History teaching frequently grapples with a dearth of student engagement. Utilizing serious games can enhance the level of engagement in history education. Many studies demonstrate clear benefits of incorporating serious games into formal educational settings. Typically, the games used in educational context promote understanding of architectural and cultural heritage by providing either an engaging, close to reality recreation of the real-world experience to appreciate the art, architecture, [37] or values of cultural heritage locations or a fun approach to pique interest in the experience itself [38]. For example, games like ARCHI.101 [39] uses an escape game style to fully involve players in the study of architectural history and theories. It focuses on the Villa Savoye as an example and provides players with the opportunity to explore three-dimensional locations and interact with important historical individuals such as Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret. An immersive simulation game Learning Rome [40] encourages “learning by doing” where users can construct historically accurate towns from the ancient Roman era by replicating buildings and structure from the era. After construction, users can visit the buildings, get access to them, and interact with the objects and personalities present. The game Work-Trade-Learn [41]employs a contextual learning strategy, allowing learners to manage a mill and engage with various individuals to acquire knowledge about medical practices and European towns. An assessment demonstrated that the game was overall effective in enhancing the user's understanding of the covered subjects and their interest in history. Existing games like Assassin Creed, Civilization and Sims have been successfully integrated in traditional classrooms to educate students about the history, architecture, and development of society [42]. Games like H-Treasure hunt combines location-based services with object-based sensors to accurately locate artefacts at a historic site [43].
Serious games have gained significant importance in cultural heritage education throughout the span of several decades. However, in Indian context serious games using virtual reality as a tool for learning in academic setup is very scares with very little literature available. Researchers utilize serious games (SGs) to involve players in meaningful activities and create situations that closely resemble real-life situations, with the goal of promoting the acquisition of transferable knowledge, skills, and attitudes. The integration of serious games, along with advancing 3D modelling techniques and Virtual Reality (VR) capabilities, allows for the accurate recreation of historical events, artefacts, and environments.
In summary, the findings revealed in this study can provide valuable insights into the relationship and impact of enjoyment and user experience on student’s learning when playing serious cultural heritage games. These findings highlight the importance of incorporating game mechanics or elements that promote enjoyment and user experience satisfaction integrating in the storyboarding phase of a typical game. Specifically, the games should be adequately challenging and may align with children's abilities and provide features that encourage and inspire players to gain and utilise acquired knowledge. There is a positive relationship between narrative, immersion, and visual aesthetics and children's learning and virtual reality can offer such affordances. and stimulate their creativity and curiosity. Additionally, it is important to include visually appealing graphics in the game. The role of immersion in serious VR games specially in achieving affective learning outcome related to feelings and emotions is unexplored and can be explored further to ensure students are not cognitively loaded in VR environment and are misaligning with the learning outcomes of the game. It must be noted that post-test knowledge is affected by what the student already knew, but self-reported cognitive learning gains and interest rises are both linked to deeper thinking and having fun. To obtain generalizable results, we want to conduct a study with a large set of students.
While the role of enjoyment in serious games is discussed in the past, the investigation of serious games for cultural heritage using immersive technology such as VR is novel and unexplored. Educational VR app evaluations have focused on usability rather than learning outcomes and participant’s experiences. The gaps in the current use of VR applications for teaching, particularly in the field of Indian architecture, suggest untapped potential that could serve as a catalyst for additional research. Research asserts that the educational experiences are positively impacted by the game's clear, concise, and unambiguous presentation of cultural heritage content and that challenges must align with the gamers' expectations [44].This is also validated in this study. Infact playful games can elicit curiosity and attract students to cultural sites through gaming mechanics like customized character building [45].The Temple Lego game in future can have personalised avatars mimicking the lifestyle of people during the Chola Dynasty of 1st century AD. Further as literature suggest of the game attributes that can enhance engagement with cultural heritage learnings include narrative-driven gameplay, information capsules, task-driven learning, ease of play, identity-driven content, open-world exploration, people-centered perspectives, meaningfulness, simulation, and verisimilitude [46].The study has tried to incorporate narrative, open world exploration while immersing the students in step 1 of the game. One study, [47] mentions that serious games must integrate sound cognitive, learning, and pedagogical principles into their design and structure to be effective. Serious games can be set up in more specific ways, with more complicated features like GPS-guided activities, simplified simulation, user-generated content, storylines, virtual pets, virtual rooms, and affective embodied agents. Because of this, they are harder to add, but if the game's context and goal allow it, they can make the game more enjoyable. In the same way, more general factors like aesthetics, interfaces, usability, and mechanics, which are made up of simpler parts, can be used to improve enjoyment [34]. The next iteration or version of the game will aim to enhance the educational value by integrating game features that promote affective learning supporting enjoyment.