Video games’ capacity to facilitate complex and interactive modes of engagement has led to their portrayal as particularly effective means for designing authentic and situated learning environments, which overcome the artificial and abstract nature of conventional teacher-centered schooling. Focusing on the intentional use of progressive-oriented video games (or “serious games”) towards educational aims, this paper sets out to go beyond this dichotomy by introducing the designability paradox of educational video games—arguing that video games’ designed nature both attenuates and accentuates the artificial and abstracted nature of conventional schooling. While video games are more authentic and situated in terms of the modes of participation available to players and intricateness of the simulative environment, they concurrently intensify the artificial and abstracted characteristics of conventional schooling as they represent an increase in the intentional design of learning environments and their separation from external contexts. Based on these analyses, the second part of the paper offers a more nuanced characterization of the types of authenticity and situatedness facilitated by educational video games along two axes: distinguishing between fictional and conceptual authenticity, and between situatedness that embeds or elicits learning. This classification is intended to offer a more nuanced understanding of learning in educational video games, and how they should be integrated into educational settings. Accordingly, the paper concludes by identifying three diverging foci of the integration of video games into classrooms: generalizing the learning taking place in the game, formalizing players’ in-game experiences, and contextualizing gameplay via critical analysis of the game.

电子游戏具有促进复杂和互动的参与模式的能力，导致它们被描绘为设计真实的和位于周围的学习环境的特别有效的手段，从而克服了传统的以教师为中心的教学方式的人为和抽象的本质。着眼于有针对性地将渐进式视频游戏（或“严肃游戏”）用于教育目的，本文着眼于通过引入教育视频游戏的可设计性悖论来超越这种二分法。-认为视频游戏的设计本质既削弱了传统学校教育的虚假性质，又加剧了传统教育的抽象性质。尽管视频游戏更加真实可靠，并且在玩家可参与的方式和复杂的模拟环境方面都处于领先地位，但它们同时也增强了传统学校教育的人为和抽象特征，因为它们代表了学习环境及其设计的有意设计的增加。与外部环境的分离。在这些分析的基础上，本文的第二部分对教育视频游戏沿两个轴提供的真实性和位置性类型进行了更细微的刻画：区分虚构和概念真实性，以及嵌入或引发学习的环境之间。此分类旨在提供对教育视频游戏中的学习以及如何将其集成到教育环境中的更细微的了解。因此，本文的结论是确定将视频游戏集成到教室中的三个不同点：概括游戏中进行的学习，形式化玩家的游戏体验以及通过对游戏的批判性分析来使游戏玩法与环境相关。