The graphic adventure as an instrument to assist comprehensive reading

Abstract

Video games are interactive applications aimed at entertainment that, practically since its inception, has been tested in order to exploit their properties in other areas. In this line, the educational extrapolation has revealed a collection of benefits of the video games as pedagogical tools [1, 2], including: the potential to assist students who lack motivation, the possibility of performing a multi-modal learning process or the promotion of autonomous learning. The particular case of adventure video games offers an artificial environment in which the player has to interact to solve problems [3]. This means that the game provides a model of the world where the active participation of the player configures the interactive fiction as he/she performs actions in the game and interacts with the characters. Within this process, reading is a key process. As a result, this paper defines a basic model to represent educational graphic adventures, based in three structural elements: narrative, reading process and acquisition of competences. Narrative wraps the game to tell the story, to describe the scenarios and objects and to allow communication with the characters. Thus, the reading of the discontinuous texts narrated in the adventure is the main mechanism of interaction and the catalyst for the rest of interactions (movements, actions, etc.) to achieve the educational competences.