Games and Rewards: A Scientometric Study of Rewards in Educational and Serious Games

Abstract

In this study we provide a new viewpoint on the body of literature regarding rewards in serious and educational games. The study includes a quantitative bibliometric analysis of literature in this context from 1969 to 2020. The dataset from the Scopus abstract and citation database was analyzed with the Bibliometrix R library. The data set was manually cleaned to contain only the relevant articles and conference papers. The data was then categorized to match the common themes. From the remaining documents, the amount of annual numbers of publications is presented and the most contributing countries are shown. The most frequent terms from the abstracts and keywords set by the authors are presented, and a co-occurrence network is drawn from the same data. The results of this study reveal that the most occurring topics in this dataset are gamification, physical activity, health, game design, and game-based learning. New directions for research are provided as the most commonly used media appear to be video games and mobile devices in addition to the literature being mostly focused on theory and not practical application.