# The Use of Educational Games in Programming Assignments: SQL Island as a Case Study
## 4 Results
### Player Experience  
In Table 3, learner perceptions on a five-point agreement scale for all the dimensions of player experience are summarized. As can be seen in Table 3, player experience was evaluated rather positively, with the exception of the focused attention dimension. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c} \hline \hline  & \multicolumn{2}{c}{**Assignment 1**} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{**Assignment 2**} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{**Assignment 3**} \\  & **EX 1** & **EX 2** & **EX 3** & **EX 1** & **EX 2** & **EX 1** & **EX 2** \\ \hline Content & Basic structures, functions and arrays in PHP & Functions and forms in PHP & Text files in PHP & SQL queries \\ \hline Environment & \multicolumn{2}{c}{XAMPP (or similar environment)} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{XAMPP} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{SQL Island} & \multicolumn{1}{c}{phpMyAdmin} \\ Submissions & 54 & 54 & 54 & 55 & 53 & 56 & 48 \\ \hline Completely & \multirow{2}{*}{43} & \multirow{2}{*}{41} & \multirow{2}{*}{35} & \multirow{2}{*}{39} & \multirow{2}{*}{28} & \multirow{2}{*}{51} & \multirow{2}{*}{36} \\ correct & & & & & & \\ Percentage of & & & & & & \\ correct & \multirow{2}{*}{80\%} & \multirow{2}{*}{76\%} & \multirow{2}{*}{65\%} & \multirow{2}{*}{71\%} & \multirow{2}{*}{53\%} & \multirow{2}{*}{91\%} & \multirow{2}{*}{75\%} \\ submissions & & & & & & \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 1: Cumulative results for students’ performance on the exercises (EX) of the course. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c} \hline \hline  & **Mean** & **Std.Dev.** & **Min** & **Max** \\ \hline All the participants (\(N=56\)) & 59 & 46 & 20 & 300 \\ Participants that finished the & \multirow{2}{*}{56} & \multirow{2}{*}{44} & \multirow{2}{*}{23} & \multirow{2}{*}{300} \\ game (\(N=51\)) & & & & \\ Participants that did not finish & \multirow{2}{*}{84} & \multirow{2}{*}{52} & \multirow{2}{*}{20} & \multirow{2}{*}{180} \\ the game (\(N=5\)) & & & & \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 2: Duration (in minutes) of playing SQL Island. The participants were rather neutral to two out of the three aspects that constitute the focused attention dimension. Although the students agreed that _\"there was something at the beginning of the game that captured their attention\"_ (median 4), they were divided as to whether they _\"forgot about their surroundings\"_ and _\"lost track of time\"_ while playing (median 3). However, we must note that achieving a high degree of immersion, although taken for granted in the case of entertaining games, is a difficult task for educational games. Analogous results were recorded for various programming games, even games with somewhat more professional graphics and richer gameplay mechanics than those in SQL Island, which were evaluated by end users utilizing the same questionnaire based on the MEEGA+ model. In the 2D game \"Rise of the Java Emperor\" [26], which is based on graphics provided by the popular game engine Unity, the user has to solve Java programming puzzles and battle with several enemies in order to defeat the Java Emperor and become his successor in the Java island. Although both the graphics and the gameplay mechanics in this game are more interesting in comparison with SQL Island, the thirty-three participants were indifferent as to whether they lost track of time and disagreed on forgetting about their immediate