A very nice summary and analysis of Thomas Malone and Mark Lepper (1987)’s article on “Making learning fun: A taxonomy of intrinsic motivation”. Basically, there are four factors that contribute to individual’s intrinsic motivation; Challenge, Curiosity, Control, and Fantasy and three factors that drive interpersonal motivation; Cooperation, Competition, and Recognition . In short, bringing back motivation into instructional system is the key.

Excerpt from the article, “Good learning games not only focus on intrinsic motivation, they attempt to achieve “intrinsic integration,”— the effective integration of a game idea with its learning content (Habgood, 2007, citing Kafai, 2001). How you achieve this intrinsic integration is still a debated topic (Habgood, 2007).”