Selecting Suitable COTS Games in STEAM Game Store to Promote Intrinsic Motivation and Computational Thinking Skills

This study aimed at examining the COTS (Commercial off the Shelf) games having strong potential for helping to enhance intrinsic motivation and computational thinking skills. To this end, STEAM game store was searched with the keywords of "programming, coding, computing, and algorithm". This search yielded 1,249 games. After eliminating irrelevant games and the games with mostly negative comments, this number was reduced to 29. In the second phase, these 29 games were examined in terms of some characteristics such as "quality, intrinsic motivation, and computational thinking" by two experts. Six games were left in the end. It was ascertained that games mostly lacked of collaboration, although they seemed to be better in terms of problem solving and algorithmic thinking. Experimental studies should be conducted to determine whether these games are actually useful for enhancing intrinsic motivation and computational thinking skills.