Crimes Against Mimesis

Roger Giner-Sorolla, a Psychology professor at NYU, wrote an article called Crimes Against Mimesis a while back about game design for Interactive Fiction (IF). Although the content is largely aimed at the Zork-like text adventure games, there are points inside that apply to the wider realm of the Adventure genre (into which many modern educational games fall). Mainly, it deals with the relationship between the game designer's intent and the game player's experience, and where breakdowns occur between them.