With the advent of gaming technologies as a method for instruction, practitioners have come to realize that gaming for learning lacks a universally accepted set of standards to both judge the effectiveness of training and inform training developers on empirically validated methods for effective instructional employment. Success stories in employing these methodologies have appeared in training literature and some principles for effective instructional games have been developed (Gee et al. 2003 - 2007, de Freitas & Jarvis 2006). However, there is not yet a commonly accepted, empirically derived set of standards available for instructional developers to describe the elements that make an effective instructional game.

This paper focuses on establishing an ontological framework for standards and guidelines in the development and employment of game-based training. To inform the discussion, the authors draw from several research and methodological sources, including 30 years of cognitive psychology literature (Anderson, 1981; Chi, Farr, & Glaser, 1988; Clark, 2008; Klahr and Kotovsky, 1989; Posner & Snyder, 1975; Schneider & Schifrin, 1977; Shiffrin & Schneider, 1977), work in Cognitive Task Analysis (Crandall, Klein, & Hoffman 2006; Klinger, 2003), and research and practical experience developing Intelligent Tutoring Systems (Anthony, 2006; Chandler, 2003) over the past 20 years. Using the proposed ontological framework as a starting point, it is expected that researchers will refine and improve upon the suggested dimensions and category levels and ultimately establish a fully specified, empirically derived ontology to be employed and used by content and instructional developers as they delve further into the world of game-based training.