Self-Efficacy and Games
Fear of Failure, Perceived Control, and Mastery Experiences
In the classroom, the stakes are very high: your grades determine your future, and this creates an environment that encourages fear of failure. The curriculum is not really in the kid's hands either for many years, it's in that of the state, so there is no sense of control over their situation, and as they jump from topic to topic without knowing the relevance of the information other than that "you'll need it later for (insert vague promise of job that doesn't exist)". This doesn't exactly create an environment that encourages meaningful mastery of subject matter through one's efforts.
If you look at kids playing games though, what do you see going on? Games are designed with failure in mind, and the more kids fail at a game, the more stubborn they get about trying to beat it. (unless it's Dark Souls, rage-quitting there is understandable) The reason kids try so hard in games are because the results are tangible and made valuable: loot, character level-ups, social recognition in the games' community for doing very well, etc, but more than anything it's about achieving a sense of control and accomplishment in their environment. This feeling establishes a sense of self-efficacy, a belief in one's competence and effectiveness.
How do you implement this in education? Research done in the University of Wisconsin-Madison by a David Shaffer that looks into specifically this has already been done, and implemented by others. The design of a game that accomplishes this will need to focus on developing mechanics that depend upon mastery of school content in order to progress in a context with a meaningful narrative and give a sense of progression with the avatar, prompting an urge for continuity. A good example of this is a game called Spore that was made by Will Wright, who also developed SimCity and the Sims that brings a player through a world starting as a unicellular organism, and rising up to become an extra-galactic society. This game was designed so that kids would "stumble upon" the major scientific theories of physics, biology, and chemistry while going through the game.
Here's a link to Will Wright's TED talk on the game and the Research by Shaffer:
https://www.ted.com/talks/will_wright_makes_toys_that_make_worlds
http://www.academiccolab.org/resources/gappspaper1.pdf