Learning, Education and Games

Volume One: Curricular and Design Considerations

Edited by Karen Schrier

Writen by members of the Learning, Education and Games (LEG) Special Interest Group (SIG)
of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA)
Learning, Education and Games
Volume One: Curricular and Design Considerations

Copyright © by Karen Schrier

and ETC Press 2014
htp://press.etc.cmu.edu/

Design Direction by Shirley Yee

ISBN: 978-1-312-54285-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014952163

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 Learning, Education and Games
Volume One: Curricular and Design Considerations

Edited by Karen Schrier

Writen by members of the Learning, Education and Games (LEG) Special Interest Group (SIG)
of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA)
 Table of Contents

Introduction by Karen Schrier 1

Acknowledgements 5

Contributor Bios 7

SECTION I—Curricular Considerations

1 Using Games to Teach, Practice, and Encourage Interest in STEM Subjects

by Elena Bertozzi 23

2 Using Computer Game Programming to Teach Computational Thinking Skills

by Linda Werner, Jill Denner, and Shannon Campe 37
Featuring a case study writen by Lucas Crispen and Elizabeth LaPensée

3 The Use of Video Games for Literacy Acquisition and Studying Literate
Practices by Richard E. Ferdig and Kristine E. Pytash 55
Featuring a case study writen by Liz Jasko

4 Designing Digital Games to Teach History by Karen Schrier 73

5 Music Games in Education by Ethan Hein 93

6 Using Games to Combine Physical Activity with Learning

by Robin Mellecker, Lisa Witherspoon, and Stephen Yang 109

7 Designing Games for Emotional Health by Ralph Vacca, Meagan Bromley,

Jakob Leyrer, Manuel Sprung, and Bruce Homer 123
8 Designing and Using Games to Teach Ethics and Ethical Thinking
by Karen Schrier 143

9 Teaching 21st Century, Executive-Functioning, and Creativity Skills

with Popular Video Games and Apps by Randy Kulman,
Teresa Slobuski, and Roy Seitsinger 161

SECTION II—Design Considerations

10 Methods of Designs by Katrin Becker and Jim Parker 181

11 Designing for the Audience and Inclusive Considerations

by Gabriela T. Richard 201
Featuring case studies writen by Paul Darvasi, Owen Gotlieb, and Sabrina Haskell Culyba

12 Developing Goals and Objectives for Gameplay and Learning

by Charlote Lærke Weitze 227

13 The Most Important Process for Making Great Games by Ira Fay 253

14 Assessing Video Games for Learning by David Simkins 267

Introduction

Karen Schrier
Kschrier@gmail.com

I am thrilled to introduce this brand new book series, Learning, Education and Games, which examines
the latest research and design techniques for creating and using games for learning. This is the irst
book in a two-book series, which was writen, edited, and reviewed by members of the Learning,
Education and Games (LEG) Special Interest Group (SIG), a subset of the International Game Developers
Association (IGDA).

But irst, let us take a step back. Is there even a connection between games and learning? Popular
opinion and mainstream media seem to suggest that games, if anything, are the antithesis to learning.
On the other hand, my experiences during the past decade have repeatedly reminded me how much
learning and games are interconnected. I observed how the power of play helps us experiment with
new identities, safely explore choices and consequences, and push the boundaries of a system.
I experienced how games provide access to new worlds and alternate systems of values, past moments
of history, and social interaction with people from diverse cultures, perspectives, and experiences.
I saw how games could situate learning in authentic contexts, such as environmental disaster zones
for science learning, physical batle sites for history learning, foreign countries for language learning,
or even in real texts for literature and literacy learning. Essential skills—from math facts acquisition
to vocabulary building to civic literacy—could be taught through games, if the games were properly
designed. The potential for teaching complex thinking skills—such as creativity and innovation, ethical
thinking, design and problem solving, systems thinking, and computational understanding—also seem
to be suggested by burgeoning research.

On the lip side, we know there are limits to what any game can do, just like any educational program,
process, or activity. One game may it a particular pedagogical need, audience, and set of goals and
constraints, while the same game could be inappropriate in a diferent context. One game may support
certain learning styles or skill needs, but not others. Just as the potentials of games for learning have

1
been suggested, the limits also need to be identiied. We need to not only understand whether a game
can teach, but the conditions under which it can (or cannot) help someone learn.

Assessing the eicacy of games in support of the acquisition and long-term practice of skills and concepts
in games has shown to be challenging. While assessing other types of educational interventions and
programs is oten tricky, games—and their many factors, ecologies, and contexts—may confound us
even further. Despite these challenges, in the past decade or so, the atention to and research of games
and learning has blossomed exponentially.

Likewise, there has been an increase in the creation and use of learning games in classrooms and
informal education sites (e.g., aterschool, libraries, home), as well as a growth in the number of websites,
applications, and other media devoted to educational games. With the advent of more accessible
and open game tools, engines, and platforms, there is also an emerging indie scene of educational
game makers.

Games and gaming for learning have also crept into unexpected corners—from the government to the
workplace, hospitals and doctor’s oices, and the military. Although the term gamiication has been
bandied about more recently to discuss games being used in not-typically-game contexts, people have
been trying to design powerful and engaging experiences using good games for years. While espousing
the pros and cons of “gamiication” is not the focus of this book series, the fact that the use of this term
has increased so rapidly (though perhaps in misaligned contexts), further suggests a need to reevaluate
the intersection of games and learning.

Despite all of the technological, social, and economic innovations that have allowed us to create, play,
iterate on, replicate, and research digital games, we also cannot overlook the many forms games can
take. Games—whether digital, hybrid, virtual, analog, online, oline, console, web-based, text-based,
graphics-intensive, or mobile—are, at their core, games. Human beings have been playing games, and
learning from games, since the start of humankind. We cannot forget that games are, at their essence,
about sharing and communicating truths about ourselves. And, if you play a game, no mater what you
have learned something—which is, at the very least, how to play the game.

For these reasons, it is an appropriate juncture to pause and consider the state of learning, education and
games. The mission of this book series is to articulate the limits and potentials of games for learning, to
identify the best practices, exemplars, and case studies, and to explore what remains to be examined.
Educators, school policymakers, parents, and designers struggle to understand beter ways to develop
and use games for learning and education. With this book, we seek to empower these audiences to
understand the primary theories, latest research indings, and best practices, and use this knowledge to
beter design and integrate games into their homes, classrooms, districts, libraries, aterschool centers,
day cares, workplaces, and museums.

2
Please note that this book series will describe the potential and limits of games to foster learning—but
will not examine whether games are inherently good or bad, nor will it consider popularly discussed
issues that could be counter to learning, such as game addiction, violence, or diminished physical
activity. This book seeks to be a thoughtful and conversational approach to a burgeoning and complex
ield, so as to inform future design, policies, standards, curricula, and products. Additionally, we will
try to steer away from deining games for learning and education with a snazzy term or acronym, such
as those used in the past (e.g., edutainment, edugames). Instead, we will make the assumption that
this book covers any game that is primarily designed or used for learning and education—even if it is
(as it should be) also designed for fun, engagement, meaningfulness and/or entertainment.

Finally, this book will also cover games whose primary use is not that of learning. For example,
mainstream, commercial of-the-shelf games (even controversial ones such as the Grand Thet Auto
or Call of Duty series) can potentially be modiied, altered, recontextualized, or relected upon for
educational purposes. That said, we agree that there are a ton of poorly designed and inadequately
implemented educational games out there (and there are also bad games of all ilk and purpose). Instead
of merely critiquing their existence, we hope that the theories, practices, and approaches described in
this book will help to constructively change their use and design.

How To Use This Book

This irst volume of this series on learning, education and games is divided into two main sections.
The irst section focuses on curricular considerations and dives into a number of disciplines and
relevant design and research frameworks, techniques, and practices. This section includes chapters on
STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), computational thinking, history and social
studies, literacy, music, physical education, emotional health, ethics, and 21st century skills. While
these are not the only topics covered in school and informal educational outlets, they are an initial stab
at unraveling the intricacies of teaching particular skill sets and themes through games.

The second section covers primary design and assessment considerations, and concentrates on
illustrating game design techniques in relation to educational needs. While designing games is always
a complex process, designing for educational purposes adds another layer of complexity, which we
try to tease out in this section. In particular, we provide an overview of the methods of designing
educational games, as well as narrow in on a few relevant topics such as deining goals and targeting an
audience. We also cover techniques for playtesting and iterative design, as well as education assessment
methodologies and practices as applied to games and game design.

3
Each individual chapter is divided into a number of segments, including the:

1. Introduction, which covers the major questions and terms related to the topic;
2. Key Frameworks, which introduces the primary theoretical frameworks for the use,
design and evaluation of games for learning;
3. Key Findings, which relays the major recent indings in the ield;
4. Assessment Considerations, which discusses speciic assessment challenges
or opportunities;
5. Future Needs, which lays out the open questions and gaps in research or application;
6. Best Practices, which summarizes the key takeaways and most efective techniques
and indings.

Each chapter also includes two to four case studies to illustrate the theories and indings in practice.
You can read the case studies individually or in the context of the chapter. Every chapter also provides
a list of useful resources and relevant further reading (and gaming!).

In the next volume, we will focus on classroom, audience, and other contextual considerations as they
relate to designing, using, and evaluating learning, education and games.

4
Acknowledgements

Many people helped out in the preparation of this irst book in the series. I want to thank the authors:
Katrin Becker, Elena Bertozzi, Meagan Bromley, Shannon Campe, Lucas Crispen, Sabrina Haskell
Culyba, Paul Darvasi, Jill Denner, Ira Fay, Rick Ferdig, Owen Gotlieb, Ethan Hein, Bruce Homer, Liz
Jasko, Randy Kulman, Elizabeth LaPensée, Jakob Leyrer, Robin Mellecker, Jim Parker, Kristine Pytash,
Gabriela Richard, Roy Seitsinger, David Simkins, Teresa Slobuski, Manuel Sprung, Ralph Vacca,
Charlote Weitze, Linda Werner, Lisa Witherspoon, and Stephen Yang.

I want to thank the founding director and president of the Learning, Education and Games (LEG) SIG,
Stephen Jacobs, and the LEG SIG steering commitee members. I want to thank Katherine Ponds for
her editorial and organizational assistance. In addition, Mark Chen provided valuable input into the
creation of a database of platforms and game creation tools.

I want to thank the hardworking peer reviewers: Courtney Aiello, Elena Bertozzi, Mark Chen, Pierre
Depaz, Brock Dubbels, Allan Fowler, Joseph France, Randall Fujimoto, Lisi Gopin Gefen, Jessica
Hammer, Jenna Hofstein, Liz Jasko, Elyssebeth Leigh, Anna Loparev, Mathea Marquart, Keiju
Matsunaga, Robin Mellecker, Gabriel Recchia, Peter Shea, Ryan Sitler, Teresa Slobuski, Deborah
Solomon, Moses Wolfenstein, and Nicole Zdeb. I also want to thank those people who helped with
copyediting the manuscript, including Robert Dran Jr. I want to thank Drew Davidson and the ETC
Press for their support and guidance in publishing this book series.

Finally, I want to thank my family, including my husband, David Shaenield and my daughter, Alyssa,
who was born during the writing and editing of this book.

Karen Schrier, Editor

5
Author Bios

Katrin Becker
President, Mink Hollow Media and Adjunct Professor, Mount Royal University, Calgary, Alberta,
Canada, www.minkhollow.ca/becker, becker.minkhollow@gmail.com

Katrin Becker is an internationally known expert in the design and analysis of Serious Games. She holds
two degrees in computer science and a Ph.D. in Educational Technology with a focus on instructional
game design. She has over 30 years of teaching experience in science, engineering, education, and art,
and she has taught computer science, video game design, digital game-based learning, and technical
writing. Her teaching innovations have been internationally recognized and she is widely published
in the areas of computer science education, educational technology, and digital game based learning.
She designs and develops eLearning in all sectors, and has consulted for various organizations on the
use of digital games for instructional purposes. She has designed and developed several educational
and advertising games. She is also the author of a book on the technical aspects of simulations and
games writen for non-technical people. Finally, perhaps as counterpoint to her work in and with
digital technology, she runs a small farm where she has been raising waterfowl and other animals for
over twenty years. This farm forms the basis for her “Ducks in the Classroom” program, which has
been providing eggs for hatching in classrooms locally since 1988, and information on school hatching
projects globally since 2001.

7
Elena Bertozzi
Associate Professor, Game Design & Development, Quinnipiac University, Hamden, Connecticut, U.S.,
htp://engendergamesgroup.com, elena.bertozzi@quinnipiac.edu

Elena Bertozzi has developed curricula and game design programs at Indiana University, Bloomington,
University of Wisconsin, Whitewater and LIU. She founded the Engender Games Group Lab to facilitate
partnerships between the public and private sectors. Her team of student artists, programmers, and
interface designers has worked on a wide range of projects ranging from frog identiication to helping
women make decisions about birth control. She is currently involved in eforts to increase the quality
of game proposals submited for federal funding, and she is working on a serious game to promote safe
sex practices funded by a Gates Foundation Global Challenge grant.

Meagan Bromley
Doctoral Student at New York University, New York, New York, U.S., meagan.kathleen@gmail.com

Meagan Bromley is a current doctoral student in New York University’s Educational Communication
and Technology program and a Research Assistant at CREATE lab, a member of the Games for Learning
Institute. Her research interests include family learning, literacy learning in digital environments,
interaction design for gestural interfaces, and the role of media in the development of cognitive skills
like executive functions. Meagan’s background working in media has included ilm development and
production in the entertainment industry, ield research with Sesame Workshop’s Education, Research
and Outreach Group and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, and collaborations with companies including
Microsot Studios, Nokia Research, E-Line Media, IDEO, the New York Hall of Science and faculty at
NYU, University of Vienna and LIFE Center. In that time, she contributed to studies in television and
game-based digital media, investigating the assessment of learning and usability on interactive media
designed for the web, handheld mobile devices and tablets, as well as the Nintendo Wii and Microsot
Kinect. She has also worked as a game designer and project manager on numerous projects. Meagan
holds a Bachelor’s degree in Film Studies from UC Berkeley, and a Master’s degree in Digital Media
Design for Learning from New York University.

Shannon Campe
Research Associate, ETR (Education, Training, Research), Scots Valley, California, U.S.,
htp://www.etr.org/, shannonc@etr.org

Shannon Campe is a Research Associate and Project Coordinator at Education, Training, Research
(ETR). Her work focuses on bridging research and practice in K-12 education, with a focus on youth
and technology. Current and recent projects include a study of how computational thinking develops
in middle school students when they program computer games and a synthesis of research on children
programming games. Her understanding of both educational practice and computer programming
has led to presentations and publications in the ields of education and computer science education.

8
Shannon’s other contributions include assisting with writing grant proposals, and coordinating large,
multi-site research projects. Her skills include teaching, working with teachers and schools to bridge
research and practice and to monitor idelity of implementation, data collection and management, data
analysis, and curriculum design. Shannon enjoys working in all areas of education with the focus on
coordinating all parts and team members of a project, while staying connected to the students and
teachers involved in the work.

Lucas Crispen
Instructor, Pixel Arts Game Development Education, Portland, Oregon, U.S., lucas.crispen@gmail.com

Lucas Crispen is an independent game developer and instructor for Pixel Arts Game Development
Education in Portland, Oregon. He holds a degree in computer science and mathematics. He has
worked with Buzz Monkey Sotware, where he contributed to multiple titles, including two games in
the Tomb Raider series. He is currently working on an unannounced game while teaching and writing
a curriculum for game programming courses at Self Enhancement, Inc., a non-proit organization that
provides educational opportunities to disadvantaged middle school and high school youth.

Sabrina Haskell Culyba

Senior Game Designer, Schell Games, Pitsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.,
www.schellgames.com, sabrina@schellgames.com

Sabrina Haskell Culyba is a Senior Game Designer at Schell Games. Her design work in the game
industry includes Disney’s Toy Story Midway Mania ride, Disney’s Pixie Hollow Online MMO,
SeaWorld’s Race for the Beach interactive exhibit, and several transformational games. She co-founded
Interbots (interbots.com), where her work includes several high-end animatronic characters, as well
as several mobile applications for young children with Autism. Sabrina received her B.S. in computer
science and her Master’s in entertainment technology from Carnegie Mellon University.

Paul Darvasi
High School Media Studies and English Teacher and Co-Director, Toronto Student Film Festival,
Toronto, Canada, www.ludiclearning.org, pauldarvasi@yahoo.ca

Paul Darvasi teaches high school English and media studies in Toronto, Canada, and is co-director of
the Toronto Student Film Festival. He earned an English literature degree from McGill University, a
Master of Educational Technology from the University of British Columbia and is a Ph.D. candidate in
York University’s Language, Culture, and Teaching program. He designed The Ward Game, a pervasive
game to teach high school seniors One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and he is co-designing Blind
Protocol, an inter-school Alternate Reality Game (ARG) that instructs on privacy and surveillance. Paul

9
has lived and worked in South America, Africa and some remote communities in northern Canada.
He spent many years working in Antarctic and expedition tourism, including leading trips to Machu
Picchu and the Galapagos Islands. He has optioned a feature ilm screenplay, and worked as freelance
journalist and translator in Santiago, Chile. His current work explores the instructional possibilities
ofered by the intersection of narrative, games and literature.

Jill Denner
Senior Research Scientist, ETR (Education, Training, Research), Scots Valley, California, U.S.,
htp://www.etr.org/, jilld@etr.org

Dr. Jill Denner is a Senior Research Scientist at Education, Training, Research (ETR), a non-proit
organization in California. She does applied research in K-12 setings, with a focus on increasing the
number of women and Latino/a students in computer science and information technology. Her current
focus is on how middle school students learn while creating computer games, the role of peers and families
in children’s educational pathways, and increasing diversity in community college computer science
classes. Dr. Denner has been a Principal Investigator (PI) on several NSF grants, published numerous
peer-reviewed articles, and co-edited two books: Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat: New Perspectives
on Gender and Gaming, published by MIT Press in 2008, and Latina Girls: Voices of Adolescent Strength
in the U.S., published by NYU Press in 2006. Dr. Denner has a Ph.D. in developmental psychology from
Teachers College, Columbia University.

Ira Fay
Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Game Design at Hampshire College and
CEO of Fay Games, Amherst, Massachusets, U.S., htp://irafay.com, ira@irafay.com

Ira Fay is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Game Design at Hampshire College and is
the CEO of Fay Games, a studio primarily focused on games for educational impact. He previously
co-founded the Game Design and Development program at Quinnipiac University, where he was an
Assistant Professor of Game Design and Development. Before beginning his academic career, Ira was a
Senior Game Designer at Electronic Arts (Pogo.com), where he led Pogo iPhone game development and
released several top web games. Prior to Pogo, Fay worked at Z-Axis (Activision) on X-Men 3, at Maxis
on The Sims 2, and at Walt Disney Imagineering on ToonTown Online. Fay graduated from Carnegie
Mellon University with a bachelor’s degree in computer science and master’s degrees in information
systems management and entertainment technology. He is also a published board game designer.

10
Richard E. Ferdig
Summit Professor of Learning Technologies, Professor, Instructional Technology, Kent State
University, Kent, Ohio, U.S., htp://www.ferdig.com, rferdig@gmail.com

Richard E. Ferdig is the Summit Professor of Learning Technologies and Professor of Instructional
Technology at Kent State University. He works within the Research Center for Educational Technology
and also the School of Lifespan Development and Educational Sciences. He earned his Ph.D. in
Educational Psychology from Michigan State University. He has served as researcher and instructor at
Michigan State University, the University of Florida, the Wyzsza Szkola Pedagogiczna (Krakow, Poland),
and the Università degli studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia (Italy). At Kent State University, his research,
teaching, and service focus on combining cuting-edge technologies with current pedagogic theory to
create innovative learning environments. His research interests include online education, educational
games and simulations, the role of faith in technology, and what he labels a deeper psychology of
technology. In addition to publishing and presenting nationally and internationally, Ferdig has also
been funded to study the impact of emerging technologies such as K-12 Virtual Schools. Rick was the
founding Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Gaming and Computer Mediated Simulations,
is the current Associate Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, and also
serves as a Consulting Editor for the Development Editorial Board of Educational Technology Research
and Development and on the Review Panel of the British Journal of Educational Technology.

Owen Gotlieb
Jim Joseph Fellow and Ph.D. Candidate in Education and Jewish Studies at New York University,
New York, New York, U.S., htp://www.converjent.org, owen@converjent.org

Owen Gotlieb is a Jim Joseph Fellow and Ph.D. Candidate in Education and Jewish Studies at the
NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. He specializes in Digital
Media and Games for Learning. Gotlieb is the founder and director of ConverJent: Jewish Games for
Learning (www.converjent.org). His mobile GPS augmented reality game, Jewish Time Jump: New York
was nominated for Most Innovative Game by the 2013 Games for Change Festival. Gotlieb’s eclectic
background includes project management for Internet sotware development, screen and television
writing for Paramount and Universal, and rabbinic ordination (Reform). Gotlieb’s work crosses
the ields of Jewish education, the learning sciences, the digital humanities, media studies, cultural
anthropology, and social studies education. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College,
master’s degrees from the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts and Hebrew
Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. He is a member of the Writers Guild of America, West; the
Central Conference of American Rabbis; and the International Game Developers Association.

11
Ethan Hein
Adjunct professor of Music Technology and Music Education at New York University,
New York, New York, U.S., htp://ethanhein.com/, ethan@ethanhein.com

Ethan Hein teaches music tech to future music teachers at NYU and Montclair State University. A
graduate of NYU’s Music Technology program, Ethan has spent iteen years performing, teaching,
composing, and writing about music. He is a co-developer of Play With Your Music, a MOOC
(Massively Open Online Course) that introduces audio production concepts and techniques, developed
in collaboration with NYU, the MIT Media Lab, P2PU, and Peter Gabriel. He works with the NYU
Steinhardt Music Experience Design Lab, developing new sotware and physical interfaces for music
learning, engagement and creativity.

Bruce Homer
Associate Professor, The Graduate Center at City University of New York, New York, New York, U.S.,
BHomer@gc.cuny.edu

Dr. Bruce D. Homer is an Associate Professor of Educational Psychology in the Learning, Development
and Instruction subprogram at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. He is the director of
the Child Interactive Learning and Development (CHILD) Lab there, and co-Director of the CREATE
lab at New York University. His research examines how children acquire and use “cultural tools” to
store and transmit knowledge (e.g., language, literacy, and information technologies), and how these
tools transform developmental and learning processes. He and his colleagues have been investigating
how diferent design paterns in games afect student learning and motivation, as well as ways of
embedding assessment into educational games to provide to students and educators. This line of work
has included examinations of emotional design for improved learning outcomes in video games, and
recently involved research on the potential of video games to assess and train executive functions in
children. Dr. Homer holds an MA in Applied Cognitive Science and a Ph.D. in Human Development and
Applied Psychology from the University of Toronto.

Liz Jasko
UX Designer, The Lathe, New York, New York, U.S., www.lizjasko.com, ljasko@gmail.com

Liz Jasko is a UX designer specialized in purposeful technology. She has guided user experiences
in educational media, games and mobile apps including work for Discovery Kids and Bayer
Pharmaceuticals. She is the co-organizer of the Game-Based Learning NYC Meetup group, and a
member of the IGDA. Jasko holds a B.A. in Communications & Media Arts for Interactive Media/Game
Studies from Marist College. Her article “How Video Games Can Revolutionize the Static Classroom”
was published in the Fox Forum academic discourse journal of Marist College, and she was awarded
by the School of Communications and the Arts for “Outstanding Achievement in Interactive Media/
Game Studies.” Ater a semester studying abroad in Italy, Jasko took a special interest in researching
and designing language-learning games.

12
Randy Kulman
Founder and President, LearningWorks for Kids, PeaceDale, Rhode Island, U.S.,
htp://www.learningworksforkids.com/, randy@learningworksforkids.com

Randy Kulman, Ph.D. is the Founder and President of LearningWorks for Kids, an educational technology
company that specializes in using video games and interactive digital media to teach executive-
functioning and academic skills. For the past 25 years Dr. Kulman has also been the Clinical Director
and President of South County Child and Family Consultants, a multidisciplinary group of private
practitioners that specializes in assessment and interventions for children with learning disorders
and atention diiculties. Additionally, Dr. Kulman is the author of numerous essays on the use of
digital technologies for improving executive-functioning skills in children in which he has developed
concepts such as “play diets” and “engamement” to help parents and teachers understand the impact
of digital technologies on children. He is the author of Train Your Brain for Success: A Teenager’s Guide
to Executive Functions and the co-author of a chapter in the book Designing Games for Ethics: Models,
Techniques, and Frameworks published in 2011 by IGI Global. He is also the author of the forthcoming
2014 book LearningWorks for Kids: Playing Smarter in the Digital World.

Elizabeth LaPensée
Game Researcher, Designer, and Writer, Portland, Oregon, U.S., elizabethlapensee@gmail.com

Elizabeth LaPensée, Ph.D., specializes in Indigenous determination in game development, including

research, design, writing for games and participating in game development education for Indigenous
youth. She contributed writing and consultation for the transmedia property Animism (2011). She
has consulted and writen for games such as Andy Schatz’s Venture Arctic (2007). Currently, she is
designing a board game about Northwest Native traditional foods with the Northwest Indian College as
well as co-designing a suite of Tulalip traditional foods games for the Oregon Museum of Science and
Industry. She is passionate about living by example as well as passing on skills and providing access to
technology to empower the next generations to determine their own representations in games.

Jakob Leyrer
Doctoral Student, Psychology, University of Vienna, and Research Assistant at Games4Resilience
Lab, Vienna, Austria, jakob.leyrer@univie.ac.at

Jakob Leyrer is a current doctoral student in the Department of Psychology at the University of Vienna,
and a Research Assistant at the Games4Resilience Lab. His research centers around the development of
games to train emotional understanding and executive functioning in children. As a project manager on
the game EmoJump, he has assembled groups of graduate students, artists and programmers to design
and build a research prototype. On Space Ranger Alien Quest he has worked in collaboration with teams
from New York University, the Graduate Center at City University of New York, and programmers

13
from the University of Applied Sciences Technikum Wien to build a game engine and lead playtesting
and research studies in local schools with Austrian children. He has presented his research indings
throughout Europe at both academic and game industry events.

Robin Mellecker
Post Doctorate Fellow, Institute of Human Performance, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong,
robmel@hku.hk

Dr. Robin Mellecker received her Ph.D. at the University of Hong Kong and is currently a Post Doctorate
Fellow in the Institute of Human Performance at the University of Hong Kong. Robin is a passionate
researcher who examines ways in which modern computer gaming technology can be used to encourage
children to participate in physical activity and to learn academically. Robin has published and presented
her research indings and has won awards for her research locally and internationally. Her aim is to
engage multiple stakeholders in planning, implementation, and evaluation of physical activity and
learning intervention strategies and to enhance the likelihood that innovative technologies will be
incorporated into activity and learning programs that are sustainable and can be replicated in schools
and community setings.

Jim Parker
Professor of Art at the University of Calgary and Principal Designer at MinkHollow Media Ltd,
Alberta, Canada, www.ucalgary.ca/~jparker, parker@minkhollow.ca

Jim Parker is a full Professor in the Department of Art at the University of Calgary, teaching game
design and media art, and before that he taught Computer Science at the same school for 26 years
(image processing, game development) and Drama for two years. He is the author of six books, the
latest being, Game Development Using Processing. He has most recently has been conducting research
in virtual theatre and in computer games, especially serious games. Jim is also the principal designer at
MinkHollow Media Ltd, a serious game developer in Canada.

Kristine E. Pytash
Assistant Professor, Literacy Education, Teaching, Learning and Curricular Studies, Kent State
University, Kent, Ohio, U.S., htp://www.literacyspaces.com/, kpytash@kent.edu

Kristine E. Pytash is an assistant professor in Teaching, Learning and Curriculum Studies at Kent State
University’s College of Education, Health, and Human Services, where she co-directs the secondary
Integrated Language Arts teacher preparation program. She was a former high school English teacher.
Her research focuses on disciplinary writing, writing instruction in juvenile detention facilities and
the literacy practices of youth in alternative schools and juvenile detention facilities. Her recent work
has appeared in the Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, English Journal, Voices from the Middle, and
Middle School Journal.

14
Gabriela T. Richard
Postdoctoral Research Fellow for Academic Diversity, Graduate School of Education, University of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S., htp://www.gabrielarichard.com, gric@upenn.edu

Gabriela T. Richard is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow for Academic Diversity at the University of
Pennsylvania in the Graduate School of Education. She is a National Science Foundation (NSF)
and AAUW-funded scholar, whose research speaks more broadly to issues important to media
designed for formal and informal education. Speciically, her research focuses on how to design and
implement educational media and technology that is inclusive and sensitive to how social realities can
disproportionately afect identiication and achievement (particularly across sociocultural experiences,
including gender, ethnicity, and sexuality). She has worked as an interactive designer, and taught
instructional design and educational games courses at New York University, CUNY, and University
of Pennsylvania. Before starting her Ph.D., she developed an innovative outreach program, which
taught New York City public school students and teachers how to develop tangible media with physical
computing, which received grant funding from the NSF. For over ten years, she has taught youth how
to develop interactive and tangible media, including digital games. She has presented widely on why
diversity maters in media design, as connected to her research indings of marginalizing practices in
game culture and their relationship to social identities and stereotype threat. She received her master’s
degree from the Interactive Telecommunication Program at New York University, and her Ph.D. from
the Educational Communication and Technology Program at New York University.

Karen Schrier
Assistant Professor of Media Arts, Marist College and Director, Play Innovation Lab, Marist College,
Poughkeepsie, New York, U.S., www.playinnovationlab.com, kschrier@gmail.com

Dr. Karen Schrier is an Assistant Professor of Media Arts at Marist College, where she leads the
concentration in Interactive Media/Game Design. She also directs the Play Innovation Lab (www.
playinnovationlab.com), which researches and creates games and media for education and social
change. Prior to Marist, she designed and produced websites, apps, and games at Scholastic, BrainPOP,
Nickelodeon and ESI Design. She is the editor of this book series on games and learning, and has
previously edited two books on games and ethics: Designing Games for Ethics and Teaching Values
through Play. Dr. Schrier is also currently writing a book on games and social change (Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2015). She is a member of the steering commitee of the IGDA Learning, Education,
and Games (LEG) SIG—the group that collaborated to write, review and edit this book. She holds a
doctorate from Columbia University, master’s degree from Massachusets Institute of Technology, and
a bachelor’s degree from Amherst College.

15
Roy M. Seitsinger, Jr.
Superintendent of Schools, Westerly Public Schools, Westerly, Rhode Island, U.S.,
htp://westerly.k12.ri.us, rseitsinger@westerly.k12.ri.us

Roy Seitsinger, Ph.D., has held the full range of educational leadership and learning positions since
he began his career as a Title I literacy teacher for grade two in 1977. He is a former superintendent,
assistant superintendent, middle school principal, middle school assistant principal, elementary school
principal, and classroom teacher. He has led classrooms from kindergarten through high school in New
England and grade four at an international school in London. Dr. Seitsinger has been the Superintendent
of Schools in Westerly, Rhode Island since August 2010. During his tenure he has amassed a set of
innovations that has gained statewide atention, not the least of which is his innovative partnership
with the Town of Westerly in the creation of a joint Finance Director. Dr. Seitsinger was the Director
of Middle School and High School Reform for the Rhode Island Department of Education from 2006
to 2010. As a community member Dr. Seitsinger continues to read to children, is a member of several
professional organizations, and serves on the board of the local Supper Table, an organization dedicated
to bring healthy meals to the less fortunate.

David Simkins
Assistant Professor, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, New York, U.S.,
www.davidsimkins.org, dwsimkins@gmail.com

David Simkins is an assistant professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology where he is engaged
in the assessment of games for learning for the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Department
of Education (DoE) funded projects. In addition to work in learning assessment, he is a designer and a
qualitative and mixed methods researcher of role-play in face-to-face and video game contexts. His Ph.D.
is from University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Curriculum and Instruction. Dr. Simkins is a
founding member of the Games, Learning, and Society group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Teresa Slobuski
Liaison Librarian for Elementary Education, Special Education, and Social Work at San Jose State
University, San Jose, California, U.S., htp://instantiatethis.com, teresa.slobuski@sjsu.edu

Teresa Slobuski, MLIS, is the liaison librarian for elementary education, special education, and social
work at San Jose State University. She also serves as the librarian for San Jose State’s nascent Learning
and Games Education Initiative and manages International Games Day at the Library on campus. As the
elementary education liaison she oversees collections of current and historical California textbooks for
kindergarten through eighth grade. Slobuski completed her master’s degree in library and information
science at Rutgers University in her home state of New Jersey. She received her undergraduate degree
in English from St. Mary’s College of Maryland. She conducts research on a variety of topics such as

16
the impact of non-text media on information retrieval, children’s literature, and educational technology
topics, especially the use of games as educational tools. In her free time, she spends as much time
playing games as reason allows. She resides in San Jose, California and loves the sunny weather.

Manuel Sprung
Professor of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, University of Vienna and
Founding Director of the Games4Resilience Lab, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria,
www.manuelsprung.at, manuel.sprung@univie.ac.at

Dr. Manuel Sprung is a Professor of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology in the Department of
Psychology at the University of Vienna, and founding director of the Games4Resilience Lab in the
division of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology at the University of Vienna. Dr. Sprung has held
academic and research positions at various universities in Europe and the U.S., including a position
at Harvard University. His research interests are at the intersection of traditional areas of psychology
and bridge with other academic disciplines, such as informatics, and exercise and sports science. He
conducts transnational research on the eicacy and transportability of evidence-based child and
adolescent mental health services. Research in the Games4Resilience Lab is aimed at developing
innovative ways to disseminate efective interventions and to prevent child and adolescents mental
health problems, to help ill the current treatment gap in mental health care.

Ralph Vacca
Doctoral student at New York University, New York, New York, U.S., ralph.vacca@nyu.edu

Ralph Vacca is a doctoral student in New York University’s Educational Communication and Technology
program and researcher at dolcelab. His research focuses on the use of technology to promote personal
wellness for social wellness, speciically promoting empathy, compassion, emotion regulation, and civic
engagement. Ralph’s background includes design of award-winning commercial games and simulations
in the area of mental health, the design of social change games, and exploring social entrepreneurship
as vehicle for serving at-risk populations. Ralph holds a bachelor’s degree in entrepreneurship from City
University of New York, and master’s degree in educational leadership from NYU.

Charlote Lærke Weitze

Doctoral student, Learning and Philosophy Department and ILD-lab at Aalborg University,
Copenhagen, Denmark, htp://personproil.aau.dk/126686, cw@learning.aau.dk

Chartlote Weitze was trained as a pianist at The Royal Danish Conservatory of Music and earned a
M.SC. from the IT University of Copenhagen, focusing on digital design and communication. In her
master’s thesis, she developed a model of how to develop motivating and engaging learning game as
well as a concept for a music learning game, which she has described in the article, The Smiley model—

17
Concept Model for Designing Engaging and Motivating Games for Learning. She is interested in design
of learning games—both professional design of learning games, as well as learners’ design of games as a
way to become subject experts. In addition, she is interested in methods for competence development of
teachers when they need to be innovative in respect to the use of IT in teaching. She is also interested in
the development and measurement of students’ and teachers’ motivation and engagement in learning
situations. She is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Learning and Philosophy and ILD-lab: IT and
learning design at Aalborg University in Copenhagen.

Linda Werner
Adjunct Professor of Computer Science, Baskin School of Engineering, University of California,
Santa Cruz, California, U.S., htp://www.soe.ucsc.edu/people/linda, linda@soe.ucsc.edu

Dr. Linda Werner is an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science (CS) at the University of California,
Santa Cruz. She has experience as an educator and researcher at the university, community college,
high school, and junior high levels. Dr. Werner was the Primary Investigator (PI) on an NSF-funded
study of the retention of female CS students, the results from which provide convincing evidence for
using pair programming in introductory CS courses. She has been invited to share her research on pair
programming at the university and middle school levels in international setings, as well as NSF and
ACM JETT/TECS sponsored workshops. In addition, she has many years of experience as a sotware
engineer. She has consulted on an NSF-funded study to design, implement and conduct research on
game design as a strategy for increasing girls’ interest, skills, and conidence in technology. She was also
the co-PI of an NSF-funded study of middle school students, computer game design, and computational
thinking. She is a co-PI of an NSF-funded study of community college CS students looking at the role
of motivation, family support and prior computer use, particularly digital gaming. Linda Werner has a
Ph.D. in CS from the University of California, San Diego.

Lisa Witherspoon
Assistant Professor, The University of South Florida, The School of Physical Education and Exercise
Science, Tampa, Florida, U.S., Withersp@usf.edu

Lisa Witherspoon, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor at The University of South Florida in the School of
Physical Education and Exercise Science. She received her academic qualiications in Early Childhood
Education, curriculum and instruction, with a cognate in Physical Education. Dr. Witherspoon
serves as the Co-Director of the USF Active Gaming Research Laboratories. Her research focuses on
understanding the efects of active gaming technologies on physical activity and improvements in
lifelong physical activity behaviors. Dr. Witherspoon is also an established business advisor, author and
presenter at International and National conferences and events related to the ield of active gaming. In
addition, she serves on National commitees and Advisory Boards related to physical education, active

18
gaming, sports and itness concepts. Dr. Witherspoon’s most recent achievement has landed her a role
as PE Central Active Gaming Managing Editor. She has been elected as an Inaugural iTeach Fellow at
the University of South Florida to assist future teachers and current faculty in using technology in the
classroom. In addition, Dr. Witherspoon has served as a consultant for national and global organizations
as well as many corporations in writing curriculum and conducting presentations.

Stephen Yang
Assistant Professor, Health Promotion & Wellness, at SUNY Oswego,
Oswego, New York, U.S., exergamelab@gmail.com

Stephen P. Yang, Ph.D. is a Lecturer and Research Associate in the Center for Obesity Research (CORE)
at SUNY Cortland. Dr. Yang actively pursued technologically innovative methods to promote physical
activity in his role as a former high school teacher. Dr. Yang researches the efectiveness of using
exergames (active video games) and technologies for children, adolescents, and adults with and without
disabilities. His innovative approach to facilitate learning involved technology and problem-based
learning principles. He has been actively involved in promoting the ield of exergaming since its infancy
and has published and presented internationally and nationally. As a contributor with the Games for
Health (GFH) Project, Dr. Yang consults with video game developers, toy and technology irms, and
exergaming companies on products and services. In recognition of his expertise, he was appointed
to the Board of Advisors of Exergame Fitness and has been interviewed for several national news
services. Throughout all his research and collaborations, Dr. Yang wishes to examine the efectiveness
of using exergames as a gateway to inspire people to be more active and healthy over their lifetime.

19
SECTION ONE

Curricular Considerations
CHAPTER 1

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM)

Using Games to Teach, Practice,

and Encourage Interest in STEM Subjects
Elena Bertozzi, Quinnipiac University, Hamden, Connecticut, U.S., elena.bertozzi@quinnipiac.edu

Key Summary Points

Many games purport to teach, practice, or encourage interest in STEM subjects; however,
1 many fail to do so in ways that can be statistically shown to be efective. The potential beneits
of such games are oten overstated. All parties should be more cognizant of realistically
achievable outcomes.

Designers and educators should establish parameters to determine what constitutes a

2 successful game experience and design usability tests that measure the degree of improvement
in students’ aptitude and performance following engagement with STEM games.

Progress is being made both in building STEM games and assessing their efects. Analysis
3 of some successful games is helpful in determining how to include games in curricula and
demonstrating how they support educational goals.

Key Terms
STEM
Self-eicacy
Technological literacy
Scientiic method
Intrinsically motivating
Game physics
Playful learning

23
Introduction
Educators, politicians, and businesspeople are among the many parties concerned about the decline
of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) competency in the United States. Other
countries such as China and the Nordic countries are doing a much beter job of preparing citizens
for a highly technological and scientiically complex world (OECD, 2013). A scientiically informed
and competent workforce is essential for success in an increasingly technological world. Regardless
of what kinds of work students eventually go into, understanding the scientiic process, fostering a
sense of wonder about the world around us and the bodies we inhabit, and encouraging engagement
with math and computer programming will enrich their lives and help them make informed decisions
as an electorate.

Concurrently, we have seen enormous growth and development in the computer, mobile and casual
game markets, along with hardware development that has enabled a range of new ways to interface with
computer games on multiple platforms. As a result, academics, funding organizations, and developers
have fostered interest in the potential use of games on multiple platforms to help encourage, teach,
and practice STEM competencies. Many games, such as MathBlaster, which claim to accomplish these
goals have been produced and successfully marketed despite the fact that there is litle proof of their
efectiveness (Greer, 2013). Games that have actually demonstrated measurable success (e.g., Wuzzit
Trouble in improving math understanding (Beveridge, 2013)) are rarer.

One reason for the diiculty in suggesting that games are more efective at motivating and teaching
students than traditional methods is that STEM subjects are complex and diicult, and achieving
competency in these areas typically requires long periods of focused practice. Games can be very
helpful in exposing children to scientiic concepts and demonstrating how fascinating they are, but
creating games that successfully teach how to calculate statistics or the properties of diferent chemical
reactions, for example, has proven to be much more challenging. Progress is being made as developers
and researchers determine what works best and how to deploy such games in educational environments
(Clark, Tanner-Smith, Killingsworth, & Bellamy, 2013).

The proitability of the game industry over the past decade has led to innovation and rapid development
of large-scale world simulations, such as World of Warcrat and Eve Online, which are populated by
millions of players. At the moment, these environments are used primarily for entertainment purposes;
however, they are now being explored for their educational potential as well. Such worlds can allow
students to virtually experience and inhabit worlds diferent from the one in which they live. For
example, researchers at San Francisco State University have created a game entitled World of Balance
where players can manipulate the presence and growth of the lora and fauna native to a habitat and
atempt to organize multiple interacting ecological systems to increase the health of the biome (htp://
smurf.sfsu.edu/~debugger/wb/). Games such as these demonstrate how complex systems are structured
by allowing students to see and change them. Massively multiplayer online (MMOs) worlds can also
expose students to economic principles such as currency and exchange rates, or the way incremental

24
increases in technology can favor one side over another in a conlict, and the importance of forming
and maintaining alliances. Games can also reduce the tedium of practice by creating environments
with achievable goals and intrinsic rewards so that students will be motivated to continue seeking to
overcome challenges.

It is important that both developers and educators realistically assess both the potential and limitations
of such games so that they can be usefully deployed in learning environments. For example,
3D game environments are much costlier than simpler 2D games with less complex graphics, and are not
necessarily more efective at communicating STEM concepts. The previously mentioned game Math
Blaster allows the players to navigate 3D environments, but the 2D Wuzzit Trouble game does a beter job
of teaching math. New tools are being developed to help educators assess diferent games to determine
what works best in any given environment. Common Sense Media created an online tool (htp://www.
commonsensemedia.org/app-reviews) where teachers and parents can share their experiences with
and assessments of new applications and educational products. Serious game conferences, such as the
Serious Play conference, now routinely include panels on outcomes measurement and assessment. The
National Science Foundation (NSF) created a track speciically to fund educational STEM games, and
academics and game developers are establishing more rigorous standards for demonstrating eicacy.

Students oten avoid STEM subjects because they are diicult. Learning calculus and physics, for
example, requires complex thinking, hours of repeated practice, and self-discipline. Games may be an
important impetus for exposing students to practical uses of STEM and fostering an interest in being
able to do it themselves. Simply playing with technology and managing the interfaces through which
it is accessed is not enough, however. This chapter seeks to explore how games can be used to help
students really go “under the hood” and understand how technology and science operate at a much more
fundamental level. Some games create environments that allow players to see and manipulate items,
such as molecules, which are very small in the real world so that students can learn how the building
blocks of life combine. Other games provide players with actual blocks and give them a sandbox in
which to use them to create any kind of structure with a variety of materials. Another strategy is to
create a series of scenarios that present the player with complex problems and provide the tools to solve
them. The player is given a goal and encouraged to explore.

Academics in the developing ield of game studies are working to determine whether STEM-related
games actually succeed in helping students engage with and succeed in STEM subjects when they are
not playing. This chapter will discuss examples of games that are currently being used successfully
to promote scientiic thinking and practice. Additionally, we will explore some of the challenges
of building such games and list best practices for ways that educators can deploy such games and
monitor results.

25
Key Frameworks
The act of playing games on machines is in and of itself practice with technology (Bertozzi & Lee, 2007).
Many intelligent living beings use play as a way to become familiar with and adept at manipulating the
tools required for success in speciic ecosystems (Heinrich, 1999). Human beings living in technologically
complex worlds have an advantage if they have acquired the high-level skills necessary to create and
manipulate the technologies that make our world work. Students who play a lot of games on computers,
tablets, and phones may experience pleasure from this activity. If the pleasure is interrupted, they
are strongly motivated to return to it. Thus, such children are more likely to learn how the technology
works so that they can ix it if it is broken and therefore have a beter understanding of how it works.
The V-chip, which was meant to protect children from adult content, is an excellent example. Many
parents were unable to make it work by themselves and had to call their children to igure out how
to use and remove it because the children understood the control system beter than the parents did
(Hazlet, 2004).

Children who play video games are much more likely to want to learn sotware engineering and computer
programming than children who do not (Egenfeldt-Nielsen, 2006; Overmars, 2004). The recent creation
and expansion of game design and development programs on college campuses is an international
phenomenon that both recognizes the economic importance of the business of selling games (and thus
the lourishing job market for developers) and the presence of strongly motivated students who want to
be able to earn a living creating a medium that they love.

Researchers have determined that playing science-based games (forensic science mystery solving, for
example) both increases fact retention and the likelihood that students will report motivation to pursue
science-based careers (Miller, Chang, Wang, Beier, & Klisch, 2011). More longitudinal studies will be
required to see if players actually do pursue such careers. Klopfer (2008) has worked extensively on
integrating mobile technologies such as phones and tablets into science education by puting students
in environments and asking them to solve problems using participatory simulations and play (Klopfer,
2008). Like the forensic science game mentioned above, the idea is to make the learning of science more
similar to the practice of science (Rosenbaum, Klopfer, & Perry, 2007). Now that the viability of science
games is beter established, more speciic studies seek to determine which deployments of games are
more efective. For example, one study tested to see if is it beter to let students play games freely or
interrupt the play experience to introduce traditional learning experiences and found no diference in
learning outcomes between the two methods (Koops & Hoevenaar, 2013). Other studies are focused on
isolating which elements of gameplay are most important to successful learning outcomes. Pavlas et
al., found that video game self-eicacy (experience with and comfort level with games as a technology)
and achieving a state of low were the most signiicant predictors of learning success (Pavlas, Heyne,
Bedwell, Lazzara, & Salas, 2010).

26
Good educational games tend to rest on similar frameworks. Norman (1994), deined some useful
parameters for relaying information through games. Games meant to teach should:

1. Provide a high intensity of interaction and feedback: As mentioned above, games need
to be fun and immersive so that students are engaged and receptive to learning.
2. Have speciic goals and established procedures: Narrowly-focused games with speciic
outcomes (as discussed in the case studies) allow educators to assess how gameplay
impacts knowledge retention.
3. Motivate: Good games have in-game incentives such as scores, badges, leveling up
and rewards for victors.
4. Challenge: Provide a continual feeling of challenge that is neither so diicult as to
create a sense of hopelessness and frustration, nor so easy as to produce boredom.
5. Direct engagement: Provide a sense of direct engagement, producing the feeling of
directly experiencing the environment, directly working on the task.

There have been shits in frameworks as more research is done in the ield. In the past, games were
implemented in the classroom with an “instructionist” perspective (making instructional materials
looks like games). A more successful strategy appears to be a constructionist perspective (making
games that embed learning) (Kafai, 2006). Early games for learning oten seemed merely to be quizzes
or lashcards that had been made digital and interactive, but lacked intrinsic motivation (they were
not fun in and of themselves). Now it is understood that games have to be fun to play in addition to
implementing their educational goals.

27
Case Study: Crowdsourcing Science (Foldit and EyeWire)
An important development is the creation and use of games that crowdsource tasks and problem solving.
Such games not only help researchers advance their goals, but also allow the general public to view,
educate themselves about and play with complex physical phenomenon that they would otherwise be
unlikely to be involved with (Good & Su, 2011).

For example, Foldit was created because scientists had been unable to resolve certain biomechanical
functions without an understanding of how complex proteins were folded. A group of researchers at
the University of Washington decided to use crowdsourcing as a way of addressing the problem (Game
Science at University of Washington & University of Washington Department of Biochemistry, 2012).
They created a series of game environments, allowed anyone to log into the system, and gave players
the proteins as puzzles to solve. The environment was competitive and rewarded players both through
scoring and through the good feeling that they were helping researchers solve important problems
related to human health.

Eyewire (eyewire.org) is another example of making science problems available to the general public.
The goal of Eyewire is to map the neurons in the human retina. The game takes a large number of
high-resolution images of the brain and asks players to help identify which structures in the images
are neurons and which are not. Players are initially trained in this identiication through a tutorial and
then encouraged to compete with other players to see how quickly and accurately they can identify
the greatest number of neurons. As with the Foldit game, Eyewire allows access to highly detailed and
speciic scientiic information to anyone who wants to login. The images are aesthetically interesting
and the challenge is intellectually satisfying.

Both of these games could be used in school environments to show students the complex and fascinating
structures that make up the human body and to provide contemporary examples of the ways that science
can manipulate them to improve health. Given their narrow focus, clearly deined tasks, demonstrably
successful motivational incentives and explicit parameters for success, they serve as examples of the
aforementioned atributes of successful educational games. Additionally, the games demonstrate how
much time and painstaking atention to detail are necessary to make signiicant discoveries. Games of
this type are not appropriate for all age levels, but they can serve as examples of how complex scientiic
information can be presented and explained to the public through play. It is important that educational
games both demonstrate the potential of science and how diicult (and satisfying) it can be to make
progress. Recent studies of the efects of playing these and similar games demonstrate that they do in
fact improve cognition (Latham, Patston, & Tippet, 2013).

28
Key Findings
Although a great deal more work needs to be done to determine how games that efectively and playfully
communicate STEM information can be constructed and deployed, there is some existing research
documenting such efectiveness.

One major inding is that good games motivate players and can broaden their interests (Egenfeldt-
Nielsen, 2006). Games can introduce players to the idea of environments as constructions— assemblages
of parts that can be wondered at, explored, taken apart, studied, and rebuilt. Games such as Neverwinter
Nights not only allow players to play in the world, but also provide players with the opportunity to
“mod” the world. They can create their own modiications of the play environment and then publish
them so that others can play their new version of the game (Kaplan-Rakowski & Loh, 2010). Play worlds
can expose students to speciic systems and networks of systems to help them see the way that things
are connected and how their actions can afect individual parts. These concepts are fundamental to the
sparking of curiosity about science, math, and engineering, which are based on our desire to understand
ourselves, the world around us, and how everything works.

Minecrat, for example, is now one of the most played games in the world (22 million players) and is
being used in both high school and college classrooms because the development team has speciically
sought collaborations with educators to both implement the game in educational environments and
study its efects (htp://minecratedu.com). Minecrat is a massively multiplayer online role-playing
game (MMPORG) where players can construct structures out of a variety of diferent materials
and then navigate through the worlds that they and others have built to accomplish a variety of
diferent tasks. This game has been used successfully to further STEM education in multiple setings
(Short, 2012) (see more in Case Study Two).

Another inding is that games can provide players with the opportunity to learn mathematical and
scientiic concepts intuitively rather than symbolically in the same way that a person can learn to play
the piano without knowing how to read music (Devlin, 2013). Many schools begin teaching with the
symbolic representation—numbers and graphs, for example—rather than introducing the concepts irst
and the symbolic representation aterward. Singapore math is taught according to the later system
(Hoven & Garelick, 2007). Games work similarly in that players can see the importance of understanding
how the physical environment works to succeed in the game. In Angry Birds, for example, players have
to intuitively igure out what kind of projectile to use and the angle and amount of force with which to
launch it. These considerations involve thinking scientiically. Some educators have capitalized on this
and are using the game in the classroom to teach how objects move through space and the math and
science needed to calculate trajectories (Crecente, 2011).

Other indings include the proven efectiveness of using games for motivating and reinforcing the
repeated practice necessary to become adept at the kinds of complex skills required in many STEM
ields. Educators and developers are collaborating to build games speciically to introduce students to

29
subjects in a way that makes repeated practice intrinsically motivating. Universities have started game
development degree programs on their campuses that allow faculty to work together with students
in STEM subjects to create games that reinforce speciic skill sets such as mechanical engineering
(Coller & Scot, 2009). Games are also increasingly being used in healthcare. Atendiendo el Parto en
Casa (Bertozzi et al., 2013), for example, is being used to train midwives in developing countries how
to deal with potentially fatal complications. Another game, Underground, creates an environment in
which doctors, aspiring doctors and anyone who is interested can learn the motor skills required for
laparoscopic surgery (Grendel Games, 2013) (see Case Study Three).

Case Study: Scenario-Based Games for Science (Plague.Inc and Underground)

Some developers have created scenario-based games for communicating science knowledge. These
games immerse the player in an environment in which they must learn about a speciic problem and
acquire a speciic skill set to survive in the game. Plague.Inc, for example, is a top-rated game for the
Android platform. The premise of the game is that the player wants to infect all human beings and
thereby eliminate humankind from the Earth. In the course of doing so, players learn a great deal about
infectious diseases, how they spread, and how to infect (and also protect) populations. Through the play
of the game, players also have to learn geography and demographics, how viruses mutate, and how to
make a virus maximally virulent. By providing a goal that is the opposite of what might be expected—
destroying fellow human beings rather than saving them—players can not only enjoy the gameplay, but
also enjoy the thrill of breaking taboos, which can signiicantly add to a game’s appeal (Bertozzi, 2008).

Other games can be more straightforward in their approach. Bertozzi’s Engender Games Group lab,
for example, has created a game aimed at educating midwives in developing countries (Bertozzi et
al., 2013). Traditionally-trained midwives can make errors, which result in the death of the mother
or the neonate during labor and delivery. In the developing world, midwives are oten not literate,
which further complicates training them. Using a scenario-based video game, midwives can play
through the results of diferent actions and see how outcomes can improve using alternative methods
(Cohen, Cragin, Wong, & Walker, 2012; Cragin, DeMaria, Campero, & Walker, 2007).

The Grendel team in Holland released a game, Underground, aimed at teaching surgeons
(and prospective surgeons) how to acquire the physical coordination necessary to be skillful at
laparoscopic surgery (Grendel Games, 2013). A local hospital discovered that the enormous amount
of money that they had invested in a lab where physicians could practice their skills went to waste
because physicians found the exercises in that lab to be extremely boring. Grendel’s scenario-based
game, with its compelling story and credible goals, which required players to become adept at using
certain manual skills, was a much more successful method of encouraging physicians to exercise their
skills in this area (GoogleTechTalks, 2012).

30
Assessment Considerations
There are now a plethora of games purporting to teach STEM subjects and it is very diicult to
determine which ones are most efective for which contexts or learners. Given that there are not yet
any professional rating or ranking systems to inform educators about which games are most efective
in reaching speciic teaching goals, the following questions can help an educator determine if a game
is worth using for STEM learning. These questions are drawn from Norman’s previously mentioned
framework (1994) and from usability studies on interactive applications in general (Nielsen, 2000).

1. Does the game have a narrow, speciic, measurable outcome? Look for games that
have smaller and thus more achievable parameters for success.
2. How long is the game? Consider how long students will be playing the game and look
for games that realistically promise what can be practiced or communicated in that
amount of time.
3. Is the interface clear and understandable for the target audience? Many games present
the player with challenges, but the user interface is not clear. When players get stuck, they
may not be able to igure out how to get out of the situation. Good games include tutorials
that walk players through gameplay or ofer help sections.
4. Has the game been run through cycles of usability and outcomes testing to ensure that
stated goals are being met? For example, if the game says that it is going to teach students
to memorize and implement the multiplication tables, the company website should have
usability and outcomes testing data to demonstrate efectiveness.
5. Reputable third party assessment and endorsement of games can also help. Ratings may
or may not be useful. Games may be highly rated because they are fun to play; it is more
diicult to ind ratings assessing efectiveness.
6. Does the game have internal means of measurement and reward that encourage players
and promote continued engagement? Players love to be given feedback. Scoreboards,
badges, positive and negative sounds that respond to player behavior are all means by
which games can keep players informed about how they are doing. Good educational
games can integrate this assessment with the learning goals of the game. It is helpful for
teachers if in-game assessments can support external assessment.
7. Does the game provide educators with access points so that it can be integrated into
existing classroom activities? It is important to remember that games do not need to stand
alone as learning tools. Teachers must integrate them into their own speciic classroom
environments in the same way other media are utilized. Thus, educator input into the
development process is very useful. Game developers need to hear from educators about
how this aspect of games can be improved.

31
Future Needs
Given the fact that using video games in the classroom is a relatively new phenomenon, educators
currently have litle guidance about how to use them efectively. Many schools now provide students
with tablets (such as iPads) and encourage educators to integrate them into classroom activities. These
eforts have coincided with an increased push for core competencies and outcomes assessment from
the government and other agencies. It is essential that schools, educators and developers work together
to ind a way to develop and deploy games that foster an interest in and practice competencies in STEM
subjects. Teachers cannot be expected to be able to review games and determine what will and will not
work in the classroom without formal structures to assist them.

Case Study: Modding an Existing MMORPG with Minecrat

Rather than creating an entirely new game, educators can use existing games for educational purposes.
The beneit of doing this is that the challenge of creating a compelling and fun experience has already
been accomplished; now the game just needs to be implemented in a new seting. Minecrat is a sandbox
game that provides players with a wide range of materials and tools and a great deal of freedom to do
whatever they want inside the game space. The passage of time is simulated in the gamespace; day
occurs and then night falls. During the day, players can accumulate materials and build things with
them. At night, enemies emerge and it is important to have created structures that protect players from
harm, otherwise death and destruction ensues. The game simulates the challenges living beings face
in a natural environment and therefore many aspects of gameplay can be related to myriad scientiic
ields. To play the game, players must intuitively grapple with the principles of physics and architecture
to put together structures that can protect them from enemies. They have to learn and use economic
principles to acquire goods, resources, and capital so that they have the means to construct adequate
protection. Many players create elaborate versions of structures that exist in the real world (e.g., the Taj
Mahal) or in ictitious worlds (e.g., the Starship Enterprise). Educators are currently using this game to
introduce and practice a range of engineering and science concepts (Short, 2012; West & Bleiberg, 2013),
such as Bob Kahn’s implementation in Brentwood Middle School (2013). There are many resources for
educators at minecratedu.com, including a wiki to help teachers and players answer questions and
develop innovative ways to use the game.

Some games allow players to modify the game (known as “modding”) by giving them access to the
source code and encouraging them to come up with their own content. There are many games that
leverage player interest to create new content in existing game worlds. Such games open their worlds
to modiications by players who are able to build new sections of the game and then see what happens
when players play inside of them (Solano, 2011). Minecrat encourages modding and this aspect of the
game has been utilized to teach and practice coding of artiicial intelligence agents in game worlds
(Bayliss, 2012). As both developers and educators come to recognize the potential beneits of games for
education, we will see more targeted examples of gameplay that teach speciic concepts.

32
Best Practices
Educators seeking games that will encourage, educate, and promote practice with STEM subjects should
be aware of the fact that many games claiming to do so fail to meet the criteria for efective learning tools.
This will change as the industry matures and educators and developers create and test new products
and develop means for measuring efectiveness. At the moment, there are few directories or other tools
for educators to use to ind games that have proven efective. Educators should seek out games with a
narrow focus with goals that appear reasonable and achievable. They should look for games that have
been tested and can present evidence of outcomes assessment and usability analysis. Most importantly,
games should be fun. Otherwise, they are simply interactive training environments masquerading as
games. A good game motivates players to want to engage with it. STEM games should foster a sense of
wonder and appreciation of the challenges involved in learning complex natural phenomena. Given
the increased focus on the potential of games for educational motivation and achievement, games are
atracting more funding (DeLoura & Metz, 2013) and more rigorous forms of assessment (Clark et al.,
2013). This will certainly result in the development of beter games and the means to integrate them
into curricula.

Resources
Games
3rd World Farmer
Angry Birds
Big Seed
FoldIt
Extrasolar
EyeWire
Minecrat
Motion Math games
Newton’s Playground
Plague.Inc
Rube Works: The Oicial Rube Goldberg Invention Game
Save the Seas
Sid’s Science Fair
World of Balance (htp://smurf.sfsu.edu/~debugger/wb/)
Wuzzit Trouble

Books
Baek, Y.K. (Ed.), Gaming for Classroom-Based Learning: Digital Role Playing as a Motivator of Study. Hershey,
PA: IGI-Global.
Devlin, K. Mathematics Education for a New Era: Video Games as a Medium for Learning
Gee, J. What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy (Second Edition). New York, NY:
Palgrave Macmillan.

33
Ifenthaler, D., Eseryel, D & Ge, X. (Eds). Assessment in Game-Based Learning: Foundations, Innovations, and
Perspectives. New York, NY: Springer
Klopfer, E. Augmented Learning: Research and Design of Mobile Educational Games
Squire, K. Video Games and Learning: Teaching and Participatory Culture in the Digital Age

Websites
MinecratEdu: Bringing Minecrat to the Classroom (htp://Minecratedu.com)
Educade (htp://Educade.org)
Common Sense Media (htp://www.commonsensemedia.org (see sections for STEM games)

Consortia & Labs

STEM Education Coalition (htp://www.stemedcoalition.org/)
The New Media Consortium (htp://www.nmc.org/news/get-technology-outlook-stem-education-2013-2018)
VirginaTech School of Education STEM Education Collaboratory
(htp://www.soe.vt.edu/STEM/collaboratory.html)
The Institute for Advanced Learning and Research STEM Internships (htp://www.ialr.org/index.php/advanced-
learning/k-12-programs/stem-internships)

References
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Innovation Conference (IGIC), 2012 IEEE International.
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Journal of Game Studies, 1(3), online.
Bertozzi, E., & Lee, S. (2007). Not just fun and games: Atitudes towards technology and gameplay. Women’s
Studies in Communication.
Bertozzi, E., Walker, D., Rouse, C., Nguyen, N., Cooper, M., & Cooper, N. (2013). Atendiendo El Parto En Casa
Retrieved January 21, 2013, from htp://ardeaarts.org/atendiendo/
Beveridge, C. (2013). Review: Wuzzit Trouble. Aperiodical. Retrieved from aperiodical.com website: htp://
aperiodical.com/2013/09/review-wuzzit-trouble/
Clark, D., Tanner-Smith, E., Killingsworth, S., & Bellamy, S. (2013). Digital games for learning: A systematic
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Cohen, S. R., Cragin, L., Wong, B., & Walker, D. M. (2012). Self-eicacy change with low-tech, high-idelity
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e15-e24. doi: htp://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecns.2010.05.004
Coller, B. D., & Scot, M. J. (2009). Efectiveness of using a video game to teach a course in mechanical
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Cragin, L., DeMaria, L. M., Campero, L., & Walker, D. M. (2007). Educating skilled birth atendants in Mexico:
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Devlin, K. (2013). The music of math games. American Scientist, 101, 87.
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Game Science at University of Washington & University of Washington Department of Biochemistry. (2012). The
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Good, B., & Su, A. (2011). Games with a scientiic purpose. Genome Biology, 12(12), 135.
GoogleTechTalks (Producer). (2013). Playing Surgery: A laparoscopy game for surgeons. Retrieved from htp://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpSvDvYvJGk
Greer, T. (2013). Mobile learning to reach $2.1 billion in North America by 2017. Internet Learning Technology
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2017-North-America-Mobile-Learning-Market.aspx
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gizmos/2004/02/requiem_for_the_vchip.html
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cognitive abilities. [Review]. Frontiers in Psychology, 4. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00629
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CHAPTER 2

Computational Thinking

Using Computer Game Programming

to Teach Computational Thinking Skills
Linda Werner, University of California, Santa Cruz, California, U.S., linda@soe.ucsc.edu
Jill Denner, ETR, Scots Valley, California, U.S., jilld@etr.org
Shannon Campe, ETR, Scots Valley, California, U.S., shannonc@etr.org

Key Summary Points

Computer game programming can be used to engage middle school students in the
1 development of computational thinking skills.

This paper describes a framework, Game Computational Sophistication, which is used to

2 evaluate students’ games regarding their computational sophistication.

Best practices include suggested assessment strategies, and ways that teachers can use
3 computer game programming to maximize computational thinking.

Key Terms
Computer game programming
Computational thinking
Metrics for operationalization of computational thinking
Computational sophistication
Programming construct
Patern
Game mechanic
Middle school

37
Introduction
A good way for teachers to motivate students to work on computational thinking (CT) skills is by bringing
computer game programming into the K-12 classroom. CT is described as a set of skills that includes
formulating problems, logically organizing and analyzing data, representing data through abstractions,
and automating solutions (Barr & Stephenson, 2011). Selby (2013) proposes a deinition of CT focusing on
the activities that develop acquisition and provides evidence of CT skills. These include the ability to
think in abstractions, generalizations, algorithmically, and in terms of decomposition and evaluation.

Wing (2006) explains that “(c)omputational thinking will be a fundamental skill used by everyone in
the world by the middle of the 21st century.” The Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) has
included elements of CT in its “K-12 Computer Science Standards,” such as problem solving, algorithms,
data representation, modeling and simulation, and abstraction (CSTA Standards Task Force, 2011).
These standards also identify a developmental progression in these skills. For example, a middle school
level understanding of abstraction involves being able to decompose a problem into sub-parts, whereas
a high school level understanding of abstraction involves using procedural abstraction, object-oriented
design, and functional design to decompose a large-scale computational problem.

While most agree that CT is a set of important skills to develop, there is litle guidance on how to
teach them. Lee et al. (2011) describe an instructional progression that includes the steps that teachers
can take to engage students in CT and involves creating models and simulations, as well as designing
and programming computer games. Selby (2013) suggests that the following activities can lead to the
development of CT skills: problem solving, systems design, automation, modeling, simulation, and
visualization. Our own and others’ research suggests that the design and building of computer games, if
done with appropriate guidance and appropriate game development tools, leads children to develop and
show evidence of the use of CT skills (Denner & Werner, 2011; Denner, Werner, & Ortiz, 2012; Werner,
Denner, Campe & Kawamoto, 2012; Werner et al., 2012; Repenning, Webb, & Ioannidou, 2010; Resnick
et al., 2009).

In this chapter, we describe how making a computer game can engage middle school students in CT. We
ofer a framework that we developed to evaluate students’ games for CT, and include examples of how
to identify diferent aspects of CT in speciic games, such as problem solving, algorithms, modeling, and
abstraction. Finally, we describe best practices that instructors can use to increase the likelihood that
computer game programming will involve CT.

Key Frameworks
The research in this chapter builds on prior studies in the areas of complex problem solving and novice
programming. The creation of computer games can be a complex problem solving activity and one
that young students are capable of doing. Designing and programming a game is what Jonassen (2000)
has described as a “design problem” that is ill-structured, requiring the student to deine the goal, the
solution path, and how to evaluate the solution. For example, most games include the key features of

38
complex problem solving that were identiied by Quesada, Kintsch, & Gomez (2005). These include
tasks that are: 1) dynamic (each action changes the environment), 2) time dependent, and 3) complex
(requires a collection of decisions that determine later ones). To study these features, research must look
at how students atempt to solve problems—what they do when they are faced with situations that are
dynamic (each action changes the environment), time dependent (use timers to enhance the gameplay
experience) and complex (decisions made early in the game determine later decisions).

Historically, the irst programs students create are not considered complex systems since they are not
dynamic, not time dependent, and not complex. These irst programs typically do not focus on the
user of the program. Instead, these programs implement small, but highly constrained, computational
tasks, such as adding integers or displaying the words “Hello World.” With the advent of powerful,
yet simple-to-use, novice programming environments such as Alice and Scratch, young students can
create their own dynamic systems—computer games—and in doing so, the students focus on the user
or game player, of their creations.

Our efort to understand what children learn by programming games is based on decades of studies.
For example, research on the development of programming knowledge has described developmental
progressions. Both Linn (1985), with her “chain of accomplishments” example, and Robins, Rountree,
& Rountree (2003) describe three dimensions that can be used to distinguish between efective and
inefective computer programming novices:

1. Knowledge: The knowledge of design, language, and debugging tools;

2. Strategies: The strategies for design, implementing the program using
a programming language, and debugging; and
3. Models: The mental models of the problem domain, the desired program,
and the actual program.

These three dimensions—knowledge, strategies, and models—provide a useful framework for identifying
the types of thinking that a student engages in while programming. While these dimensions sometimes
overlap, Robins et al. (2003) suggest thinking of them as stages in the process of acquiring programming
skills, and within each stage, students progress through the phases of designing, generating, and
evaluating their program.

Research on children programming games and digital stories has focused less on progressions and more
on the computer programs the children create. These eforts typically focus on the use of programming
constructs, which are one of the fundamental computer science building blocks that are accessible to
students in novice programming environments (Denner & Werner, 2011; Brennan & Resnick, 2012). Most
of these studies have summarized which programming constructs appear in students’ inal programs,
but do not distinguish between programming constructs that have been successfully or unsuccessfully
used. The analysis of computer programs created by children done by Werner, Campe, & Denner (2012)
is important because it relies not only on the presence of a programming construct, but also analyzes

39
its use. This analysis determines whether the programming construct is reachable along some program
path and whether the construct, when executed, causes abnormal program execution.

We propose a new framework for analyzing how children develop CT skills during computer game
programming called “Game Computational Sophistication” that has been informed by the work by
Jonassen (2000), Quesada et al. (2005), Linn (1985) and Robins et al. (2003). This framework emerged
from our analysis of student games, and accounts for multiple levels of complexity that go beyond
programming constructs to look at whether game programmers are creating complex systems. At the
simplest level of the framework, are the elementary code pieces of students’ games or programming
constructs. These include a programming language’s instruction set, and what are typically described
in studies of how computer game programming can teach students higher order thinking.

At the next level of computational sophistication, students put together multiple programming
constructs to create instances of “paterns,” which are higher order computer science building blocks
that use combinations of programming constructs. Paterns create additional program functionality but
may or may not be contiguous segments of code. Expert programmers have libraries of these paterns,
sometimes called “plans,” from which to build their programs (Brooks, 1977; Pea & Kurland, 1984;
Jefries et al., 1981; Ehrlich & Soloway, 1984). Sotware engineers call these plans “design paterns,”
based on the work by Alexander (1997) who writes they “provide a common vocabulary for design, they
reduce system complexity by naming and deining abstractions, they constitute a base of experience
for building reusable sotware, and they act as building blocks from which more complex designs can be
built (Gamma et al., 1993).” It is suggested by Kreimeier (2002) that game developers “make a sustained,
conscious efort to deine and describe the recurring elements of their daily work … so we can begin
to create sotware tools made or adapted speciically for game design purposes.” The identiication
of game design paterns creates a common language for both designing and analyzing games
(Holopainen & Bjrk, 2003). Repenning and his colleagues describe paterns at the level of phenomena
(e.g., collision, transport, and difusion), and they explore whether students can transfer the use of
those paterns to other applications (Ioannidou, Bennet, Repenning, Koh, & Basawapatna, 2011). While
these authors have advanced our understanding of how to think about and identify paterns, studies
examining the incomplete, successful, and unsuccessful paterns used to create games developed by
middle school youth are nonexistent.

At the highest level, the game computational sophistication includes “game mechanics,” which are a
combination of programming constructs and paterns. They are used to make the game fun to play and
to challenge the player. Game mechanics are the actions, behaviors, and control mechanisms that are
available to the player (Hunicke, LeBlanc, & Zubeck, 2004) and provide the kinds of actions that the
player must take to move gameplay along. Sicart (2008) provides a deinition of game mechanics that
is useful for game analysis: “methods invoked by agents, designed for interaction with the game state…
something that connects players’ actions with the purpose of the game and its main challenges.” In
other words, the game designer must engage in complex problem solving to create rules, interactions
between the rules, and the mechanics (the game pieces that provide the interactivity for the player) to

40
address a challenge or set of challenges within the game. We know of no studies of games that identify
game mechanics in games developed by youth. Discussions with game design experts and researchers
have advanced our understanding of how to think about and identify game mechanics. Similar to
the research on programming constructs and paterns, we are not familiar with any research that
has examined the properties of incomplete, successful, and unsuccessful game mechanics in games
developed by youth.

Key Findings

In this section, we describe how we used the Computational Sophistication framework to understand
how computer game programming can teach children computational thinking skills. To assess the
computational sophistication of the students’ games, we irst identiied the programming constructs,
paterns, and game mechanics that are possible given the programming environment used, and then
analyzed the games’ program codes for instantiations of these three types of computer game building
blocks. The diferences lie in the number and computational sophistication of the programming
constructs and paterns used, the number of mechanics, as well as the complexity of the integration of
constructs into paterns, paterns into mechanics, and the integration between the mechanics.

The study took place in technology elective classes during or ater school at seven public schools
in California. Three hundred and sixty-ive middle school students using the Alice programming
environment made the games. Over a two-year period, we ofered our entire Alice curriculum 16
diferent times, each over a semester. Classes were randomly assigned for students to work on their
games in a pair or by themselves. Students spent approximately ten hours learning to use Alice by
following worksheets with step-by-step instructions to introduce programming constructs, and another
ten hours programming their games. Students chose the content of their games with the limitations
being that the content is appropriate for school, as deined by their teacher; that the game is interactive,
has a player outcome, and includes player instructions. A total of 231 games were created.

The games were analyzed for the following Alice programming constructs, presented in order from
least to most sophisticated: do in order statement, do together statement, simple event handlers, built-in
functions, set statement, more sophisticated event handlers, student-created methods, student-created
and non-list variables, if/else statement, loop statement, while statement, student-created parameters,
student-created functions, student-created list variables, for all in order statement, for all together
statement, nested if/else statement.

For paterns, we identiied the following 15 paterns in the student-created games, again listed from
least to most sophisticated (see Table 1). The last column shows the percentage of the 231 games that
included each patern.

41
Table 1. Paterns

Patern Patern Description %

Parameters Seting parameters such as font size, as seen by (but not duration) available 35.5%
for all built-in methods

Sound Use of audio sounds not built into Alice methods 13.9%

Movement Controlling object or camera movement with key or mouse 19.5%

Manipulating subparts Programming subparts of an object to change during the game (e.g., arm of 25.5%
one character hits another and just their head falls of)

Instructions Instructions are programmed via 3D text, methods 71.9%

Phantom objects Using not-in-view objects to move and position other objects 4.3%

Embedded methods Student-created method that is embedded within another method 27.3%

Dialog box Player is asked for input, input is read in, and program uses the input 15.6%

Vehicles Vehicle property is used so that when the vehicle object moves, an atached 21.2%
object moves in unison with it

Collision There is a program action depending on the distance one object is from 21.2%
another

Camera control Changing the view according to movement or player input within one 39.4%
scene

Scene change Programming movement to and from diferent scenes 12.6%

Counters Integer variable created and initialized, variable’s value incremented or 7.8%
decremented, and threshold value of variable triggers additional action

Timers Integer variable created and initialized, variable’s value changed as time 9.5%
passes, and threshold value of variable triggers additional action

List processing List variables are created and used with For all in order or For all together 2%

We identiied the following 11 game mechanics in the student-created games (see Table 2) based on
discussions with game design experts and researchers (A. Sullivan, G. Smith, T. Fristoe & L. McBron,
2011) and by analyzing the students’ games. We have found that there was a range of computational
sophistication, based on programming constructs and paterns used, to build each of these game
mechanics. The last column shows the percentage of games that included each game mechanic.

42
Table 2. Game mechanics

Game Mechanic Game Mechanic Description %

Collecting Player atempts to accumulate objects to advance in game. 19.9%

Timed Challenge Player is given a time limit to complete game task. 11.3%

Exploration Player moves an object or the camera to ind objects beyond player’s initial 13.0%
range of view. Movement is not restricted to occur along a designated path.

Shooting Player shoots at object; actual projectile must be present. 2.6%

Racing Player moves object across a inish line within time limit or moves an 3.9%
object in competition with other objects.

Guessing Player answers questions via clicking, typing, or moving an object. 22.9%

Hidden Objects Player searches for an object that is hidden either beyond view or “hidden 6.1%
in plain sight.”

Navigation Player moves object and/or camera from one location to another known 16.5%
location oten on a designated path.

Levels Player moves between at least 2 stages by gathering points or fulilling a 2.2%
challenge.

Avoidance Player moves object to avoid either stationary or moving obstacle based on 3.5%
player proximity to obstacle. Feedback to proximity is required.

Hiting Moving Objects Player atempts to click on moving object or moves something (character, 5.6%
object, camera) closer to a moving target to prompt another action.

To illustrate what our Computational Sophistication Framework looks like when applied to games,
speciically to illustrate a range of sophistication in what these paterns and mechanics look like, we
have included two case studies (see case study section).

43
Case Study: M808 Super Batle Tank
One of the more computationally sophisticated games created by the middle school students in our
study was made by a pair of boys, titled M808 Super Batle Tank. The students use eight unique paterns
to implement three diferent game mechanics (Collecting, Timed Challenge, and Exploration). The
student programmers use two additional paterns to enhance the visual aspects of the game. The game
instructs the player to drive a tank around a city (the Exploration game mechanic) to ind and destroy
seven cars by clicking on them to start ires (the Collection game mechanic) within a particular time
limit (the Timed Challenge game mechanic). A “win” message appears if the player destroys seven cars
within the alloted time; a “lose” message appears if the time runs out and seven cars are not destroyed.

In Table 3 are listed each of the paterns used to implement each of the game mechanics found in
M808 Super Batle Tank. To demonstrate the detail collected during our analysis, Table 3 also includes
the more sophisticated programming constructs that students used to implement paterns for their
Collecting game mechanic. The programming constructs have been italicized in the Collecting Game
Mechanic column.

The “Instructions” patern is part of this game’s three game mechanics since the instructions are
needed to inform the game player what items to collect (part of the Collecting game mechanic), inform
the game player that only three minutes are given to complete the collecting (part of the Time Challenge
game mechanic), and inform the game player to move around the scene to ind the cars (part of the
Exploration game mechanic).

44
Table 3. The integration of paterns and mechanics in M808 Super Batle Tank

Patern Collecting Game Timed Challenge Exploration Game

Mechanic Game Mechanic Mechanic
Instructions Destroy 7 cars Destroy 7 cars within 3 Move around city to see
minutes cars

Vehicles Camera using tank as

vehicle

Camera Control Player seeing back of tank

while moving around
game scene

Embedded methods Blow up cars, counting, Check count of how many

etc. cars are blown up, win and
lose messages, etc.

Phantom objects Placement of instructions Placement of instructions Placement of instructions

Timer Destroy 7 cars within time Move around to destroy

limit 7 cars

Counter Count the number Destroy 7 cars within time

of cars collected (i.e., limit.
clicked on) as you move
through scene. Uses
variables, student-created
methods, simple and
more sophisticated event
handlers, set statement,
and built-in functions.

Parameters Car blowing up style is

abrupt; for look and feel

Manipulating subparts Tank’s turret is turned; for

look and feel

Key/mouse control Tank’s turret is moved.

Uses simple event handlers.

45
Case Study: Fishy Atack

Fishy Atack, made by a girl working alone, is a game showing a mid-range level of computational
sophistication. It has two game mechanics, “Collecting” and “Timed Challenge,” which the student
implemented using four distinct paterns (see Table 4). The student programmed the Timed Challenge
mechanic using only the Instructions patern. The student programmed a monkey to give instructions
using the say built-in method call and modiied the duration parameter’s default value of the say to
keep the instructions on the screen for ive seconds giving the player more time to read each of the
instructions. The student also programmed a print programming construct that persistently displays
“click on all the ishy…” below the game scene. It is important to note that the student used simple event
handler programming constructs to make the ish invisible when collected. The use of simple event
programming to accomplish this collecting does not constitute the use of a patern.

Table 4. The integration of paterns and mechanics in Fishy Atack

Patern Collecting Mechanic Timed Challenge Mechanic
Instructions Click on all ish. Uses simple event handlers. Click on all ish within 40 seconds.

Embedded methods All remaining ish sink underwater.

Timer Click on all ish within 40 seconds.

List processing All remaining ish sink underwater in unison.

The opening screen shot for Fishy Atack is shown in Figure 1. Ater the monkey on the island says,
“Can you please help me get of this island,” the player is instructed to “click on all the ishy” (the
Collecting game mechanic) before they drown (the Timed Challenge game mechanic). As the player
clicks on ish, they disappear and are saved. Unfortunately, there is no code for one of the ish to
disappear when the player clicks on it; therefore, there is no way to win by saving all the ish from
drowning. It is unclear if this was the intent of the student. When the time runs out and the player has
not succeeded in saving all of the ish from drowning, all the unsaved ish sink underwater.

Figure 1. Opening screen shot for Fishy Atack

46
Assessment Considerations
Game-based assessment techniques such as we have described with our game computational
sophistication framework provide only one strategy for measuring computational thinking skills. Their
contribution is that they allow a quantiiable measure of deinable aspects of CT, and we can say with
reasonable conidence that the students engaged in those aspects. The games themselves cannot tell
us how deeply the students engaged in those aspects of CT, however, or why the students included or
did not include certain features—whether it was due to the complexity of the programming construct or
patern, or to a lack of interest in having that particular feature in their game. A more comprehensive
picture of CT skills requires additional assessments, such as a test of students’ knowledge transfer, or
the collection of more in-depth, qualitative data from both students and teachers.

For example, Werner et al. (2012) measured transference of CT skills with the Fairy Assessment,
which is an Alice game that students play solving increasingly more sophisticated CT problems by
adding, debugging, and modifying the Alice programming code. More than 300 middle school students’
solutions were scored resulting in a range of CT skills. Administration of the assessment was not costly;
however, scoring of the solutions was time-consuming. Burke & Kafai (2012) analyzed Scratch programs
created by ten inner city middle school youth enrolled in a digital storytelling class. Regarding CT
skills, they found widespread use of concepts such as loops and event handling but only limited use
of the more sophisticated programming concepts such as conditionals, Boolean logic, and variables.
Limitations include concerns about what students were able to do on their own without help from
others. Additionally, their study involves only a small number of students.

In another example, Repenning et al. (2010) have begun the analysis of games students have created
using AgentSheets looking for the presence of CT skills. Middle and high school teachers involved in
their projects report high student engagement. Limitations include whether demonstrated CT skills are
transferable. The researchers have identiied next steps such as to show that the students’ game building
skills are transferable to other areas of STEM education. The researchers have built an inventory of
higher-level CT paterns used in game development. Their next step is to show use of these paterns in
computational biology and chemistry simulations and robotics applications.

Brennan & Resnick (2012) have developed the most comprehensive assessment package for Scratch
projects. This consists of three parts: 1) Automated project portfolio analysis, 2) Interviews about
artifacts created, and 3) Design scenario-based testing. These researchers have identiied limitations of
this assessment package, repeating concerns of what students are able to do on their own when looking
at the results of the automated project portfolio analysis. They reported the interview portion of the
assessment is time-consuming, taking one to two hours per interview. Additionally, the researchers
believe this portion of the assessment package would beneit from multiple interviews per student
occurring progressively during the project development period. The design scenario part of the
assessment package, similar to the Fairy Assessment described above, is time-consuming in delivery.

47
Future Needs
Computer game programming can teach CT skills, and we have begun to identify the kinds of
computational thinking that middle school students engage in while making their personal choice of
games with the Alice programming environment. There are limitations to our work, such as:

1. The Computational Sophistication Framework was developed by analyzing games created

in Alice and needs to be tested on games created with other tools to see if the distinction
between constructs-paterns-mechanics makes sense and to see if other paterns or
mechanics emerge.
2. The indings need to be compared against other measures of CT collected from the same
students to ensure their reliability.
3. The indings do not contribute to eforts to understand CT learning progressions,
and further work is needed to determine whether certain paterns (or mechanics)
are more sophisticated than other paterns (or mechanics) and whether there is a range
of sophistication in how paterns or mechanics are used.
4. For this approach to be used by teachers, the assessment and analysis needs to
be automated.

Case Study: Scratch as a Path to Programming

(writen by Lucas Crispen and Elizabeth LaPensée)
Scratch (scratch.mit.edu/) is a graphical programming language and development environment that is
an accessible, efective, and engaging way to teach coding. It has been particularly accessible for middle
school and high school students at the Self-Enhancement Academy Inc. (SEI), a non-proit organization
supporting disadvantaged youth through a full-time middle school and ater-school program. This case
study describes the application of Scratch in a programming class at SEI taught alongside a partnership
with Pixel Arts Game Education (www.gameeducationpdx.com/), a non-proit dedicated to reducing
the barriers of access to game development technology and education. Experiences with Scratch are
based on three middle school classes and one high school class taught across Fall 2013, Winter 2014, and
Spring 2014 with individual class sizes ranging between ive and iteen youth.

Initially, Lucas Crispen—a game programmer with professional industry experience and academic
experience in teaching and developing curriculum for weekend and summer classes and camps in
digital media and game programming—was brought in to teach a general coding class. SEI selected
Code Academy (www.codeacademy.org) due to its robust curriculum, and while it is excellent overall
for teaching Javascript and web design, it failed to meet the needs of SEI’s youth. Foremost, youth
faced a learning curve since they had litle to no prior programming experience, brought on by limited
computer access outside of SEI classrooms. Many youth were intimidated by screens of code and self-
defeating when encountering issues.

48
Based on these concerns, as well as a desire to beter engage youth in an ater-school programming
class with no mandatory atendance or grade system, Crispen developed a curriculum around the
visual programming environments Scratch and SNAP (a visual drag-and-drop programming language,
snap.berkeley.edu). He noticed an immediate improvement in the engagement level of youth as well as
the speed with which they were able to pick up basic programming concepts.

The curriculum involves nine weeks of two one-hour sessions each week, beginning with open-ended
discussions about programming and simple exercises in SNAP and Scratch. In Weeks two and three,
youth learn how to manipulate sprites, learn about the 2D coordinate system by drawing shapes and
paterns with the pen tool, and engage in simple conditionals and loops while making a simple line-based
Snake-like game with user input. Week 4 invites experimentation and excites youth by encouraging
“hacking.” The students play games from the Scratch community, identify how these games function
based on previous lessons, and then “hack” the code of these games to adjust the diiculty level and/or
change graphics or sound, which is well-supported by Scratch’s “Remix” functionality.

The remainder of the curriculum reinforces core concepts including compound logic, multi-case
conditionals, and conditional loops as youth make their own maze games and elevate to making their
own versions of Flappy Bird, through cycles of development, playtesting, and iteration with other youth
in the class. Youth were especially engaged by contributing to the Flappy Bird “clone” community and
reinforced skills established earlier.

When using Scratch in programming curriculum, there is room for improvement in terms of
performance. Scratch has performance issues on older computers, which is a concern for institutions
and organizations with restricted technology funding. The browser version of Scratch also requires
reliable Internet connections and speed. This can result in frustration for youth and for instructors
working within limited class time.

Overall, Scratch is successful in achieving STEM outreach by establishing concepts and enthusiasm
reinforced by integrating popular games throughout curriculum. Scratch’s visual nature avoids many
of the language diiculties associated with learning traditional programming and allows students to
focus on developing computational thinking skills and understanding core concepts. From a game
development perspective, it provides an easy introduction to handling keyboard and mouse inputs, as
well as a simple sprite-based system for drawing objects on the screen.

Since Scratch does not currently convert visual programming to existing programming language, it is
best implemented as a path to understanding foundations that can be followed-up by a tool like Stencyl
(www.stencyl.com/), which is currently used in the game development classes by Pixel Arts Game
Education. Youth in the programming classes are able to directly correlate their experience designing a
game with the classic Snake mechanic, a maze game, and a Flappy Bird clone to more advanced steps
for designing their own self-determined games.

49
Best Practices
Based on our indings (Campe, Denner, & Werner, 2013), the following principles should guide teachers
on how to use computer game programming to develop and engage students in computational thinking
skills:

1. Curriculum: Schedule technology modules into your class. The entire Alice curriculum
its well into one semester’s schedule of four hours of class meetings per week.
2. Technology: Choose one of the novice programming environments (Kelleher & Pausch,
2005). Alice and Scratch are the most popular and the CSTA publishes lists of resources for
both of these programming environments for teachers to use in their K-12 classrooms.
3. Teacher Prep: Understand the range of computational sophistication involved in making
diferent types of games using tables such as those we have given in this chapter for
paterns. Understand the types of games that same-age students are interested in making
to assist students in determining personal interest (Denner, Ortiz, Campe, & Werner, 2014).
4. Pedagogy: Guide the students to make the more sophisticated types of games.
For example:
a. Provide examples of more sophisticated games made by same-age students.
b. Provide scafolding to students for learning the novice programming
environment and learning key constructs and paterns for game design
and creation (Campe et al., 2013; Campe, Werner & Denner, 2012;
Webb & Rossen, 2013).
c. Guide students to design and create a practice game irst. This activity
motivates students to learn more sophisticated programming constructs,
paterns, and game mechanics.
d. Include student, teacher, and peer review activities of students’ games to
provide feedback highlighting game functionality and usability issues (such as
that seen in the second case study with a “no win” situation). These can be done
as group, pair, or individual activities and can be done at various points during
the game development process.

Resources
Websites and Reports
National Research Council. Report of a Workshop on the Scope and Nature of Computational Thinking.
Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2010.
National Research Council. Report of a Workshop on the Pedagogical Aspects of Computational Thinking.
Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2011.
CSTA/ISTE CT resources (htps://csta.acm.org/Curriculum/sub/CompThinking.html)
Alice website (htp://www.alice.org/)
Scratch website (htp://scratch.mit.edu/)
SNAP website (htp://snap.berkeley.edu/)

50
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52
Acknowledgments
Our thanks go to the teachers and administrators at our seven schools, speciically Anne Guerrero, Shelly
Laschkewitsch, Don Jacobs, Sue Seibolt, Karen Snedeker, Susan Rivas, and Katie Ziparo. Thanks also to
teaching assistants, Will Park, Chizu Kawamoto, and Joanne Sanchez; and to Pat Rex and Eloy Ortiz, for
instructional materials design and technology support. Thanks to Dominic Arcamone, Stephen Butkus, Melanie
Dickinson, Anthony Lim, and Kimberly Shannon for their game analysis work. Thanks to all of the students
who participated. This research is funded by a grant from NSF 0909733 “The Development of Computational
Thinking among Middle School Students Creating Computer Games.” Any opinions, indings, conclusions or
recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily relect the views of
the National Science Foundation.

53
CHAPTER 3

Literacy

Using Video Games for Literacy

Acquisition and Studying Literate Practices
Richard E. Ferdig, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, U.S., rferdig@gmail.com
Kristine E. Pytash, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, U.S., kpytash@kent.edu

Key Summary Points

There are four areas typically addressed within the broader concept of literacy and games:
1 (1) educational games to teach reading and writing; (2) commercial, non-educational games
that instructors use for literacy acquisition; (3) commercial, non-educational games that
unintentionally provide literacy practice; and (4) educational and non-educational video
games as literate practices.

Research provides evidence that both educational and non-educational video games can be
2 used for literacy acquisition and instruction.

Literacy researchers view media such as video games as literate practices worthy of their own
3 study.

Key Terms
Literacy
Reading
Writing
Literacy practices
Literacy acquisition
Educational video games
Commercial video games

55
Introduction
Since the mid- to late-1980s, there have been video games created with the sole intent of improving
the literacy acquisition of its users. Literacy acquisition here refers to early acquisition (e.g., phonemic
awareness, an understanding of spoken language), advanced practices (e.g., formal writing), and even
second language acquisition. Gee (2003) provided perhaps the strongest impetus for educators to explore
the connection between video games and literacy. He developed principles associated with video games
that could be applied to students’ literacy learning, such as active engagement, motivation in literacy
tasks, and exploration of discourse and ainity groups. For Gee, these principles existed in video game
use and could also be applied in rethinking literacy acquisition and instruction.

Since then, a number of educators have begun to explore how video games can be used in the literacy
classroom. There are four main ways to understand the relationship between video games and literacy.
The irst way is through literacy acquisition. Educators and video game designers have developed video
games directly aimed at teaching students to read. These games, such as Reader Rabbit (1986) or Smarty
Ants (2012) are speciically built to teach core reading concepts and developing reading skills in early
readers. Concepts such as phonemic awareness, vocabulary, luency, and comprehension are usually
emphasized.

Second, educators have explored how concepts in commercial video games could be used to teach
literacy concepts. The uses of commercial games here are pedagogically intentional with literacy
teachers having speciic rationales for using these particular video games in literacy classrooms. While
these video games were not created solely for educational purposes, educators can conceptualize how
the principles associated with video games are related to literacy acts. Literacy teachers view these
games as a way to engage students in literacy practices while teaching speciic concepts central to
reading and writing. An example would include students creating characters in The Sims (2000) and
then writing about those characters.

A third connection also relates to commercial games. The focus here, however, is not pedagogical.
Researchers want to study commercial games for the purpose of understanding literacy outcomes
without intentionally assigning the games in a learning environment. For instance, educators and
researchers might be interested in how players in World of Warcrat (2004) are using reading, writing,
and communication skills to interact with other players. Researchers and educators in these cases are
simply interested in what is being gained by players who play without a pedagogical set of instructions
surrounding the gameplay (Steinkuehler, 2008).

A fourth relationship between literacy and video games relates to an exploration of video games as
literacy practices. Walsh (2010) acknowledges that researchers have used terms, such as “procedural
literacy” (Bogost, 2007), “gaming literacies” (Salen, 2007), and “gaming literacy” (Zimmerman, 2008);
however, Walsh uses the term, “systems-based literacy practices” deined as “an understanding of how
to conigure the machine or device the digital game is played on, in addition to knowing how to play the

56
game and having the knowledge of where to ind information that allows a beter understanding of the
system (game, program, virtual world, etc.) itself” (p. 27).

It is important for anyone exploring the notion of video games and literacy to irst understand the
purpose of the examination. These four relationships are summarized in Table 1 and provide an
examination of the speciic conditions necessary for literacy learning through video games. These
relationships also provide insight into how researchers deine literacy: whether it is viewed as a skill-
set or a broader view of literacy as multimodal practice.

Table 1. The relationship between video games and literacy

Relationship between Example
Video games and Literacy
1. The pedagogical use of literacy games to A teacher uses Reader Rabbit to atempt to improve reading scores.
improve reading, writing and speaking skills.

2. The pedagogical use of non-literacy games to A teacher uses The Sims (2000) to have students write fan iction.
improve reading, writing, and speaking skills.

3. Studying the existing use of non-literacy games An educator or researcher studies writing abilities and/or changes
to explore literacy practices of users. over time of World of Warcrat players.

4. Studying video game use and design as Researchers and educators explore tutorial gameplay within Lego
literate practices. Star Wars: The Video Game (2005) as negotiations of existing
novice and expert practices.

57
Case Study One: Writing Pal
Writing Pal, an intelligent tutoring system, is directed by Danielle McNamara at Arizona State
University’s Learning Science Institute. This system explores how students acquire and develop writing
skills. Writing Pal uses videos to introduce students to various writing strategies that facilitate learning
across the writing process (e.g., brainstorming, drating, revising). Students can engage in eight writing
strategy modules, which have puzzles and competitive elements, as well as narrative elements, such
as role-playing. Writing Pal also has options for students to engage in game-based strategy practice
of their rhetorical writing skills. The essay tools provide automatic feedback and students’ scores. For
example, one of the games included in Writing Pal is Adventurer’s Loot, which helps students practice
paraphrasing strategies by examining word choice, combining sentences and ixing run-on sentences
(Roscoe, Brandon, Snow, & McNamara, 2013). Students become a treasure hunter and are given clues to
decipher. Students earn treasures if they answer correctly, whereas a monster appears if they answer
incorrectly.

Roscoe et al. (2013) explored the inluence of Writing Pal on adolescents’ persuasive writing. Of the 65
students involved in the study, 33 engaged in Writing Pal and 32 students were in the condition group,
which only had students interact with the essay and feedback tools within the game.

Writing strategies, such as how to write an introduction, body paragraphs, concluding paragraphs,
and revision strategies were embedded within the game. Students’ knowledge was measured through
a pre-post writing strategy open-ended questionnaire, measures of writing, reading comprehension,
vocabulary, and atitudes toward writing. Students who participated in the Writing Pal condition
accumulated a greater number of new strategy concepts. Students also expressed enjoying the games,
inding the games helpful, and rated the graphics as appealing. Overall, Roscoe et al. (2013) found that
Writing Pal provided students with clear goals for their writing and motivation to achieve these goals.
Students playing Writing Pal also learned more new writing strategies than those adolescents who
wrote and revised their essays with feedback only.

While this study took place on a university campus in a laboratory seting, Roscoe et al. (2013) note
that further research will take place in high school English language arts classrooms and will be used
for longer periods of times, over the course of semesters or entire school years. Exploring student
interactions with games in authentic classroom setings is important to understanding how educational
games could beneit teaching and learning. Roscoe et al. (2013) contend that future research should
continue to explore the many potential advantages of designing educational games to motivate and
engage students in learning content, speciically writing. The authors also state that future research
could examine how an increase in graphics, music, and other features might further engage students
in educational games. This study is an example of an educational game created with the sole intent of
improving literacy scores.

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Key Frameworks
There are two key theoretical perspectives that deserve atention: new literacies and Gee’s conceptions
of cognitive learning with video games. Historically, literacy was deined as the acts of reading and
writing and the cognitive processes that followed. New technologies have redeined literacy practices,
however. Leu, Kinzer, Coiro, & Cammack (2004), deined new literacies for the 21st century as:

The skills, strategies, and dispositions necessary to successfully use and adapt to
the rapidly changing information and communication technologies and contexts
that continuously emerge in our world and inluence all areas of our personal and
professional lives. These new literacies allow us to use the Internet and other ICTs to
identify important questions, locate information, critically evaluate the usefulness
of that information, synthesize information to answer those questions, and then
communicate the answers to others.
(Leu et al., 2004, p. 1572)

The concept of new literacies broadens our perspectives and deinitions of literacy. In turn, it helps
us explore technologies such as video games for multiple purposes. At the basic level, it is possible to
understand video games for using and potentially improving core literacy skills like reading, writing
and communicating. At a more enhanced level, we can also begin to explore video games as literate
practices in and of themselves. We can begin to ask questions about the literacy practices of novice
vs. expert gamers, and we can also explore transfer among multiple literate environments (e.g., games,
work, home, classroom).

A second important framework comes from Gee’s work on games. In his What Video Games Have to
Teach Us About Learning and Literacy (2003), Gee explored the cognitive learning that occurs during
video games and then explored how 36 learning principles could be applied to the learning of reading
and writing. He speciically explores principles such as:

1. Semiotic domains: Gee makes the case for games and places where learning occurs.
He contends that video games are semiotic domains, much like other activities in life
(and as argued by those interested in new literacies).
2. Learning and identity: Identity here relates to the fact that games allow the development
of an identity, but that games also allow you to identify with the game environment.
3. Situated meaning and learning: Like real life, games allow an exploration of a world. You
can learn things about your world as you interact with it and the characters it contains.
4. Telling and doing: As pedagogical research has demonstrated, giving users opportunities
to learn by doing, including making mistakes, provides more enhanced learning then just
talking or discussion.
5. Cultural models: Games have implicit and explicit models and views of the world.
They can embed cultural practices and norms as well as question those practices.

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 6. The social mind: The focus here is on the value of multiplayer and peer learning
environments. Unlike many of our school practices, which are individualistic, these
literacy practices are social connected and networked.

The theoretical perspectives presented here make a strong case that literacy acquisition, albeit
intentional or unintentional and through educational or commercial games, can occur through video
gameplay and video gameplay itself is a literate practice that is worth of study.

Case Study Two: MMORPGs for Language Learning

Kongmee et al. (2011) conducted a study of massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs)
and their potential for language learning. The multiplayer games selected by the authors for evaluation
and those chosen by students were all commercial of-the-shelf games, or were intended for
entertainment rather than solely for educational purposes. “Three MMORPGs were used in the study:
Godswar Online (GO), Hello Kity Online (HKO), and Asda Story (AS)” (p. 4).

The authors selected MMORPGs as a subject of study because they hypothesized that Internet-based
games, such as MMORPGs, ofered an opportunity to provide alternative social interaction to support
language learning. These games provided tasks for players, which by their very nature, required
interaction with others. Finally, because the objectives and challenges within a game are oten repetitive,
they believed the games would provide repeated practice on tasks within a motivating environment.

The researchers invited eight undergraduate students in a Thai university to participate. They
introduced the MMORPGs and then watched the students’ progress through both recorded sessions
and by playing along with the character in the virtual worlds. The participants were then given various
tests before, during, and ater the MMORPG experiences.

The authors provided evidence in their study that learners who participated in a game-based
environment produced positive achievements in reading, vocabulary, conversational relevance,
writing, and public speaking. This was documented through a virtual ethnography measured with the
support of screen recorders; however, participants also grew in their pre- and post-test scores on an
ELLIS Placement Test. The authors conclude:

The indings demonstrate that MMORPGs can successfully support language

learning as illustrated by the improvements in the standard language tests and the
participation and progression in the game itself. The students became more active in
using English, showing greater patience in reading, being more motivated to write
and also to produce dialogue when speaking and chating.
(Kongmee et al., 2011, p. 10.)

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The authors atribute this growth to the authentic game environment and its ability to motivate
players. This is not to suggest this literacy achievement could only be accomplished through
MMORPGs. The fact that learning occurred naturally in an enjoyable situation, however, provided
an impetus for continued participation from the students. This study is an example of how
commercial games, which were not created with the sole intent of improving literacy scores, could
be used pedagogically to achieve desired outcomes.

Key Findings
This section reports researchers’ indings as they explore the links between video games and literacy.
The indings below represent the four ways in which literacy and games intertwine:

1. The use of educational games for literacy acquisition;

2. The intentional use of commercial games for literacy acquisition;
3. The study of unintended literacy practices in commercial games; and
4. Games as literate practices.

Educational games created to teach literacy

There are researchers and educators commited to creating video games speciically to advance students’
reading and writing knowledge. These games are created for educational has suggested that educational
games can improve literacy achievement (Calfee, Pearson, & Callahan, 2012; Rosas et al., 2003).

For example, Smarty Ants (Calfee et al., 2012) was created to engage elementary-aged students in
efective reading instruction, incorporating the National Reading Panel’s deined components of reading
instruction including, phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, luency, and reading comprehension.
In this video game, students’ literacy skills are initially assessed. Students then engage in series of
activities based on phonological awareness and literacy acquisition skills. In the preliminary data
analysis, researchers found kindergarten students’ engaged in Smarty Ants had higher gain in reading
achievement scores on the CORE Phonics survey than students in control classrooms. In addition, the
teachers reported Smarty Ants was successfully implemented into their literacy instruction. They noted
that the program allowed their literacy instruction to be personalized and targeted, as students could
work at their own pace. Teachers self-reported that it seemed students were motivated and engaged in
the video game.

Similarly, Rosas et al. (2003) examined ive research-designed educational video games using the
platform of Nintendo’s Gameboy in the context of economically disadvantaged schools in Chile. The
ive video games were Magalu, Hermes, Tiki-Tiki, Roli, and Hangman. A total of 1274 students were

61
placed in an experimental group, an internal control group, or an external control group. Students in
the experimental groups played video games over a three-month period for an average of 30 hours, the
students in the internal control group were in the same school as the experiment group, but did not
play video games, and the external control group was in schools without any access to the experiment.
Rosas et al. (2003) found signiicant diferences between the experimental groups and internal controls
groups in terms of reading comprehension, as compared to the external control groups. Researchers
reported that students were motivated and wanted to play the video games not only during class, but
also during free time during the day. Also, both the teachers and students had a quick appropriation of
the video game, so it was easily incorporated in the classroom. These factors could have contributed to
the inding.

These studies suggest that students’ literacy skills increase when engaged with the speciic educational
video games employed. While there are signiicant numbers and varieties of educational games that
aim to support literacy learning, there is still research needed that explicitly shows the beneits to
students using these games for literacy skills acquisition.

Commercial games to intentionally teach literacy

Educators have begun exploring how commercial video games could be used to teach reading
and writing. In the studies featured in this section, the intended design of the video game was for
entertainment and commercial purposes. Educational researchers have documented how students’
engagement in games—whether playing them in their personal lives or in the classroom—can be used
as a scafold for developing writing practices. For example, through playing and referencing commercial
games, teachers can help students connect their knowledge of games to new knowledge about reading
and writing. deWinter & Vie (2008) highlight how Second Life can be used in composition courses to
explore narrative writing through creating avatars and interacting with others in a virtual world.
Through these experiences students can consider the complexities of the term “identity,” including
what it means to have a writerly or literate identity. deWinter & Vie (2008) also contend that Second
Life provides composition teachers with opportunities to engage students in discussions about ethics,
power, and critical media literacy.

Similarly, Gerber & Price (2011) explored how games could serve as a platform for writing instruction
in a variety of genres. The authors link traditional print-based genres to concepts in video games. For
example, Gerber & Price argue that “walk-throughs” in video games are actually expository texts;
therefore, students could learn the features of expository writing by composing their own walkthroughs
for their favorite video games.

The key indings from these studies suggest that educators can use commercial games to teach particular
literacy skills. Speciically, researchers have explored how video games can serve as a catalyst for
writing instruction, particularly narrative writing. Video games are oten based on ictional worlds and
characters players design, a creative process that is similar with aspects narrative writing.

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Unintended literacy outcomes of commercial game use
A third realm focuses on the examination of literacy practices within gameplay where no pedagogical
instruction is provided. One of the main outcomes in this area is that game players will engage in literate
practices on their own without the need for instruction to do so. Gumulak & Webber (2011) interviewed
28 young adults (24 males and four females) who regularly play video games such as Grand Thet Auto,
Call of Duty, and Resident Evil. While players reported a number of beneits, such as awareness of
problem-solving skills, they also noted that they were engaged in the paratexts, or supporting materials,
which surround the game. Gumulak & Webber found that 80% of the young adults read reviews about
the games. Young adults also reported a connection between books they enjoy reading and the games
they enjoy playing. For instance, one of the participants self-reported that his reading skills increased
because of his use of video games; however, this claim was not further measured or validated by the
investigators.

Studies like this suggest that the act of playing a video game engages students in literacy practices and
may inluence their literacy habits even if the game was not played in an educational seting or with the
speciic intent of literacy acquisition.

Video games as literate practices

Finally, researchers have begun to explore how video games can be conceptualized as literate practices.
Steinkuehler (2007) argues that video games “are not replaying literacy activities but rather are literacy
activities” (p. 298). She surveyed the literacy practices associated with Massively Multiplayer Online
(MMO) games and the paratexts that support players. Steinkuehler examined two notions of literacy:
irst, as a set of cognitive processes and skills and second, as more contemporary deinitions of literacy
being plural, situated, meaning-making activities. From both of these stances, Steinkuehler argued that
MMOs are very much literacy practices. Players must read signiicant amounts of texts in the video
game, as well as engage in blogs, websites, fan iction, fan websites, and discussion boards.

In the classroom, Beavis & O’Mara (2010) presented case studies of two teachers who conceptualized
literacy units with video games. The irst teacher engaged students in close readings of images from
video games, such as Grand Thet Auto, to conduct critical analyses. Their analyses led to the creation
of multimodal compositions focused on an awareness of the games they play and their engagement
with these games. The researchers found students

frequently demonstrated their mastery of the review genre both in writing and
in online multimodal form, a deep knowledge of speciic games and the gaming
environment, and the capacity to anticipate what new players would need to know,
while also assuming a shared degree of internet savviness and knowledge.
(Beavis & O’Mara, 2010, p. 67)

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The second teacher, featured in Beavis & O’Mara’s (2010) article, had students create games using
GameMaker. Students relied on genre knowledge and narrative plotlines to design and construct video
games. Students then engaged in peer-review to provide each other with feedback about their games.
The two case studies revealed that the analysis of video games and engagement in the creation of video
games allowed students to practice metacognitive tasks related to how video games are conceptualized
and their personal engagement in video games. Teachers can draw on students’ current knowledge
about video games to help them connect to knowledge about writing. These case studies also represent
examples of how video games become their own literate practices worthy of study. Video games have an
entire literate practice that surrounds them as many players read and write paratexts, such as reviews,
websites, cheats, walk-throughs, and discussion forums. Players are not just engaging with those pieces
of texts, but also thinking deeply about how that information inluences their future gameplay.

Case Study Three: World of Warcrat

Steinkuehler & Duncan’s (2008) study documents and assesses the speciic literacy practices within
World of Warcrat by analyzing a random sample of approximately two thousand discussion posts on
the “priest forum” on the oicial website. Speciically assessing “scientiic habits of mind” (Steinkeuhler
& Duncan, 2008, p. 532) the researchers used benchmarks from the American Association for the
Advancement of Science (1993), Chinn & Malhotra’s (2002) theoretical framework for evaluating inquiry
tasks, and Kuhn’s (1992) epistemological framework.

Steinkuehler & Duncan found that participants who play World of Warcrat and engage on discussion
forums participate in social knowledge construction and argumentation. When analyzing the discussion
forums, 86% of the “talk” could be considered social knowledge construction in that participants
were sharing knowledge and discussing to solve problems. Participants also engaged in scientiic
argumentation by proposing theories and engage in a questioning and response type discussion.
The authors also found that 58% of the World of Warcrat forum posts also displayed systems-based
reasoning, while one-tenth of forum posts revealed model-based reasoning. The study found, “forms
of inquiry within play contexts such as these are authentic although synthetic: even though the worlds
themselves are fantasy, the knowledge building communities around them are quite real” (Steinkeuler
& Duncan, 2008, p. 541).

Steinkuehler & Duncan have three implications for their work. First, they acknowledge that certain
schools or educators might not see the beneits of games and the gaming culture. They hope research
of this type might begin to break down those barriers. Second, they ask, who are the people engaged in
this play and what resources do they have? Steinkuehler & Duncan emphasize that the digital divide
might not be solely between the “have and have-nots,” but the “do and do-nots” (542). This means that
the digital divide might not only be between people who have access to technology and those who do
not, but also those people who have access to technology, yet do not play video games. Finally, they

64
acknowledge that exploring video games as literate practices can bridge spaces between home and
school practices. Engaging in video games at home, as well as school, might not only provide access to
technology some may not have, but it also might encourage those who might not normally play video
games to play them.

This study is an example of two uses of commercial video games. First, it is an examination of the use
of a commercial game that has produced literate outcomes without direct pedagogical intervention.
Second, it is an example of a commercial game whose play itself becomes a literate practice worthy of
study.

Assessment
What does it mean to assess video games as literate practices? Theoretical perspectives can help
researchers examine how video games are constructed and how players enact literacy practices
through engagement in video games. Educators can also assess video games and literacy by exploring
how certain principles innate to games can be applied to reading and writing practice. There are four
main ways to assess the connection between video games and literacy:

1. Assess how video games, produced speciically for educational purposes, advance
students’ learning of reading and writing; pre- and post-test measures can examine
students’ before and ater participating in video games.
2. Assess how literacy educators are integrating video games into reading and
writing classrooms; focus on examining the diferences in outcomes based
on games created for educational purposes and games created for commercial
use, but used in an educational seting; examine the conditions necessary for
literacy learning through playing video games.
3. Assess the intended and unintended consequences of engaging students in video games
in literacy classrooms; focus on the contexts in which games are played and how playing
games outside of the classroom might engage students in meaningful literacy practices;
this would also include examining how the curriculum might bridge students’ in-school
and out-of-school literacy practices.
4. Assess the impact of commercial video game use on traditional literacy outcomes and any
literate practices of users who play in out-of-school setings (such as at home).

Future Directions
Advances in technological tools are changing the nature of reading and writing. Young adult literature
is moving from solely print-based books to multiplatform books encompassing images, videos, and
audio. Digital writing and multimodal composition are changing how we understand and deine
writing. These advances have led educators to conceptualize and recognize video games as literary

65
practices and have led to discussions about how the principles associated with video games could be
applied to reading and writing instruction. As educators consider and redeine the notions of what
it means to be a “reader” and “writer,” they will need to learn efective instructional approaches for
incorporating video games into the literacy curriculum. Researchers can continue to explore teachers’
instructional decision-making regarding using video games in the classroom. Future work could
explore how teachers decide the appropriate game to include in the curriculum and the question of
whether video games should be implemented in ways that just replace traditional print-based activities,
and the extent to which they are transforming educational practices. For example, how do video games
create opportunities for cooperative and collaborative literacy learning, which traditional methods may
not do as efectively, or may do diferently?

The inclusion of video games into the classroom also brings up questions of access and power. More
research is needed on the afordances, limitations, potentials, and constraints of using video games in
reading and writing classrooms. Who are the teachers implementing video games in their classrooms
and what are the challenges they face? Educators can explore the efect of parents and administrator’s
support or lack of support when in using video games for instructional purposes. Finally, as technological
tools, such as haptics or tools applying motion or vibrations to engage participants’ sense of touch, are
becoming more advanced, educators will also have to consider how technology associated with video
games might inluence the ways we teach students to read and write.

Case Study Four: Understanding the Potential of Language-Learning with Mentira

(writen by Liz Jasko)
Today’s language-learning games cover a diverse range of purposes, scopes, and applications. This holds
especially true in the mobile sphere, where highly accessible casual mobile games such as MindSnacks,
Roseta Stone Arcade Academy, and Duolingo ofer interactive, autonomous learning experiences to
help any average person pursue a variety of language choices. These games tend to primarily focus
on vocabulary and basic sentence structure, utilizing engaging ways to efectively achieve interest
and retention. While the presence of such commercial games continues to grow, second language
acquisition (SLA) researchers and teachers seek more complex, sophisticated ways to elevate foreign
language classroom instruction through the use of games.

Chris Holden and Julia Sykes are among the pioneering efort behind Mentira—a place-based mobile
language-learning game. The game was designed locally at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque
to be constructively integrated with a Spanish 202 course over a period of four weeks. This story-driven
game presents a murder mystery plot that requires players to identify with a virtual family identity,
seek clues through dialogue with non-playing characters (NPCs), and collaborate with other students
to solve a mystery. The story unfolds in a real, nearby Spanish-speaking neighborhood, requiring both
interacting in Spanish and physically visiting the town to ind clues. Students are irst introduced to it

66
in the classroom, and are either provided phones or use their own devices to collaboratively advance
through the story in the classroom, at home, and ultimately in the town where the story takes place
(Holden & Skyes, 2011a). It was built with the ARIS engine—a technology that uses GPS to create a
hybrid world of virtual interactive characters, items, and media placed in physical space (Holden &
Skyes, 2011b).

Over several years of designing, iterating, and evaluating Mentira based on its experimental use as a
real component of classroom curriculum, Holden & Skyes emphasize the following goals and outcomes
in their publication, Prototyping Language-Based Locative Gameplay (Holden & Skyes, 2011a).

1. Situated language learning extends the subject of Spanish out of the classroom and into
a nearby Spanish-speaking community, accomplishing the notion that “since knowledge
occurs in conjunction with context, the learning process should be tied to a meaningful
situation” (Schrier, 2005). Holden & Skyes (2011a) found this to be true, since the most well
received aspect of the game integration was at the end, when students took a ield trip to
inally use the augmented reality game in the actual town.
2. Narrative created a higher-level connection to the content. Holden & Skyes (2011a)
formated the game into a murder mystery based on historical iction because it created
authenticity and a real-world connection that still allowed them lexibility to create the
simple and direct goal of the game, which was solving a murder.
3. Pragmatics-approach atempts to address language learning in the context of “critical
learning”—when learning is not just limited to understanding meaning in a particular
realm, but also invites the reproduction and active use of the learning (Gee, 2003).
Holden & Skyes explain, “Instead of revolving around the assimilation of vocabulary,
the conversations work in terms of pragmatics: knowing the social seting and acting
appropriately” (2011a, p. 119). They accomplish this by integrating a fair amount of
vocabulary unfamiliar to the students, and by structuring the conversations of diferent
NPC family identities to require speciic ways of social interaction, such as programming
NPCs to withhold important information for advancing through the murder mystery if
the student speaks to them in a rude tone. Where the game falls short is the way in which
these dialogues take place through Mass Efect style textual multiple-choice responses.
Instead, the use of voice, audio, and language construction could potentially be used,
such as the voice communication with real players that drives Babbel’s mobile language
learning game, PlaySay.
4. Task-based language teaching (TBLT) approach also focuses the content predominantly
on meaning and secondarily on form, as outlined by Purushotma, Thorne and Wheatley
(Purushotma et al., 2009; Reinders, 2012). Ellis (2003) identiies the key components of
TBLT as perspective, authenticity, language skill, cognitive processes and outcome—
which are propelled in Mentira through the irst three points. Rather than designing a
game to learn things about a language, a game is designed to use a language as a means to
achieving a goal.

67
 5. Collaborative play is also executed through what Holden & Skyes (2011a) refer to as
“jigsaws.” The family identities assigned to each student behaved as a crucial constraint
in the game, because no player was able to access the entirety of information. To move
forward through the story, students had to collaborate to piece together the clues. Holden
& Skyes (2011a) found, however, that the actual collaboration between students in the
classroom was not naturally instigated and that it usually required the direct intervention
of the teacher.

In addition to these key points, Holden & Skyes (2011a) emphasize:

1. The importance of iterating the design based on student feedback.

2. Maintaining continuity by using the mobile game over time and outside the classroom.
3. Promoting risk-taking by bringing students in a real-world seting to practice language.
4. Recognizing how the execution of the game maters and not just the vision.

Overall, they found that the behaviors they wanted Mentira to provoke, “playfulness, inventiveness,
collaboration and risk-taking—the behaviors that did not manifest in the classroom—emerged
spontaneously in surprising ways during the ield trip portions of the game” (Holden & Skyes, 2011a,
p. 125). Holden and Skyes continue to push the boundaries, incorporating the positive takeaways and
addressing the weaker areas. While the scope of this experiment was limited in regards to platform and
distribution, the potential for future development based around this concept is immense.

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Games/Simulations
Book Worm (htps://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/PPPdYw-fw9kLv55iYhT5Llgo6XxFQRGQ)
Grand Thet Auto (htp://www.rockstargames.com/grandthetauto/)
Mentira (htp://www.mentira.org/)
Playtime Theatre (htps://itunes.apple.com/us/app/playtime-theater/id411289693?mt=8)
SimCity (htps://www.facebook.com/SimCity)
Smarty Ants (htp://www.smartyants.com/)
Storybook Workshop (htps://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/8P8tfzT9FHjnkyhfreEvpnnKpxtngOvO)
World of Warcrat (htp://us.batle.net/wow/en/)
Writing Pal (htp://129.219.222.66/Publish/projectsitewpal.html)

Websites
ABCya (htp://www.abcya.com/)
ICT Games (htp://www.ictgames.com/literacy.html)
Literacy Sites Literacy Games (htp://www.literacysites.com/litgames.htm)
PBS Kids Reading Games (htp://pbskids.org/games/reading/)
The Dictionary Project (htp://www.dictionaryproject.org/resources/word-games-puzzles-and-interactive-
literacy-games)

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CHAPTER 4

History and Social Studies

Using Digital Games to Teach

History and Historical Thinking
Karen Schrier, Marist College, Poughkeepsie, New York, U.S., Kschrier@gmail.com

Key Summary Points

Consider your pedagogical goals when designing games for history—whether you are focused
1 more on teaching facts and data, concepts and themes, and/or decision-making and resource
management.

2 Carefully consider the balance between maintaining historical accuracy and fun and
engaging gameplay and actions.

Well-designed games can provide efective learning opportunities for students to develop
3 historical thinking and historical empathy skills.

Key Terms
Historiography
Historical thinking
Historical empathy
Situated cognition
Social studies games
History games
Communities of practice
Constructivism
Constructionism

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Introduction
How do we deine a game as being a history game? Would games from the Civilization, Sim City, or
Assassins Creed series count as history games? Uricchio argues that, “historical simulations that
are based upon manipulation of quantities of things like economic production, religious intensity,
foreign trade, bureaucratic development, and literacy indeed fall more into the realm of sociology or
anthropology than history” (Uricchio, 2005, p. 331). In this chapter, we will consider social studies
games as those games that directly deal with history topics, and also those games related to politics,
economics, resource management, and civics, as well. For the purposes of this chapter, I will mainly
focus on the history/historical aspects of social studies games. In addition, while this chapter will focus
on designing and using digital games for educational purposes, there are a number of analog games,
including card, board, and role-playing games that may be relevant to history education. (A few analog
examples are included in the Resources section).

There are three main types of social studies/history (digital) games. These include games that focus on
the:

1. Representation of the past. This type of game enables the player to interact with a game
representation of a particular historic or economic moment. This moment is recreated
in the game and an aspect of this moment is re-performed by the player through the
game. Typically, these games encourage “the player to engage in a speculative or “what
if” encounter with a particular past…eforts are usually taken to maximize the accuracy
of historical detail, allowing the seting and conditions to constrain and shape game
play” (Uricchio, 2005, p. 328). Two examples are Muzzy Lane’s Making History series and
Channel 13/WNET’s Mission US, a series of game modules that take players through
diferent moments in history, such as during the Underground Railroad or the events
leading up to the Revolutionary War in Boston (see Case Study One). In Mission US, for
example, middle school players play as Nat, a printer’s apprentice, and relive the Boston
Massacre incident from a unique perspective.
2. Interaction with historic themes, concepts, choices, or resources. This type of game
deals with social studies in a more abstract way, where the player may be working within
historic themes, decisions, or resource deliberations, and acting like “a godlike player
[who] makes strategic decisions and learns to cope with the consequences, freed from the
constraints of historically speciic conditions” (Uricchio, 2005, p. 328). This second type
of game is typically less focused on maintaining the historical accuracy of moments or
time periods, but more focused on allowing access to relevant historic questions, causes
and efects, and/or systematic issues. For example, consider the Civilization series by Sid
Meier, or The Redistricting Game, a game that enables players to “redistrict” based on voter
constraints to understand the consequences of gerrymandering.

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 3. Play within a historical or history-related seting. This type of game may have elements
of the other types of history games, but is less focused on maintaining historical accuracy
or immersing players in speciic historical moments or decisions. This type of game
features a quasi-historical seting or themes, which may or may not be based on research
or reality, and could involve alternative histories, alternative “presents,” or an incorrect
juxtaposition of historical events. Examples of this include the commercial of-the-shelf
series Assassins Creed games, which features historic setings such as Italy and the
Revolutionary War-era colonies. Even games such as Rockstar’s Grand Thet Auto series
and L.A. Noire could be seen as historical artifacts, in a sense. The game designers spent
such atention to detail when recreating the cities represented in the games, such as Los
Angeles in the 1940s, or New York City in the 2000s, that through playing the game you
can, in essence, experience the city with the lavor of that time period (albeit still from the
designers’ perspectives).

There is an underlying question in history games as to what extent do they represent history accurately.
This is a key tension when designing and using history games, as there is always a tradeof between
maintaining accuracy and representing details, and simulating themes, questions, and consequences,
while also ensuring a fun, engaging experience. This tension in how to appropriately represent history
in a game parallels some of the key tensions in history education.

One of the driving questions in history education is what types of content, skills, and practices it should
include. On the one hand, there are a number of history teachers, researchers, and practitioners that
feel that learning history facts—such as the dates of batles, the order of events in a war, or the major
igures in a movement—is a solid foundation for history education. These teachers feel that learning
these facts irst will ground students in the topic so that they could then approach the broader themes.
They view these facts as not debatable and “free from social context” (Squire & Barab, 2004, p. 506).
Likewise, some social studies educators teach history as unmovable—in other words, history is not
open to interpretation, but rather, there is an acceptable understanding of the past that should be
provided to students. Students, in essence, are a blank slate who need learn the “beter story” or the
most appropriate and dominant narrative of the past (Downey & Levstick, 1991; Squire & Barab, 2004;
Seixas, 2000).

On the other hand, Squire & Barab (2004) and Seixas (2000) argue that focusing only on facts and master
narratives may be more akin to myth telling or heritage education than actual critical historiography
(the practice of history). Rather than cultivating a love of history, these tactics may decrease students’
overall interest in history and lead to misconceptions about how history is typically practiced (Seixas,
2000; Wineburg, 2001; Squire & Barab, 2004).

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For these reasons and others, some history teachers, theorists, and practitioners, believe that it is more
important for students to learn how to think like a historian—to sit through evidence, identify biases,
and interpret perspectives—than it is to learn a litany of facts and igures.

Whereas students read textbooks, memorize facts, and recite “ready-made”

knowledge, academics, curators, journalists, and social activists do a lot more: They
consider research topics of theoretical and/or practical importance, consult original
sources, produce arguments, interpret data in dialogue with existing theory, and
negotiate indings within social contexts.
(Squire & Barab, 2004, pp. 505-6).

These educators argue history is open to interpretation, and is, at its core, a representation of the past,
but not the past itself. They believe students who grapple with past moments, trends, or eras, should
keep in mind that it is just one possible interpretation, and there may be many other ways to view the
past. These educators encourage students to question not only other’s interpretations of the past, but
also how current issues and events are presented, whether in the media, via friends, or by teachers. In
the history classroom, students can potentially rewrite or resist master narratives and reconcile their
own or their community’s interpretations with dominant interpretations, while also exploring their
own identity in relation to history (Barnet et al., 2000; Squire & Barab, 2004).

There are many other pedagogical styles and strategies history educators use to express the past. Some
history educators privilege the “people” part of history, such as the personal struggles, perspectives,
and obstacles; whereas others emphasize how limited resources, geographies, or technologies interact,
or how cultures collide, for example. Moreover, some history educators feel that to truly understand
history, one needs to be in the shoes of its inhabitants, and empathize with the issues, problems, goals,
trends, and perspectives of the time. They might argue that interpreting a historic moment with a more
modern mindset could render any consideration of past events invalid. Or, they believe that at the very
least, one’s current biases should be relected on when re-interpreting the past. These educators may
be proponents of practicing historical empathy, which is the process of taking on another’s perspective
and cultural and social context so as to more properly understand his or her atitudes, feelings, actions,
and decisions in the past.

Thus, there are many styles and approaches that history educators grapple with when deciding how
to teach history. These lead to further questions when making history games. How much should the
game incorporate alternative perspectives, such as from other cultures, countries, races, ethnicities or
genders? How does a game explain human atrocities, such as genocide or slavery, in terms students
will understand? Can place and location afect the player’s understanding of history? Should the game
focus mainly on historical and human crises, or should it also include role models, heroes/heroines,
and positive advancements, which might be more inspiring to students? These are also the types of
questions game designers regularly ask themselves as they design games for history education.

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Another key question any game designer or game player should ask is the diferences between playing
a history digital game, versus experiencing history through another medium, such as a documentary
video or textbook. Schut (2007) discusses the key diferences. For example, history in games is played,
rather than just presented or questioned. While other media can help people ask “what if” questions,
games allow players to run with those questions and see varying outcomes (2007).

This results in a very open-ended picture of history.…In a book, history is

completed; the future work of the historian may change history, of course, but
not the speciic history that the reader is currently engaging. … In a digital game,
however, history is never set: The player always has the ability to redo history. …
Although the player has freedom to change the course of history, it is only to the
degree that the game system allows.
(Schut, 2007, p. 230)

As a result, games may not ofer a clear and linear narrative of history, but instead typically center
around historical systems and places (Schut, 2007), or through their play, question the standard versions
of the past.

In the next sections, I will describe and annotate a few diferent learning and history education theories
that may be useful to employ when designing and using games in history education. I will also present
indings and best practices.

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Case Study One: Mission US
Mission US is a series of free online browser-based adventure games that cover speciic moments in
United States history (such as the Boston Massacre/events leading up to the Revolutionary War in
Boston, the Cheyenne Indians in the 1860s, and the Underground Railroad in 1848), and is geared
toward middle school students. Mission US is in the process of being developed by WNET/Channel
13 (PBS) and Electric Funstuf, a game company, with content expertise from CUNY historians and
assessment directed by Education Development Center (EDC). The game is funded by the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting’s “American History and Civics Initiative.”

The goal of Mission US is to teach historical thinking skills and historical empathy, using as a backdrop
speciic moments from history. For example, module one, “For Crown or Colony,” takes participants
back in time to play as ictional Nathaniel Wheeler, a printer’s apprentice, during the time of the
American Revolution and Boston Massacre. In the 2014-released module three, “A Cheyenne Odyssey,”
players play as Litle Fox, a boy living in the Northern Cheyenne tribe in 1866. The game is a point-and-
click adventure game with a strong story foundation. Players are able to participate in tasks, such as
helping Paul Revere (in module one), and making alliances with various NPCs (non-playing characters),
who may be devoted to Loyalist or Patriot causes. One of the pivotal moments is when the player, as
Nat, watches the Boston Massacre, and then makes decisions about what was seen. Each player gets a
slightly diferent set of perspectives on the Massacre based on a randomized series of vignetes drawn
from a database of possible perspectives on the Massacre (e.g., British soldiers wielding guns or colonists
throwing snowballs). Students in a class are invited to deliberate what they saw, and to consider why
each person saw the Massacre slightly diferently. As a result of one’s dialogue choices related to their
interpretations of the Massacre, one’s game ending and alliances may end up slightly diferently.

As mentioned earlier, the team creating Mission US consisted of historians from CUNY, game designers
(Electric Funstuf) and producers from PBS/Channel 13. History educators were also brought in as
user testers. Each of these groups had diferent goals, needs, and requirements. The game designers
wanted to make an efective, fun, engaging, and compelling game that also it into any technological
constraints; the historians wanted to maintain historical accuracy and represent the American
Revolution appropriately; the history educators wanted an experience that its into their classrooms,
curriculum, and teaching style, which also meets core standards. To move forward in designing and
executing the game, this meant that the team had to collectively balance these needs, address competing
concerns, appropriately represent history for the target demographic, and still maintain an engaging
and economically feasible game. The team regularly relected on their decisions, and tested their
assumptions with their users, which helped to create a more successful and efective game experience,
as well as helped them to identify any problems with the game.

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Key Frameworks
There are a few diferent theories of history and history education that can inform our design and use
of games for social studies learning. While there are many possible theories, I have chosen to describe
two diferent frameworks of history education, including Seixas’s three history education frameworks,
and Munslow’s three approaches to historiography. I have also selected two frameworks speciically
focused on designing games for history: McCall’s ive principles for designing history games and the
History Multimedia Interactive Educational Game (HMIEG) framework. In addition, I chose four
learning theories and concepts that may be useful to those creating games for history, including situated
cognition, communities of practice, historical thinking, and historical empathy, and I briely mention
constructionism and constructivism.

Frameworks: History education

Seixas (2000) outlines three possible options for history education. This includes:

1. The “Best Possible Story” model: Seixas (2000) explains that the aim of history education
in the “Best Possible Story” model is to share the single most agreed-upon narrative of
history. The purpose of this model is to enable a uniied and collective view of history (Kee,
2011). Limits of this model are that there is a lack of agreement of what really happened in
the past, making this type of “best it” model practically impossible (Kee, 2011; Seixas, 2000;
Lowenthal, 1996). It may also be diicult to use this approach when making a history game,
because it may be hard to ensure all players receive the same, standardized narrative of the
past.
2. “Disciplinary History” model: The “Disciplinary History” Model gives students the
opportunity to weigh diferent perspectives on the past, which simulates more closely the
typical practice of history by historians (Lowenthal, 1996; Kee, 2011).
3. “Postmodern History” model: The “Postmodern History” model questions whether
historians can construct the past without subjectivity, and encourages the analysis of
historical arguments, as well as relection on the historian’s own biases or choices (Jenkins,
2003; Kee, 2011). “Whereas History simulation games may give the player the impression
that he or she has an accurate portrait of the past, in all of its complexity, …. [this model]
highlights our distance from the past and the diiculty of reconstructing an ‘accurate’
picture of what has gone on before” (Kee, 2011, pp. 434-5).

Munslow (1997) breaks down three other frameworks for historiography in Deconstructing History
(Munslow, 1997). The three approaches to how historians can represent the past are as follows:

1. Reconstructionist history, in which historians discover facts through empirical methods.

This is similar to how a scientist might conduct science—historians would collect evidence,
analyze it and uncover what really happened in the past (Schrier, 2005; Munslow, 1997).

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 2. Constructionist history, in which the historian incorporates his/her own present and past
experiences when judging the past. This approach contends that one’s own sociocultural
frames and personal values can afect interpretations of the past (Schrier, 2005; Munslow,
1997).
3. Deconstructionist history. The third approach is Deconstructionist, which is not focused
on empiricism but considers how information is interpreted, and seeks to put the personal
back into history. In this approach, all evidence, such as transcripts, diaries, amateur
videos, notes, images, or ilms are considered texts and are interpretable (Schrier, 2005;
Munslow, 1997). These documents are a “representation of the past rather than the
objective access to the reality of the past” (Munslow, 1997, pp. 17-35). How we revise and
rewrite the past is inluenced by our present position, and all interpretations are relative
and individual.

Frameworks: History game design, use, and evaluation

One possible framework for using and evaluating games for history education is by McCall (2011), who
lists ive driving principles in his book, Gaming the Past.

1. Principle I, “Introduce the Purpose of Simulation Gaming and the Characteristics of

the Medium” (McCall, 2011, p. 24) involves introducing students to the critical analysis of
games, and help them consider the limits and potentials of the medium, while also helping
them think through how history is constructed, rather than set in stone.
2. Principle II, “Play Relectively and Atentively; Observe and Engage in the Problem
Space” (McCall, 2011, p. 24) explains that students should irst play the game without
having to engage in higher-level history analysis. Students should have opportunities
to closely atend to the game’s goals, choices, and consequences, as well as any biases
embedded in the game.
3. Principle III, “Study Independent Historical Evidence on the Historical Problem Space”
(McCall, 2011, p. 24) suggests that designers, educators and their students should spend
time with primary and secondary sources on the historical topic, and use this to help
question assumptions in the game, and within the historical evidence.
4. Principle IV, “Discuss, Debrief, Evaluate, Extend” (McCall, 2011, p. 24) explains that time
should be spent deliberating how the game was designed to support a possible version
of the past, and to compare it to available evidence. He explains that educators should
encourage the analysis of how and why the game presents the historical issues as it does,
and the extent to which the choices available in the game mimicked the available choices
historically.
5. Finally, Principle V, “Critique, Critique, Critique” (McCall, 2011, p. 25) encourages
educators to question the validity of the game, while trying to avoid comparisons to
“reality” or “how it really was” (McCall, 2011, p. 25).

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Another possible framework to use for evaluating and designing history games is called the History
Multimedia Interactive Educational Game (HMIEG), which is a “design model for teaching history”
(Zin, Yue, & Azizah, 2009) and drawn from their interpretation of research on learning and game design.
There are eight features in the pedagogical component of HMIEG, including “engagement, learning
goal determination, motivation, critical thinking, psychological needs, explorations, challenge and
competition” (Zin et al., 2009). According to Zin et al. (2009), these eight features speciically help support
the learning goals (2009). “Constructivism theory, information processing model and Tolman Learning
Theory are used in HMIEG design to enable students to remember historical facts and thus enhance
learning” (Zin et al., 2009). There are 15 features in the game design component of HMIEG, or “feedback,
fantasy, fun, rules, security, entertainment, immersive, active participation, control path, track and
manage progress, interaction, task, narrative, control and imagination” (Zin et al., 2009). While Zin et
al. (2009) have some useful observations and have connected research to their design principles, it is
unclear the extent to which each of these principles directly afects history learning, as their model as
a whole, and as components, has not been tested empirically.

Finally, while this is not a framework, per se, the Mission US team (Schrier & Channel 13, 2009) made
the following speciic design choices, which they explain contributed to the efectiveness of designing
and using Mission US to meet speciic pedagogical goals. These include:

1. Simpliication of animation: The team simpliied the animation so they did not distract
the player from any text or audio happening concurrently.
2. Modular play: They developed short segments (25-45 minutes long) that could be
integrated into a classroom class period.
3. Balanced control and freedom: They allowed for a number of mini-tasks and mini-
decisions (such as choosing among dialogue choices), but also had enough constraints in
the narrative as well.
4. Goals and mini-tasks: They designed a clear, overall goal to follow, and also designed a
number of mini-tasks to complete in the game.
5. Integration in curricula and standards: The game included many points where a teacher
could connect it to diferent social studies curricula, and it was tied to state and national
history standards.
6. Pivotal climax and resolution: The game builds toward a climax (the Boston Massacre),
which everyone experiences slightly diferently. The deposition scene also shows the
possible consequences to one’s interpretations.

Frameworks: Related learning theories and concepts

There are also a number of more general learning theories that can help us consider how to beter use
games to support history learning and historical thinking, speciically.

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One theory is situated cognition. In this approach, “context and learning, knowing and doing, are seen as
intertwined and interdependent” (Schrier, 2006). The authentic tools and resources, as well as problems,
situations, and contexts needed to complete an activity are mixed with the thinking, learning, and
necessary actions (Klopfer et al., 2003; Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Dede et al., 2002). The learners’
environment, context, and situation are seen as essential to the learning process (Schrier, 2006). In other
words, learners wanting to understand history could practice authentic historic problems and goals
within a relevant context, using realistic tools, data, texts, evidence or people. For example, a game
based on this framework might situate authentic historical evidence, such as irst-person testimonials,
in a virtual version of a historic site or location. For example, one game, Reliving the Revolution, situates
historic evidence, testimonials of the Batle of Lexington, within in a real and authentic location, the
site of the Batle or Lexington, Massachusets (See Case Study Two).

Bruner’s (2009) work on situated cultural contexts also may be useful when designing games, as he
argues that learning is additionally situated in a cultural context—”learning and thinking are always
situated in a cultural seting and always dependent upon the utilization of cultural resources” (Bruner,
2009, p. 162). A related concept is the “Community of practice,” (Lave & Wenger, 1991) where learners
collaborate to apply knowledge to solve authentic problems, while learning the vocabulary, taxonomies,
epistemic frames, and rules of a speciic community, vocation, or culture (Shafer, 2005). A community
of learners could be online, in an environment such as iCivics (see Case Study Three) or in person with
a shared activity, game, or virtual experience, such as in the case of Mission US (see Case Study One).

Finally, historical empathy and historical thinking are also compelling concepts. Historical thinking
is “History as a way of knowing” (Schrier et al., 2010, p. 258) and involves mimicking the activities of
actual historians (e.g., analysis of evidence, interpreting causality, explaining change, bias identiication,
relecting on one’s role in the narrative formation) (Lee, 1983; Seixas, 1996, 2006; Wineburg, 2001). One
major component of this is called historical empathy, which is deined as “…where we get to when we
have successfully reconstructed other people’s beliefs, values, goals, and atendant feelings” (Ashby &
Lee, 1987, p. 63). Otentimes students may judge the past in light of present-day norms and values, rather
than activating prior factors, frames, and points of view (Wineburg, 1991, 2001; Schrier et al., 2010).
Instead of deciding that other’s perspectives are the “result of ignorance, stupidity, or delusion” (Barton
& Levstik, 2004, pg. 211), we need to consider whether they make sense in the context of past moral
codes or social values. In other words, ataining historical empathy “suggests that one can contextualize
these perspectives from within a historical frame of reference or put oneself in the mindset of someone
in history” (Schrier et al., 2010, p. 258). A game that helps students try on someone else’s perspective
and understand their cultural context, mindset, and obstacles, may be able to help them beter interpret
the past.

Other relevant frameworks are constructivism and constructionism, as well as social learning theory.
Piaget’s theory of constructivism focuses on how people learn through actively constructing ideas and
knowledge. Constructionism, developed by Papert (1980) builds on this theory in Mindstorms: Children,
Computers, and Powerful Ideas, and focuses on learning by making or constructing, particularly with

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others. For example, a game that enables participants to collaboratively construct historic artifacts
using authentic materials may be useful for understanding how materials may have contributed to its
look, feel, and function.

Finally, briely, social learning theory suggests that people learn from observing other people’s
experiences, rather than needing to experience something directly (Bandura, 1977). This theory
supports learning from games where the player may observe an avatar’s or NPC’s experience with an
event, but may not directly interact with the historic incident.

Case Study Two: Reliving the Revolution

Schrier designed one of the irst location-based games to teach children about history and to practice
historical thinking skills. The game, Reliving the Revolution (RtR) (2005), invited participants to
explore the physical location of the Batle of Lexington (Lexington, Massachusets) and access virtual
information about the Batle using GPS-enabled Palm Pilots (this was before iphones existed and GPS
was integrated into phones). The game was tailored to students in middle and high school, and provided
numerous mini-narratives based on irst-person testimonials writen by minutemen soldiers, British
(regular) soldiers, local loyalists, and other townspeople, which would automatically appear on the
players’ phones depending on where they were standing at the physical Batle of Lexington site. To
complete the game, students needed to interpret and weave together the irst-person narratives about
the historic moment of the Batle and create a meta-narrative about who ired the irst shot at the Batle.

During the game, students worked together in pairs and played as a speciic role based on a real historic
igure (e.g., a minuteman solider, a female loyalist). Each role received slightly diferent information; for
example, if a player was playing as a minuteman soldier and “talking” to a British Regular, they may
have been receiving false or biased information. If they were “talking” to Paul Revere, the information
might have been more accurate. This necessarily afected their reading of the evidence, and they
needed to interpret and use the evidence they found accordingly. This also meant that they needed to
compare evidence found with the evidence received by players in other roles to see where there were
diferences, if any.

RtR was tested with three separate groups of students, including college students and middle school/
high school students. RtR was suggested to support and motivate historical thinking, 21st century skills,
such as collaboration and media luency, as well as civic literacy. While the game itself was engaging
because of its story, its encouragement of physical exploration of a site, and its use of technology, the
experience was also efective because of the factors outside of the game. For example, a guide/mentor
posed questions during the student deliberations; encouraged students to consider other perspectives,
and provided necessary context to the history mission.

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Key Findings
There are few empirical studies that have investigated the use of history games in classroom and
informal setings. In this section I will consider some recent studies and their limitations.

Squire & Barab (2004) describe the use of Civilization III to explore the potential of using games to teach
history by modifying the game and testing it with kids in social studies classrooms. They explain how
“world history and geography became tools for playing [Civilization III] a stark contrast to how history
is frequently taught. Failure to understand basic facts (such as where the Celts originated) drove them
to Learn” (Squire & Barab, 2004, p. 512). Their study suggests that students did develop “systemic-level
understandings” (Squire & Barab, 2004, p. 512) of history, through their gameplay, whereas incorporating
more “historical texts as resources” (Squire & Barab, 2004, p. 512) might have further connected the
game to history, such that the students were efectively replaying history and not just gaming the
system (Squire & Barab, 2004, p. 512; Durga & Squire, 2008). One possible limitation of the study is
that so much of the students’ involvement and engagement with the game, and understanding of its
connection to history, may be predicated on the teacher/mentor role. (For more about this research, see
Squire’s (2005) dissertation.)

Corbeil & Laveault (2011) tested a simulation game in a History of International Relations course. They
found that those in the experimental group (those who received a game) had higher comprehension on
a history test. Those students who were able to more formally reason (based on a Piagetian framework,
and tested prior to the study) were able to atain signiicantly higher scores on the exam (Corbeil &
Laveault, 2011).

[They] also noted a favorable reaction to the game of those students preferring
more social styles of learning… active involvement was the only afective factor
signiicantly linked to learning. We might generalize this by saying that simulation
games can help motivate social-minded students…. We must try to give students
mobile and tactile instruments, which they can manipulate themselves as tools
to study and understand ideas and abstract concepts. Games must also allow
participants to discuss among themselves hypotheses, methods, and lines of
approach in terms of situation analysis and choice of strategy. A game with
predetermined results and behavior is no longer, in our sense, a game.
(Corbeil & Laveault, 2011, p. 474)

One possible limitation of this study is that it seemed the students’ prior knowledge, personality,
learning style, and ability may have afected their comprehension as a result of the game intervention.
While this would be expected, it makes it diicult to narrow down what exactly the game helps do to
support comprehension.

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Schrier (2005, 2006) created a location-based GPS-enabled game, Reliving the Revolution (RtR) to teach
and motivate historical thinking, historical empathy, and the critical thinking of history (Schrier,
2005, 2006). The game takes place in the historic site of the Batle of Lexington, an event during the
(American) Revolutionary War. In the game, participants needed to explore the Lexington batle site
and access historical testimonials about the Batle, which were triggered to appear on a Palm Pilot
mobile device, depending on where the participant was located in the town. The goal of the game was
to try to understand who ired the irst shot at Lexington, based on the interpretations of the evidence, a
history mystery that is still unsolved. A pilot study of the game, using middle and high school students,
suggested that the participants employed a variety of skills through the playing of the game, such as
problem solving, community and global awareness skills, and the consideration of multiple perspectives
(Schrier, 2005, 2006) (See more in Case Study Two). Limitations of this study include no empirically
testing, no control group, and a limited sample size. The study was ethnographic, descriptive, and
anecdotal, rather than tested using experimental conditions.

Anecdotal results on two other location-based experiences, Jewish Time Jump and Dow Day, have
suggested they are efective in helping participants relive a historic moment. Dow Day is a situated
documentary created using ARIS, a platform, which helps participants relive the moment of the 1967
Dow Chemical Corporation protest on the University of Madison-Wisconsin campus. For more about
Jewish Time Jump, see Chapter 11, Case Study Two.

Assessment Considerations
To properly design or use (and then assess) the eicacy of a game for history education, one must be
very clear as to the approach and learning goals. It follows that if the goal is to teach batle facts about
the Civil War, then it would be more useful to have a pre- and post-game assessment that addresses
students about these facts. Likewise, if the game focuses on teaching students historical empathy, a
pre- and post-game task should help the educator assess whether historical empathy skills are being
employed diferently before, during and/or ater the intervention. For example, with Mission US,
students were invited to investigate a photo of the Boston Massacre before and ater the game. Based
on their evaluations, questions, and interpretations of this photo, they were rated in their practice of
historical empathy.

The game itself should also be considered as a potential site of efective assessment, rather than having
assessments that are only external to the game experience. In other words, assessment should be built
into the game, and integrated in a way that it does not feel arduous or separate, but that part and parcel
of the gameplay is achieving something or performing something that in and of itself shows that the
player has learned what they need to learn, and also reveals what the player still needs to learn.

Moreover, the actual design of the game should be tested and re-tested throughout the process, such that
the educational and design goals are being met. In Mission US, there were a number of design principles
implemented to guide the creation of the game. These included using an authentic context and content,
social context and collaboration, and engaging story, building an avatar/player relationship, and

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scafolding vocabulary acquisition. These principles were tested (in terms of their eicacy in supporting
the goals for the target audience, and also in their presence in the design) informally during playtesting,
as well as through formative and summative assessments, throughout the design and implementation
process. Testing should be built into the entire process as an integral part of design and assessment (see
more in Case Study One).

Future Needs
There are many tensions and questions in how to beter articulate history and social studies concepts
and ideas through a game system. Empirical analysis, coupled with descriptive and ethnographic
accounts, could support the endeavors of those educators, designers, and developers looking to make
games for social studies learning. In addition, we should search for new techniques and assessment
tools that can help us understand what students are actually learning and doing in these games and
outside of the games in the long term, and which game elements or external elements are supporting it.
We should also consider the teacher’s role in supporting these games and any learning, and we should
be open to considering alternative views of history pedagogy and practice.

Case Study Three: iCivics

iCivics.org is online education project with a suite of games related to civics, social studies, government,
and justice. It is managed by iCivics, a non-proit organization that was started by Justice Sandra Day
O’Connor, who observed that students did not understand even the basic civics concepts, such as the
answer to “Which are the branches of government?” but they knew who the judges were on American
Idol, for instance. The website includes lesson plans for educators and a teacher guide, along with dozens
of games aimed to teach a variety of government and civics concepts.

In the mini-game, Argument Wars, created by Filament Games, you play as a lawyer who is arguing
a case that is being presented to the Supreme Court. The player, playing as a lawyer avatar, argues
real historic cases, such as Brown vs. Board of Education. The game uses clever mechanics to support
argument formulation. For example, at one point in the game, the player can choose from a set of cards
to “pitch” an argument. The opponent then chooses cards to “pitch” his or her own argument and the
player can choose to object to any of the opponent’s statements, mimicking lawyers in a courtroom. The
judge has a limited number of “ruling points” that s/he can disperse depending on the validity of either
side’s arguments. The winning side is the one who has the most points at the end of the mini-game. At
the end of the case, the game also explains which side actually won when the real case went to trial.

Other mini-games include Branches of Power, where the player can manage and balance the three
branches of government, while trying to pass new laws, and Do I Have a Right, where the player runs a
law irm that specializes in constitutional law and needs to judge whether possible clients “have a right”
based on authentic constitutional rights.

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The iCivics games also provide diferent achievements based on progress. For example, the “Rain
Maker” achievement is for players who inish a game and do not lose any cases. iCivics also has weekly
and monthly leaderboards. The website explains that three million students play the iCivics games each
year and is used by over 40,000 educators. iCivics games have been evaluated in a number of studies,
including LeCompte et al. (2011) and Kawashima & Ginsburg (2012). For example, LeCompte et al. (2011)
researched students who played any iCivics games for one hour per week for six weeks and found a 19%
increase in test scores on a pre- to post-test on civic knowledge. Qualitatively, they also found that the
students seemed highly motivated to play the game and seemed to look forward to their social studies
classes.

Best Practices
There are a number of best practices that have emerged in designing and using digital games for social
studies and history education.

1. Clearly identify your pedagogical approach. When designing or using a game to teach
history, questions of pedagogical and historiographic approach should be answered as
quickly as possible and communicated efectively within the team. The questions and
tensions listed in this chapter—whether to maintain the highest accuracy to details or
to focus on broader trends, whether to highlight personal obstacles or macro-level scale
economic issues, or whether to include uncomfortable issues like the Holocaust, human
traicking, or slavery—are all present as well when designing history education games.
It is problematic when designers and educators do not, up front, deine their pedagogical
approach and the skills and practices they want the game to enable, as well as relect on
the implications of these choices. Instead, many designers and educators try to make a
one-size-its all solution, which ends up being overwhelming or confusing; or, they use an
of-the-shelf game without considering its implications.
2. Understand the limits and potentials of games. Games should not just be used to further
engage students in the boring topic of history. Rather, each individual game’s what
potentials and limits should be considered, as well as the factors under which the game
will be used and the curricular goals.
3. Understand the values and biases embedded in the game’s design and performance.
As such, and with any representation of the past, games can therefore embed a number
of biases and oversimpliications (McCall, 2011). No piece of media, whether a game or a
diferent medium, can fully represent history and all of its complexity. “No imaginable
set of ‘‘historical’’ representations can do justice to the fullness of ‘‘history’’ as past”
(Uricchio, 2005, p. 331). Moreover, Schut argues that “history games are predisposed toward
presentations of history that are stereotypically masculine, highly systematic, and focused
on spatially oriented interactivity” (Schut, 2007, pg. 230). This oten requires a teacher or
other educator to be involved in supporting, critiquing, relecting, and questioning of the

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 designers’ choices and decisions in how they represented the past, its people, systems, and
places, its boundaries and constraints, and the choices it allows or disallows, as well as
what it did not represent. Ater all, there may have been ininite other ways a game could
have been designed.
4. Consider the role of the teacher, guide, or mentor. The teacher or guide is an integral
part of the Reliving the Revolution (RtR) experience, and research has shown that this role
is essential (McCall, 2011; Schrier et al., 2010). RtR itself was just one part of the learning
experience. Other aspects of the curriculum, such as worksheets, in-class debates around
the game, relection exercises, diaries, and dramatic tasks, were related to the game but not
the game itself. Designing not only the game, but the curriculum and mentorship around
the game, seemed to add up to a more holistic educational experience for the players, which
was anecdotally efective. More research should consider the extent to which the activities
and guidance around the game contribute to its educational eicacy.
5. Consider the diferences between games and other media. It is also important to consider
the diferences between how history is presented in other media, versus how it can be
presented in games.

Table 1 may be useful as initial questions to ask when designing a game for history/social studies
learning.

Table 1. Initial questions to consider when designing and using games for history education
Initial Questions to Consider When Designing and Using Games for History Education
1. What is the approach to history education—are skills such as inquiry, bias identiication, or perspective-taking
more important, or is memorizing facts and igures more essential?

2. To what extent does the historical place, people, and items need to be accurate and what does “accuracy”
mean in the context of the game?

3. What are the learning goals and how will those be communicated and achieved through the game?

4. Are students experiencing alternate approaches to a historical moment, or even interpreting it themselves,
or are they learning how others have interpreted it and then applying that to new situations?

5. Are students playing the game immersing themselves in a historical igure’s shoes, or are they playing
as themselves and thinking about diferences between today and yesterday?

6. If you are using an of-the-shelf game, look under the hood and consider the designers’ perspectives and biases—
how are their approaches to history or values integrated into the game’s design and how will this afect any learning
that results?

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Resources
Books and publications
Akkerman, S., Admiraal, W., & Huizenga, J. (2009). Storiication in history education: A mobile game in and about
medieval Amsterdam. Computers & Education. 52(2): 449-459.
López, J.M.C. & Cáceres, M.J.M. (2010). Virtual games in social science education. Computers & Education. 55(3):
1336-1345.
McCall, J. (2011). Gaming the Past. New York, NY: Routledge.
Shafer, D. (2006). How Computer Games Help Children Learn. New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan.
Squire, K. (2004). Replaying History: Learning World History through Playing Civilization III. Doctoral
Dissertation. (htp://website.education.wisc.edu/kdsquire/dissertation.html)
Stearns, P., Seixas, P., & Wineburg, S. (Eds). (2000) Knowing Teaching & Learning History. New York: New York
University Press.
Vansledright, B. (1997/8). “On the importance of historical positionality to thinking about and teaching history.”
The International Journal of Social Education. 12(2), 1-18.

Games and websites

ARIS (htp://arisgames.org/)
Assassins Creed
Axis and Allies
Batle of Lexington Reenactment
(every Patriot’s Day morning in Lexington, Massachusets) (htp://www.batleroad.org/)
Carcassonne
Civilization
Cruel Necessity: The English Civil Wars, 1640-1653
Democracy 3
Diplomacy
Dow Day
Frequentie 1550 (<htp://freq1550.waag.or)
Gaming the Past blog (htp://gamingthepast.net/)
Grand Thet Auto
Historical board games
(htps://www.facebook.com/HistoricalBoardGames and htp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Category:Historical_board_games)
History Channel games (htp://www.history.com/games/)
Historypin (htp://www.historypin.com)
iCivics (www.icivics.org)
Jewish Time Jump
LA Noire
Making History
Mission US (www.mission-us.org)
Muzzy Lane (htp://muzzylane.com/project/making_history/edu)
National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) (htp://www.socialstudies.org/standards)
Play it Again Project (history of games) (htp://playitagainproject.org/)

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Play the Past (htp://www.playthepast.org/)
Puerto Rico
Red Dead Redemption
Redistricting Game (htp://www.redistrictinggame.org/)
Reliving the Revolution
Revolutions
Risk
River City
SimCityEdu (www.simcityedu.org)
Smart History (htp://www.yourcommonwealth.org/)
The Migrant Trail (htp://theundocumented.com/)
The Republica Times
Tiki-Toki (htp://www.tiki-toki.com/)
Your Commonwealth (htp://www.yourcommonwealth.org/)

References
Ashby, R. and Lee, P. (1987). Children’s concepts of empathy and understanding in history. In C. Portal (Ed.), The
history curriculum for teachers (62-88). London, UK: Falmer.
Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Englewood Clifs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Barnet, M., Barab, S., Schatz, S., Warren S. (2000). Designing a community of inquiry in an undergraduate
history course: A clash of cultures. Paper presented at the 2000 Annual Meeting of the American
Educational Research Association. New Orleans, LA.
Barton, K. C. and Levstik, L. S. (2004). Teaching history for the common good. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates.
Brown, J., Collins, A., and Dugid, P. (1989). Situated cognition and the culture of learning, Educational Researcher,
18, 32-42.
Bruner, J. (2009). Culture, Mind, and Education. In K. Illeris (Ed.), Contemporary theories of learning. New York,
NY: Routledge.
Corbeil, P. and Laveault, D. (2011). Validity of a simulation game as a method for history teaching. Simulation and
Gaming, 42(4), 462-475.
Dede, C., Whitehouse, P., & Brown-L’Bahy, T. (2002) Designing and studying learning experiences that use
multiple interactive media to bridge distance and time. In C. Vrasidas & G. Glass (Eds.), Current
perspectives on applied information technologies. Vol. 1: Distance education, (1-30). Greenwich, CN:
Information Age Press.
Downey, M., Levstik, L. (1991). Teaching and learning history. In J. Shaver (Ed.), Handbook of research on social
studies teaching and learning, (400-410). New York: Macmillan Publishing Company.
Jenkins, K. (2003). Rethinking history. New York: Routledge.
Kee, K. (2011). Computerized history games: Narrative options. Simulation & Gaming, 4, 423-440.
Klopfer, E., Squire, K., & Jenkins, H. (2003). Augmented reality simulations on handheld computers. Paper
presented at the American Educational Research Association Conference, Chicago, IL.
Klopfer, E., Squire, K. & Jenkins, H. (2002). Environmental detectives: PDAs as a window into a virtual simulated
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Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press.
Lee, P. (1983). History teaching and philosophy of history. History and Theory, 22(4), 19-49.
Lee, P. & Ashby, R. (2000). Empathy, perspective taking, and rational understanding. In edited J. O. L. Davis, E. A.
Yeager & S. J. Foster. Historical Empathy and Perspective Taking in the Social Studies, (21-50). Maryland:
Rowman & Litleield Publishers, Inc.
Lowenthal, D. (1996) Possessed by the past: The heritage crusade and the spoils of history. New York: Free Press.
McCall, J. (2011). Gaming the Past. New York, NY: Routledge.
Munslow, A. (1997). Deconstructing history. New York, NY: Routledge.
Papert, S. (1980). Mindstorms: Children, computers, and powerful ideas. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Piaget, J. (1926). The language and thought of the child. London: Routledge & Kegan.
Schrier, K. (2005). Revolutionizing history education: Using augmented reality games to teach histories. (Master’s
thesis, Massachusets Institute of Technology, 2005).
Schrier, K. (2006). Using augmented reality games to teach 21st century skills. Proceedings of ACM siggraph 2006
educators program. Boston, MA.
Schrier, K., & Channel 13. (2009). The research-informed game design approach to Mission US. Unpublished
whitepaper.
Schrier, K., Diamond, J., and Langendoen, D. (2010). Using Mission US: For crown or colony? to develop historical
empathy and nurture ethical thinking. In K. Schrier & D. Gibson (Eds.), Ethics and game design: Teaching
values through play, (239-261). Hershey, PA: IGI.
Schut, K. (2007) Strategic simulations and our past: The bias of computer games in the presentation of history.
Games and Culture. 2(3), 213-235.
Seixas, P. (1996). Conceptualizing growth in historical understanding. In D. Olson & N. Torrance (Eds.) Education
and human development. London: Blackwell.
Seixas, P. (2000). Schweigen! die kinder! or, does postmodern history have a place in the schools? In Stearns,
P., Seixas, P., & Wineburg, S. (Eds.) Knowing teaching & learning history: National and international
perspectives. New York, NY: New York University Press.
Squire, K., & Durga, S. (2006). Productive gaming: The case for historiographic game play. To appear in R. Ferdig
(Ed.) The handbook of educational gaming. Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference.
Squire, K., & Barab, S. (2004). Replaying history: Engaging urban underserved students in learning world
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Monica, United States: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
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Computer Game Studies, 327-338. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Wineburg, S. (2001). Historical thinking and other unnatural acts: Charting the future of teaching the past.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Wineburg, S. S. (1991). Historical problem solving: A study of the cognitive processes used in the evaluation of
documentary and pictorial evidence. Journal of Educational Psychology, 83, 73-87.
Zin, N., Yue, W., and J. Azizah. (2009). Digital game-based learning (DGBL) model and development methodology
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CHAPTER 5

Music

Music Games in Education

Ethan Hein, New York University, New York, New York, U.S., ethan@ethanhein.com

Key Summary Points

The greatest challenge music educators face is to translate young people’s innate enjoyment
1 of music into sustained interest and focus in the classroom. Even when students are fortunate
enough to have access to music education, many disengage, and many abandon formal
musical study entirely (Mota, 2013).

Common reasons for children and teens to become discouraged by music classes or lessons
2 include a steep technical barrier to entry requiring many hours of practice to overcome, the
fact that classroom music is typically socially or culturally inauthentic and unfamiliar, and
the stress and anxiety of performance.

There are three major types of music games: drill-and-skill, rhythm games, and music toys.
3 Each has its pros and cons for learning music.

Key Terms
DAW
Electronic music
Generative music
MIDI
Notation sotware
Remix
Sequencer
Win condition

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Introduction
Games hold promise for the teaching of music due to their accessibility and ability to engage the player.
It remains to be seen how much of this promise will be realized. Koops & Taggart (2011) deine “work”
as a means toward accomplishment, and “play” as a means toward personal physical, emotional, or
cognitive well-being. It is no accident games and music share the verb “to play.” Work is necessary to
master the basic skills that enable musical play, as it is in any creative undertaking. Music games show
their strongest educational potential when they make the work feel like play as well (Dillon, 2007).

Among American high school students who have access to elective music classes, only ive percent
choose to take them (Lowe, 2012). Nearly all young people like music, so why do they abandon its study
in such overwhelming numbers?

Harwood & Marsh (2012) observe that traditional music education asks students to perform two
challenging learning tasks at the same time: 1) they must learn unfamiliar repertoire, and 2) they must
do so using unfamiliar tools and techniques. The technical and notational barriers to entry discourage
some beginners. Others ind it diicult to relate to the music they are learning. Still others are stymied
by the combination of both factors.

Music games can ease some of the pedagogical burden, both in their content and their delivery
methods. The game format is generally familiar and appealing to young people. Commercial games
such as the Rock Band series use recognizable pop and rock songs—material students are more likely
to ind personally meaningful (see Case Study One). Games can give even novice players a taste of the
excitement of performing, a feeling that is normally only available only to very adept musicians.

Beginner-level music students must simultaneously learn (1) music concepts, (2) the notation system
encoding those concepts, and (3) the instrumental or vocal techniques necessary to translate the
symbols into sound. How useful are games for each of these three tasks?

Most games explicitly aimed at the educational market, so-called “drill-and-skill” games, recreate
traditional classroom activities in the computer: reading and writing notation, identifying intervals and
scales, and the like. Such tasks are extrinsically motivated, since students typically play the games at
the behest of a teacher or parent, and/or as part of or in addition to structured music lessons. Drill-and-
skill games have a signiicant advantage over pencil-and-paper methods because they ofer instant
feedback, both sonic and visual. Rather than having to wait for a teacher to correct the assignment,
students ind out instantly whether they have marked a note correctly. Furthermore, students can
match notation to sounds without having to simultaneously struggle with instrument mechanics.

Games can help with the learning of music concepts through the use of novel interactive visualization
systems. Wilkie, Holland, & Mulholland (2010) demonstrate that the most efective metaphors for aiding
in musical understanding are tangible and bodily. Chords and keys are “containers” for notes. Repetitive

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paterns are cycles. Pitch is a vertical ladder. A consonant note is “in the center,” while a dissonant one
is “at the periphery.” A song is a narrative, beginning at a “source,” moving along a “path” toward a
“goal.” The best music games use such metaphors to create intuitive mappings between sound and
image. For example, the Rock Band series represents musical time as a road or track, along which you
travel in the irst person. Such visualizations can create an intuitive musical understanding that paves
the way for learning traditional notation and instrumental skills.

Most games do not teach instrumental or vocal techniques directly. Instrument simulation games such
as the Rock Band and Guitar Hero series are roundly criticized for simplifying and misrepresenting real
instruments, and their players are derided as not being “real musicians” (Miller, 2009). Rock Band 3 is a
rare exception in that it atempts to teach actual instrument technique (see Case Study One).

Most mainstream commercial music games center around rhythm, rather than pitch, timbre, or other
aspects of music. In rhythm games, you move or press controls in sync to a song, following onscreen
notation, oten using a specialized controller. Rhythm games fall into several subgenres:

1. Dance games: Dance Dance Revolution, Let’s Dance

2. Instrument simulations: Rock Band, Guitar Hero, Donkey Konga
3. Singing games: Karaoke Revolution, SingStar
4. More abstract games: FreQuency, VibRibbon, Rez

There is a category of experimental music games that are more properly called “music toys,” open-
ended generative systems in which the player interacts improvisationally with a semi-autonomous
synthesis system. Examples include SimTunes, Electroplankton, Wii Music, Nodebeat, and Bloom. The
iPad and iPhone are particularly congenial platforms for music toys. While these programs supericially
resemble games in their presentation, they generally do not have a competitive aspect per se, and are
more like musical instruments.

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Case Study One: Rock Band 3
Rock Band 3 was released in 2010 by Harmonix Music Systems for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii,
and Nintendo DS. As with previous titles in the series, Rock Band 3 enables you to “play” rock and
pop songs while using special controllers mimicking guitar, bass, and drums. Unlike the previous two
games, Rock Band 3 includes a keyboard controller. Players can also sing three-part vocal harmonies.
The game includes thousands of songs and can be played by up to seven people at a time.

Critics of rhythm games complain that players are not learning actual, transferable music skills.
Harmonix addressed that criticism with Rock Band 3’s novel Pro Mode. In place of the usual simpliied
abstractions, Pro Mode aims to teach players the actual instrumental parts on more realistic controllers.
For example, Fender sells a real guitar with custom electronics to use with Pro Mode—not only is it a
fully functional MIDI controller, but it can sense the location of the player’s ingers to give nuanced
feedback. Pro Mode has an easy level that ofers simpliied versions of songs, similar to the abstractions
in previous Guitar Hero titles. As the player advances, the complexity increases and the transcriptions
become more complete.

Rock Band 3 also includes tutorials on technique and music theory developed by experts from the
Berklee College of Music, though these are somewhat perfunctory. More intriguing is Practice Mode,
which slows down songs and allows the player to loop speciic sections. The game’s designers needed
a notation system that anyone could learn to sight-read. Their solution is what they describe as “a
Montessori approach,” a graphical tablature showing chord ingerings as modular shapes. This enables
the game to teach actual songs irst, introducing theory only optionally, if at all—a strategy used by
many self-taught guitarists (Booth & Dubrofsky, 2011).

There is not much data on the efectiveness of Rock Band 3 in the music classroom. Cassidy & Paisley
(2013) found that the game promotes low and invites disciplined and constructive engagement. They
did not explicitly measure gains in musical skill, however. Peppler, Downton, Lindsay & Hay (2011)
conducted a study of 26 children in an aterschool club, with a hypothesis that the subjects would
measurably improve their music skills. The authors’ argument in favor of Rock Band 3 as a teaching
tool centers not on Pro Mode, but on the in-game notation system. They see the game’s value not in
its teaching of instrument mechanics, but in its interactive visualization of music theory and song
structure. The results of their study were inconclusive, but did show some improvement in participants’
rhythm and reading skills.

Schultz (2008) observes that, like the MIDI piano roll, rhythm games are interactive graphical scores.
They connect visual abstractions to sound in an intuitive way, showing particular ingenuity in the
Z-axis “driving mode” representation of musical time. Furthermore, rhythm games give crucial real-
time feedback: failing to hit a note correctly both sets of an animated visual response and causes the
player’s instrument to temporarily drop out of the mix. Peppler et al. (2011) observe that, “This dynamic
feedback is rarely aforded to musicians outside of gameplay, who must be told by someone with more

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experience (usually a parent, bandmate or teacher) if what they played was contrary to what was
writen on the page” (p. 6).

Rhythm game notation shares some key features with traditional music notation, including models
of metric hierarchy, subdivision, measurement and patern identiication. The beginner-level notation
shows only the most structurally important events in each phrase, using an abstraction system similar
to the reductions performed by music theorists when analyzing a piece. In spite of its simplicity, the
notation still retains the song’s overall melodic contour.

Rock Band beneits music students by enabling them to study culturally authentic material directly
from recordings, as popular musicians do in actual practice. The visual notation adds considerable
value to such aural learning: “[E]ven those trained in formal notational systems report hearing new
elements in the music through this activity than from score-reading or listening, alone” (Peppler et
al., 2011, p. 5). Furthermore, every Rock Band session is a performance. In this sense, it may be a more
“realistic” music experience than the decontextualized pieces and exercises in music class. Much more
research is needed on whether the pleasure of Rock Band 3 translates to the learning of transferable
musical skills.

Key Frameworks
Games can address several of the obstacles to music learning listed above in the introduction. Students’
frustration with too-diicult or too-simple tasks can be addressed with multiple diiculty levels and
self-pacing. Well-designed games ofer individually calibrated challenges, carefully matching the
player’s ability to steadily escalating challenges. While failure in music performance is embarrassing
and frustrating, Tobias (2012) observes that, in games, “Failure is designed to encourage players to
determine beter solutions to a given problem and allows for multiple opportunities to reach a particular
goal” (p. 5).

Performance anxiety is a powerful obstacle to music learning. Games can assuage this anxiety by
providing opportunities for private virtual performance. Students who are too shy to perform for peers
can engage with music in the safety of their bedrooms or headphones.

Most overtly educational music games use the same sorts of artiicial melodies found in traditional
teaching materials. By contrast, pop-oriented commercial games use material that young people are
familiar with and enjoy. More importantly, the games enable players to learn aurally from recordings as
well as from notation. Recordings can act as expert peers or virtual master teachers. A desire to imitate
pop stars can motivate young people, particularly teenagers, to perform disciplined study.

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Ideally, music class should be a genuine community of learning that speaks to students’ musical
selves. Students oten express social solidarity with each other by resisting music class, whereas social
solidarity could, instead, encourage other’s to further engage with music class. Green (2002) argues
that the Eurocentric basis of traditional music education is incompatible with students’ enculturation.
She proposes integrating the following informal, pop-oriented pedagogical practices into formal music
education for young students:

1. Allowing learners to choose the music.

2. Learning by listening to and copying recordings.
3. Learning in friendship groups with minimal adult guidance.
4. Learning in personal, haphazard ways.
5. Integrating listening, playing, singing, improvising, and composing.

Music games support these practices to varying extents.

Well-designed games create engagement by promoting a low state, a total absorption that makes the
player gratifyingly oblivious to anything else. Good musical experiences also involve low states, and
music classes are most efective when they foster low. There are ive elements necessary to bring about
low states (Csíkszentmihályi, 2009):

1. Immediate feedback contributing to a balance between skill and challenge;

2. Merged action and awareness, completely occupying students’ atention;
3. Deep, sustained concentration;
4. Control of the situation, and the freedom to generate possibilities; and
5. Loss of self-consciousness.

The single strongest rationale for including games in the music classroom is their self-motivating, low-
promoting quality. Ideally, a student who experiences low brought on by self-motivated disciplined
practice in the game context will be inspired to pursue the same state in other contexts (Dillon, 2007).
Challenge is a strong motivation for learning when the student has a commensurate skill level. Well-
designed games promote low by continually adjusting their diiculty level to meet the player’s present
state of understanding. Rhythm games have an additional quality that strongly promotes low, which is
that they involve physical activity (Custodero, 2002).

Music games have a major limitation in their low-inducing capabilities: they typically give the player
litle control over the music being produced. Music toys are the exception; their purpose is to foster
expressiveness, and they enable even complete novices to exercise control and implement their own
ideas.

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Case Study Two: iGotGame
The major shortcoming of both drill-and-skill games and rhythm games is the absence of improvisation.
The player moves through the song like a train on a track, and the games penalize any variation from
the prescribed notes. Not all real-life music is improvisational either, but there is usually some element
of personal expressiveness. Not so in music games—mimicry is the only way to play. Rosenstock
(2010) recognized this shortcoming, and devised a game to try to address it. Working with students
at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, he developed iGotBand, an experimental rhythm game that
incorporates improvisation. While the basic gameplay follows the Rock Band model, you need not
reproduce the given note sequences exactly; you are free to use any rhythm and you can interject notes
of your choosing.

Rosenstock’s game is an admirable atempt at incorporating improvisation into a music game, but he
fails to address some basic problems. The improvisation in iGotGame has no bearing on the player’s
success or failure. This makes it a nice but meaningless feature. Rosenstock readily admits this to be
a problem, and his discussion of the issue is enlightening. Games and music share the verb “to play,”
but in both domains, the word has several distinct meanings. Rosenstock introduces the term paidia,
meaning childlike play: spontaneous and unruly. The musical equivalent would be freeform jazz, or
generative music toys. By contrast, there is play as ludus: games with ordered rules and a win condition,
such as chess or basketball (and indeed, nearly all video games.) The musical equivalent of ludus is
classical composition and more formally-bound jazz styles such as bebop.

Like most other rhythm games, iGotBand is an example of ludus. The improvisational aspect is a dash
of paidia, but it has no bearing on the win condition, and therefore is not intrinsic to the experience. In
fairness to Rosenstock, it is diicult to imagine how one could possibly devise an unambiguous system
of rules for judging improvisation. Rosenstock atempts to address this problem by suggesting that
players vote on the quality of others’ improvisation. This merely defers the issue, however; there is still
no rule-based system for making judgments beyond whatever arbitrary criteria players would use for
voting.

Improvisation might supericially resemble a game, but Rosenstock inadvertently demonstrates how
fundamentally incompatible it is with a win condition. Music toys with game-like interfaces can
potentially serve the goal of expressiveness much beter than perhaps games can; more research should
be conducted to tease out this relationship.

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Key Findings
Ruthmann (2006) lists three goals that music education technology should meet. They include:

1. Broadening participation;
2. Enabling greater musical creativity through improvisation; and
3. The widespread teaching of music composition.

Rhythm games have been shown to inspire broader participation in “real music” (Miller, 2009; Peppler
et al., 2011). Some games ofer composition tools, though these are usually limited. Most games actively
work against improvisation (see Case Study Two).

Egenfeldt-Nielsen (2007) uses the term “edutainment” to describe games explicitly designed for
educational use, with Math Blaster! as his canonical example. He takes a dim view of such titles, for two
reasons: the educational content is frequently disconnected from the game elements, and the in-game
learning is typically rote, resulting in weak skill transfer. A meta-study of the efectiveness of such
edutainment titles showed that while they do work, there is no reliable evidence they perform beter
(or worse) than any other learning method (Egenfeldt-Nielsen, 2007). Nevertheless, music teachers
and parents have embraced drill-and-skill games, perhaps because of their similarity to traditional
curriculum materials.

Commercial rhythm games such as Rock Band and Guitar Hero are the source of considerable
controversy. These games certainly require (and inspire) a great deal of disciplined practice. But are
players really learning music? Ruthmann (2006) argues that the best curriculum activities derive from
real-world activities, ideally retaining the essential values of the original. The objects and operations
of the adapted activity should be genuine instances of the original activity, however simpliied. By this
logic, rhythm games should be very valuable for educators. Many musicians and teachers, however,
criticize simpliied game controllers that do not realistically represent actual instruments. For example,
while the drum kits in Rock Band and Guitar Hero games correspond somewhat closely to real drum
kits, the pads are simply on-of controllers with no dynamics or expression.

As of this writing, there has been litle research on how well rhythm games teach traditional music
skills and theory. Some early research points to the games’ efectiveness (Peppler et al., 2011). Other
studies, however, show improvement only in tracking the kinds of visual prompts used in the game
notation. Richardson & Kim (2011) explain: “Repeated play of these games may create some form of
musical rehearsal, but their non-literal and varying performance mappings are arguably removed from
or even counter-productive to both the rehearsal of the speciic music approximated and the general
practices of traditional music education” (p. 278).

On the other hand, Richardson & Kim’s study of student experience of rhythm games includes some
anecdotes that reveal the games’ unexpected educational beneits. For example, one of their subjects
cites the games’ power to reduce anxiety: “I have never sung in front of anyone before, but this was the

100
best way to do it, I guess, because everyone was watching the screen” (Richardson & Kim, 2011, p. 288).
The games also encourage close and active listening. Another participant comments, “I’d never listened
to music in layers like that” (Richardson & Kim, 2011, p. 288). Such close study of “real-world” recordings
is invaluable for situating the notes on the page in a meaningful context (Green, 2002).

In their analysis of the Rock Band series and SingStar, Gower & McDowall (2012) observe that these
games have a major advantage over traditional music education for teaching pitch and rhythm: the
games give real-time auditory and visual feedback. Each note played or sung prompts an immediate
graphical and sonic event informing the player whether it was right or wrong. Such continual and
granular performance assessment would be diicult to deliver any other way. Even in one-on-one
private instruction, a teacher cannot readily react to every individual note in the moment.

Beyond their musical value, the aforementioned popular music games are also excellent tools for
engaging with the cultural history of popular music (Gower & McDowall, 2012). For example, the Rock
Band series’ library comprises of thousands of songs spanning ive decades. Furthermore, the games
themselves are potential objects of rich study. The graphical avatars can provoke conversation about
gender and cultural stereotypes in music and its pop cultural presentation (Tobias, 2012). The games can
also act as a springboard for a more general philosophical discussion of the nature of music performance
and authenticity in virtual contexts (Miller, 2009).

Smith (2004) observes that “playing [rhythm] games can feel like a genuinely musical experience: the
controller is no longer a trigger but a percussion instrument, and the player stops thinking in terms
of locking on targets and instead tries to feel the groove” (p. 65). Smith (2004), however, is concerned
that players have litle agency in the game, since they are restricted to preprogrammed buton presses
triggering preprogrammed sounds: “The pleasure of agency in electronic environments is oten
confused with the mere ability to move a joystick or click on a mouse. But activity alone is not agency”
(p. 61). The Rock Band and Guitar Hero games do have special modes allowing remixing of their content
or the creation of new playable songs. These systems are more limited than full-blown music production
sotware, but for that reason, they are also more accessible to novices.

Creativity has entered one music game through an unexpected vector. Dance Dance Revolution (DDR)
was born in the arcades of Japan and from its inception was a spectator sport or a performance for a
real-world audience. The performance aspect of DDR has taken on a life of its own with the practice of
“freestyling”—dancing while facing away from the screen and toward the crowd, incorporating upper-
body moves that have no bearing on the game (Smith, 2004). To pull this of, freestylers must memorize
the steps to songs and then how to do them backward so that they can turn and face the crowd. The
home version of DDR subsequently turned freestyling into an oicial game feature by adding a mirror
mode that turns the steps backward.

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Assessment Considerations
Drill-and-skill games aim to transfer concrete musical skills like notation, ear training, and transcription.
It is a straightforward mater to assess student progress in this context: either they do the exercises
correctly or they do not. By contrast, student work with music toys deies easy assessment. These
titles are intrinsically open-ended and expressive, so there is no obvious way to gauge “successful” or
“unsuccessful” usage. It is beter to consider music games as new instruments, rather than as exercises
or games, per se. We can judge a music toy based on how discoverable its rules are, and by the depth
and quality of its generative output.

Rhythm games pose the greatest challenges for assessment. On the one hand, they have clear win
conditions and internal scoring systems. On the other hand, the game objectives may not map onto the
curriculum easily, or at all. One approach to assessment is to evaluate players’ expressiveness within the
games, as we would with music toys. We might also examine players’ mastery of skills and knowledge
that generalize into other musical setings.

Future Needs
Teachers may well appreciate the engaging, low-promoting qualities of rhythm games, but wish that
they included other forms of music. Smith (2004) cites one of the rare classical music rhythm games,
Mad Maestro, irst released in 2001 for the PlayStation 2. The gameplay follows the Rock Band model,
but with the player “conducting” an orchestra playing the classical greatest hits: The Marriage of Figaro,
Swan Lake, Pictures at an Exhibition, and so on.

We might imagine Conductor Hero, in which you use a motion controller to conduct diferent world-
class ensembles, starting with small chamber works and progressing through large-scale symphonies.
Such a game, however, is not likely to emerge from the marketplace anytime soon. A satirical article in
The Onion (2007) illustrates the challenges:

Activision Reports Sluggish Sales For Sousaphone Hero

In the wake of Guitar Hero’s success, we thought the public was more than ready for
additional popular American musical genres in a simulated-performance format,
but people don’t seem to be responding to marches as well as we had hoped…If you
score enough points, you can unlock the ultimate level: playing in the John Philip
Sousa–led Marine Band at Grover Cleveland’s inauguration.
(p. 1)

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Educational and government organizations that wish to produce non-pop rhythm games with the level
of polish and engagement found in commercial titles face two major obstacles: the considerable expense
of developing complex multimedia sotware and custom controllers, and the expense and logistical
complexity of licensing the music and musician likenesses.

Aside from the music toys, music games permit litle or no creativity on the player’s part. There are a
few exceptions, however. Later titles in the Guitar Hero series have included GH Mix, a composition
tool that enables you to create original music in the game environment. The controllers act as primitive
MIDI instruments for sequencing notes into the game’s “piano roll.” Players can also record your own
vocals. Songs created this way are fully playable within the game and can be shared with other players
via the game’s online network.

Harmonix has also created the Rock Band Network, a platform for translating original recordings into
playable Rock Band songs using the audio editing sotware Reaper along with a special plug-in. These
recordings need not be rock or pop songs. Tobias (2012) suggests that music teachers take advantage of
this feature to expand the musical possibilities of the rhythm game format:

Opportunities for students, whether in rock bands creating original music or brass
quintets performing baroque works, to have their music played with controllers in
a video game environment ofer varied entry points into these musics and raise
compelling questions about what it means to create, listen to, and perform music
in this context. Whether deciding how to distribute brass quintet parts across the
game controllers or visualizing the rhythms of an original rif, students’ use of video
games in the music classroom afords new ways of interacting with music from
multiple viewpoints. The implications of creating, arranging, and playing Gabrieli on
a plastic guitar controller or samba on rubber drums are yet to be seen. (p. 15)

Rather than waiting for Conductor Hero to be released, educators may be well advised to follow Tobias’
suggestion to repurpose existing titles for their own purposes.

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Case Study Three: My Note Games!
There are many drill-and-skill music games on the market. The state of the art is well represented by
My Note Games!, released by Appata Ltd for iOS in 2011. This app comprises several distinct games. The
most basic and introductory exercises are free, and you can purchase upgrades to the full games within
the app. Your score across all exercises is kept in the form of “Aural IQ,” and the app uses this measure
to calibrate diiculty levels. The games include:

1. Hear It, Note It! A transcription game: You hear a melody and use the game’s notation
editor to transcribe it. You can listen any number of times until you enter your irst note,
at which point you must write from memory. If the transcription is incorrect, the melody
plays again and you can make corrections.
2. Tap That Note: You are shown a simple melody with a row of note names below it. You
must tap the note names in the sequence they are writen on the score. The game can be
played in treble, bass, alto, or tenor clef. It tracks your timing as well as your note choices,
though not very precisely. You have approximately one second per note, for an implicit
minimum tempo of 60 beats per minute.
3. Play That Note: This game tests sight-reading ability. You play a short melody on your
instrument into the built-in mic, and the game tracks your accuracy note-by-note. A
variety of instruments are supported, and there is beta support for singing and whistling
as well, though the pitch-tracking for the later two works unevenly at best. The game
requires you to keep your instrument in tune, and to that end, supplies a built-in tuner.
Here, again, note durations are not very important, so long as you play faster than about 60
beats per minute.
4. Play-A-Day: This game involves a more demanding sight-reading exercise, which requires
more exact timing. You are given eight melodies, and when you can play all of them
correctly, you advance to the next eight. The melodies are generated randomly and are not
exceptionally musical, which raises the issue of cultural authenticity.

As a delivery system for traditional classroom and homework exercises, My Note Games! are well-
designed. The immediate feedback is gratifying, the self-pacing and automatic diiculty adjustments
are conducive to learning, and the graphics are cheerful and colorful. As a game, however, the app leaves
much to be desired. The musical content is dry and artiicial, and any motivation is largely extrinsic.
Appata’s website copy for Play-A-Day sums it up well: “Play it every day and show your teacher how
fast you are progressing!” In other words, pleasing your teacher is your reason for playing, not the
satisfaction of the game itself. Will students who do not already respond to traditional music pedagogy
fare any beter when the same content comes in the form of an iOS app? So far, there have been no
rigorous empirical studies providing a satisfactory answer to this question (Egenfeldt-Nielsen, 2007).

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Best Practices
1. Encourage interaction with generative music systems.
a. Burnard (2012) encourages us to take a broad view of musical creativity
in digital contexts. Games that are not centered on music can still ofer
opportunities for engagement and invention. As game soundtracks become
more sophisticated and generative, players inadvertently collaborate with the
composer and sound designer to produce the actual music coming out of the
speakers.
b. Burnard also praises the level creation system in LitleBigPlanet, which allows
player/designers to add interactive music elements to their levels in the form of
cartoon boomboxes. Electronic music blurs the line between sound design and
composition, and interactive audio environments such as LitleBigPlanet give
future musicians a taste of both practices.
2. Avoid the blank canvas.
a. Ruthmann (2012) observers that traditional music creation sotware uses the
metaphor of a blank canvas or void. It is intimidating for novices to have
to ill an empty screen with notes, samples and loops. Music toys such as
the networked collaborative performance program jam2jam (htp://www.
savetodisc.net/jam2jam/) start the user of with pre-existing sound and images
to be manipulated.
b. Even when music toys start with a blank canvas, they present a much lower
barrier to entry than an empty Garageband session or Sibelius score. Apps
such as Bloom or Nodebeat begin to produce musical sound in response to the
most tentative or random user actions. With the music underway immediately,
the user can then explore the parameters of the system through playful
improvisation.
3. Encourage play with non-game music tools.
a. The music toy Singing Fingers records and plays back sound through the visual
metaphor of inger painting. You sing or make sounds while drawing on the
screen, creating colorful lines. Once your drawing is complete, you can play
back your sounds by retracing your lines. The sound is arrayed over the length
of the line and can be scrubbed forward or backward at any speed. Ruthmann
(2012) suggests drawing a staircase while singing a scale, so that each step of the
staircase displays as a diferent color. Then students can recreate a melody by
touching steps on the staircase, giving them a visceral connection between the
sound and visual representation of pitches.
b. Tools such as Garageband and Sibelius can be made more like music toys
simply by pre-illing them with musical material. Rather than giving students
an empty session or document, you might give them a dense block of existing
music and challenge them to create something new through subtraction only.

105
 c.
Ruthmann (2012) suggests a playful use of Google Translate: making the
sotware beatbox. By seting both the “From” and “To” languages to German,
you can enter consonant groupings that the sotware speaks in a manner
similar to beatbox sounds. Many adolescents love beatboxing, but they can
be reluctant to do so in front of their peers, especially in a classroom seting.
Leting Google Translate do the initial performing gives them a safe space to
work out ideas, and even create full-ledged rhythm tracks.
4. Motivate the creation of music games.
a. The most ambitious music educators can use the Scratch visual programming
environment (htp://scratch.mit.edu) to enable their students to create new
music and multimedia, and even to generate your own music games. The
Scratch companion site for teachers (htp://scratched.media.mit.edu) ofers free
lesson plans and project ideas, including working code.

Resources
Book
McPherson, G. and Welch, G. (Eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Music Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Games and Tools

There is a growing body of full-ledged music games and tools that run entirely within the web browser,
with no additional sotware or hardware needed. Prominent examples include:
Soundation (htp://soundation.com/) is not a game, but rather a digital audio workstation similar to Garageband.
It is particularly useful for Windows-based environments.
jam2jam (htp://www.jam2jam.com/) is a collaborative media performance tool that enables music and video
remixing in real time over the internet.
PBS maintains a collection of browser games for children of preschool age
(htp://pbskids.org/games/music.html).

Websites
Dr. Alex Ruthmann’s website (htp://www.alexruthmann.com/blog1/): Collects a variety of resources, including
several mentioned in the previous section.
The Experiencing Audio Research Group at NYU (htp://experiencingaudio.org/): Studies and creates
technologies and experiences for music making, learning, and engagement. They “collaborate with
technology developers, educational agencies, teachers, students and musicians in the creation of
solutions to real world music education challenges.”
The Rock Band 3 Pro Mode design process: Game designers may ind inspiration here
(htp://www.rockbandaide.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Jason_Booth_Sylvain_Dubrofsky_
Design_Prototype_Through_Production.ppt).
The Everyday Play cluster on The New Everyday blog
(htp://mediacommons.futureothebook.org/tne/pieces/everyday-play):
Curated by Sam Tobin, this a collection of mostly personal relections on the role of play in daily life.

106
Scratch (htp://scratch.mit.edu): A programming language for creating interactive music, multimedia and games.
The website includes curriculum ideas and code examples.
Scratch lesson plans (htp://scratched.media.mit.edu)
htp://www.savetodisc.net/jam2jam/

Events
Music education hack days: Gatherings that bring together programmers, educators and musicians
to quickly produce and present new projects in a casual environment. Past events have taken
place in New York (htp://musiceducationhack.splashthat.com/) and London
(htp://www.meetup.com/The-London-Educational-Games-Meetup-Group/).

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Welch, G. (Eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Music Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wilkie, K.; Holland, S.; & Mulholland, P. (2010). What can the language of musicians tell us about music
interaction design? Computer Music Journal, Vol. 34, No. 4, p. 34-48.

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CHAPTER 6

Physical Health

Combining Physical Activity with Learning:

An Interactive Approach
Robin Mellecker, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China, robmel@hku.hk
Lisa Witherspoon, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, U.S., withersp@usf.edu
Stephen Yang, SUNY Oswego, Oswego, New York, U.S., exergamelab@gmail.com

Key Summary Points

This chapter introduces the potential of pairing physical activity with video game technology
1 that has the potential to foster learning.

2 The chapter reviews the possible mediating factors that facilitate learning and outcomes
through physical interactions with video game technology.

Key Terms
Exergaming
Activegaming
Active Learning
ActivLearning
Exercise
Physical gaming

Introduction
An educational tool that is engaging, enjoyable, improves educational outcomes, and increases physical
activity levels would appear to be unlikely. Yet current advances in interactive technologies include
three key components—physical activity, video gaming, and educational content—have the potential to
be valuable complements to traditional forms of educational instruction (Shayne, Fogel, Miltenberger,
& Koehler, 2012). The use of physical activity game-based learning or active learning games, which
will be referred to as “Active Learning” throughout the chapter is characterized by the interplay of
the three key components and has recently been used as a successful physical activity and e-learning

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alternative (Fogel, Miltenberger, Graves, & Koehler, 2010; Mellecker, Witherspoon, & Waterson, 2013).
Incorporating Active Learning into physical education lessons has shown to improve physical activity
levels in inactive children and provides an active alternative that is enjoyable, improves skills that
are necessary for physical movement, and increases physical activity levels (Fogel et al., 2010; Maeda
& Randall, 2003). Using Active Learning inside the classroom has also resulted in promising learning
outcomes, teacher acceptance, and student enjoyment (Mellecker et al., 2013).

Proponents of traditional physical education (PE) programs that focus primarily on sport and exercise
regimes may be reluctant to embrace Active Learning into physical education lessons. Removed from
many curriculums or cancelled due to increased focus on national and state mandated testing, physical
education is slowly being eliminated from the school day (National Association for Sport and Physical
Education & American Heart Association, 2012). Inclement weather conditions or lack of space also
limit the amount and level of physical activity participation. For students beginning an exercise regime
for the irst time or for those students ridiculed due to their lack of skill or success in sport and exercise,
Active Learning may prove to be an atractive alternate physical activity as most games are easy to
play and can be individualized for a participants’ skill level. Individualized and graded challenges
(competence) and self-selected levels (autonomy) in video games allow the user to participate at a pace
that suits one’s skill-level and understanding, and this promotes engagement and sustainability in an
activity (Sheldon & Filak, 2008). This is particularly relevant in active video gameplay, as it requires
players to meet the cognitive demands, as well as the physical efort of each level in the game, but
also allows players to determine the speed at which they perform a task or move to the next level.
The “play at your own pace” feature in Active Learning could also instill the conidence needed to
engage in physical activity. When addressing the lack of interest or unwillingness to participate in
physical activity and when considering the positive atributes associated with Active Learning, there
is a potential advantage to using Active Learning as a physical activity and learning alternative, which
should be studied further.

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Case Study One: Learn-Pads
Researchers at the Multimedia Communication Research Laboratory University of Otawa designed
Learn-Pads, a math Active Learning system. The team has piloted the program to determine whether
children enjoyed their experience when playing with the Learn-Pad system as well as the social
component of playing with others (Karime, Al Osman, Gueaieb, Aljaam, & El Saddik, 2011), both
important variables for initiation and long-term adherence to learning programs and physical activity.
When using the Learn-Pads children are given a mathematical equation, including multiplication,
addition or both (e.g., (8+3) x 2). To solve the math problem, children jump and jog over the Learn-Pads
within a set time. When the children are moving over the Learn-Pads, verbal spelling of the number
that has been reached and whether the child is reaching the correct answer accompany the movement
patern. The diicult level in the Learn-Pads system is customized to ensure the game is suitable for
various cognitive abilities. In the irst pilot study, children were asked to assess the diiculty of the
math, enjoyment and whether they would recommend the Learn-Pads game to their friends. Subjective
feedback from the children suggests that the children enjoyed playing the game. In addition, math
diiculty level was determined by age and observation of the children indicates that Learn-Pads
promote social interaction. Although it appears that the main objective of the Learn-Pads is to address
learning math and social bonding, this irst pilot study did not assess step counts or physical activity
increases from stepping on the Learn-Pads. The authors report that this game will continue to revise
the system to include more topics such as shapes, vocabulary, and leters as well as a heart rate monitor
and vibrating pads. It also appears that physical activity was simply a condition for the learning to
occur and for this reason it would be interesting for future research to address the beneits from the
physical activity component used in the Learn-Pad system.

Key Frameworks
Active Learning includes physical activity and video game technology, with the added value of
knowledge transfer capabilities. This is a novel and innovative approach to learning that has yet to
be assigned a speciic framework. Recent suggestions to create a framework for active video games
that incorporates theories of play and fun include the Design, Play, and Experience (DPE) Framework
(Mellecker, Lyons, & Baranowski, 2013). The expanded Design, Play and Experience (DPE) Framework
suggest that bodily movements consistent when children are engaged in active video gaming evoke a
sense of play. The embedded “play” in video game technology is a key component of the DPE Framework
and is inluenced by the learning subcomponent. The learning subcomponent in the DPE Framework
drives content and pedagogy design, as well as the type of teaching that may lead to self-directed
learning. This self-directed approach is also prevalent in play scenarios as children readily engage in
free play and learn as a result of independently directed play. Although not speciically designed or
expanded to include Active Learning, the DPE Framework includes the constructs of play as well as the
subcomponents of physical activity, teaching, and learning, and therefore may help to further advance
Active Learning as a tool for use in the classroom.

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Key Findings
The educational beneits of combining physical activity with video games appear to be abundant. Both
video gaming and physical activity increase blood low to the brain. This response triggers numerous
physiological responses, such as a catecholamine release (Koepp et al., 1998). These responses have
been linked to emotions that are important for learning. Enjoyment is an important component for
initiating and adhering to educational activities, as well as physical activity.

Evidence indicating positive learning outcomes from playing video games have emerged highlighting
increased physical beneits (Barnet, Hinkley, Okely, Hesketh, & Salmon, 2012; Vernadkis, Giotsidou,
Antoniou, Ioannidis, & Giannous, 2012) cognitive outcomes (Chuang & Chen, 2009) and social
interactions (Chou & Tsai, 2007). Functional motor skill proiciency, including object control skill, has
been achieved with games designed to engage individuals in physically active gameplay (Barnet et al.,
2012). Video game technology has also been useful in improving analytical skills and recall processing
(Chuang & Chen, 2009). Student reports suggest that gameplay may inluence relationships with friends
and promote social interaction (Chou & Tsai, 2007).

To educators and parents already focused on student performance, standardized tests, and the recently
added Common Core Standards (CSS), incorporating video games and more physical activity into
the curriculum may seem time-consuming and counterintuitive. In reality, if physical activity is
incorporated into the learning experience using a holistic approach, the potential to accomplish speciic
learning outcomes could surpass expectations using traditional teaching strategies (Prensky, 2001).
Improvements in cognitive development and academic achievement have been reported as a result
of regular participation in physical activity (Tomporowsk, Davis, Miller, & Naglieri, 2008). Physically
active children have higher executive functioning (e.g., cerebral processing involved in goal directed
behavior) and when compared with sedentary peers perform beter academically (Best, 2010; Davis et
al., 2011). When children are physically active during the school day, on-task behavior improves (Mahar
et al., 2006) and emerging evidence indicates that physical activity improves behavior and cognitive
performance in children with ADHD (Gapin, Labban, & Etnier, 2011) Moreover, children who engage
in regular physical activity are more likely to live healthier lives, avoiding the diseases associated with
an inactive lifestyle (LeMasurier & Corbin, 2006). In addition to the known physical health beneits,
regular participation in physical activity also results in social competence or a willingness to interact
with peers (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2010) as well as positive psychological well-
being, such as improved self-esteem (Nieman, 2002). Fusing physical activity into educational content
and video gameplay has considerable potential in obtaining learning outcomes. Learning beneits may
be possible with even short bursts of activity that are synonymous with child activity paterns (Bailey
et al., 1995).

Recently, educators have implemented physically active video gaming or active video gaming in
physical education classes, increasing the opportunity for students to engage in physical activity
while participating in an enjoyable activity (Maloney, Stempel, Wood, Patraitis, & Beaudoin, 2012).

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Although newly introduced, active video gaming has been shown to increase motor skills (Barnet
et al., 2012), balance (Sheehan & Katz, 2013), executive function skills (Staiano, Abraham, & Calvert,
2012), and knowledge about healthy nutritional habits (Mellecker et al., 2013). Considerable evidence is
mounting on the beneits of using technology in educational setings and video games ofer the type
of experience that students have come to expect in their classrooms. Combining the two components,
physical activity and video gaming (Active Learning) will provide the educational tool educators can
use as they look to improve learning environments and connect with the students in their classrooms.

In the classroom?
Children conined to a classroom environment for long periods during the day lose concentration, which
is counterproductive to learning and may ultimately result in an inefective learning environment
(Pellgrini & Davis, 1993). The use of alternatives activities to alter undesirable behavior is of increasing
interest to policymakers eager to improve school based physical activity and academic performance
(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2010). Adjusting to a curriculum that appears to be stretched
and ridden with time constraints has let teachers searching for physical activity alternatives to address
these constraints (Ward et al., 2006). Improvements in academic performance and behavior are being
realized from participation in physical activity, dispelling the belief that physical activity reduces the
amount of time for academic related activities and is counterproductive to learning (Bartholomew
& Jowers, 2011; Trost & van der Mars, 2010). To address this issue and to promote physical activity
participation, physical activity programs have been introduced into the classroom environment to
promote learning (Bartholomew & Jowers, 2011; Mahar et al., 2006). Physically active academic lessons
incorporated into classroom lessons improve on task-behavior (Mahar et al., 2006) and are showing
promising learning outcomes (Bartholomew & Jowers, 2011). Teachers engaging children in physical
activity in the classroom environment are able to increase their productivity and subsequently spend
more time engaging children in learning activities (Maeda & Randall, 2003).

Changes in learning and behavior typically require children to participate in physical activity for as
litle as ive to ten minutes (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2010). Increased concentration
(Caterino & Polak, 1999), as well as improvements in on-task behavior is suggested to occur when
using short duration physically active “brain breaks” (short breaks between lessons that include body
movements) led by teachers in the classroom (Mahar et al., 2006). The learning efects occur in response
to the brain derived neurotropic factor (BDNF), a protein responsible for growth and development of
neurons and connections in the brain and has been associated with improvements in learning following
short bouts of activity (Winter et al., 2007). This approach to learning has also resulted in increased daily
in-school physical activity levels that are synonymous with public health guidelines (Bartholomew &
Jowers, 2011; Mahar et al., 2006).

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Case Study Two: Active Learning in Schools
George Velarde at Siesta Vista Junior High School in California has created a physical education
program by including Active Learning as a valuable aspect in the physical education program. Mr.
Velarde’s program includes technology for learning such as HopSports, Nintendo Wii, virtual bikes,
and Dance Dance Revolution. The “new” Physical Education (PE) program is based on teaching itness,
health and wellness rather than traditional team sports and skills that has been the focus of traditional
physical education. Sierra Vista transformed their PE program into a personalized physical education
curriculum that utilizes technology to engage children in physical activity and maintain interest
throughout junior high school. Students are engaged in enjoyable and challenging activities that enable
them to learn knowledge, atitudes, and behaviors related to functional motor skills, physiological
responses to exercise, and even core vocabulary words printed on the backs of the PE uniforms. During
PE lessons, use heart rate monitors to track their workout intensity and to learn about the cardiovascular
eforts associated with physical activity. The Polar Cardio GX heart rate monitoring system allows the
students to view their heart rate in real-time on a screen while they are exercising thus providing a
valuable feedback and learning tool. Other physiological parameters, such as heart rate, step counts,
and calories burned, are also tracked in some of the game based technology systems that are used in
the program. Physical education lessons are all encompassing and interdisciplinary. One of the more
interesting components of the program includes lessons that incorporate traditional exercise with game
based technology. Physical education at Sierra Vista has moved into the classrooms with “brain breaks”
during classroom time. Children are encouraged to get out of their seats and exercise during a ive-
minute break and are oten asked to lead the activity breaks. The students are also given the opportunity
to use the Gamebikes in math classes. Once a month the school opens it doors to the community and
invites parents and children to come to the school to experience the joy of using the active game-based
technology and learn how exercise impacts learning as well as health and itness. Mr. Velarde’s PE
program is well received by the students, parents, and fellow teachers and was recently recognized by
Michelle Obama’s Lets Move! Active Schools program as a model “Active School.” This program is a
testament to the possibilities aforded by Active Learning alternatives in school PE programs.

Assessment Considerations
Determining the outcomes from Active Learning introduces a degree of complexity. As mentioned
throughout the chapter, activity game-based learning is inclusive of three diverse components (physical
activity, educational content and video gaming) and therefore is capable of producing numerous
outcomes. To add to the complexity, existing literature on assessment of learning outcomes when using
activity Active Learning is scant. Furthermore, numerous devices are used to measure physical activity
preventing comparisons across video games and studies. The two most popular forms of technology
driven physical activity assessment tools, the pedometer and accelerometer have been introduced
into mobile devices and more recently been developed with video game technology. Pedometers are
used to track number of steps while the accelerometer is used to assess velocity of movement. The

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pedometer is an inexpensive tool and can be used to assess physical activity paterns of large groups
of people whereas the accelerometer is more expensive but has a much higher degree of accuracy than
the pedometer. Zamzee, a social networking game-based activity monitor has recently introduced an
inexpensive triaxial accelerometer that has proven to be useful with young children by providing a
reward system for being physical active. Accelerometers are now common in mobile devices and can be
used with mobile-based apps to assess physical activity. Both of these devices are also used in research
to understand the amount and intensity of physical activity when children play physically active
technology driven games.

Future Needs
Technological changes occur at speeds unseen in any other form of learning application. For these
reasons, there is an urgent need to learn more about how these systems can be used in the academic
classroom and other environments that promote learning. Establishing and implementing best practice
evidenced-based models will be crucial if we are to maximize the full potential of Active Learning
technology in the academic or the physical education classroom. With this in mind, there is a need to
understand long-term sustainability and atempt to understand the correlates that produce interest and
engagement to achieve best practice approaches to implementing successful game based e-learning
physical activity programs. It would also be interesting to learn how Active Learning approaches difer
from traditional forms of teaching and which form of teaching students prefer.

The key to the success of Active Learning is based on the educators and the educational system. Many
teachers currently in the classroom are digital immigrants and lack the conidence to embark on a new
teaching regime especially when it includes technology-based learning. An understanding of teacher
atitudes and experiences when implementing Active Learning into the classroom environment is
necessary for successful implementation. In addition, adequate training and continued professional
development will be required to encourage and develop physically active educational tools.

Furthermore, continuous assessment is needed to ensure that learning goals are being achieved and
physical activity guidelines are being met when children engage in Active Learning. Similar to other
forms of assessment, test anxiety will surely be apparent if children are aware of pending assessments.
Embedding relevant content and assessing any changes to student atitudes, behaviors, or knowledge
using Active Learning is one of the beneits of using technology (Shute, 2011). Litle is known about
this seemingly valuable atribute or whether embedded assessment can be used with success when
implementing Active Learning. Finally, establishing speciic guidelines, safety precautions and privacy
policies for school-aged students will be necessary prior to implementing these technologies.

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Case Study Three: Two Research Laboratories
Two labs are directed by Lisa Witherspoon, an Assistant Professor at the University of South Florida
(USF) and focus on Active Learning, which the labs call “ActivLearning.” One lab is located in an
elementary school and the second lab is located in the Physical Education and Exercise Science
building on the USF campus. The university aims to understand the efects of ActivLearning products
when children engage in physical education. The “living” laboratory located in the elementary school
is used for physical education programs that are implemented into the PE curriculum. Research
studies are used to determine the eicacy and to provide an evidence base for physical education.
Speciic emphasis is placed on learning objectives that are based on evidenced based research and
best practices approaches to learning. Whereas the research laboratory located in the USF Campus
focuses speciically on research. Learning more about how diferent populations appreciate the
games as well as learn through the games is the main focus. The labs house fully functioning active
gaming rooms equipped with numerous ActivLearning products. The labs focus on understanding the
efects of active gaming on various populations (speciically children) including behavior, academic
performance, product preference assessment, skill development, physiological performance and
physical education outcomes. A recent program introduced by the USF active gaming research labs
discovered that ActivLearning activities provide children with a cognitive beneit related to nutrition
and science academic content. The students involved in these pilot studies were asked to play online
video games involving nutrition and science principles whilst stepping on Footgaming pads and the
Gamercize stepper, respectively. Students in these pilot studies achieved academic success, elevated
heart rates and reported high levels of enjoyment. ActivLearning research is ongoing at USF as the topic
is insuiciently researched and may provide educators important information on efective and eicient
methods for teaching and implementing ActivLearning programs. Currently, USF is investigating the
use of “brain breaks” throughout the school day to understand the consistency of physical activity
breaks and efects of “brain breaks” on behavior and learning. Additionally, researchers are exploring
the use of a multiplayer system by Konami, DanceDanceRevolution-Classroom Edition (DDR-CE), to
learn about the physiological and cognitive efects of the product on middle school students.

Best Practices
Some key factors are emphasized to realize the full learning potential of Active Learning in the
classroom:

1. To ensure that skill levels are appropriately set and to avoid frustration for the children the
Active Learning games should be age and topic appropriate. Allowing or including students
to choose games and or levels can empower them, give them greater feelings of autonomy,
increased enjoyment and perhaps motivate them to continue playing.

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 2. The learning outcomes and physical activity objectives should be combined into the
playing of the games. By blending the physical activity and learning content into a game
the teacher has an opportunity to assess students with less test anxiety.
3. The games should be set at a level that provides physical and cognitive challenges but
does not overwhelm the student. Teachers and or the games/technology should provide
meaningful and appropriate constructive feedback to their students to further enhance
feelings of competence and self-eicacy. Teachers should also be able to adapt or change
games according to student skill levels. This scafolding approach may lead to a more
appropriate (and less frustrating) experience.
4. The intensity level of the activity should be kept within a range that corresponds
to physical activity guidelines or health outcomes. Current physical activity
recommendations suggest that children should be participating in 60 minutes of physical
activity that makes them sweat and breath hard referred to as moderate to vigorous
intensity physical activity. Students performing activities below these thresholds may
still improve skills, increase their conidence and receive health beneits; and should be
encouraged to continue participating at their skill and itness level.
5. Learning and health beneits may occur within a short duration of activity and this type
of activity is consistent with activity paterns during childhood. Implementing Active
Learning in the classroom in short intermitent bouts ofers children an activity they enjoy
and provides the teacher with a transition activity that has proven to be beneicial for
students.
6. Teachers should be well acquainted with the Active Learning games and should be
trained to use the system prior to implementing programs into the classroom or learning
environments. Many schools also have student leaders within each class that are able
to assist teachers (especially substitute teachers) in using the equipment and teaching
others (including parents during an open house or parent/teacher conference). These
opportunities should be seized upon as these helping hands can be well-versed in
technology and a valuable resource for students and teachers.

Educators are instrumental in facilitating and implementing activity game-based learning into the
educational environment. Determining the most suitable system, platform, and game requires the
educator to consider the user, the physical activity, and learning outcomes. Currently, there are a
number of popular commercially available active game-based learning systems that can be used to
promote physical activity and learning (e.g., functional motor skills), including Dance Dance Revolution
(DDR), Microsot Kinect, Nintendo Wii, and XaviX (see Table 1 for more details). Similar to other teaching
applications, it is essential for the teacher to not just provide the game, but to pair the lesson plan
with the technology and desired learning outcomes. To assist teachers and to provide possible Active
Learning alternatives speciic game platforms and sotware, targeted learning outcomes, and the body
movements required to play each of the games are highlighted in Table 1.

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Resources
Table 1.
Comparisons of Active Learning systems and games, targeted learning outcomes, and body movement required for gameplay

Categories Games Targeted learning outcomes Physical

activity
Rhythmic Dance

DDR Classroom Edition Pump it Up, iDance, Math: patern recognition Stepping,
iDance Just Dance Kids, Physical: motor skills, rhythm, timing, syncopation jumping,
Nintendo Wii Dance Central dancing,
XBOX Kinect twisting

Sensor-Based

Microsot Kinect Animal Scramble, Math skills: logic, executive control, numbers Stepping,
Nyoyn Brain and Body, & counting, spatial awareness, sequencing, patern jumping,
Wild Planet Sesame Street: and object recognition kicking,
XaviX Once Upon a Physical: eye-hand coordination, agility, balance waving,
Vtech Vmotion Monster, Nebula/ Science: Science: species recognition, ecosystem, rolling,
Zippity Strip, Soundsteps, food chain energy cycle, mapping skills, running,
Swinxs Animal Scramble, animal behavior sliding,
Hyper Jump, Ask, Social responsibility: caring for the environment, touching,
Listen, Learn: Kids recycling, caring for others sweeping,
and Alcohol Don’t Spelling standing
Mix™, Jackie Chan Other: recognizing musical notes and color, sound up, hand
Challenge and visual recognition, health nutrition behaviors and arm
gesturing

Virtual Bikes

BrainBike Neuroactive, Math Math: logic, patern recognition, visual acuity, Bicycling:
Fisher-Price Smart Mountain, Shape alphabet, shapes steering,
Cycle Racer Lake, Number Physical: eye-hand coordination, motor skills, pedaling
Expresso HD Fields, Leter Creek
Youth Exercise Bike

Books and Articles

Bartholomew, J.B., & Jowers, E.M. (2011). Physically active academic lessons in elementary children. Preventive
Medicine, 52, S51-S54.
Bogost, I. (2011). How to Do Things with Videogames. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Papastergiou, M., (2009). Exploring the potential of computer and video games for health and physical education:
A literature review. Computers and Education, 53, 603-622.
Ratey, J. (2008). Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain. New York, Hachete Book Group
USA.
Staiano, A.E., & Calvert, S.L. (2011). Exergames for physical education courses: Physical, social, and cognitive
beneits. Child Development Perspectives, 5(2), 93–98.
Zemliansky, W. (2010). Design and Implementation of Educational Video Games. IGI Global. Hershey, PA.

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Websites
Action Based learning (htp://abllab.com/)
ActiveLearning Blog (htp://activlearninggames.blogspot.com/)
Machine Dance Report (iDANCE in Norway) (htp://www.positivegaming.com/beneits/machine-dance-
research-projects/stokke-machine-dance-project-report)
Microsot Kinect School Activity Plans
(htp://www.microsot.com/education/en-us/products/Pages/kinect.aspx#3)
Exergames Unlocked (htp://exergamesunlocked.org/)
PE Central (htp://www.pecentral.org)

Researchers
Tom Baranowski, Ph.D. (htp://www.bcm.edu/cnrc/faculty/baranowskit.htm)
Barbara Chamberlain, Ph.D. (htp://aces.nmsu.edu/mediaproductions/)
Ann Maloney, M.D. (htp://www.umassmed.edu/Content.aspx?id=92224)
Floyd Mueller, Ph.D. (htp://exertiongameslab.org/)
Adam Noah. Ph.D (htp://mediaartsliu.com/faculty_top.html)
Amanda Staiano, Ph.D. (htp://www.pbrc.edu/research-and-faculty/postdocs/)
Josh Trout, Ph.D. (htp://www.csuchico.edu/kine/faculty_staf/index.shtml)
Lisa Witherspoon, Ph.D (htp://www.coedu.usf.edu/main/index.html)
Stephen Yang, Ph.D (htp://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenpyang)
Stephan Göbel, Ph.D (Stefan.Goebel@hom.tu.darmstadt.de)

Labs and Projects

Canadian Exergaming Research Center (www.ucalgary.ca/exergaming)
Exercise4Learning (htp://www.exercise4learning.com/)
Exergame Lab (www.exergamelab.org)
Gateway Uniied School District (Mat Diskin) (htp://www.californiaprojectlean.org/doc.asp?id=249)
Learning Readiness PE, Naperville, IL (htp://learningreadinesspe.com/)
Sierra Vista Jr. High PE (George Velarde) (htp://www.hartdistrict.org/sierra/pe/)
Active Gaming Research Laboratory University of South Florida
(htp://www.coedu.usf.edu/main/departments/physed/labs/xrkLab.html)

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CHAPTER 7

Emotional Health

Designing Games for Emotional Health

Ralph Vacca, New York University, New York, New York, U.S., ralph.vacca@nyu.edu
Meagan Bromley, New York University, New York, New York, U.S., meagan.bromley@nyu.edu
Jakob Leyrer, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria, jakob.leyrer@univie.ac.at
Manuel Sprung, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria, manuel.sprung@univie.ac.at
Bruce Homer, City University of New York, New York, New York, U.S., bhomer@gc.cuny.edu

Key Summary Points

There is a growing understanding of key skills that can help individuals beter manage
1 emotions to improve well-being, such as emotional understanding, executive functioning,
and emotion regulation skills.

In promoting emotional health, games can operate at the low-order brain training level (e.g.,
2 drill-and-skill), as well as the higher order meaning-making level.

Emotional health is broad, and eicacious approaches to skills development in emotional

3 health are highly contextual, taking into account expected outcomes, environmental context,
and individual psychometric conditions.

Key Terms
Emotions
Emotional health
Emotional regulation
Emotional intelligence
Emotional understanding
Self-regulation
Executive functioning
Mental health

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Introduction
It is not oten we think about emotional health. Physical health, yes. We have heard of mental health.
But what do we mean by emotional health? Furthermore, what are we referring to when we talk about
games for emotional health?

In this chapter we ask: can games help us develop speciic skills that can in turn improve our emotional
health? If so, what are the best practices for designing and using games to develop such skills?

Deining emotional health

First of, we should deine what we mean by emotional health. In short, it means diferent things to
diferent people, but for the purposes of this chapter, we are deining emotional health as how we
manage our emotional responses in interacting with the world around us that partly contributes to our
overall well-being.

While some use the term mental health interchangeably with emotional health, there is a key distinction
worth making. Mental health refers to a general state of well-being that allows us to cope with the
normal stresses of life and make a contribution to one’s community (WHO, 2004). Emotional health
refers speciically to the positive and negative afect resulting from life events that contributes to our
overall mental and physical health (Hendrie et al., 2006).

One can conceptualize emotional health along a continuum of poor to excellent, much like our physical
health. A common misconception is that “good” emotional health would resemble an individual that
is always happy or stress-free. This is not the case, however. Research in positive psychology, among
other research, has atempted to look at emotional health as falling within a particular positivity ratio
which examines the ratio of “positive” and “negative” emotions that make up one’s afectivity (Watson,
Clark, & Carey, 1988). In other words, good emotional health merely suggests that an individual has the
ability to manage their emotional responses in ways that contribute positively to their overall sense of
well-being, rather than an absence of “negative” emotions. For instance, they may have the capacity to
assume diferent perspectives, or relax their bodies to beter manage stress responses, or simply bounce
back faster from highly stressful experiences. On the other hand, at the heart of poor emotional health
is severe diiculty in responding to environmental demands in ways that do not hamper one’s physical
and mental health. Oten such challenges coincide with emotion disorders or traumatic experiences
that have shaped the way we emotionally respond to stimuli such as stressful situations or relationship
demands.

Games and emotional health

When thinking about how to design games to promote emotional health, a common question oten
emerges. What skills are we really teaching and can they actually be learned? In other words, what
are we really teaching when we teach individuals to more efectively manage their emotions, and can
games help teach these skills?

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First of, it is important to note that there exists a well-established and rather large ield of
psychotherapeutic interventions dedicated to improving mental and emotional health, which primarily
rely on in-person interactions. For instance there is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Emotional
Processing Therapy, Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT),
and dozens of others, all varying on how the interaction between therapist and client occurs. Many
of these interventions have been fairly successful in addressing some of more prominent emotional
health challenges such as managing depression and coping with anxiety (Aldao, Nolen-Hoeksema, &
Schweizer, 2010; Ellard, Fairholme, Boisseau, Farchione, & Barlow, 2010; Fava & Tomba, 2009).

One core challenge with such interventions is access. According to the World Mental Health Surveys
of the World Health Organization (WHO), one in three people in the U.S. sufer from a mental disorder
in their lifetime (Kessler et al., 2009), but only a portion of those people receive treatment, ranging from
26% to 60% for mild and severe mental disorders respectively. Many of these disorders have a signiicant
emotional health component (Aldao et al., 2010). Taking into consideration large diversity in the
population and treatment quality, one other major challenge is atrition and low adherence (Thompson
& McCabe, 2012), meaning individuals may not stick to treatment protocols and recommendations.

Some are seeing games as one tool that can, and already has, made headway in addressing these
challenges, among others. Games can increase accessibility to populations that may not be able to gain
access to traditional interventions, and they oten provide high levels of repeated engagement with
exercises that can improve or match traditional intervention outcomes (e.g., Tate, Haritatos, & Cole,
2009). Furthermore, games provide a new avenue for emotional health, allowing individuals that may
not be diagnosed with disorders access to tools that may empower them to improve their emotional
health or overcome emotional health challenges.

Why should we care about emotional health?

According to the WHO (2004), at any point in time, there are an estimated 450 million people in the
world who are alicted by some sort of mental, neurological, or behavioral problem. Furthermore, there
are increasing numbers of individuals that are undiagnosed or have emotional health challenges that
are not disorders, yet still compromise their overall well-being.

About this Chapter

The increasing popularity and role of mobile technology and games in daily life continues to present
new opportunities in the emotional health space. There are two key questions framing this chapter.
First, can games help us develop speciic skills that can in turn improve our emotional health? Second,
are there best practices for designing and using games to develop such skills?

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Case Study One: EmoJump, A Game Targeting Emotional Understanding Skills
EmoJump is a computer game being developed by the games4resilience lab at the University of Vienna
to enhance children’s understanding of external causes of emotions, belief-based emotions, and mixed
emotions. It is designed as a “forced-speed” jump and run game. In every level the player is shown
several cartoons, where he or she has to decipher the emotional state of a speciic character using only
story-based visuals or lines of dialogue in the scene. Faces communicate emotions very efectively
and the training focuses on emotion understanding beyond facial recognition, so the faces of game
characters are not shown. Thus, the player has to understand the situation the cartoon depicts and hold
in his or her mind which emotion one would feel in that particular situation.

Ater watching the cartoon, the player enters the “forced speed” jump and run sequence where he or
she encounters “coins” with faces expressing one of four basic emotions (happy, sad, fear, anger) and is
tasked with collecting the appropriate coins that correspond to the situation depicted in the cartoon.
This sequence continues through several rounds of cartoons, providing the player with level feedback
and trophies that can be earned for high scores.

In line with Pons and Harris’ (2000) Test of Emotional Comprehension, the game’s level design is
aligned with levels of emotion, ranging from a surface level understanding of emotions to higher-
order thinking used to regulate emotional responses. Using story-based challenges as described above,
early levels focus on understanding external causes of emotions and identifying internal processes
(e.g., interpretations) that form belief-based emotions. The challenge of collecting the correct coin to
correspond with an emotion is situated through the point of view of the main character, causing players
to not only analyze a situation, but also to engage in a task requiring perspective-taking, a component
of theory of mind. Later levels deal with mixed emotions and diferent possible interpretations of a
situation or associated thoughts. As a result, the task of collecting coins to correspond to the appropriate
emotion requires holding multiple, oten conlicting, emotions in mind and collecting more than one
target item while completing the “forced speed” run sequence.

Given that the ability to comprehend emotional states and their contexts is crucial for successful
engagement in highly social environments, the game targets these skills. As emotional understanding
is also a prerequisite to successfully engage in emotion regulation (Jacob et al., 2011) the designers
wanted to target deicits in emotion understanding irst before teaching emotion regulation strategies.

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Key Frameworks
Before designing any game that seeks to improve individual emotional health it is important to
understand two things. First, scientiic research in the area of human emotion continues to grow each
year, bringing with it new insights into how we generate and manage our emotions. This means it is extra
important to be up to date on the latest research around the speciic approach you may be integrating
into your designs. Second, there are many existing perspectives on how to improve emotional health,
which means one major task (even more than usual) for designers is to understand how the learning
context, expected outcomes, and learner proiles may lend itself to a speciic approach. In this section,
we will briely describe a few key approaches taken to improving emotional health that may serve as
the focal point of a game-based intervention.

Emotional understanding
A precursor to any discussion on managing emotions oten assumes individuals possess some degree
of emotional understanding. For example, our ability to label emotions using speciic language (e.g.,
anger), identify related facial expressions (e.g., smiling), and understand how belief systems inluence
our emotions, are all examples of skills underlying emotional understanding (Garner, 1999). Sometimes
referred to as emotional knowledge, or as a subset of emotional intelligence (Nelis, Quoidbach,
Mikolajczak, & Hansenne, 2009), emotional understanding is all about making sense of information
to beter understand our own and others’ emotional states. Deicits in emotional understanding
can be found in a range of psychopathologies and problem behaviors (Southam-Gerow, 2002), and
knowledge of facial expressions and labels is a major predictor of academic achievement (Izard et al.,
2001). Interventions focusing on emotional understanding oten target children, but have also included
adolescent and adult populations.

Inherent aspects of many games such as multiple sensory representations (i.e., visual, auditory)
and narratives that provide a context for decision-making, have been used to tackle emotional-
understanding skills. See Case Study One for an in-depth example that is situated in this emotional
understanding focus.

Executive functioning
The term executive functioning (EF) is broad and can be an amorphous concept to get across, if you are
not well versed in psychological theories of cognitive systems. In short, the idea is that there exists a
set of cognitive processes (i.e., brain functioning) that controls our ability to deal with novel situations—
situations where we do not just automatically respond without thought. In dealing with these novel
situations, EF helps us inhibit our responses, or resolve conlicting thoughts on how best to respond (e.g.,
going on a irst date). As you can imagine, these cognitive processes include quite a few things such as
directing our atention, self-monitoring, planning, organizing, remembering and inhibiting impulsivity
(Tang, Yang, Leve, & Harold, 2012).

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So what does this have to do with emotional health? Simply put, EF is essential to our ability to resolve
conlict between competing emotions or tendencies in how we respond to something (Botvinick,
Braver, Barch, Carter, & Cohen, 2001; Rothbart, 2011). Research has shown that deicits in components
of EF are strongly associated with various negative outcomes across one’s lifespan, such as behavior
problems, aggression, antisocial behavior, inatention, atention deicit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD),
problems with peers, school failure, depression, and substance abuse during childhood and adolescence
(Eigsti et al., 2006; Floyd & Kirby, 2001; Ivanov, Schulz, London, & Newcorn, 2008; Perner, Kain, &
Barchfeld, 2002; Riggs, Blair, & Greenberg, 2004). On the lipside, higher levels of EF are associated with
beter perspective-taking skills, self esteem, relationship success, as well as positive social, emotional,
behavioral, economic, and physical health outcomes (Blair & Peters, 2003; Carlson & Moses, 2001;
Moit et al., 2011).

Games present interesting opportunities in EF training, in that repetition and escalating diiculty oten
serve as key design paterns found in training interventions targeting EF skills. In other words, cognitive
processes are modiied through repeated exercise before moving on to more challenging exercises that
push related cognitive processes (e.g., memorization, paying atention to changing instructions). See
Case Study Three for an example that illustrates a game-based approach to executive functioning
training for emotional health.

Emotion regulation
So far we have covered emotional understanding and executive functioning, as they relate to emotional
health, yet perhaps the most direct approach found in emotional health interventions is to focus on
emotion regulation—the use of speciic strategies to manage one’s own emotional response to varying
situations. One useful model to conceptualize emotion regulation is the Emotion Regulation Process
Model (Gross & Barret, 2011), illustrated in Figure 1, which outlines ive strategies we can use to
inluence our eventual emotional response.

Figure 1. Emotion Regulation Model. Adapted from Gross & Barret (2011).

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The ability to efectively use such strategies is commonly referred to as emotion regulation skills,
because these skills regulate the nature, frequency, and duration of one’s own emotions (Gross &
Muñoz, 1995). Two emotion regulation strategies commonly focused on are atentional deployment and
cognitive change—more commonly referred to as cognitive appraisal. Atentional deployment skills
refer to our ability to direct our atention to speciic aspects of a situation to modulate our emotional
response. Cognitive appraisal skills refers to our ability to re-interpret stimuli in diferent ways to in
turn manage our emotional response.

Games for emotion regulation training can provide valuable decision-making and feedback experiences
situated in contexts that largely inluence the relevance of speciic strategies. In other words, games allow
players to experience the results of using speciic strategies within speciic contexts in ways in-person
role-playing exercises may be unable to do. Furthermore, games provide interesting opportunities for
using in-game data collected to aid in post-game relection as well as monitoring changes in players.

Additional perspectives
There are several other approaches that may be relevant for game designers. Designers interested in
working in conjunction with in-person therapy or leveraging speciic therapeutic exercises may want to
explore therapeutic frameworks that atempt to work across diferent diagnosed disorders. For instance,
the Uniied Protocol (UP) seeks to work across diagnosed disorders seeking to provide a more holistic
approach that entails: 1) increasing emotional awareness, 2) supporting lexibility in appraisals, 3)
identifying and preventing emotional avoidance, and 4) situational exposure to emotion cues (Ellard
et al., 2010).

Lastly, but certainly not least, is a social approach where human-to-human interaction is the key
focus. Research has shown that social interactions are closely linked to emotional health (Umberson &
Montez, 2010) and there may be opportunities for designing social games situated in this focus.

Each of these approaches has a hety body of literature that is worth diving into for more details. In
the next section, we will consider what the psychological, game studies, and design research say about
creating games to support the development of diferent skills linked to emotional health. In short, if
enhancing emotional health is the goal, then how can we beter design games or use them within
interventions?

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Case Study Two: Leela, A Commercial Game Targeting Mindfulness
In terms of emotion regulation training, mindfulness is one approach that has become increasingly
popular. Typically when one hears mindfulness they imagine an individual in meditation or chanting.
From an emotion regulation perspective, mindfulness is commonly deined as the process of directing
atention on the present in a non-judgmental way (Kabat-Zinn, 2003) and incorporates emotion
regulation strategies such as atentional deployment and cognitive reappraisal. In fact, emerging
research in neuropsychology has shown that mindfulness can have profound emotional health beneits
in managing anxiety, depression, pain, and psycho-regulatory activity (Chiesa, Calati, & Serreti,
2011). While traditionally mindfulness has been taught through in-person or audio-guided meditation,
emerging technology incorporating physical interaction has expanded our possible approaches to
developing such emotion regulation skills.

Deepak Chopra’s Leela (N-Fusion Interactive, 2011) is a game for the Microsot Xbox 360/Kinect that
combines traditional relaxation with meditation techniques to cultivate mindfulness. The unique aspect
of the game is the use of the Kinect platform, which allows players to use their body and movements
to interact with the game in ways standard game controllers cannot enable. For instance, the “chakra”
mini-games that are at the heart of the game make use of embodied game interactions such as twisting
one’s body, swinging one’s arms, and controlling one’s rate of breathing. Each of these mechanics is tied
to traditional game mechanics such as win/lose states, escalating challenges, mastery sequences, and
various feedback mechanisms.

The embodied approach—where you use your body—taken by Leela addresses one core limitation of
many games designed to provide aspects of emotion regulation training, which is to involve the body
in addition to our cognitive processes (Vacca, 2013). Research suggests that regulatory efort involving
body-mind states and not just a cognitive focus can promote long-term engagement in that over time
physiological involvement can relieve stress associated with engaging in self-control (Tang & Posner,
2009). Some key challenges in Leela and other game-based approaches that rely on promoting a “relaxed
state” is balancing this goal with the tension that oten comes with competitive win/loss mechanics
incorporated into games (Sweetser & Wyeth, 2005). In addition, embodied learning experiences that
require focusing on internal activity (e.g., shiting focus away from a wandering mind) oten instead
have to focus on external activity (e.g., breathing and gestures) (Mizen, 2009) to take advantage of
commercial sensor technology, although that may quickly change in the coming years.

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Key Findings
In the past few years, a number of research studies have suggested compelling directions for teaching
skills related to emotional health through games, from a variety of diferent ields and with varying
approaches.

Executive functioning
There have been several interesting indings on the use of games to improve executive functioning (EF)
skills. As mentioned earlier, EF skills such as planning, inhibiting behavior, and remembering can also
inluence our ability to manage emotional responses.

In designing interventions targeting EF skills, repetition and escalating levels of challenges have been
found to be efective (Diamond & Lee, 2011). For instance, the game-based intervention Play Atention,
which targets learners with ADHD to train atention skills and improve memory, makes extensive
use of repetition and varying diiculty levels, and has been found to improve performance on tasks
requiring atentional control (Unique Logic and Technology, 2011). While the game does not directly
target emotional health outcomes, the EF skills that are targeted, such as inhibiting impulsivity and
shiting atention, could have implications for emotional health training. Other examples include the
Cogmed program, which has been used with individuals who have ADHD and Autism as a means of
improving working memory and by extension, atentional control (Klingberg et. al., 2005). For the most
part, interventions focusing on executive functioning have largely targeted children, where research
has shown that wider efects can be achieved (Wass, Scerif, & Johnson, 2012).

Lastly, interventions focusing on executive functions have been found to be more efective when the
focus is broader so as to include emotional and social development (Diamond & Lee, 2011), in addition to
physical engagement requiring body movement and awareness (Tang & Posner, 2009). In other words,
games that make use of emerging physical gaming platforms such as the Nintendo Wii and Microsot
Kinect, may also be able to augment existing EF training approaches through physical engagement.

Emotion regulation
Interventions targeting emotion regulation skills—the use of emotion regulation strategies to beter
manage emotional responses—have been found to be more efective when designed with certain
criteria in mind.

One such criterion has to do with the kind of strategies targeted. As you can recall from our earlier
discussion on emotion regulation, particular strategies for response come earlier in the emotion
regulation model. Research has shown that such strategies—oten referred to as antecedent strategies—
are generally more efective in managing emotional responses than inhibiting an emotional response
generated (Goldin, McRae, Ramel, & Gross, 2008). For example, researchers from the University of
Auckland designed a game called SPARX to help young people learn such antecedent strategies to deal
with feeling down, depressed, or stressed using methods from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).

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Results from research by Merry et al. (2012) indicate that the game was as efective as standard care
for adolescents and signiicantly reduced depression, anxiety, feelings of hopelessness, and improved
quality of life. This game provides the player a irst-person experience where he or she engages in mini-
games that present challenges and prompt the player to make decisions and then receive feedback.

Another criterion is situational context in which strategies are learned. Research has shown that emotion
regulation strategies are context dependent and training interventions should relect the importance
of such situational context. For instance, researchers have found diferences in the efectiveness of
diferent strategies based on the strength (i.e., magnitude) of the afect (e.g., anger) (McRae, Misra,
Prasad, Pereira, & Gross, 2012). Games such as Bravemind from USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies
situates the use of strategies such as inhibition within situational reenactments so as to signiicantly
improve the emotional health of individuals with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (USC ICT, 2013).

Lastly, there is increasing interest in expanding emotion regulation training to include physiological
awareness. For example, researchers in Spain designed a video game to increase emotional and
impulsivity self-control for individuals struggling with Bulimia Nervosa, which incorporates a motion-
tracking suit equipped with various sensors. Results show that players saw improved abilities (Fagundo
et al., 2013).

There are additional indings emerging from a variety of ields that overlap with indings in interventions
to improve emotional health. Such indings include research in spacing or optimal repetition paterns,
embodied cognition (how our body helps us think), and ambient computing (how our environment
inluences our thoughts and behavior).

Assessment Considerations
In understanding whether games can truly change skills associated with emotional health, it seems
logical that we understand how emotions constantly change over time. How we can actually measure
emotions, however, is an evolving and highly contextual endeavor. Emotional reactivity can be
measured biologically, using fMRI to capture brain activity through changes in blood low, heart
rate and nerve activity via vagal tone monitoring, and facial muscle electrical activity through EMG
(electromyography) measurements, to name a few. These measures can be combined and interpreted in
diferent ways based on what you are interested in understanding and the context of the research (Cole,
Martin & Dennis 2004).

In the clinical space, the Test of Emotion Comprehension has been developed by Pons & Harris (2000)
as a useful tool for measuring children’s understanding of emotion. The test is particularly useful for
revealing hidden emotions that may be diicult for children to articulate depending on their self-
awareness and level of development. The test consists of nine levels of emotion, spanning surface level
understanding and emotion identiication, to higher order emotional functioning. The children must
determine whether emotions are real using false belief tasks that test a child’s understanding of another

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person’s emotions by atributing behaviors in given scenarios to how a character is feeling (Pons &
Harris, 2000). This test can serve as a blueprint for mapping diferent levels of emotional comprehension
onto game mechanics and levels, as will be discussed in the later case study of EmoJump (see Case
Study One).

There are a few methods for measuring and assessing player emotion skills and behavior in games.
Among these methods are:

1. Observation: Oten conclusions about a player’s emotional experience can be reached

through simple observations by a researcher, either in person or via video recordings.
Researchers and designers may use checklists of emotional responses, including
expressions such as smiles and frowns to determine the emotional climate of the play
session and speciic responses to notable in-game actions and events. A drawback of this
method is the issue of subjectivity among observers. People’s observations and perception
of the emotional climate of a given experience will vary and this can create inconsistency
as well as problems establishing inter-rater reliability for the data collected.
2. Player self-report: Researchers can conduct emotional evaluations of players before,
during, and ater gameplay sessions. Typically, this involves a player responding to a series
of questions posed by the researcher, or pointing to a visual cue to indicate the emotion
he or she is feeling. Many game systems can actually embed this assessment within the
play experience by having the player answer a quick question with a controller or gestural
interaction, before moving onto the next segment in the game.
3. Think-alouds: Guided think-aloud methods require players to verbalize their internal
thoughts and feelings to determine the efects of a game’s design and the overall
experience on the player’s emotional state. Researchers moderate and guide the talk aloud.
Information gathered from this method can also help designers and researchers learn more
about strategies a player may engage in to address his or her emotional responses.
4. Biometrics: Biometrics are physiological measures of heart rate, respiration, skin galvanic
response, eye tracking, postural movement, facial EMG and even brain activity via
fMRI, which can help to determine a player’s emotional states. Physical responses from
a player’s body allow researchers to chart when a player is in a heightened positive or
negative emotional state, and at which point they are able to recover from it. In addition,
there is increasing use of brain sensor interfaces (e.g., reading brain waves to control in-
game elements) that designers can use for assessment that can be linked to neuroscience
frameworks such as Davidson’s (1999; 2012) emotional styles that outlines speciic neural
circuits underlying speciic emotional response paterns.

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 5. In-game data collection: This growing ield of research uses in-game actions in the form of
clicks, level completions, and failures, and a number of other important in-game decisions,
and aligns the resulting data with behavioral measures, such as biometric measures
as described above, or data from psychological rating scales like the BASC, Behavior
Assessment System for Children, which may include self-reports or teacher reports of
behavior (Reynolds & Kamphaus, 2013). Analysis of the paterns in the game can reveal
emotional regulation strategies and key moments for further evaluation.

Future Needs
Simply put, there is a growing consensus that emotion regulation skills in particular, are highly
contextual and interventions must consider context as a design priority. For instance, particular
strategies to improve emotional health that might serve high-poverty populations may not serve those
with terminal illness. As such, game designers need to truly understand the situational contexts, as
well as the psychometric contexts of their populations to design interventions that are helpful and not
irrelevant or in worst case, harmful. Along the same lines with situational context, are limitations of
one’s target population, so as to consider a strengths-based focus rather than a deicit-based perspective.
In other words, in particular contexts it may serve learners beter to focus on leveraging skills that
come easy to them, rather than build up skills that “fall short.” Furthermore, there is a growing need
to go beyond cognitive-only approaches and adopt mind/body approaches that incorporate embodied
experiences such as the integration of physical sensors in gameplay. The increased ubiquity of new
sensor technology will likely present needs around frameworks that connect in-game behaviors with
target emotional health outcomes. Lastly, there is greater need for cross-disciplinary collaboration that
can combine practical and theoretical knowledge to address speciic populations. For instance, early
childhood educators, counselors, and game designers can beneit from more formal collaborative spaces
where they can share their practical and theoretical knowledge to improve relevant skills inluencing
emotional health.

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Case Study Three:
Space Ranger Alien Quest, A Game Targeting Executive Functioning
Space Ranger Alien Quest is an action video game developed through an international collaboration
among New York University’s CREATE lab, CUNY’s CHILD lab, the games4resilience lab at the
University of Vienna, and the University of Applied Sciences Technikum Wien. Researchers in this
consortium are currently investigating the alignment of game performance with executive functioning
(EF) (a clear set of cognitive skills tied to self-regulation), with the intention of implementing the game
as an intervention to train children and improve health and academic outcomes in the near future. The
game has been designed to focus on shiting between mental sets of information while also incorporating
design features known to inluence emotional response. Research on games such as Space Ranger Alien
Quest seeks to fulill a need to assess individuals’ self-regulation skills while also testing the capability
of a speciic game mechanic (e.g., sorting items based on new rule sets) to improve a speciic cognitive
strategy (e.g., mental set shiting).

The game, designed for children between the ages of seven and eleven, puts players in the role of a
space ranger who must take care of aliens by giving them food and drinks. Speciic aliens that appear
on the screen have very speciic needs, however the aliens are incredibly ickle and live on a strange
planet with an unstable environment that is always changing. Players have to keep up with an ever-
changing series of rule hierarchies and changes to advance through levels. For example, red aliens
may be hungry and need food given to them at the beginning of a level, but then change their minds a
series of times due to environmental changes like rapid sunsets and sunrises, strange storms or bolts
of lightning appearing on-screen. Actions in the game are largely driven by empathic goals in which
players are caregivers and emotionally driven feedback from the characters. The narrative, character
design, and visual design of the interface are based on emotional design research on how the role of
color, lighting and character design in games can induce positive states in players (Bura, 2008, Knez &
Niedenthal, 2008, Um, Plass, Hayward, & Homer, 2012). Lastly, a player’s success is measured in terms
of the aliens’ moods and his or her ability to make the aliens happy.

Thus far, validation research and a training study have been completed, and show promising results.
Preliminary results have found that the game produces a similar range of scores to those achieved on
established measures of EF in clinical setings (e.g., card sorting tasks, spatial atention tasks) and that
children who play the game over a period of time show improved skills in comparison to those who are
not exposed to the intervention (Bromley, et. al. 2013; Sprung, et. al., 2013). Additionally, children enjoyed
playing the game and were motivated to pursue more diicult levels featuring complex rule structures
with more rapid environmental changes and actions. Further studies unpacking the diferences in
behaviors resulting from an emotional response and cognitive skill development are planned for the
future. Implications of these indings suggest that children’s ability to self-regulate may beneit from
playing video games that are speciically designed to address such cognitive activities.

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Best Practices
The following design principles should be considered when creating games to build skills targeting
emotional health based on the current frameworks and indings.

1. Provide a situational context when providing training around emotion regulation

strategies: Environmental inluences and social conditions can signiicantly inluence the
utility of speciic strategies in the learner’s real-world situations and needs.
2. Provide opportunities for repeated practice over time: While for younger populations
it may be easier to develop emotion regulation and understanding skills, for adult
populations it may require additional engagement to re-learn certain behaviors paterns.
3. A narrow focus on implementing a speciic strategy can lead to more rigorous,
eicacious, and engaging gaming experiences: Whether your focus is on atentional
control, how to re-appraise body image, or emotional states that drive behaviors, keeping
a narrow focus allows for diversiication of application contexts and increasing levels of
complexity.
4. Consider focusing on strengths as much as focusing on needs: At times our ability to
respond in emotionally healthy ways to challenging life events relies on our use of speciic
strengths rather than building up what may be considered deiciencies.
5. Where possible incorporate embodied experiences: We oten forget emotions are closely
linked to our physical states. Gaming experiences that allow us to engage in embodied
experiences can help us tap a broader spectrum of awareness and regulatory techniques
(e.g., breathing deeply, focusing on a sensation).

Resources
Games
Beating the Blues (htp://www.beatingtheblues.co.uk/)
Braingame Brian: Toward an Executive Function Training Program with
Game Elements for Children with ADHD and Cognitive Control Problems
(htp://www.gamingandtraining.nl/beschrijving-braingame-brian/)
Deepak Chopra’s Leela (htp://www.thq.com/us/deepakchpoprasleela/360)
Lumosity Lab Brain Games & Brain Training (htp://www.lumosity.com/)
Mindbloom (htp://www.mindbloom.com/)
Mood Gym (htps://moodgym.anu.edu.au/welcome)
MoodHacker by ORCAs (htp://www.orcasinc.com/products/moodhacker/)
Play Atention (htp://www.playatention.com/)
Playmancer (htp://www.playmancer.eu/)
RAGE-Control: A Game to Build Emotional Strength
Re-Mission (htp://www.re-mission.net/)
SuperBeter (htps://www.superbeter.com/)

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Books
Davidson, R.J. & Begley, S. (2013). The Emotional Life of Your Brain: How Its Unique Paterns Afect the Way You
Think, Feel, and Live—and How You Can Change Them. New York, NY: Penguin Group.
Fogg, B.J. (2003). Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do.
San Francisco, CA: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.
Games for Health Journal
Hanna, H. (2013). The Sharp Solution: A Brain-Based Approach for Optimal Performance.
Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Ledoux, J. (1996) Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life.
New York, NY: Simon and Schuster.
Rogers, S. (2010). Level Up!: The Guide to Great Video Game Design.
West Sussex, United Kingdom: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Reports
Institute for the Future (2012). Innovations in Games: Beter Health and Healthcare, Convened by the Oice of
the National Coordinator for Health IT and the White House Oice of Science and Technology Policy.
Lieberman, D. (2009). Designing Serious Games for Learning and Health in Informal and Formal Setings. In U.
Riterfeld, M. Cody, & P. Vorderer (Eds.), Serious Games: Mechanisms and Efects. New York: Routledge
Primack, B.A., Carroll, M.V., McNamara, M., Klem, M.L., King, B., Rich, M. Chan, C.W. & Nayak, S, (2012).
Role of Video Games in Improving Health-Related Outcomes: A Systematic Review, American
Journal of Preventative Medicine, 42(6); 630-8.
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (2011). Advancing the Field of Health Games: A Progress Report
on Health Games Research, RWJF Program Results Progress Report.

Researchers
Richie Davidson, Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin,
Madison (htp://www.investigatinghealthyminds.org/)
Steve Cole and team at HopeLab (htp://www.hopelab.org/)
Joseph LeDoux, Center for Neural Science at NYU (htp://www.cns.nyu.edu/)
Manuel Sprung, Games4Resilience Lab at University of Vienna (htp://www.manuelsprung.at/en/)
Ben Sawyer, Digitalmill (htp://www.dmill.com/)
Nick Yee, Ubisot (htp://www.nickyee.com/)
Albert “Skip” Rizzo, Institute for Creative Technologies, USC (htp://ict.usc.edu/)
Katherine Isbister, Game Innovation Lab, NYU (htp://gil.poly.edu/people/)

Research Labs
Center for Investigating Healthy Minds Lab at University of Wisconsin, Madison
(htp://www.investigatinghealthyminds.org/)
Games4Resilience Lab at University of Vienna (htp://www.manuelsprung.at/en/)
CREATE Lab at New York University (htp://create.nyu.edu/)
Emotion Regulation Lab at Hunter College City University of New York
(htp://urban.hunter.cuny.edu/~tdennis/index.html)
Institute for Creative Technologies at University of Southern California (htp://ict.usc.edu/))

137
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CHAPTER 8

Ethics

Designing and Using Games to

Teach Ethics and Ethical Thinking
Karen Schrier, Marist College, Poughkeepsie, New York, U.S., Kschrier@gmail.com

Key Summary Points

Instead of focusing only on how games can teach speciic values, we may also want to think
1 about how they could teach skills associated with ethical thinking.

There are a number of frameworks and case studies that suggest the potential of ethics
2 practice through games, but few of them have been empirically tested or assessed.

Some best practices include making consequences and feedback on choices clear, allowing
3 more time for players to form relationships with characters in the game, and using authentic
scenarios and contexts. These should be further tested.

Key Terms
Ethics
Morals
Values
Ethical thinking
Empathy
Ethical reasoning
Ethical relection
Ethically notable games
Ethics education

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Introduction
Oten when people hear the terms “ethics” and “games” in the same sentence, they initially think of
violence, addiction, online bullying, sexism, and racism in games, and the like. They may be worried
games such as Grand Thet Auto or Call of Duty are teaching their kids negative values; that their
teenager is geting harassed by others in the real-time chats of Counterstrike; or, they are concerned
their students are spending more time playing games rather than being socially, educationally, or
civically engaged. This chapter is not about these issues, though they may be valid concerns.

Rather, this chapter instead asks: can games also help us learn how to practice ethics and ethical
thinking? If so, what does the research say about this? Are there best practices for designing and using
games to teach ethics?

Deining ethics, morals and values

But irst, what do I mean by ethics? There are many diferent deinitions of ethics and morals, which
oten get conlated. Typically, morals refer to “universal truths, or public rules or principles” (Tierney,
1994, p. ix), or agreed-upon, more general guidelines. Ethics, on the other hand, usually are referred to as
a more individual, active way of handling morals, an “individual’s response to social morality in terms
of relective engagement, valuation, and choice” (Tierney, 1994, p. ix). Likewise, Sicart deines ethics
as the practice of making choices and moral judgments to achieve a good human life (Sicart, 2005).
The term “values” is also typically found alongside “ethics” and “morals” and are usually the output
of one’s ethics and morals—these are the principles or guidelines that deine what maters to a person,
organization or society. For a cross-cultural study of values, see Hofstede (2001) and Schwartz & Bilsky
(1990). For more about types of values, see Schwartz (1994).

Some educators and designers reading this chapter may be looking for advice on how to teach kids
positive values through games, or to use games to teach kids how to act and behave ethically, and
to know right from wrong. The best practices listed at the end of this chapter, as well as the list of
resources, may be useful to help you beter design games for this purpose. The next section suggests
some possible diiculties in using games to teach values.

From ethics to ethical thinking

Some researchers (Schrier & Kinzer, 2009; Schrier, 2010) argue that it could be problematic to design
games that focus on teaching kids the so-called right way to behave without teaching the underlying
principles or skills needed to determine what is ethical or appropriate. In other words, educators, mentors,
and parents need to help kids build the skills and thought processes they need to learn to know how to
determine the right or ethical way to act. One issue is that ethics may change from context to context.
What is appropriate in one online forum may be very diferent from what is proper on a playground or
a family function. Some of those diferences may be obvious, while others may be nuanced, and require
cultural awareness, interpersonal skills, empathy, and respect for others. These skills, therefore, would
be more beneicial to teach, rather than a list of the rules to be followed in each context.

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What may be more beneicial to teach through games is ethical thinking (Schrier & Kinzer, 2009;
Schrier, 2010). Ethical thinking is not just about following some agreed-upon code of ethics, or the
existence of one right way to do things or how to act. Rather, it is about being able to think critically
about the questions and moments in one’s life, and judging the right thing to do in a given context,
space, or culture. Regardless of whether a person is oline or online, in a classroom or at work, with
their family or strangers, in another country or their own backyard, that individual needs to be able to
reason, relect, empathize and gather information to judge how to best behave, act, share or choose. A
game, therefore, should focus on teaching the skills associated with ethical thinking rather than merely
posit which behaviors or concepts are right or wrong.

Why should we be ethical thinkers?

It may be obvious why we should become ethical thinkers. As we more regularly traverse other cultures
in our globally interconnected world, we may also become more frequently challenged with knowing
how to behave appropriately. Moreover, Kereluik et al. (2013) identify ethical thinking and ethical
awareness as a key component of 21st century learning (2013). In their framework, ethical/emotional
awareness contributes to the “Humanistic Knowledge (to Value)” hub, with “Foundational Knowledge”
and “Meta Knowledge” as the other hubs (Kereluik et al., 2013). They explain that, “Ethical awareness
included…the ability to imagine oneself in someone else’s position and feel with that individual as
well as the ability to engage in ethical decision making” (Kereluik et al., 2013, p. 5). For example, we
need to be able to identify, address, and assuage bullying in new contexts, both virtual and real. Social
conundrums, such as global warming, sustainability, poverty, educational inequalities, and access to
healthcare are complex and require people to weigh multiple perspectives, evaluate consequences, and
be system thinkers (Schrier, 2014). Finally, teaching ethical thinking is not just about helping students
address ethical problems or negative values. We also all need to become more engaged ethical thinkers
to ind new ways to communicate, empathize, give, and accept support, connection, camaraderie, and
care across distance, time, culture, and contexts.

Why games for ethical thinking?

Yet ethics as a practice—or as a subject even—is rarely taught or addressed in the K-12 classroom (Schrier
& Kinzer, 2009). Games could be one additional way to formally or informally introduce and support
ethical thinking skills practice, inside or outside of the classroom. In the preface to her edited book, Ethics
and Games: Teaching Values through Play, Schrier (2010) notes that there are several characteristics of
games, such as the ability to take on new identities and the ability to experience the consequences
of one’s choices and iterate on those consequences, which may make games particularly amenable to
ethical exploration and practice (Schrier, 2010). Further research should consider the potential additional
beneits to learning and practicing ethical thinking skills within gaming environments.

143
About this chapter
There are many concerns related to the domain of ethics and games. Some people are concerned with
the modes of game production, distribution and marketing, and the ethical considerations of developing
and selling games. Others are interested in how games, as they are both an art form and medium, express
the creator’s values, and how this may potentially inluence or interact with one’s audience. These all
may be relevant topics that could be discussed and relected upon as part of a classroom exercise on
games. For example, a conversation on the harassment of a female game creator of Depression Quest on
Steam’s Greenlight could help initiate broader discussions of gender, ethnicity, and race in the media,
microaggressions and violence, class and privilege, and/or online harassment (see more at Smith, 2013).
While this chapter cannot cover all of the possible topics associated with ethics and games, educators,
and designers should be aware of the many lenses through which we can use and play games to help us
consider ethical issues and beter understand humanity.

While there are many worthy ethical issues related to gaming, the rest of the chapter focuses mainly on
the design and use of games to support ethical thinking skills and ethical relection, instead of just the
speciic ethical topics that games may generate. In other words, how can we beter design games or use
them in our classrooms, if teaching ethics is one of our goals?

Case Study One: Ethics and Media Research Labs

There are a number of research labs and centers that are dedicated to the study of ethics, values and
games. Looking at their latest research questions and indings is a good irst step in this problem space.

PetLab (Prototyping, Evaluation, and Teaching and Learning Lab),

Parsons The New School and Games for Change
This lab, led by Colleen Macklin, John Sharp, and Karen Sideman, is housed at Parsons The New
School, and co-directed by the Games for Change organization. PetLab creates and tests games related
to education, public interest, and civic engagement. Projects include Re:Activism, Play It Forward, and
Red Cross Games for Disaster Preparedness.

Values@Play and Tiltfactor

Values@Play is a research initiative, set of game tools, and curriculum developed by researchers seeking
ways to help designers incorporate values into their creation of games. For example, the Values@Play
curriculum has been used to teach values conscious design (Belman et al., 2011; Belman & Flanagan,
2010). Principal investigators and directors include Mary Flanagan, who runs the Tiltfactor Lab at
Dartmouth, and Helen Nissenbaum of New York University. One of the key outputs is the Grow-A-
Game series, which is a deck of cards aimed at helping designers create games that prioritize values.

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Good Play and The Good Project
The Good Project, originally initiated by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, William Damon, and Howard
Gardner, is a research efort aimed at understanding how we create responsible and caring young
citizens in a digital age. A component of this is the Good Play project (part of Harvard’s Project Zero),
which looks at how youth handle ethical issues in digital spaces, such as games. Good Play is funded
by the MacArthur foundation and has collaborated with Henry Jenkins at USC to create a curriculum
to encourage relection on the ethical aspects of digital media, such as Facebook and online games.
Their reports also may be especially useful for learning about the teen and young adult space. See more
at htp://www.thegoodproject.org/good-play/good-play-project/ and htp://www.thegoodproject.org/
good-play/developing-minds-digital-media/publications/.

Play Innovation Lab

The Play Innovation Lab is directed by Karen Schrier and focuses on creating digital and analog games
that support social change, empathy, and ethical relection. The lab, which is housed at Marist College
and launched in 2014, is currently researching the use and design of games to teach ethics, issues
of gender and sexuality in games, crowdsourcing and games, and methodologies for reducing online
bullying and harassment in games. Relevant papers on ethics and games include Schrier & Kinzer
(2009), Schrier (2011), Schrier (2012), Schrier (2014), and a forthcoming paper on the Ethics Practice and
Implementation Categorization (EPIC) Framework.

Key Frameworks
There are a number of theoretical frameworks and perspectives that describe the intersection of games
and ethics. In this section, I will briely describe a few key perspectives, which include:

1. Sicart (2009, 2013): Sicart, in his book Ethics and Computer Games (2009) views games as
being “designed ethical objects” (Sicart, 2009). He argues that games do not just feature
ethical choices as part of their gameplay, but are also ethical systems themselves. They are
products of, played by, and discussed by human beings. Additionally, those game players,
game designers, and game commentators are ethical agents, embedded in complex social,
historical, ethical and cultural systems (Sicart, 2009). Sicart also wrote a follow-up book,
Beyond Choices: The Design of Ethical Gameplay (2013), which considers more deeply the
design of games for ethics. He uses a variety of games as case studies, including Anna
Antropy’s Dys4ia, Spec Ops: The Line, and Fallout New Vegas as case studies.
2. Zagal (2009, 2011): Zagal (2009, 2011) describes a framework for evaluating “ethically
notable” (Zagal, 2011) games. He explains that while not all games directly enable moral
relection and reasoning, those that do are ethically notable games. In Zagal’s framework,
he investigates whether a game’s dilemmas are actually moral and whether there is
consistency in how the ethical structure of the game is treated.

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3. In Schrier’s doctoral dissertation (2011), she develops a framework for conceptualizing
and assessing ethical thinking in games, particularly role-playing video games. She
constructs a model that includes four categories of ethical thinking skill and thought
processes: 1) relection, 2) information gathering, 3) reasoning, and 4) empathy. Her model
also includes several “drivers” or underlying motivators, such as “personal ethics,” “game
status” and “relationship building,” which interact with the four categories of ethical
thinking to afect how people think through ethical decisions in role-playing video games
(see Figure 1).
4. The Values at Play (VAP) methodology: Flanagan & Nissenbaum (2007) describe the
Values at Play (VAP) methodology (2007), which is a game methodology that articulates
how to incorporate social themes and values into one’s game design. The VAP consists of
three parts: 1) the discovery phase, where designers consider which are the relevant values
to include, 2) the translation phase, which involves translating those values into design
paterns, mechanics, and gameplay, and 3) the veriication phase, which involves testing
the game to make sure that the values expressed through the game are what was intended.
Flanagan & Nussbaum describe the framework in their book, Values at Play in Digital
Games (2014). For more information about the VAP, see Flanagan et al. (2005, 2007) and the
Values at Play Team (2007).
5. Ethics Practice and Implementation Categorization (EPIC) Framework: Schrier (2014)
created an in-progress ethics game categorization framework (EPIC) for using games for
ethics education. This framework describes diferent categories of using games for teaching
ethics, ethical thinking, and ethical relection, and cites recent games as examples. The
purpose of the EPIC framework is to help teachers ind and use appropriate games for
teaching ethics in the classroom. For instance, the framework’s “Mood” category was
deined as “Games that primarily convey emotion … in ways that could help us see new
perspectives on humanity” (Schrier, 2014) and uses as examples Dear Esther and Gone
Home. These are games that could be used in a lesson about how the emotional tone
and mood of a game interact with one’s empathy for a character’s experience. Another
category, “Choice,” refers to games “with clear ethical choices and decision-making, which
have difering efects on the game play,” (Schrier, 2014) and consequences for one’s game
experience. The “Choice” category includes as examples games such as The Walking Dead,
The Stanley Parable, and Papers, Please. These are games that could be incorporated into
a lesson about weighing and making ethical choices and relecting on the consequences of
those decisions.

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Figure 1. Framework of ethical thinking skills and thought process categories and drivers of ethical decisions in role-playing
video games.

There are many other nascent frameworks that deal with ethical issues in games. Other frameworks
that may be worth considering include:

1. Consalvo’s analysis of cheating in games and its implications for gameplay and game
design (2005, 2007). She looks at what it means when players use cheat codes, share
information in forums, ignore established rules, hack systems, or read through walk-
throughs. Her perspective asserts that players actively change and interact with game
rules and systems (Consalvo, 2005).
2. Freier & Saulnier’s (2011) framework for looking at ethical thinking skills through the lens
of the moral and social development of children and adolescents (Freier & Saulnier, 2011).
3. Bogost’s (2007) approach to persuasive games, in which games make arguments about
its own meaning through the ways in which they are played. This is diferent from other
types of media because games express meaning through rules and interactions with those
rules (procedurally), and not just through the interplay of text and/or images (Bogost,
2007).
4. Stevenson’s (2011) framework, which classiies and critiques ethics games to recommend
ways to make games more ethically engaging.

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In addition, when teaching ethics through games, it may be useful to identify an approach to ethics.
There are a number of diferent perspectives on how to deine ethics, what constitutes ethics, and
how we arrive at ethical (i.e., appropriate or inappropriate, good or bad, or right or wrong) behavior,
atitudes, or actions. The following list includes a number of the more commonly used approaches to
ethics and ethics education. A good introductory text to these frameworks is Shafer-Landau (2010), The
Fundamentals of Ethics (2nd Edition). These include:

1. Virtue ethics: Virtue ethics focuses on one’s character and its virtues in helping to decide
and assess the ethics of a situation. For example, what one’s actions or behavior reveals
about one’s character, and the intention of one’s actions, all factor into whether the
behavior was ethical. The major thinkers related to this are Aristotle and Plato, though
since then there have been many others. (For more information, see Nicomachean Ethics by
Aristotle, Plato’s Republic, St. Thomas Aquinas, David Hume, and Alasdair MacIntyre).
2. Hedonism: Hedonism focuses on the pursuit of pleasure above all others, and that people
have the right to seek as much pleasure as possible, as it is the highest good to atain. The
major thinkers related to this are Aristippus of Cyrene, Epicurus, and Michel Onfray.
3. Deontology: This framework emphasizes adherence to rules, regulations, duties, and
other’s rights. Kantian ethics is one sub-type. The core of Kantian ethics is the categorical
imperative. Other major thinkers who were inluenced by Immanuel Kant include Jorge
Habermas and Jacques Lacan.
4. Utilitarianism: Utilitarianism emphasizes utility, or the best-case scenario that can
be achieved by maximizing pleasure or goodness and reducing sufering. The greatest
happiness for the greatest number of people is the typical axiom. John Stuart Mill and
Jeremy Bentham are the key thinkers.
5. Feminist ethics: This is an approach to ethics that atempts to consider more diverse
perspectives on ethics, such as including women viewpoints and female experiences on
what is moral or appropriate behavior. For example, typically less credence was given to
feminine traits, such as emotion, sharing, or connection, when evaluating the ethics of
a situation, whereas typically masculine traits such as independence, dominance and
autonomy were given more weight. Key thinkers are Mary Wollstonecrat and Elizabeth
Cady Stanton.
6. Ethics of care: The ethics of care focuses on how empathy and compassion relate to ethics
and ethical behavior. The major thinkers are Carol Gilligan and Nel Noddings.

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Case Study Two: Fable III
Fable III is a role-playing video game developed by Lionhead Studios and published by Microsot/
Xbox. It is the third in the Fable series of games, where a player inhabits the imaginary world of Albion,
a medieval-lavored game set in 1800s London. In Fable III, players take on the role of a prince or
princess, who must go on quests to save Albion from a coming darkness. Along the way, players need
to approach ethical choices, such as whether to sacriice their friend or a number of villagers; or make
decisions for Albion, such as whether to build a brothel or orphanage in a town. The choices have
consequences for the game player and the game world. For example, if a player builds the orphanage,
s/he can go visit the orphanage later in the game. If a player builds the brothel instead, s/he may
see homeless non-playing character (NPC) kids and the surrounding town may look darker and more
economically depressed.

Schrier (2011) investigated the skills and thought processes players used when working through the
ethical scenarios in Fable III. To do this, she randomly assigned twenty males to play Fable III, with
half assigned to play as a male avatar, and half assigned as a female avatar. She also randomly assigned
ten males to a control condition, which included writen versions of the ethical scenarios in Fable III.

Based on this, she found that game players did practice many ethical thinking skills in Fable III.
She identiied and categorized the ethical thinking skills and thought processes used, and labeled 35
distinct skills (e.g., interpreting evidence, weighing pros and cons) and 20 distinct thought processes
(e.g., prioritizing people’s feelings over any other reason).

Other overall indings were that participants used empathy-related skills more frequently with in-
game characters, ater they had time to play the game and build relationships with them. There were
few gender diferences in how people made ethical decisions or ethical skills and thought processes
used, unless gender was a speciic aspect of an ethical question.

In general, participants did not practice ethical thinking very diferently between the writen and
game scenarios, however, participants used systems thinking more frequently in the game scenarios.
Also, game participants seemed to empathize with other’s perspectives more frequently than control
condition participants, in an additional non-Fable related ethical scenario that was read to them, which
was outside of the game.

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Key Findings
In just the past few years, there have been a number of research studies that have suggested compelling
directions for teaching ethics through games. Here are a few:

1. Hodhod, Cairns, & Kudenko (2011) created an interactive story game, AEINS, to teach
character education.
2. Fitzgerald & Grof (2011) tested two games in a grade school in Cambridge, Massachusets:
Diplomacy and Civilization IV: Colonization, to understand how these games may teach
ethics from a moral and cognitive development perspective.
3. Koo & Seider’s (2010) investigated how video games can support prosocial learning.
4. Belman & Flanagan’s (2010) research from the Values@Play project has suggested a
connection between empathy and games.
5. Simkins & Simkins (2008) looked at role-playing games and their support of ethical
reasoning skills. They determined four categories of features related to ethical reasoning,
including mirroring, social context, efecting change, and having signiicant decisions.
Their research is useful in thinking about the reasoning component of ethical thinking,
and how it emerges during gameplay.
6. Schrier, Diamond, & Langendoen (2010) describe the process of creating a game, Mission
U.S.: For Crown or Colony. They designed one part of the game to motivate ethical
decisions surrounding testimonials on the Boston Massacre, and anecdotal indings
suggested that empathy-related skills and thought processes were employed by players in
the game, though this has not been studied empirically yet (Schrier et al., 2010). For more
information, see Case Study One in Chapter Four.

A number of researchers have also looked at large-scale role-playing games to evaluate the potential
of them to encourage ethical practice. For example, Svelch (2010) and Melenson (2011) each analyzed
the ethical situations in games for their authenticity and complexity. They separately concluded that
the morality meters in games, such as the karma point system in Fallout III, and the renegade/paragon
system in the Mass Efect series, do not encourage the practice of ethics. Instead, they appear to motivate
players to maximize the amount of “goodness” or “badness” achieved in the game, as if it is just another
atribute for their avatar, like agility, strength, or happiness (Svelch, 2010).

Schrier (2011) investigated Fable III, a role-playing game, to identify, evaluate, and analyze the types
of ethical thinking skills practiced in the game, versus writen scenarios based on the game. Her
indings are described in greater detail in the case study (see Case Study Two). Moreover, results from
Schrier’s (2012) study of Fable III and avatar gender found that the gender of one’s avatar may afect
how participants think through ethical scenarios, but only if it was a salient part of a scenario (all
participants were male, playing as either male or female avatars). The results also suggested that players
were more likely to make diferent ethical decisions based on their avatar’s gender in the beginning of
the game experience, when participants were not as fully immersed in their role. In addition, despite
whether participants made so-called “good” or “bad” decisions, they still practiced a variety of ethical

150
thinking skills, and there were no avatar gender diferences found. Schrier (2014) also showed, using
Fable III, how games could be windows into ethical thinking around sustainability and environmental
questions, by showing how (through a game) people can think through and prioritize environmental
concerns as opposed to other issues.

Assessment Considerations
How do we know if we are becoming more engaged ethical thinkers? How do we assess the ethics of
one’s behaviors, actions, or thoughts, particularly when there is debate about what it means to be ethical
or how we arrive at this, in any context, let alone in games? One of the key challenges in assessing
ethics games is that we do not yet have clear, veted, universal assessment techniques. This is not
surprising, since every ethical moment or situation is diferent, and there is no objective checklist for
how people should act, behave, share, or feel. A few studies have sought to assess a game’s eicacy in
supporting the practice of ethical thinking and ethics. These include researchers who used:

1. Mixed methods, such as a “talk aloud” and discourse analysis, and the creation of a coding
scheme and identiication and comparison of skills and thought processes applied on
scenarios, before and ater the game, or between a control and experimental group (Schrier,
2011, 2012, 2014).
2. A pre- and post-game activity, such as a Paul Revere image, which was used in assessing
historical and ethical thinking in Mission U.S.: For Crown or Colony (Schrier et al., 2010).
(See more in Case Study One in Chapter Four.)
3. Textual analysis, such as those conducted by Zagal (2011), Svelch (2010), and Melenson
(2011).
4. Design research, in which the process of design serves as a type of formative assessment,
such as those designs conducted by Barab et al. (2011) on River of Justice and Macklin (2010)
on Re: Activism.
5. Focus groups or case studies, such as those conducted by Fitzgerald & Grof (2011).
6. Ethnographic approaches, such as those done by Consalvo (2007).
7. Designer relection, in which the designer interrogates and relects on his or her design, as
in the case of Brathwaite & Sharp (2010) and Brathwaite (now Romero’s) Train.

Future Needs
There are still many gaps in the research, namely, further empirical research and assessment to
understand the short- and long-term efectiveness of games to support the practice of ethical thinking.
While hopefully this chapter has suggested the potential of games as a site for ethical exploration,
relection, and practice, more investigation is necessary to fully understand the factors that afect ethical
thinking in games, such as how speciic game elements afect, limit, and motivate ethical thinking.

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Case Study Three: Bioware
Bioware, a game studio, is known for creating role-playing video games that feature ethical choices and
scenarios, such as the Mass Efect, Dragon Age, and Knights of the Old Republic series. These games
may be useful to play and use for educational purposes to beter understand and relect on how the
designers created the game’s “ethical system,” ethics game mechanics, and ethics meters. For instance,
in Bioware’s games, the choices a player may have consequences in the game’s world, and they may
afect one’s social standing, play options, story, and/or relationships in the game. Depending on one’s
actions, one’s avatar may have levels or resources that go up or down, which in turn may afect their
abilities and/or story options in the game.

In Bioware’s Mass Efect series, for example, you create a character named Commander Shephard and
lead him or her to make choices that will help keep peace in the galaxy and potentially protect the
human race. Throughout a series of science iction adventures, you, as Shephard, make choices on
how to interact with alien races and other human beings, and build a team of allies to support you on
your quest to save the universe. You can make choices and pick dialogue options—you can act polite
and by the book, or act rebellious and above the law. Depending on how you act, you may end up more
on the “paragon” or “renegade” side, respectively, or even somewhere in the middle, which may lead to
new dialogue and gameplay options being unlocked or blocked, and diferences in how non-playing
characters (NPCs) treat you.

Similarly, in the Dragon Age series, you play as a character that is a Grey Warden (an order of warriors)
in a fantasy seting. You need to form alliances with NPCs to help unite the world and go on quests to
stop, and ultimately kill, an archdemon. As part of this game, you select from a list of dialogue options.
Depending on how you relate to the NPCs, they will have diferential levels of loyalty and friendship.
As with Mass Efect, your choices have an efect on your gameplay and standing in the game world.
In Dragon Age, however, it is sometimes less clear how dialogue options or actions map to the game’s
nuanced and complex morality system. The paragon/renegade distinction in Mass Efect is much
more clear-cut and players can continually check to see where their avatar ranks in this moral system.
Likewise, Bioware’s Knights of the Old Republic game series also includes morality systems and is based
on the Star Wars universe, such as the Jedi Knight versus Sith dichotomy.

Educators and designers may want to use Bioware’s games, and the principles behind their games, in the
classroom, or to inspire their own activities or games. Although the games are for mature game players,
educators may be able to use or modify speciic scenes or dialogue from the games. For example, a
teacher could show a brief interaction between Shephard and another character, and invite students to
discuss how they would respond to the situation. Another potential classroom activity is to discuss as a
class how Bioware designers approached the challenge of representing ethical thinking in Dragon Age,
including unpacking its moral system and game mechanics.

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Best Practices
The following design principles should be considered when creating games to teach ethical thinking,
based on a survey of the current frameworks and indings. These include:

1. Players should be exposed to alternative perspectives. Adolescents, for example, who

are exposed to opposing views on social topics show improvement in argumentation skill
(Kuhn, 2008; Kuhn et al., 2008).
2. Players should be able to deliberate with others. Players who had the opportunity to
deliberate and debate topics with others were beter able to improve argumentation skill
(Kuhn, 2008; Kuhn et al., 2008). Further research should consider whether these need to be
real people, or if virtual characters are suicient.
3. Players should be able to make choices. The participants need to have an element of
agency in making decisions.
4. The choices should be relatable. Players are more deeply engaged in practicing thinking
skills with choices that are personally meaningful and relatable.
5. The game’s context should be personally meaningful and authentic. The context
surrounding any choices, as well as the choice itself, should be genuine and meaningful.
By making the opposing views and choices authentic, participants are potentially more apt
to bring in their own views and think through the problem as they would outside of the
game, as well as use and apply what they learn and practice in the game.
6. Any consequences should be appropriate. Players are more motivated to apply thinking
skills to dilemmas if the consequences to their choices are appropriate, relevant and
authentic; and they are aware of the consequences.
7. Players need time to develop relationships with their avatar and with other characters
to build empathy for them. Players may need time in the game to develop relationships
with any NPCs to be able to beter empathize with their points of view (Schrier, 2012).
Players also may need more time to fully identify with their avatar to be able to think
through ethical decisions more deeply, particularly if they feel, at irst, that their avatar
does not represent them. Embodying a diferent avatar gender than their own gender, for
example, may make participants feel that their avatar does not represent them, at least
initially, when playing a game. This appears to decrease over time as the participant has
more opportunities to behave as him or herself in the game.

153
Resources
Research Labs
Berkman Center for Internet and Society
Engagement Game Lab
GoodPlay Project
MIT Center for Civic Media
PETLab
Play Innovation Lab
Tiltfactor
Values@Play

Related Researchers
Mia Consalvo
Jim Diamond
Mary Flanagan
Eric Gordon
Carrie Heeter
Helen Nissenbaum
Doris Rusch
Karen Schrier
David Simkins
Jose Zagal

Books, Blogs, Websites, and Reports

Anna Anthropy (htp://auntiepixelante.com/?page_id=2142)
Bogost, I. (2011). How to Do Things With Games. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Bogost, I. (2007). Persuasive Games. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Bogost, I. (2006). Unit Operations. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Brown, H. (2008). Videogames and Education: Humanistic Approaches to an Emergent Art Form. M.E. Sharpe.
Campbell, H.A. & Grieve, G.P. (2014). Playing with Religion in Digital Games. Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press.
Consalvo, M. (2007). Cheating. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Feldman, F. (2006). Pleasure and the Good Life: Concerning the Nature, Varieties, and Plausibility of Hedonism.
New York: Oxford University Press.
Flanagan, M. (2009). Critical Play: Radical Game Design. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Galloway, A. (2006). Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Gardner, H., Csikszentmihalyi, M., & Damon, W. (2001). Good Work: When excellence and ethics meet. New York:
Basic Books.
Gee, J. (2005). Why Video Games are Good for Your Soul. Common Ground.
Lenhart, A. (2008). Teens, Videogames, and Civics. Pew Internet.
Jenkins, H. et al. (2006). Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture. MacArthur Whitepaper.
Kahne, J. (2009). The Civic Potential Of Videogames. MacArthur Series.
Matie Brice (htp://www.matiebrice.com/)
Project Horseshoe (htp://www.projecthorseshoe.com/)

154
Russell, D., (Ed.). (2013). The Cambridge Companion to Virtue Ethics. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Schreiber, I., Seifert, C., Pineda, C., Preston, J., Hughes, L., Cash, S., & Robertson, T. Choosing between right and
right: Creating meaningful ethical dilemmas in games. Project Horseshoe Whitepaper. htp://www.
projecthorseshoe.com/reports/ph09/ph09r3.htm
Schrier, K. (2012). Avatar gender and ethical thinking in Fable III. Bulletin of Science, Technology, and Society,
32, 375-383.
Schrier, K. & Gibson, D. (Eds.) (2010). Ethics and Game Design: Teaching Values through Play. IGI Global.
Schrier, K. & Gibson, D. (Eds.) (2011). Designing Games for Ethics: Models, Techniques, and Frameworks. IGI
Global.
Sicart, M. (2009). Ethics and Computer Games. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Sicart, M. (2013). Beyond Choices: The Design of Ethical Gameplay.
Wark, M. (2007). Gamer Theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Well Played 1.0 and the Well Played series. ETC Press.
Values@Play website and papers (www.valuesatplay.com) and (htp://www.valuesatplay.org/wp-content/
uploads/2007/09/vap-chiinal06sub.pdf)

Games
While any game, arguably, can be useful to understanding teaching ethics through games, these games may be
particularly relevant:

AEINS by Rania Hodhod, Paul Cairns and Daniel Kudenko

Akrasia
Airport Security
Awesome Upstanders
Bastion
Bioshock series
Bufalo
Cart Life
Darfur is Dying
Dear Esther
Deus Ex
Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Diplomacy
Dragon Age Series
Dys4ia
EthicsGame by Catharyn A. Baird
Everyday the Same Dream
Fable Series
Fallout 3
Fallout: New Vegas
Gone Home
Grand Thet Auto series
Grow-A-Game by Values@Play
Heavy Rain

155
Howling Dogs
Hush
Ico
Knights of the Old Republic
LA Noire
Layof
Lim
Madrid Game
Mass Efect series
McDonald’s Game
Mirror’s Edge
Mission US series
Oblivion
Papers, Please
Paralect
Passage
Parenthood
Peacemaker
pOnd
Portal/Portal 2
Quandary Game by Learning Game Network
Re:Activism by PETLab
Red Dead Redemption
River of Justice by Sasha Barab, Tyler Dodge, Edward Gentry, Asmalina Saleh, Patrick Petyjohn
Seeds by Nahil Sharkasi
September 12
Spec Ops: The Line
Super Columbine Massacre RPG
Sweatshop
Skyrim
The Arab-Israeli Conlict and First Wind, by Sharman Siebenthal Adams and Jeremiah Holden
The Shooting at Sandy Hook
The Stanley Parable
The Sufering
The Walking Dead Season One/Two
The Yawhg
Train by Brenda Brathwaite/Romero
Triad
Unmanned
Way

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CHAPTER 9

Critical Thinking, 21st Century, and Creativity Skills

Teaching 21st Century, Executive-Functioning, and

Creativity Skills with Popular Video Games and Apps
Randy Kulman, LearningWorks for Kids, PeaceDale, Rhode Island, U.S.,
randy@learningworksforkids.com
Teresa Slobuski, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library, San Jose State University, San Jose, California,
U.S., Teresa.Slobuski@sjsu.edu
Roy Seitsinger, Westerly Public Schools, Westerly, Rhode Island, U.S.,
rseitsinger@westerly.k12.ri.us

Key Summary Points

21st century skills, including lexible thinking, collaborative communication skills, executive
1 function and critical thinking skills, and digital literacy, will be necessary for education and
jobs in the future.

Video games and apps are an extremely powerful tool for teaching 21st century skills due to
2 game mechanics that build in learning principles and their highly engaging nature.

Games such as Minecrat, Portal 2, and a variety of casual video games have been demonstrated
3 to teach skills, such as problem solving, processing eiciency, cognitive lexibility, and the
21st century skill of digital literacy.

Key Terms
21st century skills
Executive functioning
Creativity skills
Digital literacy
Common core state standards
Long-form games
Short-form games

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Introduction
The skills needed for success in the future will go far beyond the content conventionally taught in U.S.
schools. Success, today, and tomorrow, will require 21st century skills such as creativity, collaboration,
executive functioning, and digital literacy (Trilling & Fadel, 2009). No longer will simple rote learning,
memorization of facts, or training for traditional manufacturing, service, or agricultural jobs be
adequate to prepare students for life and work in the future (21st Century Skills and the Workplace,
Microsot, Pearson Report 2013). Instead, 21st century skills deined by the capacity to think lexibly and
innovatively (creativity); the aptitude to communicate with colleagues both face to face and digitally
(collaboration); capability in planning, self-management, organization, time management, and critical
thinking (executive functions); and the knowledge of how to use electronic media and tools (digital
literacy) will become the core proiciencies for future success. The use of video games and apps has
potential for encouraging the practice of creativity, collaboration, executive functions, and digital
literacy.

Employers around the globe are looking for 21st century skills in their new hires to help them adjust to
information-focused jobs that require problem solving, teamwork, the capacity to identify relevant facts,
and organizational, planning, and eiciency skills. In 1990 the U.S. Department of Labor’s Secretary’s
Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills report indicated that a variety of functional skills are
needed to be successful at the modern workplace such as, resource management, social interaction,
human and technology interaction, and afective skills (Kane, Berryman, Goslin & Meltzer, 1990).
Educators, meanwhile, are rethinking how best to prepare children to meet these workforce needs by
incorporating digital technologies and collaboration in the classroom.

In the U.S., the latest national education standards, the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) (National
Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) & Council of Chief State School Oicers
(CCSSO), 2010), atempt to meet these market demands by encouraging many of these skills along with
more traditional academic content. Although concepts such as “teaching the whole child” and going
beyond the fundamentals are not new in educational research, CCSS’s national predecessor policy, No
Child Let Behind (NCLB) (U.S. Department of Education, 2013), limited these educational aims through
mandatory testing, which requires teachers to focus on content alone. For many educators, NCLB is seen
as a stumbling block to teaching 21st century skills (Schoen & Fusarelli, 2008; Noddings, 2005). CCSS,
however, integrates many 21st century skills through its standards on college and career readiness
such as creativity, collaboration, and digital-technology use. Thus, as CCSS becomes integrated into
classroom curricula, teachers have an opportunity to expand their teaching of these skills and many
are inding that video games are one method to supplement the teaching of these skills.

In this chapter, we will consider 21st century skills as imperative to success during and ater school.
Rather than competing with the curriculum, 21st century skills can and should be integrated into the
student experience. One of the more powerful ways of building 21st century skills is through the use of
digital games and technologies, whether the content focus is on 21st century skills or not.

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Key Frameworks
What are 21st century skills?
21st century skills are deined by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (2009) as having three
components:

1. Learning and innovation skills, which include creative thinking and problem solving
and communication and collaboration. These skills are crucial to working in a group,
developing new ideas, and analyzing and evaluating information.
2. Life and career skills, which encompass skills such as lexibility and adaptability;
initiative and self-directed social and cross-cultural skills; productivity and accountability
skills; and leadership and responsibility skills, many of which can also be described by
the term executive functions. Executive functions are deined as brain-based cognitive
skills that support self-management and critical thinking. Executive functions are based
primarily in the prefrontal cortex of our brains and orchestrate various brain functions
that integrate a person’s perceptions, experiences, cognitions, and memories toward
goal-directed behavior. These are identiied by many experts as the key to academic and
vocational success in the 21st century (Brown, 2013; Barkley, 2012). Executive functions
include a set of related skills that help prioritize, regulate, and orchestrate an individual’s
thoughts and behaviors.
3. Digital literacy skills, which include understanding about digital information; being able
to access information efectively; evaluating, analyzing, and using media; and being able to
apply technology efectively. Proiciencies in being able to create media use technology for
research, and competencies in using a variety of electronic forms of communication and
networking tools are core digital literacy skills (Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2009).

What are the Common Core State Standards?

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) deine the educational content and expectations of
performance of students at all levels. The CCSS were developed with the recognition of the global
nature of competition for jobs and the expectation of what workers need to know and be able to do. To
prepare students for an increasingly competitive workforce, the CCSS are “staircased” in increasing
complexity to guide students toward full readiness for college and career. To date 45 states, the District
of Columbia, 4 territories, and the Department of Defense schools have adopted the CCSS based on
these observations.

In drating the CCSS, the Council of Chief State School Oicers (CCSSO) and the National Governors
Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) worked with a variety of stakeholders to develop
standards that relect the skills and experience necessary for American children to succeed in college
and their careers. Not only does the CCSS cover what content is necessary for students to succeed,
but it also recognizes the importance of a variety of 21st century skills throughout the standards.
For example, the introduction to the CCSS for “English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social

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Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects” states that students who are college- and career-ready are
able to “demonstrate independence,” “respond to the varying demands of audience, task, purpose and
discipline,” “use technology and digital media strategically and capably,” and “come to understand other
perspectives and cultures” (NGA Center & CCSSO, 2010, p. 7), each of which is intimately tied to one or
more 21st century skills. Throughout the standards there is additional emphasis on building students’
ability with “lexible communication and collaboration,” NGA Center & CCSSO, 2010, p. 8) a large piece
of the 21st century skill puzzle. By using video games to teach skills such as collaboration and creativity
teachers are able to provide students an opportunity not only to develop those skills, but also to increase
their digital literacy skills.

Selecting Case Studies

Games are a particularly powerful tool for teaching 21st century skills because their reach extends
beyond the classroom. Children ages eight to 18 spend an average of seven hours and 38 minutes per
day using digital media (Rideout, Foehr, & Roberts, 2010), strongly suggesting that they are more than
willing to play games and apps on their own as a part of homework or to pursue their own interests.
Teachers are increasingly turning to a variety of types of games for their teaching. One of the common
observations described by teachers who use games in the classroom is the level and sophistication of
engaged discussion that takes place among classmates that leads to additional learning and insights
(Cornally, 2012).

Selecting video games that can target speciic skills and engender the type of engagement that
encourages learning that goes beyond the classroom is one of the keys to game-based learning of 21st
century skills. Both long- and short-form games can be implemented in the classroom to aid in teaching
21st century skills. Long-form games, which are more open-ended and may take place over many hours
at home and school, can be used as a teaching tool. Examination of two long-form games, Minecrat
and Portal 2, demonstrates how these types of games are being implemented in classrooms. Short-form
games can be played within a single class period, and multiple games can be combined in a suite.

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Case Study One: Minecrat
Minecrat is one of the most recognized and widely played games in the United States and counts 45
million people as having registered for the games (MinecratEdu.com, n.d.). Minecrat is becoming a
widely used game in many classrooms around the world due to the lexibility, ease of entry of the
game, and mass appeal. Minecrat is an open-world game without speciic goal. It has two major modes:
survival, which requires players to acquire resources, maintain their health, and survive the night,
and creative, which focuses on designing, constructing, and creating large projects. In addition to the
standard version of Minecrat available through the developer, teachers have modiied the game for
beter applicability in the classroom. Minecratedu.com, developed by Joel Levin, a computer teacher,
provides teachers with access to a customized Minecrat modiication designed speciically for
classroom use and has been used by more than 250,000 students to date (MinecratEdu.com, n.d.).

While Minecrat does not contain speciic curricula designed to teach 21st century skills, many of the
classroom-based Minecrat projects are described as practicing executive-functioning, creativity, and
collaboration skills (Levin, 2013) Rather than seeing Minecrat as being used for its 21st century skill
building alone, Levin notes that many of the examples of Minecrat used in the classroom start of by being
content driven and cover diverse topics such as Roman history, Newtonian physics, or mathematics.
He described how the lesson plans generally start by focusing on a more traditional classroom objective
such as understanding gravity, but that through playing Minecrat students frequently use a variety of
21st century skills such as innovation, creativity, and cognitive lexibility. Levin (2013) describes how
student assignments oten involve the division of tasks and time-management and collaboration skills.
Learning how to access knowledge outside of the game to answer questions involves digital literacy
skills. The skill of creativity is another necessary and important component of the world construction
that takes place in Minecrat.

The use of Minecrat as an aterschool program is being planned at the Central Falls School District in
Rhode Island by Michael St. Jean, the assistant superintendent of Central Falls Schools. St. Jean, who
has writen extensively about the powerful nature of Minecrat from his perspective as an educator
and as the parent of a 13-year old-son who has embraced the game, describes Minecrat’s utility for
teaching 21st century and problem-solving skills. He describes how the employment of Minecrat in
the classroom is useful in teaching 21st century skills and the common core curriculum. He suggests
that because the common core curriculum is based in part on project-based learning, Minecrat is an
excellent opportunity for creativity, making and ixing mistakes, and conceptual understanding of
materials. St. Jean also suggests that the computer skills necessary for becoming an expert at Minecrat,
such as coding and modding, powerfully reinforce the digital literacy component of 21st century skills
(St. Jean, 2013)

St. Jean further describes how Minecrat can be a great tool for teaching life and executive-functioning
skills. He recounts that his son has announced that he wants being engineer or an architect and now
notices the designs of buildings and is fascinated with books on historical architecture as a direct result

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of playing Minecrat. Ater seeing a similar potential ater using Minecrat in a national competition on
how to make a beter future, a school in Sweden has added playing Minecrat as part of their compulsory
curriculum. One teacher from the school stated that the students use Minecrat to “learn about city
planning, environmental issues, geting things done, and even how to plan for the future” (Gee, 2013).
Through the process of building Minecrat structures, students can learn skills and develop interests
that will be important in meeting the needs of our collective future.

Key Findings
Video games, technology, and 21st century skills
Playing and using video games and technology can be strongly related to the development of 21st
century skills. Gee (2007) identiies 36 “learning principles” that are built into good video games that can
be leveraged as efective teaching tools. Many of Gee’s learning principles, such as the active, critical
learning principle; the multiple routes principle, and the probing principle parallel 21st century skills.
Other studies describe how video games are excellent tools for teaching problem solving (Shafer, 2006),
strategic thinking (Adachi & Willoughby, 2013), cognitive lexibility (Green et al., 2012), and executive
functions (Kulman et al., 2011). A comprehensive review of game-based learning found that video games
could impact positively on problem-solving skills, motivation, and engagement, all of which support
using these digital tools in teaching 21st century skills (NFER, 2013).

The use and mastery of technology as crucial for 21st century skills becomes evident as educators
begin to deine the components of these skills. Far more than simple digital literacy, engagement with
video games, apps, and interactive digital media requires collaboration, critical thinking, adaptability,
creativity, and decision-making skills. While primarily citing the use of the Internet and productivity
tools, many educators now make the argument that video games can also be readily adapted for the
teaching, development, and improvement of 21st century skills.

As 21st century skills are more deeply explored, many connections can be seen between the use of video
games and digital technologies and the development of these important capacities. For example, many
video games and digital technologies require learning and innovation skills such as critical thinking
and problem solving, communicating and collaboration, and creativity and innovation for the user to
be successful. Additionally, they do so in a manner in which high levels of motivation and sustained
atention and efort are devoted to developing these skills. By capturing the atention of the users, these
games are able to teach many of these skills through successful gameplay.

Many games require an array of problem solving, thinking, and planning skills such as The Legend of
Zelda or the Civilization series. In Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, an action adventure game, players
must learn to use planning skills when they buy items at shops and stock up on bombs and arrows to
survive diicult dungeons to come. Civilization, a series of turn-based strategy games, requires players

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to choose where to place their energy in building new structures, improving existing ones, moving
units, initiating negotiations, etc. to advance their civilizations’ growth. Games such as Legend of Zelda
and Civilization make players into critical thinkers by encouraging successful gamers to think many
steps ahead.

Video games are increasingly integrating communication and collaboration as key components of play.
Communication can be key to survival and a requirement for maximum success in massive multiplayer
online role playing games (MMORPGs). In World of Warcrat, thousands of players stage raids to defeat
particularly diicult dungeon challenges, which can include as many as 40 individuals working to
defeat the same boss. Without advanced communication skills, collaborations of that size would not be
possible in or out of the game world.

Creativity and innovation can frequently be seen in open video game platforms such as Scratch, a suite
of interactive media creation tools from MIT or Crayon Physics, a puzzle game that requires users to
create drawings that have realistic physics applied to solve the level. In addition to using creativity and
innovation in gameplay, many gamers further practice using these skills in a variety of activities inspired
by their play. Some gamers may continue to engage with a game by creating a website, contributing to a
wiki, or participating in forums. Some games, particularly PC games, allow users to augment the game
through a process known as modding. By writing their own parts of computer programs, gamers can
develop custom maps, create a diferent interface, or visualize information otherwise unavailable to
augment their gaming experience (Kow & Nardi, 2009; Brown, 2008). Modding allows gamers to be
creative by altering a game as they see it.

Life and career skills require the capacities for self-management, goal seting, decision-making, and
adaptability. Although these skills are not oten formally taught in the classroom, they remain important
markers for success both in academics and in the workforce. By providing situational practice of these
skills, many video games can beneit players outside of the game world.

By their very nature, video games and digital technologies require lexible thinking as problem-solving
strategies change from one level to another. For example, in Angry Birds, structures are made from a
variety of materials such as wood and metal, with unique layouts requiring the player to dramatically
change strategies. An inlexible mind may atempt to break through metal as one can with wood
structures, but will ultimately be unsuccessful in completing the level. Recognizing the diferences
between various situations and adapting play techniques accordingly is key to winning in Angry Birds
and mirrors the lexibility required for adapting to real life situations.

Working independently and seting goals to maximize productivity are important parts of many
complex video games. In the Metal Gear Solid, an action adventure stealth game, players normally
move through the game atempting to atract minimal atention while completing their quests. The
player, however, can determine what that means in a given situation, whether it means sneaking past
to avoid being seen or killing guards as quickly as possible. Newer releases of the series have recognized

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the fun and challenging nature of “self rule” in the games and now provide additional achievements
for diferent types of play, for example completing the game without killing enemies by choosing to
tranquilize or avoid them instead.

Leadership and responsibility skills are noteworthy in many MMO games. These games oten include
guild or party structures where players work together to beter everyone’s play experience. To manage
resources and be successful in play with larger groups, one or more players must take on a leadership
role. Additionally, by agreeing to play in a party or be part of a guild, players agree to be responsible
for holding their weight for the team. This may be in the form of collecting resources to prepare for a
large batle or keeping an eye on other players during batle. Reeves (2008) conducted a study in which
it was found that playing World of Warcrat was very useful for developing leadership skills such
as visioning, sense-making, relating, and inventing that are crucial to business. Given the number of
elements an advanced World of Warcrat player needs to balance, it is unsurprising to see those skills
transfer into the real world.

Digital literacy skills are core requirements for expertise with video games and use of other digital
media. As video gamers are digital in nature, any time spent playing can help increase a gamer’s digital
literacy skills and comfort with digital technologies. Gaming can additionally inspire players to interact
with various digital technologies to support, augment, or share their gaming experience.

In many families, the expert at learning how to use a new cell phone, connect the cable box, or get
the Internet back online is the video gamer. A multi-system gamer can be equally comfortable using
a computer, console, or mobile device for their gameplay. Besides using the devices for actual play, a
gamer may be responsible for seting up the hardware and/or sotware of the systems to start playing.
Although knowing how to properly connect a new computer may not seem like an impressive feat, as
digital technologies continue to be more integrated into our everyday experience, comfort with seting
up and troubleshooting new technologies is an essential part to basic digital literacy.

Outside of active gameplay, many avid gamers are continuing to develop their digital literacy skills in
ainity groups. Ainity groups are deined by Gee (2004) as places of informal learning where “newbies
and masters and everyone else” (p. 85) all interact around their common interest, which could be a video
game, television show, novel, etc. These ainity groups allow fans from diverse backgrounds to come
together and discuss, learn, and share about their interest. Communities like this can not only feed into
the social skills of an individual, but also help to increase ease of digital technology use. Learning to
leverage the learning experiences occurring in these ainity groups will be key to harnessing the full
educational potential of video games (Steinkuehler, 2004).

Earlier in Internet history, gamer interaction may have been limited to searches for cheat codes or
walkthroughs to assist in completing diicult or tedious elements of gameplay. Today, increasing
numbers of gamers are creating original content to share with the world including wiki editing, forum
participation, and making “let’s play” videos to demonstrate how they play their favorite video games.

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This original content can then be used by fellow gamers and may inspire them to create their own
original content. By participating in an ever-growing digital culture of gaming, gamers not only learn
how to use technology to play games, but also learn how to use it to communicate with others, express
themselves, and otherwise navigate the digital landscape.

Innovation, life and career, and digital literacy skills are vitally important for future jobs and must be
incorporated into education in the 21st century. There is a wealth of research (Galinsky, 2010; Goldberg,
2001) showing that mastering 21st century skills, deined more broadly with terms such as “executive-
functioning skills” (Diamond, 2007) and “learning skills” (McClelland, 2007), can be more important
for academic learning than direct teaching of the same academic subjects. Many studies indicate
that learning critical-thinking skills and creativity at a young age results in greater future academic
achievement than if those same students were taught with a traditional curriculum (Willoughby et
al., 2012; Diamond, 2012). The research shows that some of the time and energy devoted to instructing
students in math and language skills would be beter spent in teaching 21st century executive
functioning, critical thinking, and creativity skills. Additionally, teaching academic and problem
solving skills through the use of video games and other digital media has been repeatedly demonstrated
(Clarield & Stoner, 2005; Ota & DuPaul, 2002) to be a more powerful and engaging learning tool than
what is used in the traditional classroom.

Case Study Two: Portal 2

Another commercial video game gaining adoption in classrooms for a variety of uses is Valve
Corporation’s Portal 2. Unlike Minecrat, normal play in Portal 2 has clearly-deined goals for the
players. Throughout the game, players are presented with rooms that require players to solve the puzzle
to move forward. These puzzles generally involve use of the portal gun, a gun-like apparatus that creates
portals between various wall/loor/ceiling surfaces, as well as other items in the environment, and
require cunning and creativity to be successful. The game has garnered atention from educators not
only for the innovative gameplay, but also for the robust puzzle maker, which furthers the possibilities
for educational use by allowing individuals to design custom levels. Additional support for educators
interested in using Portal 2 can be found through the Steam for Schools Teach with Portals program
(Teach with Portals, 2013).

As essentially a puzzle game, Portal 2 requires players to meet each puzzle with sharp critical thinking
skills, creativity, and cognitive lexibility. As players move through campaign gameplay, an increasing
number of elements become necessary for puzzle solving, such as propulsion gel, turret atackers, and
a thermal discouragement beam. Players must use the knowledge they have gained from previous
puzzles as these elements are reused throughout the levels while remaining lexible enough to recognize
new opportunities. In addition to single-player mode, Portal 2 also features a cooperative-campaign
mode in which two players must coordinate their actions and resources to successfully complete more

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complicated puzzles than they experienced in a single player. Throughout both the campaign modes
players continuously practice many 21st century skills while enjoying the immersive environment of
Portal 2.

The Perpetual Testing Initiative, a post-release DLC (downloadable content) for Portal 2, has further
expanded the educational potential of Portal 2. The DLC includes a puzzle maker, which allows gamers
to build their own puzzles using all of the Portal 2 elements. Portal 2’s level editor has provided an
opportunity for deeper levels of learning using Portal 2’s framework by allowing teachers and students
to develop levels and challenges using the Portal framework. Many of the puzzles built for educational
purposes have a content-speciic focus, such as teaching a lesson about physics. The nature of the game,
however, will always require players to think critically and creatively to solve the puzzle. In addition to
creating levels for one’s own enjoyment, the Perpetual Testing Initiative allows players to share their
creations with others, which allows the spread of educational uses of Portal 2.

Due to the ease of entry into puzzle making with Portal 2’s Perpetual Testing Initiative, teachers
quickly appropriated the game for educational use. Recognizing the educational potential, the Valve
Corporation created an educational game distribution unit, Steam for Schools, and began promoting the
educational use of Portal 2 through Teach with Portals. On the Teach with Portals website, instructors
can see example lesson plans and communicate with other educators through the forum and wiki. The
website provides Portal 2-using instructors with a space of their own where they can form an ainity
group to discuss and share how they teach with Portal 2. Additionally, Steam for Schools provides free
and cheap game access for teachers to use in their class (Teach with Portals, 2013), which helps lower
one of the largest barriers to using commercial games.

Assessment Considerations
Given the impending changes to educational needs, how to properly assess 21st century skills are at the
forefront of many educators’ minds. As these are skills of practice rather than content knowledge, they
can be diicult to quantify or measure reliably. Given the time required to accurately administer and
grade assessments of these skills, mass adoption of any one assessment is unlikely due to problems in
scaling. In the future, video games could be used as a means to assess 21st century skills. By requiring
use of these skills to successfully complete a particular level or challenge, the game may serve as both
the teacher and assessor of these skills. Currently, River City, an educational game designed for middle
school science, is a working example of simultaneous teaching and assessing (Silva, 2009). The best
methods of reporting to integrate into varied classroom experiences, however, are still relatively early
in development.

While educators wait for technology to catch up, a variety of standardized tests already exist that can
be used to measure students’ 21st century skills. Several tests atempt to measure more than one of the
21st century skills deined earlier in this chapter. For example, the College Work Readiness Assessment

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(CWRA) is a 90-minute exam intended to test how students manage a real-world dilemma, however
it is not focused on individual student achievements, but is a tool for class or school improvement
(Silva, 2009). The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) has developed a series
of standards for students that include all of the previously discussed 21st century skills (ISTE, 2012).
Although primarily for an undergraduate student audience, the Association of American Colleges
and Universities (AAC&U) VALUE rubrics can be useful for examining a variety of skills. Rubrics
that cover 21st century skills from AAC&U include: creative thinking, oral communication, writen
communication, critical thinking, and problem solving (AAC&U, 2014). The iSkills test combines critical
thinking with technology by requiring test takers to perform scenario-based tasks using information
provided in a digital format (Educational Testing Service, 2014).

This chapter cannot provide a comprehensive listing, but a variety of tests or rubrics are widely
available that atempt to measure speciic elements within the umbrella of 21st century skills, including
(in no particular order): Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) (Scholastic Testing Service, 2013),
California Critical Thinking Skills Test (CCTST) (Insight Assessment, 2013), Cornell Critical Thinking
Tests (Critical Thinking Co., 2014), and Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Test (Pearson Education, 2012).

Given the diiculty and cost of assessing many 21st century skills on a large scale, institutions or
individual teachers may choose to develop their own criteria for measuring these skills. Creating rubrics
for project assessment that include measurement of 21st century skills is one method to help students
recognize the importance of 21st century skills in their success and allow teachers to understand
where their students are on work/life skills. Checklists, learning contracts, or student relections are
additional methods for teachers to assess 21st century skills and emphasize the importance of their
development in these areas to students. Each of these methods are quite time consuming, however,
and with increasingly poor teacher to student ratios in many of our school systems, the feasibility for
complete assessment of these skills in the majority of classrooms is minimal (Greenstein, 2012).

Future Plans
Research into the impact of game-based learning and behavior modiication is in its infancy, and its
potential is only just now being realized. Both long-form and short-form games can have their place
in the classroom, but questions remain regarding how to maximize their usefulness. Researchers will
need to answer questions such as, “How long should children play games?” “How can they best be
integrated into a classroom curriculum?” “Are there limits to what can be transferred via game-based
learning?” and more before the mass adoption of games can occur in K-12 classrooms. Furthermore,
researchers need to further investigate the measurement of 21st century skills, especially as they relate
to gameplay, to maximize eiciency in this arena.

Whether at school or at work individuals need to have the necessary 21st century skills to contribute and
succeed. Creating new classroom strategies that support growth in creativity, collaboration, executive
functioning, and digital literacy is the charge of parents, educators, and specialized student support
staf.

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Digital tools and gaming will be a prominent feature as schools reshape the methods and means of
classroom instruction and use standards-based reforms to articulate curriculum and instruction
in the 21st century. The ubiquitous nature of cloud-based smart tools allows schools to set aside the
physical limitations of place, time, textbooks, and learning labs in favor of anywhere/anytime learning
strategies, which creates opportunities for game-based learning as homework, during the bus ride to
school, and as collaborative eforts from the comfort of a student’s home. These types of strategies will
enhance the acquisition of content and the growth of critical thinking skills, ultimately increasing the
capacity of individuals and entire systems in the name of efective learning experiences. The myriad
technological and content-speciic curricula that embed gaming opportunities allow learning through
gaming to become a permanent, possibly even dominant, component of building skills and knowledge.

Case Study Three: Short-Form Games

Given the demands of achieving the common core standards in the classroom, it can be diicult to
have the dozens, if not hundreds of hours needed to use a game such as Minecrat or Portal 2 to teach
21st century and executive function skills in a 50-minute class period. Fortunately, many short-form or
casual games can be powerful tools for the practice and acquisition of these skills. Short-form games can
have the advantage of being more targeted toward the development of a particular skill (Squire, 2008)
and for being useful over the course of one-to-two classroom sessions. The Cooney Foundation strongly
encourages schools to consider the use of short-form games for classroom teaching, as “collections of
short-form games can be particularly atractive to schools because they have the ability to it well into
the current K-12 classroom structure and are easier to align to standards” (Richards et al., 2013).

Emerging research (Kulman et al., 2011; Klingberg, 2010; Baniqued et al., 2013) suggests that the targeted
use of short-form games such as Bloxorz, Silversphere, and Blobber can improve skills such as problem
solving, processing eiciency, working memory, and cognitive lexibility. While there are limited
classroom studies, pilot research (Kulman et al., 2012) suggests a number of strategies for using casual,
short-form games for classroom teaching of 21st century and executive skills. These strategies include:

1. Engaging in warm-up activities that practice and discuss the importance

of the skill to be used in the game;
2. Demonstrating identiication and relection upon the skill through modeling
the irst part of the game for the class;
3. Encouraging teamwork and collaboration to overcome frustration of geting
stuck on challenging levels;
4. Seting speciic and achievable goals for gameplay rather than simply playing
for a speciied amount of time; and
5. Supporting engaging, high-level connection and generalization activities
at the conclusion of gameplay.

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There are many advantages to using short-form games for teaching 21st century skills in the classroom.
Because they are shorter, more deined, and less immersive, students will have the time and inclination
to discuss their strategies and thinking processes while using these games. The large number of available
games facilitates them being more readily tailored toward teaching speciic skills. Due to the variety
of short-form games, they are more readily modiiable for an individual student’s interest and skill
levels. Short-form games can be completed in a classroom period, and because most of them are freely
available on the Internet or as apps on a tablet device, they can be practiced outside of the classroom as
“homework.” Once a number of short-form games are identiied as practicing the same skill, others can
be assigned as homework to reinforce and generalize the skills. This type of repetition with diferent
games has been demonstrated to improve the transfer of game-based skills to the real world (Mackey
et al., 2011).

Best Practices
Successfully utilizing games and apps in the classroom to teach 21st century, executive functioning,
and creativity skills requires that educators familiarize themselves with some of the basic literature
on game-based learning. It is also necessary that games and apps be integrated into classroom goals
so there is a clear rationale for the use of these technologies. While teachers do not have to be experts
in playing the individual games, they should have some knowledge about game mechanics and how
a particular game can be used to practice a skill. Perhaps more important is teacher knowledge that
helps to generalize game-based learning into efective classroom learning. While classroom use
of video games and apps is in earliest stages, there are a number of promising tools to help teachers
select appropriate games, have a curriculum for using those games, and connect these games to larger
academic and learning goals.

Resources
Research Labs
The Education Arcade
GlassLab
Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21)

Researchers
Eric Klopfer
Scot Osterweil
Jennifer Grogg
Jason Haas
James Paul Gee

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Websites
The Learning Games Network (LGN) (htp://www.learninggamesnetwork.org/)
LearningWorks for Kids (LWK)(www.learningworksforkids.com)
Common Sense Media (www.commonsensemedia.org)
Graphite (by Common Sense Media) (htp://www.graphite.org/)
The Partnership for 21st Century Skills (htp://www.p21.org/)
Teach with Portals (htp://www.teachwithportals.com/)
MinecratEdu (htp://minecratedu.com)

Games
Angry Birds
Blobber
Bloxorz
Civilization
Crayon Physics (htp://www.crayonphysics.com/)
Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Metal Gear Solid
Mincecrat (htps://minecrat.net/)
Portal 2 (htp://www.thinkwithportals.com/)
Silversphere
World of Warcrat

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SECTION TWO

Design Considerations
CHAPTER 10

Methods of Design

An Overview of Game Design Techniques

Katrin Becker, Mink Hollow Media and Mount Royal University, Calgary, Alberta, Canada,
becker.minkhollow@gmail.com
Jim Parker, University of Calgary and Mink Hollow Media, Calgary, Alberta, Canada,
parker@minkhollow.ca

Key Summary Points

The design of games for learning requires knowledge of game design and of instructional
1 design. One cannot merely be layer on top of the other.

2 A learning game must be designed to meet pre-speciied learning objectives.

Games have speciic characteristics that require speciic design skills: they are entertaining
3 as well as instructional, interactive, visually appealing, and oten replayable.

Key Terms
Edutainment
Design
Models
Instructional design
Playtesting
Rapid prototyping
Instructional objectives

Introduction
Design is an applied endeavor: to design something one must have extensive knowledge of the thing
being designed. Design is also a complex activity and while each design discipline shares some aspect
with most other design disciplines, each also has important distinctions. It is simply not possible to be
an expert designer in the general sense. Knowing how to design children’s clothing or buildings does
not qualify one to design theater sets or costumes, although that knowledge may well help in some
situations. While digital games arguably share elements with other kinds of digital objects as well as

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with traditional games (such as board and card games), neither sotware designers nor traditional game
designers are necessarily equipped to design digital games, although, just as in the previous example,
that knowledge may well help.

To complicate maters further, designing a game for learning is not simply a mater of designing a game
and adding some learning elements. Designing games for learning is a goal-driven activity. When we
design a game for learning, we obviously have some learning goal in mind, such as learning about
Mendelian genetics, for example.

Most design disciplines have various models or theories intended to help in the design process, and
several of the ones for designing games are presented in this chapter. Simply knowing a design model,
however, is usually insuicient preparation unless you also have experience actually building that
thing, or at the very least using it. Becoming skilled at design always requires hands-on experience.
When designing games for learning, this means that designers must play games as well as design them.

Finally, games for learning combine at least two distinct design disciplines: game design and
instructional design, and some kinds of games also include aspects of simulation, which necessitates
the involvement of a third design discipline, namely simulation design (Becker & Parker, 2011). The
approaches taken for each can be very diferent so combining them is not straightforward, as will be
seen. This chapter will examine some of the issues facing designers of games for learning and will
highlight and discuss several models currently used to design these games.

Designing a game
The design of a digital game involves at least two design disciplines: game design and sotware design
(i.e., knowledge of programming, the design of computer algorithms, and simulation design) and while
many design models can be found for sotware (Budgen, 2003), far fewer exist for game design. Salen
& Zimmerman’s (2004) Rules of Play and Fullerton’s Game Design Workshop (2008) approach the game
design process, but do not include a concise design model. According to Fullerton, games are formal
systems that include a variety of elements, including, but not limited to: objectives, procedures, rules,
resources, boundaries, conlicts, and dramatic elements.

In addition to being games, digital games are also sotware systems, and are made up of computer
algorithms. Therefore, we would expect a game design model to include some elements of sotware
design.

Designing instruction
Instructional design is the practice of designing and creating instructional interventions and the
development of models and frameworks to support the process of instructional design is common.
Even those who advocate for the most structured approaches will admit that such models are oten

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best suited as a support system for practitioners new to the ield. Many experts still do make use of
these models, but when they do, they oten use them as rough guides, rather than prescriptions (Kenny,
Zhang, Schwier, & Campbell, 2005).

In instructional design, there are well-known models that promote a fairly linear approach to design,
such as Gagné’s Nine Events of Instruction (Gagné, Briggs, & Wager, 1992), while others suggest more
of an iterative approach (Dick, Carey, & Carey, 2001), and still others advocate an agile one (Piskurich,
2000). Briely, Gagné’s Nine Events of Instruction are: 1) Gaining Atention, 2) Informing Learners of
the Objective, 3) Stimulating Recall, 4) Presenting the Stimulus, 5) Providing Learning Guidance, 6)
Eliciting Performance, 7) Providing Feedback, 8) Assessing Performance, and 9) Enhancing Retention
and Transfer. Many instructional design models have similar elements and the well-known ADDIE
template (see Figure 1) that oten forms the basis for these models (Molenda, 2003) still serves as a
reasonable common denominator for all. The acronym became popular much later than the process
itself (Branson, Rayner, & Cox, 1975) and in spite of being overly simpliied, it remains a very popular
model in professional training and should in some form be included in any design framework intended
to support the design of a game for learning.

Figure 1. The ADDIE Instructional Design Model

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The ive parts of the ADDIE model are outlined below:

1. Analysis: The process for deining desired outcomes.

2. Design: The process of determining how desired outcomes are to be accomplished based on
supporting system(s) needed, required resources, timetable, and budget.
3. Development: The process of establishing requisite system(s) and acquiring needed
resources to atain desired outcomes.
4. Implementation: The process of implementing design and development plans within the
real-world environment.
5. Evaluation: The process of measuring the efectiveness and eiciency of the implemented
system and using collected data as opportunities for improvement in closing gaps between
actual and desired outcomes.

What’s important in a game for learning?

Serious games are games designed for purposes other than, or in addition to entertainment. Serious
games, of which educational games are a subset, are distinct from traditional entertainment games
in a number of ways, and these diferences inluence design. For instance, in a traditional game the
key question is “Is it fun?” Fun is an ill-deined characteristic and is hard to design for, but it is a key
motivator in the purchase and evaluation of a game. In an educational game fun is important too, but
instead of relating to game sales, it concerns the delivery of the learning goals. An educational game
that is fun will be played voluntarily and for a longer time, allowing longer exposure to the educational
material being presented.

The set of learning objectives is lacking in a traditional game, but must be irst and foremost present in
an educational one. They must guide the design by providing an initial framework within which the
game is played. For example, a game that teaches about sea life is likely to take place on a beach or under
water. The learning objectives also provide a set of underlying assumptions that cannot be violated.
The previously mentioned game about sea life must portray an accurate representation of the facts
with respect to the organisms seen within the game. We can play fast and loose with other aspects of
the game, though: players might be able to breathe the underwater or use hypothetical vehicles. Table 1
provides a summary of the key diferences between commercial games and serious games.

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Table 1. Commercial vs. Serious Games

Diferences Commercial Game Design Serious Game Design

Concept Catalyst Core Amusement Performance or Knowledge Gap

Key Question Is it fun? Does it meet learning objectives?

Focus Player Experience (the “how”) Content / Message (the “what”)

Content / Method Method is primary (content may be irrelevant) Method secondary to content
(game as receptacle?)

Vantage Point Entertainment and Sotware Engineering Special Interest Group (SIG)
(e.g., medicine, military, social change)

Fidelity Self-consistent, otherwise irrelevant Faithfulness to message essential

Credentials Industry SIG (and industry)

Learning game design—what do we need?

Instructional designers say all we need is instructional design (Gunter, Kenny, & Vick, 2006); game
designers say all we need is game design—even Gee implies this (Gee, 2003). The ongoing batle between
these two groups, while sotening, is still evident in the literature. Instructional designers claim that
game designers suck all the learning out of games and game designers claim the other side is to blame:
that instructional designers suck all the fun out of games (McDowell, Cannon-Bowers, & Prensky,
2005). There is truth to all four claims:

1. “Instructional Design (ID) is all we need.” There is a well-researched body of knowledge

in ID on what works and how to design instruction (Ely & Plomp, 1996).
2. “Game design is all we need.” Many commercial games already do an excellent job of
teaching players what they need to know to win the game (Becker, 2008b).
3. “Game designers suck all the learning out of games.” Game designers without experience
in education make educational games that are hollow—they end up taking their current
favorite game and efectively “skinning” it with an educational veneer (“eduication”)
(Becker, 2008a).
4. “Instructional designers suck all the fun out of games.” Instructional designers without
game experience also skin, but they do it the other way around—they wrap a game around
some instruction. Edutainment could be gamiication at its worst. (Van Eck, 2011).

The solution is the development of approaches that are a true synergy of both instructional design and
of game design (see Figure 2).

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 Figure 2. Serious instructional design (ID)

Case Study One: Pavlov’s Dog

As a good example of an educational game, consider Pavlov’s Dog. This game is quite clear about the
educational objectives: to answer the questions “What’s a conditioned relex?”, “What’s a stimulus?”,
and “How can you learn a conditioned relex?” The game’s object is to train Pavlov’s dog to respond to a
signal that it will associate with being fed, just as in the scientiic tale.

When the game begins, a cartoon dog is seen sleeping beside a food dish. On the let of the screen are
food items that can be dragged into the dish using the mouse, such as bananas, drumsticks, and hot
dogs. Along the botom of the screen are icons representing three things that can make a sound: a horn,
a drum, and a bell. The player needs to condition the dog to one of the sounds by clicking on a sound
maker, thereby playing a relevant sound and waking the dog. Then, the player must quickly drag a
food item into the dish. The dog will not eat the bananas, but gobbles up any of the other items, then
goes back to sleep. Ater three repetitions of this process, the sound will result in the dog waking up
and salivating without the food being present. When this occurs, the player wins, and the dog appears
holding a diploma. The other sounds simply wake the dog. Feeding the dog without the sound has no
efect, other than perhaps making the dog fat.

The game has a selection of educational material associated with it, about conditioned responses, Pavlov
himself, and the Nobel Prize that Pavlov won in 1904. The art is cartoon style, which is appropriate, and
the sounds are simple and to the point. There is no music. A key to this style of game is to focus on one
educational issue, which this game does well.

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Key Frameworks
There is a dearth of design models for educational game design. Instead, what is most commonly found
are guidelines or design issues, which amount to things that should be kept in mind while designing
such a game. These can be useful, but assume that one already knows how to design a game, and that
an educational game is a game with extra conditions and content.

For example, Aldrich (2004) suggested four important criteria to be considered when designing
educational simulations:

1. Scenarios must be authentic and relevant.

2. Scenarios should be compelling for the students. For example, student age and background
must be considered.
3. Scenarios should ofer many choices.
4. Scenarios should be replayable. The implication is that there will be some degree of
variation or randomness in the decisions that the game makes.

One can see how to use these ideas in an educational game at the design level, but they are guidelines
to use while designing, not a design strategy per se. There are too many of these guidelines to list all
of them, but some are fundamental. If the game is to be used in a classroom then it is obviously a good
idea to take into account that environment, and to ask teachers for their input. Kirriemuir (2005) did just
that, and summarized the following requirements based on speaking with teachers:

1. The game should come with classroom plans and examples, preferably tested by teachers.
Teachers work very hard and have litle time to try to igure out how to use a game in a
classroom, especially if the designers have not provided assistance.
2. The game should be able to be started at a point useful to the teacher. Daily lessons can
begin in many diferent ways and can end in random places. Teachers need to be able to
pick up where they let of. They also need to be able to assign homework or in-class tasks.
3. Games should be “light,” in that long expositions, videos, and narrations should be kept to a
minimum or removed altogether.
4. The game must be accurate in the process and facts it conveys, and should avoid political
or scientiic controversy. A game can remove the uninteresting parts of a simulation if they
are not essential. For example, time can be speeded up.

In fact, Kirriemuir was discussing how to use pre-existing games (called commercial of-the-shelf
games) in a classroom, but the rules can apply to a game being designed for the purpose. The guidelines
are those that any instructional designer would probably know, and so a key lesson is to include
instructional designers on the development team at an early stage—at the very beginning, if possible.

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Four Frameworks
Chris Crawford’s Game Design Model
One of the earliest game design models published is that of Chris Crawford, a game designer perhaps
best known for his game Balance of Power (1985). In his 1982 book, The Art of Computer Game Design
(Crawford), he outlines seven main phases in the design process:

1. Choosing a goal and a topic (Objective and premise)

2. Research and preparation
3. Design phase
a. Input output structure (Interface)
b. Game structure (gameplay and game mechanics)
c. Program structure
d. Evaluation of the design
4. Pre-programming phase
5. Programming phase
6. Playtesting phase
7. Post-mortem

This process was created in the context of entertainment games and acknowledges the fact that a game
is a program (or a system of programs) and is useful for initiating the process of designing a game for
learning.

Game Design by Brainstorming

Jesse Schell is a game designer and researcher who has developed a framework described in detail
in his book, The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses (2008). Schell’s approach involves examining
games from various perspectives, such as the theme, characters, player’s experience, aesthetics, and
technology used. As a supplement, Schell created a deck of cards printed with questions intended to
help designers remember the principles associated with the lenses.

There are also other decks of cards designed to help people brainstorm their game designs, such as
Titlfactor’s Grow-A-Game cards, available in three variations: Apprentice, Classic, and Expert (Belman,
Nissenbaum, Flanagan, & Diamond, 2011). This deck consists of 86 cards containing words and phrases
intended to help designers create game concepts that include oral, social, and political values. The
Design for Playful Impact research program at the Utrecht School of the Arts has taken the concept of
brainstorming cards to another level by turning their brainstorming cards into an actual game, where
players play as game designers who follow the instructions given to them on the cards to produce game
concepts and designs (Zaman, et al., 2012).

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Rapid iterative prototyping
The term rapid prototyping originally referred to the techniques used to build models or examples of
physical objects, like machine parts, buildings, and devices. Sotware developers, who created prototypes
of sotware modules that are part of a larger system, also used this process. Rapid prototyping has the
advantage of providing a visible, if non-functional, object that can be evaluated to see whether it is what
the designers and users have in mind. This method was extended using typical sotware development
methods to become rapid application development (RAD), a scheme that abandons signiicant advanced
planning and begins projects by building rough prototypes, then reining them by interleaving stages of
design and prototyping. The inal prototype ends up being the product.

A computer game certainly has a sotware component, but is a more complex object than merely a
computer program. A game is more like a motion picture or television program, requiring technical
expertise, but also writers, artists, musicians, and designers. RAD only works for an educational game if
a creative team irst outlines possible directions of the game, using the learning objectives as guidelines.
A small set of initial prototypes are developed, which are largely non-functional game units, but with
including art and sound in the proposed style, and basic interactions to take the evaluators from game
scenario to game scenario. We can think of these prototypes as instantiations of the high concept
design for each of the proposals.

It is essential that each of these prototypes begin with considerations based on the learning objectives.
Games generally begin with a set of ideas drawn for the designer’s experience, similar, one would
imagine, to the process a novelist or scriptwriter would use in their work. An educational game must
begin by including the material to be taught as an integral component or theme. Imagine that the goal is
to expose the students to the consequences of Newton’s Law: F=ma. This particular learning objective
does not limit the creativity of the game designer because there is a vast collection of interesting objects
in the real world that interact using this rule. Games based on teaching about Newton’s Law could
include: ball games, including snooker; car and racing games; spacecrat; canons and games involving
ballistics; and a host of other design concepts. A second aspect of the design is that the game should
expose the learning objective (the underlying physical law in this case) instead of hiding it. Most games
use Newtonian physics, but do not show the player explicitly what is happening. Collisions, for example,
take place in games and are examples of this physical law, but do not show the player how it works or
how to control it. Control is a key part of the learning experience.

The team evaluates the prototypes and selects one for development. At this point, a more detailed
design document is prepared, and as this happens, more game prototypes are constructed and tested.
At all times a playable version of the game is kept available for evaluation. Some parts of the game are
more complete than others, of course, and it is important to realize that the fact that parts are advanced
while others should not afect the basic design. The developers must be prepared to discard working
parts of the game if they become obsolete by virtue of design changes. In fact, this is one disadvantage
of this scheme is that sometimes work is done that needs to be discarded.

187
Evaluation of the prototypes is done at multiple levels:

1. As sotware: Does the game sotware work as intended?

2. As learning: Are the objectives embodied in the games and are they efective?
3. As art: Is the visual and auditory style consistent and efective?
4. As a game: Is it entertaining and fun to play?

The game testing process must evaluate all of these things and the results should be used to improve
the next version.

Serious Instructional Design Model

Games and instruction are oten designed from diferent starting points. Because there is oten a need
for accuracy in the models used for educational games it is necessary to examine design approaches
in simulation as well as games and instruction. Simulation design includes elements that address
approaches to data collection as well as data validation. Games are oten built up from a single core
idea—some experience, activity, or idea the designer inds interesting. Simulations, on the other hand
are typically built to answer some sort of “what if?” question or to create some sort of environment
that can be explored or experienced. Finally, instruction is designed from the starting point of some
identiied performance gap or a gap in understanding. Each ield has its approaches to design and no
single approach is likely to be able to account for the complexity of designing something that is, in
essence, all three. The Serious Instructional Design Model was created as a synergy of all three. This
model combines Chris Crawford’s game design (Crawford, 1982); Zeigler’s simulation design (Zeigler,
1976); and Rothwell & Kazana’s instructional design models (Rothwell & Kazanas, 1998) to produce a
new design model that is a blend of the important elements of each.

188
© K.Becker 2013
Figure 3. A schematic of The Serious Instruction Design Model.

189
The following are the components of The Serious Instructional Design Model:

1. The discovery phase: This is the initial phase of the process and includes all the usual
needs analysis, and high-level outlines that will be needed later on. Since the game being
design is the instructional strategy, it is possible that the bulk of the instructional needs
analysis was completed before we even got to the point of knowing we wanted to make a
game.
2. Research and preparation: This combines simulation-style data gathering, as well
as deciding which details will need to be accurate and which can be omited or even
transformed.
3. The design phase: This is where the simulation or game will take shape. It is important
at this phase to maintain connections between the overarching goals, which are
instructional, and the simulation details or gameplay. Although it is not necessary
for every aspect of the simulation or game to further the instructional objectives, it is
necessary that they coincide oten enough to ensure that the time spent in the simulation
or game is time well spent.
4. Creation of a conceptual model: This is not normally part of an instructional design
model but it does have a counterpart in game design, namely the irst playables and proofs
of concept. This is efectively the last stage where it will be feasible to back up for major
revisions if problems are detected. The outcome of this phase will be the detailed design
document and it should incorporate both the design elements of the simulation or game
and the checkpoints needed to ensure that this solution has a reasonable likelihood of
delivering on its instructional objectives.
5. Playtesting: Although the inal phase is the only one that explicitly lists playtesting, it
is highly recommended that playtesting be performed as early and as oten as possible.
The full educational potential of the game may not be testable in the early stages, but its
playability can be, and that is crucial.

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Case Study Two: Fission Impossible
The game Fission Impossible is an example of a less successful educational game than Pavlov’s Dog. The
game is intended to explain the basic concepts behind nuclear ission. Fission is a process that takes
place at the atomic level. Essentially, large atoms such as Uranium are struck very hard by a subatomic
particle called a neutron. The Uranium atom breaks apart, releasing energy, some new elements, and
some more neutrons. These new neutrons strike more Uranium atoms, which also break apart, thus
creating a chain reaction if enough Uranium atoms are in close proximity. A type of Uranium dubbed
U-235 will do this, whereas U-238 will not.

In the game, the opening screen shows a U-235 atom (a green sphere) within a semi-circle of black
circular objects, which turn out to be U-238 atoms, below which we see an orange sphere that represents
a neutron. Immediately the neutron begins to drop of of the screen, and the play must use the arrow
keys to guide it to strike the U-235 atom. This is hard to do, as some force seems to be pulling the neutron
to the botom of the screen. If the neutron goes outside of a circle of ixed radius centered at the U-235
atom, the game restarts. This circle is invisible until the neutron leaves it, so it is a very frustrating
process: the player must ight the invisible force using arrow keys, not go outside the invisible circle,
and hit the green sphere. When the player inally succeeds, there is a brief animation of spheres moving
about, but nothing like what one would expect from a chain reaction; more like bubbles, really. Now the
player is in level 2. There are now even more black U-238 atoms protecting the target, but otherwise no
change.

Educationally, the game does not really relect the physics of the situation. There is no chain reaction,
no breaking apart of the U-235 into components, and the U-238 does not protect the U-235 from impact
as it does in the game. As a game it is exceptionally frustrating. At the beginning, the neutron falls of
of the screen ive to six times before a typical player igures out how to prevent it. They then guide the
neutron outside of the invisible circle many times and hit the U-238 many more times before iguring
out the puzzle. At level two, the puzzle is harder, and when they inevitably fail that task the game starts
over at level one; which makes the game tedious. The game cannot be started at a teacher-speciied
location, making it harder for a teacher to use efectively. The art is simple and clear, but the music is
banal and repetitive, encouraging the player to turn the sound of. There is a pop-up window giving
science information, but it is confusing and incomplete. Moreover, the learning objectives are not met
by this game’s design. A player can get through it (eventually) without reading anything or learning
anything.

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Key Findings
The design of a game for learning requires a synergy of multiple design disciplines: instructional
design, simulation design, and game design. These design approaches cannot simply be layered upon
one another, but instead must be combined to form a new approach that relects a true synergy. That
there is no single approach that is generally accepted relects two key facts about learning game design.
The irst is that design generally is as much an art as it is engineering or science, and the moment a box
is drawn around it as a process and rules are created, a limit is deined concerning what can be done.
In other words, certain ideas and games are likely to be excluded by a restrictive design process, in
other words. The earlier the formal design method begins in the process, the more possibilities will be
discarded.

The second fact to consider is that games for learning should be designed with a learning model in mind,
and modern instructional theories are still not complete. Indeed, there are disagreements between
them that should be resolved. A game design process should collaborate in many speciic ways with
an ID model. Formal design processes help novices much more than experts, and so it would seem to
be valuable to integrate a speciic ID model with a learning game design so that novices have a place to
begin. As experience is gathered, an expert will pick and choose among methods as being more or less
relevant for a speciic task.

As an example, consider the RETAIN model (Gunter, Kenny, & Vick, 2007) for game design. This has
been devised speciically using Gagné’s Nine Events of Instruction (Gagné, Briggs, & Wager, 1992) and
follows it very closely by providing essentially one step for each event (see Table 2).

Table 2. A comparison of Gagne’s Nine Events of Instruction and the RETAIN model.
Gagné, Briggs, & Wager (1992) Gunter, Kenny, & Vick (2007)
1 Gain atention Game focus/Hook describes the essence of the game and provide
an entry point for play.

2 Describe the goal Didactic focus deines the subject mater to be taught and
provide an entry point for instruction.

3 Stimulate recall of prior knowledge Provide references to beyond-the-object reference sources that
inform the pedagogic content development for the game.

4 Present the material to be learned Game progression describes the individual game units (this
process also has nine stages)

5 Provide guidance for learning Deine the critical path for gameplay and didactic resolution

6 Elicit performance practice Deine pedagogic elements to be used

7 Provide informative feedback Describe how formative feedback will be distributed during each
unit of gameplay.

8 Assess performance test, if the lesson has been Describe how summative feedback will be distributed during
learned. Also sometimes gives general progress each unit of gameplay and at the conclusion.
information.

9 Enhance retention and transfer Describe how replay will be encouraging to assist in retention
and to remediate shortcomings.

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In the RETAIN model, the game design steps described are in lock step with the ID model and this
provides a very speciic and detailed plan for someone starting out on a new design. Ater some years
of experience, the designer would almost certainly use a large variety of ID models and ind ways to
incorporate the game design principles learned into the new (perhaps one-time-only) scheme.

Assessment Considerations
Educational research
An educational game can only be considered a success if it assists in communicating the target facts and
processes to the student. The design cannot really be assessed independently from the implementation,
as with any other educational experience. Fortunately, the ield of educational research is well developed
and includes multiple methodologies for examining everything from individual elements of a lesson to
complete curricula.

People oten ask for proof of a game’s efectiveness if it is to be used for learning, especially in a formal
seting. It is possible to use many of the commonly use research methods, such as pre- and post-testing,
case studies, and surveys. If the design of a game for learning needs to be a mix of multiple design
approaches, so must the evaluation of a game for learning also include methodologies speciically
tailored to games for learning. A recent examination by Mayer et al. (2013) suggests that oten those
proposing to use a game for learning already have their own procedures and preferences for evaluations,
which in some cases may even be mandatory (Mayer et al., 2013). There are some common elements that
should be included in any examination of a game’s efectiveness. These include:

1. Demographic information about the players and context.

2. The players’ prior experience and knowledge.
3. Measures of in-game performance, whether collected within the game itself, or externally
via observations or data collection.
4. Aspects of the gameplay itself (which is explained further in the next section).
5. Player satisfaction.
6. First order learning, which is short-term, usually measured on an individual player basis,
and usually involves self-reported and measured changes in knowledge, atitudes, skills, or
behavior.
7. Second order learning, which is longer-term, and can be self-reported, as well as measured
changes in the larger group or organization.

Unfortunately, as in almost all research that atempts to measure the efectiveness of an instructional
intervention, it is rarely possible to create the kinds of controlled conditions necessary for conclusive
results.

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Playtesting
Playtesting is fundamental to the development process in the game industry generally. The goal is
to ind out whether the game is fun to play, what parts are not fun, what parts are hard or confusing,
and whether the players are generally pleased with the result. The process varies from developer to
developer, but essentially involves watching typical players interact with the game. A small set of people
in the correct demographic group for the game are recruited, are given the game and its instructions,
and then told to start playing. Video recordings are oten made of these play sessions for later analysis,
and the game itself if oten instrumented to record player actions, speeds, and strategies. Sometimes
a questionnaire or interview is done ater a play session, but it is important not to guide the players in
advance of play or the responses might not be useful.

A playtesting session can be done as soon as a playable game exists, which should be early in the process,
and playtesting should be repeated regularly. Ater each session the results should be examined to see if
there are any problems in the design, and those should be repaired and tested in the next sessions. The
idea is not to collect statistics but to gather impressions. The concept of “fun” has eluded deinition, so
playtesting enables the design to see whether actual players ind the game entertaining, and where they
have failed. Fun is hard to deine, but most people know when they are having it.

For an educational game, playtesting is done to determine whether the target audience will be engaged
with the game. If they are not, then the educational objectives will be missed. Fun, rather than being
the opposite of learning, may well be the human’s natural reaction to discovering something new. The
playtest should indicate the places within the game where players have diiculties, and also those
places that are most enjoyable. Both can be used to improve the next iteration. There is a variety of
guides on how to conduct a play test to be found on the Internet and some quite valuable books on the
subject (e.g., Schultz).

Future Needs
Many of the design methods describe here do not provide access to most issues important to a game
designer, which includes maters of theme, play, and narrative. These are most frequently described
vaguely as “describe the essence of the game,” but in fact game design as a speciic discipline concerns
itself primarily with those things. Schell’s design scheme considers those maters as a speciic issue,
and he does so as a more or less random juxtaposition of objects and activities. For example, there may
be some game themes and mechanics that are beter in the context of a game to teach history, and
those may be diferent themes and mechanics than what would be used to teach physics. It would be
useful to know how mechanics and other aspects of games inluence learning. A computer game can
keep track of everything a user (player) does. A very important feature of a game designed for learning
is to provide feedback and an essential part of research into these games is an assessment of their
efectiveness. We need more work on the automatic evaluation of games based on collected data and on
determining exactly what feedback is best for the player.

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Best Practices
It is critical when designing a game for learning to speciically consider the instructional objectives.
As a key side issue, it is probably important for these objectives to be given to the game designers
rather than for the designers to come up with them. These seem like obvious statements, but are all
too frequently overlooked or underestimated. The objectives must be kept in mind when examining
playable versions of a game. It is very easy to get caught up in the compelling aspects of a game and not
pay suicient atention to the original goals. The fact that games are compelling is why we want to use
them, but design time is wasted if they do not help teach what is wanted.

If measurements are important, decide what measures of success will be used before the game is
designed. A good scientiic experiment always does this, of course, but it also means that you can do a
beter job of building in ways to collect data to support the evaluation. Games can generate a lot of data.
It is important to be selective.

A complete game may teach many aspects of a subject, but each speciic scenario or level should focus
on just one of two things. Keep the situation, rules, and scoring system simple, or the learning objectives
will be confused with the game objectives. Doing this makes evaluation and feedback possible and
allows players to make a logical progression through the material.

Game designers know how players play games and how to engage them. Players rarely read game
instructions, so create a tutorial level that clearly describes the scenario and the game rules and
mechanics, and at a level that can be understood by the intended audience. Listen to game design
experts with respect to player behaviors. For example, a good game can be replayed many times. A game
designer knows how to do that, and if an educational game gets replayed then learning is reinforced.

Highly interactive games are beter than ones that are not. For example, games based on questions and
answers (e.g., Jeopardy style) are relatively passive and are nor really much beter than a Q&A session in
a classroom. Games that allow players to discover things are a more realistic presentation and require
action on the part of the player.

The actions performed by the player in the game should be related to those used in the activity to be
learned. For instance, some games have pop-up questions during play for the learner to answer. This
never happens in real life. It is beter if the questions are integrated into the game so that the player
answers then because the answer is required by the play. An equation may need to be solved because
the answer helps in navigation, for example, and not just because it is a math game.

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Resources
Related Researchers
Katrin Becker
Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen
Mary Flanagan
Tracy Fullerton
James Paul Gee
Carrie Heeter
Clark N. Quinn
Katie Salen
David W. Schafer
Kurt Squire

Books
Adams, E., & Rollings, A. (2010). Fundamentals of Game Design (2nd ed.). Berkeley, CA: New Riders.
Becker, K., & Parker, J. R. (2011). The Guide to Computer Simulations and Games: Wiley.
Brathwaite, B., & Schreiber, I. (2012). Breaking into the game industry : advice for a successful career from those
who have done it. Boston, Mass.: Course Technology, Cengage Learning.
Crawford, C. (1982). The Art of Computer Game Design (Kindle ed.): Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
Fullerton, T., Swain, C., & Hofman, S. (2008). Game Design Workshop : A Playcentric Approach to Creating
Innovative Games (2nd ed.). Boston: Elsevier Morgan Kaufmann.
Koster, R. (2004). Theory of Fun for Game Design. Scotsdale, AZ: Paraglyph Press
Quinn, C. N. (2005). Engaging Learning: Designing e-Learning Simulation Games: John Wiley & Sons Canada,
Ltd.
Salen, K., & Zimmerman, E. (2006). The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press.
Schell, J. (2008). The Art Of Game Design : A Book of Lenses. Amsterdam ; Boston: Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann.

Reports & Papers

Pinelle, D., Wong, N., & Stach, T. (2008). Heuristic evaluation for games: Usability principle for video
game design. Paper presented at the The 26th ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems (CHI ‘06).

Games, Game Engines, Design Tools

Construct 2 (www.scirra.com)
Fission Impossible (game to teach basic principles of ission reactions)
(htp://www.wonderville.ca/asset/ission-impossible)
GameMaker (engine)
Pavlov’s Dog (game to teach basics of classical conditioning)
(htp://www.nobelprize.org/educational/medicine/pavlov/)
Processing (programming language)
Unity (engine)
UDK (Unreal Development Kit)
Game Seeds (brainstorming card game)
Grow-A-Game (brainstorming cards)

196
References
Aldrich, C. (2004). Simulations and the future of learning. San Francisco, CA: Pfeifer.
Becker, K. (2008a). Design paradox: Instructional game design. Paper presented at the CNIE Conference 2008,
“Reaching New Heights: Learning Innovation.”
Becker, K. (2008b). Video game pedagogy: Good games = good pedagogy. In C. T. Miller (Ed.), Games: Their
Purpose and Potential in Education (in press) New York: Springer Publishing.
Becker, K., & Parker, J. R. (2011). The guide to computer simulations and games. Wiley.
Belman, J., Nissenbaum, H., Flanagan, M., & Diamond, J. (2011). Grow-A-Game: A tool for values conscious design
and analysis of digital games.
Branson, R. K., Rayner, G. T., & Cox, J. L. (1975). Interservice procedures for instructional systems development:
Executive summary and model (Contract Number N-61339-73-C-0150 ed.). Ft. Benning, Georgia: Center
for Educational Technology at Florida State University for the U.S. Army Combat Arms Training Board.
Budgen, D. (2003). Sotware design (2nd ed.). New York: Addison-Wesley.
Crawford, C. (1982). The art of computer game design. Available from
htp://www.vancouver.wsu.edu/fac/peabody/game-book/Coverpage.html
Dick, W., Carey, L., & Carey, J. O. (2001). The systematic design of instruction (5th ed.). New York: Longman.
Ely, D. P., & Plomp, T. (1996). Classic writings on instructional technology. Englewood, Colo.: Libraries Unlimited.
Fullerton, T., Swain, C., & Hofman, S. (2008). Game design workshop: A playcentric approach to creating
innovative games (2nd ed.). Boston: Elsevier Morgan Kaufmann.
Gagné, R. M., Briggs, L. J., & Wager, W. W. (1992). Principles of instructional design (4th ed.).
Fort Worth, Tex.: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers.
Gee, J. P. (2003). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy (1st ed.).
New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Gunter, G., Kenny, R., & Vick, E. (2006, April 6-8, 2006). A case for formal design paradigm for serious games.
Paper presented at the CODE—Human Systems; Digital Bodies, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio.
Gunter, G., Kenny, R., & Vick, E. (2007). Taking educational games seriously: using the RETAIN model to
design endogenous fantasy into standalone educational games. Educational Technology Research and
Development. December 2008, Volume 56, Issue 5-6, pp 511-537.
Kenny, R. F., Zhang, Z., Schwier, R. A., & Campbell, K. (2005). A review of what instructional designers do:
Questions answered and questions not asked. Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology, 31(1), 9-26.
Kirriemuir, John (2005). A survey of COTS games used in education, presented at the Serious Games Summit/
Game Developers Conference, San Francisco.
Mayer, I., Bekebrede, G., Harteveld, C., Warmelink, H., Zhou, Q., Ruijven, T., et al. (2013).
The research and evaluation of serious games: Toward a comprehensive methodology.
British Journal of Educational Technology.
McDowell, P., Cannon-Bowers, J. A., & Prensky, M. (2005). The role of pedagogy and educational design in
serious games, Serious Games Summit. Arlington, VA.
Molenda, M. (2003). In search of the elusive ADDIE Model. Performance Improvement.
Piskurich, G. M. (2000). Rapid instructional design: learning ID fast and right. San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-Bass.
Rothwell, W. J., & Kazanas, H. C. (1998). Mastering the instructional design process: a systematic approach (2nd
ed.). San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-Bass.
Salen, K., & Zimmerman, E. (2004). Rules of play: game design fundamentals. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Schell, J. (2008). The art of game design: a book of lenses. Boston: Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann.

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Schultz, Charles and Bryant, Robert. (2012). Game testing: All in one (2nd. ed.). Dulles, VA: Mercury Learning and
Information.
Van Eck, R. (Producer). (2011, Mar 10, 2011) The gaming of educational transformation TEDxManitoba. YouTube
Video retrieved from htp://youtu.be/khJDLo0oMX4
Zaman, B., Poels, Y., Sulmon, N., Annema, J.-H., Verstraete, M., Cornillie, F., et al. (2012). Concepts and mechanics
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CHAPTER 11

Audience

Designing for the Audience:

Past Practices and Inclusive Considerations
Gabriela T. Richard, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S., gric@upenn.edu

Key Summary Points

Most research on designing for the audience centers on understanding personality, pleasure
1 preferences, or player motivations. Structural and dramatic elements are integral to driving
motivation and constructing game pleasures.

The physical and cognitive abilities of players should also be important when considering
2 your audience.

Design should be inclusive in ways that look beyond demographics and assumed diferences
3 (such as gender diferences). Particular atention should be paid to increasing diversity in
representation, and decreasing bias and harassment in play.

Design should consider how to limit player avoidance of game or learning mechanics (through
4 cheating or exploiting) and should crat ways to vary how players use game afordances and
solve problems.

Key Terms
STEM Audience
User research Player types
Motivation Pleasure
Game structure Representation
Inclusive design Gender
Race Ethnicity
Sexuality Identity
Ability

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Introduction
In Fullerton’s (2005) Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games,
she reminds us that the role of a game designer, before anything else, is to be an advocate for the
player—the audience (Fullerton, 2008). Making the audience central to the design process can be
diicult, however, especially when there are multiple demands during production and development,
and multiple perspectives on the design team.

The interesting and challenging thing about game development teams is the
sheer breadth of types of people who work on them. From the hardcore computer
scientists, who might be designing the AI or graphic displays, to the talented
illustrators and animators who bring the characters to life, to the money-minded
executives and business managers who deliver the game to its players, the range
of personalities is Incredible… A big part of [a game designer’s job]… is to serve as
a sort of universal translator, making sure that all of these diferent groups are, in
fact, working on the same game… Games are fragile systems, and each element is
inextricably linked to the others, so a change in one variable can send disruptive
ripples throughout. (Fullerton, 2008, pp. 6-7)

We oten discuss game design from the perspective of the experiences we are creating and not from the
perspective of the audience. As Fullerton points out, however, while it can be easy to get caught up with
new graphics and features, the balance of all of these features into a solidly playable system is what
actually excites and hooks players.

Game designers ask players to engage in Huizinga’s “magic circle,” where game rules create opportunities
for play within the safety of constraints; players can perform actions and see things from perspectives
they are normally unable to do in the conines of the “real world” (Salen & Zimmerman, 2003). The
kinds of actions aforded in the circle are especially powerful from an educational perspective because
learners can take on roles, simulate experiences, and interact with and view phenomena that would be
diicult otherwise (e.g., Gee, 2004; Squire, 2011).

As we think about education and learners, some of the challenges faced by commercial games when
it comes to designing for audiences become especially important to consider. The next section will
expand on this further as we examine the prevailing theories and perspectives around designing for
the audience.

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Case Study One: Gone Home as an English Text (Writen by Paul Darvasi)
Gone Home is a irst-person exploration game that was used as a text in three senior high school English
classes at Royal St. Georges’ College, an all-boys independent school in Toronto, Canada. Fity-seven
students played the game and then carried out relevant activities and responses over the course of a
two-week unit. Prior to starting the unit, players were sent redemption codes that allowed them to load
the game to their laptops. Students played independently and progressed at their own pace.

Set in 1995, Gone Home is an interactive and non-linear narrative that develops through the player’s
exploration of a family home. Players reconstruct the family drama by piecing together documents,
artifacts and personal possessions they ind around the old mansion. The central story revolves around
a teenage girl’s adolescent romance and coming out story, while her father struggles with his past and a
failed writing career, and her hardworking mother negotiates the temptations of an extramarital afair.

The game substitutes a traditional English text and was implemented without modiication. Both
its content and functionality make it a relevant selection for classroom use. Unlike many long-form
games with a narrative focus, Gone Home can be easily played in less than three hours, has low
hardware requirements, and has a user-friendly interface. The game does away with levels, points and
achievements, which make for a smooth and non-competitive gameplay experience. It is also scrubbed
of gratuitous sex and violence, but retains an “edge” by virtue of the house’s gloomy and haunting
atmosphere. Its focus on character development through environmental storytelling naturally lends
itself to a consideration of the seting, characters, perspectives and non-linear narrative structure—
concepts relevant to any secondary school literature class. Its reliance on an assortment of realistic and
diverse documents and objects such as X-Files videos, graiti-covered lockers, and journal pages also
expose students to a wide range of writen voices and forms.

Guided activities and response strategies include:

1. A writen “annotation” of a single room in the game. A combination of screenshots and

notes were employed to unpack the irst room they entered, which acquainted students
with all the main characters, basic gameplay functions and let them practice taking in-
game screenshots.
2. Individual tracking assignments. Students selected topics to track and were tasked to
take relevant notes and screenshots as they played. Tracking topics included gathering
information on speciic characters, identifying and researching objects endemic to 1995,
inding and contextualizing intertextual references to other video games, and the copious
allusions to the Riot Girl movement. Some kept notes as they played, others opted to play
through once and take notes during a second run.
3. A study of tone and mood
4. Writen reviews of the game
5. Group presentations

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These directed activities encouraged purposeful and deliberate exploration, without restricting
player agency. Ater the gameplay phase, players were grouped together according to their tracking
assignments and collaborated on presentations that were delivered to the rest of the class. Finally,
they read examples of game reviews, and then wrote their own which they then published in gaming
websites such as Metacritic, Gamespot, and IGN. The game’s developers added an optional in-game
commentary a week before the unit was launched and many students played the game a second time
with the commentary switched on, which provided valuable insights that enhanced their reviews and
presentations.

Most players seemed engaged and invested throughout. They remained focused during in-class play,
and many ofered unsolicited comments about enjoying the experience. Some students remarked that
the game was not for them or that they found the graphics subpar. Discussions led to questions of the
characters’ motives and the realism of the game, and students traded knowledge about the whereabouts
of certain spaces and items. One high performing student, who does not play video games outside of
school, noted he enjoyed the experience and found it easier to remember narrative details than he
did when reading a story or novel. The reviews showed critical thought on storyline, gameplay and
production values, and the quality of their inal products were generally high, perhaps because they
were destined for public consumption. The inal presentations were informative, engaging, and visually
appealing and collectively addressed most narrative elements of the game. Gone Home could easily be
implemented in any high school English class with access to laptops and/or desktop computer.

Key Frameworks
When designing for an audience, one of the key elements to take into consideration is how to make
them connect emotionally and engage with the game (Fullerton, 2008). This means diferent things
to diferent players, and not everyone will engage with games similarly. In fact, some game designers
and scholars have proposed that there are diferent player types, who have diferent intentions and
pleasures that motivate them.

Player types and personalities

Bartle (1996), credited with creating the irst multiuser dungeon (MUD) and online games, categorized
MUD players as ascribing to one of four player types: achievers, explorers, socializers and killers. A
personality test was created based on his work and his theory has been updated for virtual worlds and
contemporary multiplayer games (though the updated taxonomy has not been widely cited or used).
Bartle’s original taxonomy was based on hundreds of forum posts in response to the question of what
people wanted out of a MUD. He stated that there were 15 key respondents and about 15 complementary
ones, made up of the top players of one popular MUD who helped shaped his theory. He found that each
player leaned a bit toward each of the subgroups, but was primarily characterized by one.

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 1. Achievers are primarily concerned with achieving the goals of the game and they enjoy
challenge.
2. Explorers are concerned with geting to know as much as they can about the world,
sometimes beyond the play space and into the actual system and its structural makeup.
They enjoy discovering the world and its boundaries.
3. Socializers like to use the game’s communication system and interact with other players,
as part of their play. They enjoy how other players can contribute to their experiences of
the game.
4. Killers are interested in “acting on other players” in ways that are mostly understood as
harmful but can also “appear helpful” (Bartle, 1996, Interest Graph Section, para. 8). They
are oten players who want to “demonstrate their superiority over” (Bartle, 1996, Interest
Graph Section, para. 8) other human beings and desire showing of their knowledge and
skills against real people instead of non-playable characters (NPCs).

Bartle proposed that a stable MUD, or game space, was designed to keep all player types in equilibrium.
He felt it was the job of designers and administrators (or, these days, community managers) to think
through how the system was designed and maintained in striking this balance.

Figure 1. Graph of how Bartle’s four player types

cover a space.

Figure 1 shows a graph of Bartle’s four player

types and how they cover a space. The vertical
axis represents acting on or interacting with,
and the horizontal axis represents players or the
world. To interpret the player type, one would
locate its position on the axis. For example,
Achievers act on the world (hence its position
between acting and world) whereas Socializers
interact with other players, Explorers interact
with the world, and Killers act on other players.

On the other hand, Yee (2006) raised the concern that Bartle’s Taxonomy of Player Types, while widely
cited, had not been put to the test. For example, he questioned whether the four player types were truly
independent from one another. Players may have diferent motivations to take on diferent characteristics
at diferent times and with diferent games; in these cases, types would be luid and not ixed. Fullerton
(2008) argues that Callois’ (2001) seminal Man, Play and Games brings focus to the kinds of pleasures
that diferent game types imbue for players. For example, most strategy games, whether they be board-
base games (such as Chess), turn-based digital strategy games (such as Civilization), or real-time strategy
games (such as Starcrat), have rule-based and competitive elements, emphasizing certain kinds of
play. These kinds of games would not only embody diferent kinds of playful experiences, they would
also be diferentially appealing to players.

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Vandenberghe (2012), a creative director at Ubisot, presented on the Five Domains of Play during the
2012 Game Developer Conference. He proposed that psychology’s big ive personality traits could easily
and accurately predict a player’s game choices and that each of the ive personality traits (openness,
conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism) is related to the motivations that
drive behavior and choices in general, which also includes games. In other words, each personality trait
maps well to what he coins are the ive domains of play:

1. Novelty: The newness of the experience.

2. Challenge: The amount of efort or self-control the player is expected to use.
3. Stimulation: The engagement of the play experience.
4. Harmony: The relation of the rules to social and player-to-player accord in game.
5. Threat: The presence and strength of negative emotional triggers.

Vandenberghe urged designers to “appeal to both ends of each facet,” (Vandenberghe, 2012) believing
that each player mapped onto the domains of play diferently. He recognized, however, that while we
cannot always design for everyone, he encouraged designers to think about personality and play style,
beyond the demographics (and assumptions) that are oten used. Vandenberghe’s work connects theories
of personality with theories of motivation, but some researchers have looked more exclusively at what
motivates players to play in diferent complex gaming environments. In fact, he and his colleagues
contend that the Big Five model of personality traits does “an excellent job of predicting taste… [and]
relates to the acquisition phase of game engagement… [as well as] points the way for the reasons why
people will quit playing” (Brink et al., 2013, p. 1). They have conceded that, while the Big Five predicts
which games people are likely to gravitate toward, it does not predict behavior well once engaged, and
that theories of motivation do a much beter job.

Vandenberghe and his collaborators juxtapose their work to that of Ryan, Rigby, & Przybylski (2006)
who, along with Yee (2006), argue that motivation to play is luid and highly dependent on context. Ryan
et al. (2006) and Yee (2006) also focus on understanding player motivations, as opposed to personalities
or player types.

Player Motivations
Ryan et al. (2006) focuses on the role that self-motivation and determination played in human
behavior—including playing games— which stemmed from Ryan and Deci’s Self-Determination Theory
of Motivation (Ryan & Deci, 2000). They proposed that individuals’ motivations to play video games
could be accounted for by how well the game is able to satisfy basic psychological needs. These basic
needs were:

1. Competence: How much the game and its associated tasks allow for a sense of
accomplishment or mastery.
2. Autonomy: How much the game provides choice over tasks and goals, and sustains the
ability to feel a sense of control, as opposed to being controlled by feedback.
3. Relatedness: How much the game allows for being connected or related with others.

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Rigby & Ryan (2007) expanded on this theory by creating the player experience of needs satisfaction
(PENS) applied model and methodology. They felt that the PENS model needed to be thoughtfully applied
to the game mechanics (controls and rules), the gameplay (activity in the game) and player narrative
(uncovering of elements related to the character over time). To optimize on player competence, games
should give players the opportunity to apply and demonstrate mastery, provide positive, yet relevant
feedback as well as an overarching sense of continual success for sustained enjoyment. There should
further be a sense of player agency, which combines competence and autonomy, by allowing players
“who they will be…and when, where and how they take action” (Rigby & Ryan, 2007, p.12). To create a
sense of autonomy, games should allow, as much as possible, opportunities for players to act, through
interactive elements (such as NPCs and items) and ways to meaningfully interact with them (through
talking to characters or collecting items). Relatedness can oten be achieved through optimizing the
kinds of social interactions available online. While these social interactions can be diferent in shape
and form (i.e., interacting in short matches in a irst-person shooter is very diferent from sustained,
long-term teamwork in Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games), allowing for player contact
and relationship building is important to satisfaction of player needs with games.

In analyzing Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs), Yee (2006) found that
play motivations do not suppress each other; in other words, players can have a range of emotions
that inluences what they play and how they play. He found that there were three key overarching
motivation components that could be described:

1. The achievement component: This is made up of advancement (the desire to gain power,
or achieve symbols of status or wealth), mechanics (interest in analyzing the underlying
rules of a system for optimization), and competition (the desire to challenge and compete
with others).
2. The social component: This is composed of socializing (the desire to chat, make friends
and help others), relationships (interest in forming bonds with others), and teamwork
(feeling satisfaction from collaborating with others toward a group efort).
3. The immersive component: This involves discovery (inding hidden or unknown things
that others might not ind), role-playing (creating an interesting and complex persona,
which oten involved interacting with other players), customization (creating unique looks
for one’s character), and escapism (using the game or virtual space to escape reality).

While he discovered some gender diferences, with males exhibiting higher achievement motivations
and females having higher relationship building motivations, he found that this was more correlated
with age than gender. Speciically, he found that older players were less likely to be achievement
oriented, but that female players also tended to be older than male players (Yee, 2008). Also, male
and female players were equal in their social motivations, but socialized diferently, hence why only
the subcomponent of relationship building was signiicantly diferent across gender. However, more
important that gender and age diferences were his indings around the variability of why players play
MMORPGs leading him to conclude that “this variation suggests that one reason why MMOs are so
popular may be that there are many subgames embedded within a larger system” (Yee, 2008, pp. 89).

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Radof, author of Game On (2011), sought to simplify the work of Yee and Bartle by making them
applicable to any game genre. He felt that two axes could be used to deine the environment the player
is in: the horizontal axis represents the number of players involved in gameplay and the vertical
axis represents how the player is informed they are winning in the form of motivation. For example,
quantitative feedback or rewards could include leaderboards and points, whereas qualitative feedback
or rewards would be stories or emotional-based cues. Depending on the play environment, and number
of players, diferent motivational elements would emerge. This framework, however, has mainly been
applied to creating gamiied (or game inspired) contexts outside of games as opposed to within them. In
many ways, it breaks down what works well in digital games (e.g., badges, virtual goods) to apply them
to other contexts to stimulate motivation, rather than mapped onto gameplay in digital games. Radof’s
work is a good segue into understanding game pleasures and emotion.

Figure 2. Radof’s Model of Player Motivation

Game Pleasures and Emotion

Schell (2008), professor and CEO of Schell Games, a game design company, proposes that we oten look
to demographics to get at what groups ind pleasurable. As Lazzaro (2008), president of XEODesign, a
player experience design consultancy, contends, however, designing for demographics can limit an
audience, speciically if there are gender assumptions. Instead of demographics, Lazzaro has proposed
designing for core game pleasures.

Game designer Marc LeBlanc created a taxonomy of eight primary game pleasures. He focused on
several kinds of experiences that elicit pleasure:

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 1. Sensation: pleasures that involve the senses and sensations, like seeing something
beautiful and hearing something pleasurable. These are oten delivered through game
aesthetics.
2. Fantasy: pleasures that involve imagination and experiencing yourself as someone or with
other atributes.
3. Narrative: pleasures of experiencing a narrative unfolding through play.
4. Challenge: pleasures of solving problems through play.
5. Fellowship: pleasures of friendship, cooperation, and community achieved through
gameplay.
6. Discovery: pleasures of discovering new things through gameplay, which can include
exploring a game environment or inding out a new strategy or exploit.
7. Expression: pleasures of creating something or expressing oneself through gameplay or
through game afordances (i.e., creating a level someone else can play, or creating outits for
your character).
8. Submission: the pleasure of entering the fantasy space (“magic circle”) of a game and
leaving the real world behind.

Taxonomies are not without criticism. The biggest critique is whether they are exhaustive enough.
Schell (2008) contends that LeBlanc and Bartle’s taxonomies have gaps, which could “gloss over subtle
pleasures that might be easily missed” (p. 111). He adds the following additional pleasures to LeBlanc’s
Taxonomy, which he states may not cover all of the variety of pleasures derived from human experience:

1. Anticipation: The pleasure of knowing something is forthcoming.

2. Delight in another’s misfortune: This pleasure is oten experienced when someone who
has been unjust gets what was coming to them.
3. Git giving: The pleasure of giving a git and making someone happy by doing so.
4. Humor: The pleasure of something funny.
5. Possibility: The pleasure of being able to choose from many options.
6. Pride in accomplishment: The pleasure of satisfaction in having achieved something.
7. Puriication: The pleasure of clearing or cleaning something out (such as clearing the
board or killing all of the enemies).
8. Surprise: The pleasure of revelation or astonishment.
9. Thrill: The pleasure of experiencing terror while safe and secure.
10. Triumph over adversity: The pleasure of accomplishing something diicult or with many
obstacles.
11. Wonder: The pleasure of amazement.

Both of these taxonomies raise issues about whether they could ever cover all of the possible pleasures
human beings have come to ind enjoyable and motivating. Through extensive interviews and
observations of hardcore, casual and non-gamers, Lazzaro (2004) found that there are four keys to

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unlocking player emotions. Not all players like the same kinds of things but overall “players play to
experience these body sensations that result from and drive their actions” (p. 7). According to Lazzaro,
top-selling games utilize at least three of the four keys. Each key is a reason people play, and combining
each of the keys makes for a “deeply enjoyable game for a wide market” (p. 3). The following are Lazzaro’s
four keys:

1. Hard fun: This refers to creating opportunities for the player to overcome obstacles and
to pursue a goal. Challenge focuses atention, creates emotions such as frustration and
inspires creativity in developing and applying strategy. Players are oten rewarded with
feedback and they oten use Hard Fun to test their skills and feel accomplishment.
2. Easy fun: This refers to maintaining player focus with player atention instead of a
winning condition. This is oten achieved through “ambiguity, incompleteness and detail”
(Lazzaro, 2004, p. 4) as well as rich stimuli (like intricate landscapes or enticing rhythms),
which encourage players to explore and immerse themselves.
3. Altered states (updated to “serious fun”): This involves creating opportunities for players
to experience diferent emotions, senses and interactions. Players can escape from reality
or experience relief from their thoughts or feelings.
4. The people factor (updated to “people fun”): This involves allowing players to use games
for social experiences, including competition, teamwork, social bonding, and personal
recognition.

Structuring Play
So far, we have discussed the motivational or pleasurable capacities of games, without necessarily
thinking concretely about the structural and dramatic elements that create them. Fullerton (2008)
suggests that there are ive interrelated elements that are key to engaging the player: challenge, play,
premise, character, and story.

1. Challenge: Challenge is an important element in creating the tension they must resolve
through gameplay, which is oten highly motivating when designed well. We have to
balance how great or small the challenge may be, as frustration or lack of engagement can
occur when challenges are too large or too small, respectively.
2. Play: According to Fullerton, “play itself is not a game [but] the more rigid systems of
games can provide opportunities for players to use imagination, fantasy, inspiration, social
skills, or other more free-form types of interaction to achieve objectives within the game
space, to play within the game, as well as to engage the challenges it ofers” (Fullerton,
2008, p. 34). How rigid or free form the play space is designed is important for engagement,
because diferent players will approach its afordances and constraints diferently.
3. Premise: The premise of the game gives context to the rest of the elements because it sets
the backdrop, the environment, and the roles of the players and characters.

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 4. Characters: Characters “are the agents through which dramatic stories are told” (p. 40) but
they can also provide players “vessels” through which to experience situations, conlicts or
live vicariously through.
5. Story: Unlike the premise of a game, stories tend to unfold during gameplay, and not
all games contain a story. Special thought should go into how the story works with the
intentions of the game and how it unfolds.

Concerned that designers tended to focus on pleasure and motivation more than capacity, Brathwaite
& Schreiber (2008) proposed six key areas to take into account when targeting your audience: reading
ability, learning curve, cognitive ability, learning style, physical ability, as well as tactile desires. While
tactile desires do not necessarily highlight capacities, they are oten overlooked as part of the appeal. As
a result, they highlight the importance of marketing and packaging in encouraging play.

1. Reading ability: Brathwaite & Schreiber (2008) caution designers not to overestimate
the reading abilities of children, and even some young and older adults. Using auditory
feedback, even if included with text, will help those with reading diiculties or limitations.
2. Learning curve: They encourage designers to think about how game controllers and in-
game atributes relate to perceived learning curves because individuals oten “dismiss
things before they try” them (p. 149). When designing peripheral devices and in-game
feedback, like health meters and heads-up displays, think about accessibility. Design for
common references, like existing controllers, or feedback systems, while also thinking
about how you would translate those elements for a novice so they are not overwhelming.
3. Cognitive ability: When designing for diferent audiences, think about the kind of
cognitive challenge present, and whether it would be capable or interesting for that target
age group’s cognitive ability. For example, some games are rather complex and diicult for
young children, while others do not provide the kind of mental challenge certain advanced
players might ind stimulating.
4. Learning style: Citing the work of Graner Ray (2004), Brathwaite & Schreiber (2008)
contend that men and women gravitate to diferent learning styles (though this is up for
debate, as will be discussed later).
5. Physical ability: Thinking about the physical abilities of an audience is also crucial.
Designing controllers that are too large for some users, or designing games that require
absolute precision with a mouse may limit who can play your game. When designing,
there should be some thought into whether, how and why you are limiting your audience
through the physical requirements of your game.
6. Tactile desires: Brathwaite & Schreiber (2008) also point out that the tactile afordances of
your game, from the packaging, to the artwork, send strong signals to your audience about
its quality and emotional atributes.

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Case Study Two: Jewish Time Jump: New York (Writen by Owen Gotlieb)
Jewish Time Jump: New York is a mobile placed-based augmented reality game and simulation in the
form of a situated documentary. It is designed to act as a learning intervention, not only to engage
learners and spark their curiosity in exploring content knowledge in modern Jewish history, but also
to deepen their historical thinking and their civic participation, and in so doing, seek a means by
which a short-term intervention might have a longer-term efect on learner engagement with modern
Jewish history. The Jewish social justice concern of Tikkun Olam, or healing the world, is realized in the
game through centering on civic engagement in a pluralist democracy. The game’s design is concerned
with presenting engrossing historical narratives in which players investigate multiple, conlicting
perspectives and they come to explore the constructed nature of historical narrative. They learn about
issues based advocacy and organizing, as well as citizen journalism and political power structures in
an historical context.

Jewish Time Jump: New York works to push the boundaries of the genre of situated documentary
(Mathews & Squire, 2010) in terms of production, game mechanics, and narrative devices. The player’s
geographic place is directly related to the game theme, events, and seting. The game “augments” reality,
so while standing in Washington Square Park, or the buildings nearby. Players receive images based
on their GPS location—images from over 100 years earlier—giving a place-based experience of the
historical narrative.

In this game and interactive story, players travel back in time to take on the role of reporters working for
the ictional Jewish Time Jump Gazete. They are tasked with bringing a story back to their editor that
was “lost in time.” They “travel” back to 1909 in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village, New
York, where they land on the eve of The Uprising of 20,000, a garment workers’ strike, led in large part
by a number of young Jewish women were among those who led 20,000 shirtwaist workers out into the
streets. It remains the largest women-led strike in U.S. History.

The uprising occurred two years before the devastating Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. The Uprising
also occurs eleven years before women have the right to vote. Players gather perspectives from digital
characters with opposing views, receive items such as digital reproductions of original Yiddish
newspapers with a translation feature, and track down elements of their story, trying to complete their
quests before time runs out. They face obstacles such as being mistaken for strikers by local shtarkers,
who were thugs hired by owners as strikebreakers, and who oten atacked the women.

The project that would become Jewish Time Jump originated in the desire to bring advances in
contemporary research in games for learning to bear on Jewish education. Jim Mathews’ Dow Day
(Mathews & Squire, 2010) served as the jumping of point. Dow Day, which takes place on the campus
of the University Madison-Wisconsin, is a mobile, augmented reality situated documentary in which
players act as reporters during the 1967 student protests against Dow Chemical, who was recruiting on
campus. They meet digital characters of protesters, administrators, and police and are fed stills, videos,

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and historic artifacts from 1967. For the development of Jewish Time Jump: New York, this investigator
formed, and led a New York based team of historians, archivists, digital graphic and video artists, and
game designers. The New York team also collaborated with Mathews, David Gagnon, and the ARIS
Team at the University Wisconsin-Madison.

ARIS, or the Augmented Reality and Interactive Storytelling platform is an open source platform, based
out of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the inheritor of an early project at MIT. Dow Day had
been ported to ARIS, and to this day, ARIS remains the only open source, readily available technology
for GPS, location-based game-design available for mobile devices. ARIS runs on iOS (iPhone and iPad).
ARIS allows for interactive storytelling and triggers events by GPS location. At the same time, the
platform itself has constraints, and so the model of Dow Day, which was already running on ARIS, was
used as a basis for the initial kinds of gameplay that could be devised. While development on ARIS was
done over the course of Jewish Time Jump, the initial design work had to begin from the then-current
constraints of ARIS. ARIS remains in development and Jewish Time Jump remains in iterative design.
Jewish Time Jump’s development has contributed to the ARIS platform in a number of ways, including
the addition of haptics (vibration scripts), and a variety of new design-editor tools including universal
location controls.

Implications for the game are potentially broad, including a variety of player-audiences both inside
and outside formal and informal Jewish and secular social studies education setings. For the purposes
of the research study, and the focus of design, the initial target audience was ith to eighth graders
and their families,primarily in Reform Hebrew supplementary schools. This choice was to atempt
to address a population of Jewish learners with high atrition from secondary schools. Could an
intervention potentially impact atrition numbers? The researcher is still working on answering this
research question, and understanding how the game may address atrition from formal and informal
Jewish education setings. Initial results suggest that numerous design elements can contribute to
deepening engagement in perspective-taking, and historical investigation with an emphasis on civic
participation in a pluralist democracy, informed by a player’s religio-ethnic-communal perspective.

Key Findings
In summary, these frameworks explore and highlight the importance of designing for the variability
in personalities, pleasures, motivations, and abilities. These frameworks make a strong case for 1)
embedding content within reachable, yet challenging goals, with strong feedback and mastery ability,
2) allowing for delightful and unexpected experiences that could not necessarily be achieved in the
real world in the same way, 3) allowing for meaningful interaction with others, in variable ways, and
4) being aware of the accessibility of the designed space, as well as the variability of the audience for
which it is being designed.

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Learning and audience
In recent times, there has been a bit of a debate about whether commercial and serious games can
beneit learning, with several studies on the subject (for example, see Connolly, Boyle, MacArthur,
Hainey & Boyle, 2012; McClarty, Orr, Frey, Dolan, Vassileva, & McVay, 2012; Shute & Ke, 2012; Wouters,
vanNimwegen, vanOostendorp & vanderSpek, 2013; Young et al., 2012). The most compelling evidence
seems to state that games designed for learning (i.e., serious games) are signiicantly beneicial for
learning and retention over traditional instruction, though are not signiicantly motivating (see Wouters
et al., 2013).

The research on learning with digital games has oten focused on the motivational and learning
properties of games. As such, most of what we know about efective learning with games focuses
less on learning styles and more on their multisensory potential (in other words, how efective game
mechanics, atributes or design elements aid in learning, motivation or engagement). This may be in
part because the research on learning styles has mostly remained inconclusive (Pashler, McDaniel,
Rohrer, & Bjork, 2008).

Wounters et al. (2013) suggest that efective learning with serious games needs to 1) be supplemented with
other instructional methods, 2) incorporate multiple training sessions, and 3) allow learners/players
to work in groups. Their indings are very similar to indings involving other learning technologies,
particularly computer-assisted instruction. Wounters et al. (2013) also ofer that one reason games
may not have been found more motivating than traditional instruction may have been competing
outcomes such as “learning versus playing or freedom versus control” (p.13). They cite that the world of
instructional design and game design are still in the process of alignment.

Koster (2005) outlines that learning can be problematic, particularly because learners look for shortcuts
(or cheats). Cheating, however, does not allow us to fully understand a concept, and is oten relective
of problems in the design. Cheating can involve using codes to easily gain money or experience, or
downloading modded weapons or armor developed by others so that you can gain an unfair advantage.
Exploiting the game, on the other hand, involves very experienced play. It involves inding work-
arounds not intended by the developers, which can put certain players at an advantage when used.
Someone who has mastered and explored the game system is beter able to do this. Koster points
out that human beings oten want to get beter at things and one way to do this is to make things
more predictable and easier by exploiting (i.e., taking unintended shortcuts or racking up experience
beating weaker opponents). As designers, however, we do not want players/learners to circumvent the
challenges we have put in place.

Koster (2005) recommends that the game system can be successfully designed to minimize cheating
and exploitation, as well as enhance learning. He recommends incorporating the following elements:

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 1. Preparation: Allowing a player to prepare before a given challenge with choices that can
afect their chances of success (i.e., allow them to practice in advance, or heal before facing
a strong opponent).
2. A sense of space: Create this through the landscape, and players.
3. A solid core mechanic: Create an intrinsically interesting rule sets.
4. A range of challenges: Vary the challenges they encounter in interesting ways.
5. A range of abilities required to solve the encounter: Provide multiple kinds of tools with
multiple abilities. In many games, these abilities unfold over time as you play. Koster (2004)
provides the example of checkers, where you learn to force the player to make moves that
work against her over time, but not the irst time you play.
6. Skill required in using the abilities: Vary the kinds of elements or tools a player has
during play. Diferent resources and how they are applied can lead to success or failure,
and skills develop over time as they learn to apply resources diferently.

To ideally make a game a constructive learning experience, it should include:

1. A variable feedback system: A player should receive feedback on their performance and
ways to improve it.
2. Ways to deal with the mastery problem: Finding ways to tailor the game to the player’s
level of experience. High-level players will not learn anything new from easy experiences
and will end up exploiting; inexperienced players cannot learn from games that are too
diicult.
3. Failure should be part of the learning experience: While Gee (2004) points out that games
lower the consequences of failure, Koster (2004) feels that there should be an opportunity
cost. You are more likely to learn if you are forced to prepare diferently ater a failed task.

Creating opportunity costs for failure can take many forms and does not have to involve losing it all.
In fact, most contemporary games allow players to start near a particularly diicult part of the game
(instead of going all the way back to an earlier or incredibly far point in the game). As Lazzaro (2004)
points out, frustration can inspire focus and creativity, but it has to be efectively designed to do so. We
do not want learners to abandon the objective, but we want them to understand there is an opportunity
cost to not completing the experience as intended. We should try to scafold that in the form of a
learning-oriented goal or activity.

A further and fundamental consideration when designing games for learning is how formal or informal
educational content is presented to the learner. “Learning mechanics are paterns of behavior or
building blocks of learner interactivity, which may be a single action or a set of interrelated actions that
form the essential learning activity that is repeated throughout a game” (Plass, Homer, Kinzer, Frye,
& Perlin, 2011, p. 3). In designing for learning, Plass et al. (2011) make the case that learning mechanics
must further be intrinsically and meaningfully connected with game mechanics. They argue that the
learning mechanic must be grounded in the learning sciences or learning theory.

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Learning mechanics describe which kinds of functions and scafolds are needed in the environment,
though not the actual game mechanics involved, which can vary by game design. An example of
an inefective learning mechanic would involve interrupting a racing or shooting game with popup
“educational” questions before play could continue (Plass et. al., 2011). An example of an efective
learning mechanic might be having a learner select or integrate related objects, though how they select
or integrate them through game mechanics could vary by game or interface. For instance, a learner
could drag one object onto the other, such as in a simple matching game, or break objects apart and put
them back together again in new and meaningful ways, such as in Minecrat. The goal of the activity
and the game type employed should relect the learning outcomes desired (i.e., learning related objects
or categories versus learning properties of objects that could make new objects).

Designing for inclusive learning

For many years, games were designed for demographics, which oten meant designing for stereotypes
and assumptions of what people liked according to their gender (Lazzaro, 2008). Female players who
enjoyed playing what was considered male-themed games were oten not researched or marketed to
because they were thought of as “oddities” (Taylor, 2008). Some felt, however, it was important to create
a market and design for female play precisely because it would help to create more common ground and
encourage development for female interests (Cassel & Jenkins, 1998).

Contemporary research suggests that females and males enjoy more in common in games (Lazzaro,
2008). In fact, recent studies have found that once females are given equal chances to train, gender
diferences decline and skill sets that oten put inexperienced female players at a disadvantage level out
(see Feng et al., 2007; Jensen & deCassel, 2011; Vermeulen et al., 2011). For a full review on the evolution
of this literature, see Richard (2013a).

Research highlights that more is going on than diferences in assumed gender preferences. Recent
events and research suggests that females experience a signiicant amount of harassment online. In
fact, they are three times more likely to experience harassment when using voice chat to play online
(Kuznekof & Rose, 2013). Harassment and gender discrimination can play a large role in discouraging
females from playing and participating equally in gaming and learning opportunities from games
(Richard, 2013c; Richard & Hoadley, 2013).

Less has been studied regarding ethnicity and race. Studies have found that ethnic minorities do not
have the same access to high tech computer equipment as Whites (DiSalvo & Bruckman, 2010) and
that they are more likely to experience racial harassment when playing online (Nakamura, 2009; Gray,
2012; Richard, 2013c). Studies have found that ethnic minorities can be proiled by the way they speak
or by their avatars. Studies have also found that players want to have the opportunity to play as their
ethnicity, and minorities are not always allowed to choose avatars that look like them (Kafai et. al. 2010).

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Shaw’s studies (2012a; 2012b) have found that LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer),
gamers (also known as “gaymers”) are more concerned about inding places where they can express
their experiences, than the lack of LGBTQ characters. She atributes this in part to the need to ind safe
spaces from bigotry, as well as anxiety over exploiting gay identity.

Overall, research demonstrates that marginalized gamers, who are overwhelmingly female, minority,
and LGBTQ, are more likely to be negatively afected by exclusionary practices in game spaces (Gray,
2012; Kuznekof & Rose, 2013; Richard, 2013c; Richard, 2013d; Shaw, 2012a; Shaw, 2012b), which afects
their ability to identify with gaming (Richard, 2013d; Richard & Hoadley, 2013; Shaw, 2012a; Shaw,
2012b), develop conidence in their skills (Richard, 2013d; Richard & Hoadley, 2013), and ultimately learn
from games (Richard, 2013c; Richard, 2013d; Richard & Hoadley, 2013).

Research shows that the absence of female and ethnic minority characters in games makes female
and ethnic minority players feel they do not belong and reinforces others feeling they do not belong
(Lee & Park, 2011; Behm-Morawitz & Mastro, 2009). Further, research shows that stereotypes of ethnic
minorities and sexualized female characters make female and minority players feel less conident in
their abilities, and reinforce stereotypes that are negative in general (Dill & Burgess, 2013; Miller &
Summers, 2007).

Richard (2013d) conducted a mixed-methods study of game players and online communities where she
looked at players’ gender, ethnicity, sexuality (among other demographics), gaming identiication, and
gaming sense of ability. She found that female and ethnic minority players were more vulnerable to
stereotype threat (stress caused by negative stereotypes aimed at your gender or ethnic group), which
would afect their performance and conidence with games and learning from games.

Speciically, through her three-year ethnography, which involved playing and participating in
online and oline console and PC gaming, she found that harassment was a persistent and prevalent
gatekeeping activity that marginalized female and ethnic minority play and participation in the space.
Females were more likely to be harassed, though ethnic minorities (speciically, African Americans and
Latinos) also experienced harassment around ethnic characteristics, when they were easy to discern,
typically through “linguistic proiling” (Gray, 2012) or through proile stalking (i.e., the act of looking up
another player’s proile to igure out their gender, cultural background, or sexuality (Richard, 2013c)).
Richard (2013d) further found that a female-supportive (yet co-ed) community reduced stereotype
threat vulnerability for females, as well as increased conidence across gender (Richard, 2013d; Richard
& Hoadley, 2013). Her data showed support that harassment and negative stereotypes in games could
afect players diferently (speciically females and ethnic minorities). When designing games for
learning, stereotype threat is particularly important because it can afect how people perform on
learning tasks along with long-term identiication with that potential learning medium.

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Assessment Considerations
There is not necessarily one way to understand player experience, but prevailing methods have used
quantitative measures (typically through surveys), qualitative measures (typically through interviews
or ethnography), or a combination of both. Survey measures can come in various forms and depend
on what is being measured. When investigators are interested in how a speciic game might afect
player or learner outcomes, they may be applied concurrently (or at some point during game play),
or retrospectively, involving relecting upon game play. Some survey measures are more interested
in overall characteristics of players or their views on their overall experiences, so measuring how
one particular game afects them may not be as important as players’ sense of how certain games or
experiences around games shape them or motivate them.

Many survey measures, however, as well as interviews and related measures (e.g., think alouds),
are considered subjective, because individuals have to relect on their conscious meaning making
around their experiences. Survey measures, interviews, and similar relective measures are useful in
understanding player experiences, especially when point of view is important. When measuring social
experiences around play, for example, point of view and personal experience may be important.

Particularly when dealing with survey data, issues of validity and reliability are important. Validity
issues concern whether an instrument is measuring what it is intended to, while reliability issues
concern whether the instrument remains dependable over time. Yee’s critique of both Bartle’s player
types (2006) and the Big Five personality traits (2005) highlight issues of validity. For example, Yee
(2005) makes the case that there’s actually a large amount of inter-correlation among the Big Five factors
(except for neuroticism), demonstrating that they are not truly independently measuring discrete parts
of our personality. Similar critiques of independence have been made about Bartle’s player types, as
discussed earlier.

Ethnographic methods have been used extensively in research on virtual worlds and online games
(particularly massively multiplayer ones) to understand player experience in socially complex game
spaces. Boellstorf, Nardi, Pearce, and Taylor (2012), who have all conducted large-scale ethnographies
on player experiences in these kinds of spaces, have writen an extensive and thorough guide to online
ethnographic methods. Typically, researchers take on the role of participant and observer, taking in and
participating in play practices, as well as cultural practices. Analysis is still highly negotiated through
the individual researchers’ experiences and perspectives, but ethnography, like many rich qualitative
methods, can oten ofer great insights into social interactions, particularly when wanting to understand
contexts of play and meaning making, as well as where and how play or learning may be diferent for
diferent groups of players, due to context or diferential experiences.

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There are also measures that are considered less subjective, such as those that use eye tracking, galvanic
skin response (GSR), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), Electroencephalography (EEG),
and facial or body expressions. Some of these seemingly objective measures, however, are still subject
to interpretation, and may measure physiological or emotional responses to stimuli, but not necessarily
learning outcomes in personal accounts or relections on experience. Other forms of objective measures
can involve implicit response tests, such as the implicit association test, where individuals rapidly
respond to stimuli in a way that gets at underlying biases or associations.

Increasingly, scholars have argued for “stealth assessment” (Shute, 2011), or embedded and responsive
assessment measures in games, so that games can be tailored for individual needs (e.g., Shute, 2011).
For example, a game could vary its diiculty, provide just-in-time help, or ofer dynamic feedback. It
could also provide the teacher or instructor with feedback to help tailor instruction to students in other
ways. Individual tailoring, however, may be complicated by collaborative, cooperative, or other kinds
of multi-conigurational play or learning. Furthermore, complex kinds of social experiences may be lost
on these kinds of quantitative measures. Also increasingly, studies have relied on blending multiple
methods to provide both detailed outcome measures (e.g., performance or learning outcomes), along
with detailed case studies, interviews, or ethnographies, to give nuance and richness to the indings.

Future Needs
We are still uncovering which factors may derive motivations or pleasures from players, as well as the
ways that social interactions and expectations inluence and shape play. Researchers are starting to
uncover and explore the relationships between large-scale interactions and individual experiences in
context to further understand learning outcomes. As we start to learn more about who is playing, how
much, and in what ways, especially in the ways that they play, learn and engage as compared to others
with diferent backgrounds, pleasures, motivations and experiences, we will understand further about
additional design consideration for addressing diverse players.

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Case Study Three: PlayForward: Elm City Stories
(Writen by Sabrina Haskell Culyba)
PlayForward: Elm City Stories is a behavior change game developed in 2012 for Yale University’s
play2PREVENT lab by Schell Games, in collaboration with Digitalmill. The goal of PlayForward is to
reduce players’ risky behavior, thus reducing their exposure to HIV. It is a single-player, tablet-based
game whose target audience includes at-risk young teens. It was designed for initial use in a clinical
trial whose participants were located in the New Haven, Connecticut area.

PlayForward engages players with topics of risky behavior, including substance abuse, sex, and social
pressure. The gameplay features story scenarios modeled ater potential real-life situations, and
minigames on developing strategies for navigating peer pressure, evaluating the riskiness of peers,
identifying and sharing facts in a social seting, and decision making. The game also promotes future
orientation, allowing players to create a proile based on their life aspirations like career, health, and
family.

Because the game openly addresses serious and highly personal topics, it was important for the content
to feel authentic to players. Early in the project, the play2PREVENT team forged a relationship with
an aterschool program in the New Haven area with a representative group of teens from the target
demographic. As the Schell Games development team was remote and had litle irsthand experience
with at-risk teens, the information and artifacts from this representative group were instrumental
in shaping the authentic feel of the game. The participants in these activities were generally in the
targeted age range of 11-14, though at times slightly younger and older teens were included to get a
broader perspective. The information included:

1. In-depth interviews, which probed the teens’ perceptions of risky behaviors, as well as
their atitudes of the future. This information provided high-level direction on the types of
scenarios and themes that would resonate with the demographic.
2. A hands-on “My Life” project, which asked the teens to map out a vision of their next ten
years, giving insight into what they did (and did not) already think about in terms of their
own future.
3. A open-ended storytelling activity, which prompted the teens to comment on a concept
drawing of a crowded party scene. They were asked to describe what they thought was
going on with each character, what had happened earlier, and what might happen later.
This activity revealed how they evaluated social situations and the kinds of real-world
stories they perceived going on around them.
4. A photo feedback project, which provided the teens with disposable cameras and asked
them to photograph their life, including their homes, bedrooms, friends, clothes, as well
as aspirational items like adult role models, dream homes, and dream cars. These images
became guides for character and set designs, and informed the options available in the
game for the player’s proile.

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 5. Story review focus tests, which verbally led the teens through the game’s stories, asking
questions like “Do you know someone this has happened to?” or “What might happen
next?” These helped shape the game’s narratives to keep them relevant to the target
demographic.
6. Line-by-line dialogue reviews prompted the teens to suggest rewrites of dialogue lines
to sound more like something they or their friends might say. It became clear that word
choice was particularly important for creating an authentic feel for peer pressure or sexual
situations.
7. Art reviews of characters and scenes invited the teens to comment on details such as
clothing styles and room layouts, to make sure the game’s visuals felt familiar to the teens’
real world lives.
8. An on-site visit by the development team allowed members of the Schell Games
development team to see the New Haven community sites and observe a focus group in
person.

Best Practices
Based on the survey of literature, the following design principles should be considered when thinking
about the audience:

1. Consider the learners’ ability: The abilities of learners should always been considered.
Efective design for an audience is dependent on the audience’s ability (physical and
cognitive) to engage with the game.
2. Consider the player diversity, in backgrounds as well as preferences: Players have a
variety of personalities, learning and emotional preferences. While we cannot address
all players’ preferences with one game, and research is inconclusive on whether learning
styles are applicable, we can structure games that are complex enough to appeal to a
variety of pleasures and learning activities.
3. Allow for the core features of successful games: Successful games create opportunities
for immersion, achievement, interaction and socialization.
4. Have strong feedback: Players should have the opportunity for comprehensive and
variable feedback that responds to their skill level and ways to improve it.
5. Allow for responsiveness through design: Games should tailor to the player’s level of
experience for optimal learning, and failure should have fair setbacks that require someone
to learn from them.
6. Provide diversity in representation: Games should feature a variety of characters of
diferent genders, sexualities, races, and ethnicities with varying abilities that are not
stereotyped. Research shows that more diversity lowers people’s negative stereotypes of
others and increases players’ own sense of ability.

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 7. Create structures so that harmful behavior is minimized: Harassment should be
monitored and enforced in games, whether this is through the developers, educators or
community administrators. Studies continue to show that harassment alienates ethnic
minorities, females, and LGBT players. This kind of harassment does not just make players
distance themselves from gaming, but from the skills and opportunities ofered through
gaming, like tech-savvy identity building. Also, they are put at signiicant disadvantage
when it comes to learning from games.
8. Accommodate learning in contexts where the game is played: When designing for
classroom learning, how to accommodate teachers’ abilities to play and master the
games should be considered, along with how they can monitor and support classroom
management.

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Fullerton, T. (2008). Game design workshop: A playcentric approach to creating innovative games. Burlington,
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220
Games
Dow Day
Jewish Time Jump
Gone Home

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CHAPTER 12

Goals

Developing Goals and Objectives

for Gameplay and Learning
Charlote Lærke Weitze, Aalborg University, Copenhagen, Denmark, cw@learning.learning.aau.dk

Key Summary Points

When designing learning games consider how the learning goals can interact with the game
1 goals and how both should be addressed through the game mechanics used in the game.

Let the design of the progress toward the game goals make it necessary to engage with the
2 intended learning goals as the player/student works her way through the game.

The design of the challenges, rules and feedback are important when implementing and
3 aligning the learning goals with the game goals.

Key Terms
Game goals
Learning goals
Alignment of goals
Design of feedback
Goals in learning and games
Implementing learning

Introduction
“It is a delicate dance between art and science, between instructional design and game design, and
between play and guided discovery” (Hirumi, Appelman, Rieber, & Eck, 2010, p. 37).

This chapter introduces goals in games and then potential diferences between learning goals and goals
in games, as well as the diiculties that may occur when implementing learning goals in games.

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What are goals?
To design game goals for a learning game, we should begin by looking at the characteristics of goals and
how they are traditionally used in games.

Goals are objectives that a person or a system desires to achieve (Oxford Dictionaries, 2014). In a game,
a goal is what we strive for (e.g., goals can be to kill the dragon and rescue the princess). Goals are
fundamental to games; they determine what the player has to do to win the game, and give the player
a sense of accomplishment and progression. Goals are what a player reaches for in the game and they
are traditionally quantiiable, meaning that the goals are entities that can be measured, depending on
which goals we use. By making measurable goals, it is possible to tell when the goals are reached. The
player will typically know if she has reached the goal through feedback in the game. For example, this
feedback can be communicated using trophies, badges, points or unlocked new challenges and goals.

By adding a goal we can make a game out of casual activity. For instance, we can change “doing
homework” to a game by stating “the person who inishes her homework irst gets to choose what movie
to see in the cinema.” The goals are oten central to the structure of the game, which means that goals
are used to purposefully guide the player through the game, as they are the focal point of the player’s
desire in the game. A useful practice in designing goals is not just having one end goal, but a series
of sub-goals that help guide the player. For example, when a player is working her way through the
Rayman Legends game, she is guided by sub-goals. Examples of sub-goals in one of the challenges are
catching irelies and hearts giving her points and trophies when escaping from and ighting the boss
monster, freeing diferent igures in the game on the way to complete one of the many levels. Here,
you can regard the irelies and hearts as small sub-goals, the aim of escaping and ighting the current
boss monster as another sub-goal, the objective of freeing other igures as a sub-goals and the aim of
completing the current level as a sub-goal. The overall goal of the game is to complete all the levels and
become a hero. In this way all the sub-goals helps to gradually lead her toward the end-goal and also
gives her a feeling of progress, thereby keeping her engaged in the overall experience (Fullerton, 2008;
Ferrara, 2012).

Goals in a game can set the tone in a game and can also be adjusted to generate particular behaviors,
actions, and feelings in a game (Fullerton, 2008). For example, in Rayman Legends the goals in the
game will make the player run, jump, and stop. It can foster feelings (e.g., fear of the monster or joy of
achieving the goal and defeating the monster). When it comes to what you want to achieve in a game
you can aim to reach your goal, but you can also have it as your aim or goal to avoid a threat. For
example, if you look at a scene in Plants vs. Zombies, the aim is not to be eaten by zombies, so your aim
in the game is to avoid the threat of the zombies. The goal is to survive the hordes of zombies and kill
enough of them within a certain timeframe; thus, the goal is to avoid the zombie atack.

Once we deine the goal(s) of a game, we need to develop rules for how to reach this goal, and which
obstacles or challenges are necessary to overcome to reach the goal. For example, in Plants vs. Zombies
if you want to reach the goal of the next level by keeping the speciic zombies out of your house at the

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current level, you have to plant enough lowers to save up for buying weapons, as well as to choose the
right weapons and be strategic in the order and timing of using your protective weapons to be able to
survive. Once a game’s end-goal is reached, it means the player has won, and he must ind a new game
with new goals. In a way, winning causes a sort of “death” in the game experience (Koster, 2005).

How are goals in a game diferent from goals in learning?

There have been examples of games where the learning goals and game tasks are implemented
separately, and the learner is rewarded with a small game or puzzle that is entirely separate from the
learning objectives of the experience. For instance, a game could involve solving a math problem and
then geting to play a short racing game as the reward (Ratan & Riterfeld, 2009). This approach is
traditionally called chocolate covered broccoli, because it hides what is supposed to be “not fun” or
unappetizing under something delicious, such as games, while not making a connection between the
learning and the fun in the game.

But how do learning goals and game goals difer? The basic diference between the learning goal and
the game goal is that the learning goal is the knowledge and intellectual abilities we want the student
to learn in the game, whereas the game goal is the actual goal the student/player is striving for in the
game. But it will depend on the game how this diference is constructed and how close they come
to each other. In some games, the learning goal is not the target game goal, but a means to reach the
game goal. For instance, in the game Citizen Science, an adventure game that teaches scientiic literacy
and limnology (the study of freshwater lakes) to schoolchildren, the player’s game goal is to restore a
polluted lake, Lake Mendota. Through the play of the game, the learner/player gathers information and
knowledge to build arguments that can convince people with inluence in the game and change the life
in the lake. In this way, the game goal is diferent, but related to, the learning goal. The learning goals
enhance scientiic literacy and knowledge about limnology, and this practice becomes the sub-goals
that are necessary to achieve the larger game goal, which is to restore the polluted lake in the game. By
focusing on the ecological needs of Lake Mendota, as well as its surrounding community, the game,
through its goals, achieves its learning goals as well (e.g., the understanding and practice real-world
issues and scientiic practices). Thus, when designing learning games, we need to consider how the
learning goals can interact with the game goals, and how the game mechanics support these goals.
Game mechanics are what you can do in the game—the combination of actions with rules that produces
the game or gameplay (Iuppa & Borst, 2010). For example in Citizen Science the designers succeeded in
leting the learning goals (e.g., understanding and practice of limnology and how you can work toward
saving a polluted lake) interact with the game goal (e.g., saving the polluted lake). The game mechanics
support the goals since the rules, possibilities, and challenges in the game are constructed in a way such
that the player/learner has to gain knowledge to experience and practice how they can work toward
saving a polluted lake (through the non-playing characters (NPCs) in the game). The learning goals,
game goals, and the content should be structured in a way that allows for a progressive comprehension
of the content of the game (Anneta, 2010). Gee also describes this as “ish tanks” (Gee, 2007). A way
to implement the learning goals is to be creating small simpliied eco-systems or ish tanks in the

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game, starting out with a simpliied model of a complex system, making it possible for the learner to
interact with the system, and geting to know it litle by litle, and then leting the game add a bit more
complexity along the way ending up with the learner having understood the complexity of the whole
system and how it interacts.

The challenges of designing games with respect to learning goals

One of the diiculties about designing according to the learning goals is that the learning goals might
not be easy to incorporate into the play of a game. In a learning game, the learning goals are essential.
In other words, the learning goals are what are to be experienced, considered, practiced, and relected
upon. Teaching successfully through a learning game will only happen if we succeed in aligning our
learning goals and game goals in the game in a way that both addresses the curriculum and keeps
the fun of playing a game. This can be challenging, but when the process of learning and achieving
competence is designed in a way that is fun in and of itself it can be done (Koster, 2005).

In the development and use of a game for learning in the classroom, it is important to ensure possibilities
for implementation of the learning goals in a measureable and controlled way in the game, meaning
that when you develop and implement a learning goal you should at the same time consider how this
learning goal can be measured and aligned with assessment to be able to evaluate when the learner has
reached the learning goal (Hirumi et al., 2010). Thus, considering how the learning goals are implemented
in the game enhances the possibility of useful evaluations of learning, such as whether the particular
parts of the curriculum were achieved through the play of the game in class as well as the extent to
which the games were efective in helping the students learn (Institute of Play, 2014a).

Another challenge is that instructional designers, educators, and game designers construct goals
diferently. The instructional designer or educator aims to develop a game that helps the students
reach the learning objectives. She has the expertise to choose and plan which content and learning
activities will support the diferent learning processes that traditionally lead to the students reaching
the learning goals. The game designer, on the other hand, knows how to design the gameplay and the
diferent game elements, such as game mechanics, navigation, interaction, and levels, and how to make
everything come together for a fun and interesting experience for the player (Iuppa & Borst, 2010). So
where the teacher traditionally is focused on the learning, the game designer has his focus on how
to make everything an interesting and coherent experience. The resulting game must be a balance
between the aims of these two perspectives.

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Case Study One: Piano Dustbuster
The Piano Dustbuster game from JoyTunes is an example of how piano teaching can work in a game
experience. This game teaches children how to play piano, giving them the opportunity to train using
their own real piano, using a stealth recording of what you play at the piano and leting the played tones
inluence the game. In this way there is a seamless integration between what is played on the piano and
what is happening in the game. This is an innovative and intuitive way to introduce piano playing to
children, which can be used by the children alone or as a supplement to actual piano lessons.

In the game you can choose to play many diferent songs and they are divided into diferent popular
styles and levels of diiculty. Earning points and stars in the game provide an assessment of your
progress. The game is divided between a rehearsal mode and a concert mode. In the rehearsal mode,
an old lady in the game tries to sweep away the dust and the player has to help her by hiting the keys
on her own piano at the right moment when the diferent speck of dust hits the piano keys in the game.
This interaction will create the melodies played with the correct tones in the correct order at the correct
time. The rehearsal mode provides more help than the concert mode; for example, it stops if you miss
a tone. In the concert mode you are still sweeping dust and accompanied by an orchestra or a band.
This accompanying feature is motivating because it sounds nice, like an entire band when you playing.
Though the game will not be able to replace the piano teacher it is a motivating and engaging way of
geting to know how to play diferent tunes. The game’s gameplay is “composed” of traditional game
elements (Weitze & Ørngreen, 2011), such as:

1. Action stage: There is a story with an old lady sweeping dust of the piano keys. And the
stage in the game is not only inside the game but also “outside” at the real piano.
2. A goal: To be able to play a song without mistakes in the right tempo.
3. Rules: You have to hit the right keys at the right moment.
4. Choice: You can choose what songs you want to play and what style.
5. Challenge: You can progress through the diferent songs with ascending levels of diiculty.
6. Feedback: Diferent kinds of feedback are given, including:
a. Short-term, as you are at once informed if you have played the right piano key.
b. Long-term, as you are told how well you performed in diferent categories
(number of right notes, accuracy).

A reward also can be considered as a kind of feedback, as the reward is that you get to play with a “real
band” in the game ater having practiced. You can also achieve stars when everything works out well
for you. This game is a good example of how you can design a game by making it a supplementary
motivational tool for learning.

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Key Frameworks
In this section, I will cover the two concepts ludus (game-like structured goals) and paidia (play-like
player-led goals), the design of game goals, the design of learning goals and how to align learning goals
with game goals.

Clear and measurable goals are oten what make a game difer from more ambiguous play activities
(Salen & Zimmerman, 2004). This is indeed true for many traditional as well as learning games and
is one way to categorize and characterize games. Prensky (2001) has divided learning games into a
number of categories showing how diferent kinds of content, learning activities and subject maters are
possible to implement in the diferent kinds of categories of games. We also have to consider that this
way of matching subject maters and game categories when choosing style and shape of the game also
to a large degree will dependent on the designer’s imagination and innovative talent.

These design choices will inluence how the goals in the game are designed. One framework that can be
used for revealing characteristics of the game, making it clearer how to design goals, involves placing
the games on the axis between the concepts ludus and paidia (Caillois, 2001). Ludus refers to a game
that is more goal-oriented with structured rules and objectives. An example of this is Dragonbox (2014).
Dragonbox is a math game teaching children a range of math rules (for example a + 0 = a) in an intuitive
way. Here, the subject mater in itself is very rule-based and to reach the sub-goals in the game, the
player is both guided as well as discover all the diferent rules and procedures by exploring the game.
On the other hand, paidia is a more open-ended kind of playing that involves fantasy, creativity,
and improvisation. The goals in ludus are structured, speciic and measurable and it takes efort and
acquisition of skills to reach them. In paidia, the goals are more lexible, implicit, changeable, and
player-led, like playing in a sandbox. For example, in Minecrat Creative Mode (2014) players set their
own goals, create their own worlds, and their goals may change as their designs evolve or if they are
inspired by the materials or by other players in the game-world (Murphy Chertof, Guerrero, & Moit,
2013). Teachers also use Minecrat in Creative Mode as a learning game where the teachers create
the goals and rules according to the subject mater, which moves Minecrat toward the ludus pole.
These diferent kinds of goals ofer diferent kinds of possibilities for both subject maters as well as for
pedagogies when designing games. The possibilities for leting the students decide for their own learning
goals in the paidia end of the spectrum will for instance harmonize well with social constructivist
pedagogies.

Table 1. The spectrum of ludus and paidia

Ludus Paidia

Characteristics of goals Structured, speciic and measurable Flexible, implicit, changeable and player-led

Game examples Dragonbox Minecrat Creative Mode

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Designing game goals
There are a number of methods to use when designing learning games, but when it comes speciically
to establish game goals there are not many frameworks—game goals are typically part of the whole
game design. Schell (2008) has outlined the qualities that goals should have in the game to make them
appropriate and well balanced. The four most important qualities for goals are as follows:

1. Goals should be concrete in a way that makes it clear for the player what the ultimate goal
is for the game. If there are a series of goals, these should also be understandable.
2. The goals should be challenging but achievable, leting the player feel that he will be able to
reach the goals, so he does not give up.
3. The goal(s) should be designed in a way that both makes the player look forward to the
achieving the goal, as well as enjoying having reached the goal. If you have placed the goal
ater the right level of challenge the goal will be rewarding in itself.
4. You also have to balance the goals in your game in the short- and long-term, and let them
relate to each other in a meaningful way (Schell, 2008).

Goals are powerful in games since it is common to use the goals as an indirect control in games. For
example, if you have a path spliting in two in a game, you cannot predict which direction the player
will take, as she has her freedom to make her own choices. But, if you give the player a goal (e.g., ind a
new weapon to kill the dragon) and you give a hint about the new weapon being on the let side, then
the player most likely will choose the let direction. When you have designed goals that make the player
care for the game by wanting to achieve these goals, then you can sculpt the game world around these
goals, since the player traditionally will choose to follow the paths that lead toward the goals (Schell,
2008).

Goals or objectives can also be used to help categorize games (Fullerton, 2008). This list of diferent
kind of game goals in diferent categories of games is for commercial games, but may inspire us for
developing game goals in learning games.

1. Capture: In capture games the goal is to destroy something that belongs to the opponent
and at the same time avoiding being killed or captured. An example of this is Chess.
2. Chase: In a chase game the goal for player is to elude her opponent if she is chased, or to
catch her opponent.
3. Race: In a race game, the player’s goal is to reach a goal before the other players—the goal
being either conceptual or physical in time. It will oten be a mix of strategy and chance
that determines who wins the race.
4. Alignment: In an alignment game, the goal is to arrange the objects in the game in a
certain spatial coniguration or create conceptual alignment. Examples of this are Tic-tac-
toe or Tetris.
5. Rescue or escape: In a rescue game, the goal is to bring a unit in the game in safety. An
example of this is Mario Brothers.

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 6. Forbidden act: In this kind of game the goal is to break the rules or do wrong moves, such
as Twister, for example. These games are traditionally not digital games.
7. Construction games: In the game the goal is to build, manage and maintain objects. This
can for example be SimCity or Minecrat.
8. Exploration games: In exploration games the goal for the player oten is to explore the
game areas and at the same time collect treasures and solve puzzles.
9. Solution: The goals in these games are to solve puzzles more accurately or before the
opponents.
10. Outwit: The goal in outwit games is to use your knowledge to win over your opponent, for
example Trivial Pursuit.

If we are using a list such as the above for inspiration when creating game goals in learning games we
should be careful not just to create commercial games with learning implemented supericially in the
gameplay, but instead relect on how we can use the diferent kinds of goals, and also relect on the
quality, integrity and relevance of the goals in a creative way (Belman & Flanagan, 2009). One example
of a non-commercial game use of goals can be experienced in the game Hush (2007). This serious game
evokes a story about a personal experience of a complex historical situation from Rwanda and focuses
on a singular, personal experience as a solitary approach to the topic of genocide (Bogost, 2014). Hush is
created with inspiration from the Values at Play/Tiltfactor Lab’s Grow-A-Game-Cards (2014). In Hush
you are a mother and the goal is that you must calm your baby by singing a lullaby (tapping with the
right rhythm at the right key). The story takes place during war, and if the mother fails to keep her child
from crying, they will be discovered and killed. This is an example of a very diferent use of goals in a
game. The Grow-A-Game-Cards are a deck of cards used to inspire game design that incorporate values
into play. There are four card categories: challenges, games, values, and verbs. The game designer takes
a random card from each category and then uses the combination of cards for a brainstorm on the
design of a new game. In the Grow-A-Game-Cards (2014) the goals are implicit, in the sense that the
goals are to be found in all the diferent games in the game category. For example if you get the game
card, Go, the card will tell you, “one player uses black stones, the other white stones. In turns the players
“capture” as much territory as possible on a grid lined board.” This could be interpreted as a version of
a goal from Fullerton’s (2008) “capture” category above. When playing or designing with the Grow-A-
Game-Cards, three card categories, and the speciic card, might be:

1. Value: family
2. Challenge: social inequality
3. Verb: wandering

The deck challenges the user to create a game that encompasses the four cards in an innovative way. In
a learning game, it would be relevant to use the game goals as a means to make the learning situated in
the sense that some of the game goals can be used to make the game relevant compared to where this
learning could take place in the real world. For example, we could design a math game that takes place
in a shop, where the shop owner has to keep account with how much he is buying and selling on a daily

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basis. A goal in this imaginary game may be to earn more than the storeowner next door, and use this
as a way to learn basic addition and subtraction. So, when designing game goals it is important to be
creative and consider how the game goals can relate to the learning experience.

Designing learning goals

There are a number of methods to use to establish learning goals. In this section I will describe a framework
for designing learning consequences for seting learning goals, and then explain characteristics of how
learning goals can be deined and designed. Next, I will describe six levels of understanding when
mastering the learning goals, and then conclude with an explanation of how to design a progression
when implementing the learning goals.

Framework for learning design

Seting the learning goals is a part of the entire design for learning, that is, how you plan to carry out the
teaching and learning (Laurillard, 2012). Learning goals are a tool that can be used by the teacher and
students to improve teaching and learning, and they should be clear, relevant, realistic and meaningful.
Clear learning goals will make it easier for the student to evaluate her own learning process and work.
When choosing your learning goals, these goals should be seen in the context of the learning conditions,
the seting of the teaching, the educational content, the learning processes and the need for evaluation
of the learning all parts of Hiim & Hippe (1997) framework for learning design. All of these elements are
intertwined and should all be considered when designing a learning game. Though we aim to design the
learning goals in the game, it is also important to consider the following (Hiim & Hippe, 1997):

1. Learning conditions: This is the users’ prerequisite for learning. What prior knowledge can
the learner already be expected to have, or what knowledge does she need to have to be
able to reach the learning goals and be a successful learner in the game?
2. Seting of the learning: The seting of the game is important, but we also have to be aware
of time available and other contextual conditions to meet the learning goals from the
curriculum.
3. Learning goals: This includes a list of the learning goals, short-term and long-term, to be
achieved in the game. It is a highly motivating factor if the students are allowed to be a
part of choosing their own learning goals to make them meaningful for the students. These
goals can traditionally be seen as a contract between the student and the teacher, that is
what they both aim at respectively teaching and learning.
4. Learning content: This answers the question: What speciic learning content should we
choose to make the student able to reach the learning goals?
5. Learning process: The learning processes are supported by all the learning activities that
we design to make the student reach the learning goals. These activities are determined by
the subject mater, but also to a great extent to which pedagogical approaches and learning
theories we want to use in the game. The learning theories can be based on behaviorism,
cognitive science, social constructivism, constructionism (Dede, 2008; Wu, Hsiao, Wu, Lin,

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 & Huang, 2012) or experiential learning (Kolb, 1984). Many recent evaluations on research
projects evaluating the eiciency of learning games emphasize that we should make a clear
standpoint about which learning theory we use when designing games, since this will help
in our later ability to measure the efectiveness of the game in helping to reach the learning
outcomes (Wu et al., 2012).
6. Evaluation/assessment: The point is that we also need to design for evaluation and
assessment of whether our learner has reached the learning goal and the growth and
mastery we have aimed for in the game. These six points of atention are important to
consider when we design our learning game, since this will help ensure that the learner
reaches the learning goal.

When designing the learning in the game, the learning goals are what we are aiming for, but the
pedagogical approaches will vary depending on the subject mater. If, for example, the learning goal
is learning the alphabet, this involves understanding the abstract relationship between symbol and
sound, and part of the learning process will involve repetition and memorization, but also relection
and evaluation. On the other hand, acquisition of social skills, for example, will acquire another set of
skills, competencies, and atitudes. As in more traditional learning processes outside games, we always
have to consider what the student should learn before choosing how she will learn it in a learning
game (Kirriemuir & McFarlane, 2006), and thus what kind of learning activities will help the student to
achieve the learning goals.

Deinition and design of learning goals

The learning goals traditionally capture the three areas: knowledge, skills, and atitudes (Hiim & Hippe,
1997), though some taxonomies prefer to deine the third area as competencies (Winterton, Delamare-Le
Deist, & Stringfellow, 2006). The knowledge goals describe which knowledge and intellectual abilities
the students should learn (Hiim & Hippe, 1997). The skills have a more practical nature and encompass
what the student can do with her knowledge and how she can demonstrate her knowledge. The atitudes
are learning goals encompassing feelings, atitudes and values (Hiim & Hippe, 1997). Competence
is interpreted in many ways but can be interpreted as learning goals covering a combination of the
theoretical knowledge and the practical skills (Winterton et al., 2006).

We should aim to design clear learning goals to make it easy for the student to comprehend what she
should learn and to make the learning goals easy to evaluate ater the learning process for the teacher.
One way this is done is by making the goals observable, so we can see if the student masters the learning
goal. This is oten obtained by applying action verbs in the formulation of the learning objectives. An
example of this is, “ater playing [a speciic game], the student should be able to [recognize/ demonstrate/
calculate/ decide/ evaluate/ formulate] [a fact, concept, topic, theme, task, activity, or skill] (Hiim &
Hippe, 1997). A way to start formulation learning goals is to end the sentence: “Ater playing [this game]
you should be able to [blank].”

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A commonly used taxonomy of cognitive complexity was developed by Bloom (1956). In the slightly
revised version (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001, p. 67-68), the model describes six levels of understanding
and mastering the learning goals, formulated as the students thinking according to the cognitive levels
of complexity. The ascending levels are: remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating
and creating. Designing the learning objectives with these diferent cognitive levels in mind will give
an overview of how and at which level we expect our students to be able to master the learning goals,
and these levels will also help making the learning goals more simple to measure when we evaluate
what has been learned in the game and at what level of cognitive rigor (Hess, Jones, Carlock & Walkup,
2009). When studying a subject such as human rights, the speciication of the cognitive levels when
designing the learning goals will make it possible to measure if the student only is able to remember
basic human rights or if she is able to apply and use human rights concepts for analyzing complex social
situations.

Progression in the choice of learning objectives in the game

When designing learning goals you should also be aware of the progression in the learning to make the
goals atainable. Learning progressions within a content area begin at the novice level with the core
concepts and skills as the learning goals; these core concepts and skills are considered fundamental.
To progress through a content area to reach the learning goal, every learner needs to master these
core competencies. For example, you could say that the student must learn and master the rules and
procedures within each learning topic to achieve the learning goal (Dreyfuss, 2001). This is one of the
things that successful computer games do very well. As the student has acquired the knowledge or the
learning goals in the novice level, the rules and skills are integrated into each other, and you can begin
to let the student get to know more complex relationships within the current topic, higher learning goals
as in Bloom’s taxonomy of cognitive complexity. In education, it is important to take the student’s zone
of proximal development into account (Vygotsky, according to Santrock, 2008). This zone is located
between the student’s actual level of development and the potential development. You need to support
and scafold the implementation of the learning goals and slowly begin to “remove the scafolding” until
the student is able to work on his own at the current level of competence. This should be followed by the
next level in the new zone of proximal development, and in this way he will progress in an expanding
cycle, reaching new learning goals progressively.

Aligning game goals with learning goals

There are a number of diferent methodologies for aligning game goals with learning goals. I will
start by describing the Q Design Pack for Games and Learning, then Whiton’s recommendations for
implementing learning in games, then The Smiley Model, which explains how the game elements in
this model relates to the learning goals.

One methodology for aligning game goals with learning goals is by the Institute of Play and described
in their book, Q Design Pack for Games and Learning. This book explains that, “All efective classroom
games are designed with speciic learning goals in mind. Before you can design games focused on

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speciic learning goals, you need to learn about game design” (Institute of Play 1, 2014, p. 11). Learning
goals and game goals can be aligned by providing a practice space for goal-oriented challenges. For
example, in the game Dragonbox (2014), the student/player is provided with a practice space in which
she can gradually move through the challenges, explores and solve the puzzles reaching the game goals
and learning goals of each level.

The Q Design Packs ofer a framework to develop learning games and within this frame it is central to
help align game goals with learning goals (Institute of Play 1, 2014; Salen, Torres, Wolozin, Rufo-Tepper,
& Shapiro, 2011). To align game goals with learning goals, we irst generate ideas with the learning goal
in mind, while also considering how to assess these goals during and ater gameplay. This is based
on backward planning, which means knowing your students learning goals, and the inal assessment
before planning the individual lessons and activities (Wiggins & McTighe, according to Institute of Play
1, 2014). This is followed by an elaboration of the game design comprising an overall mission with an
overall game goal and several quests with sub-goals on the way to the end goal. At the Institute of Play,
the students have used this framework for making their own learning games.

Whiton, in Learning with Digital Games (2009), states that for a learning game to be a successful
learning tool, it should be designed in a way that ensues that the game goals support the learning goals.
Whiton suggests creating a list that describes the intended learning goals, followed by a description of
the traditional learning activities that would lead to the student achieving these learning goals. Then,
this should be followed by a process of deciding which learning activities can be modiied or embedded
within a game, as things we can do in the game. Whiton does not directly mention the role of the game
goals in this design process.

There are many atempts to design frameworks for educational game design (Winn, 2008; Staalduinen
& Freitas, 2011). The Smiley-Model is a game design model describing how to design engaging learning
games (see Figure 1) (Weitze & Ørngreen, 2011). The model addresses how to design the learning and
how to implement the learning elements into the game while at the same time always considering how
to make the game motivating and engaging. The Smiley-Model uses the Hiim & Hippes (1997) learning
design framework described above for the learning design (Weitze & Ørngreen, 2011).

In the Smiley-Model, the game goal is one of the six game elements you can use when you want to “set
the learning design into play” (Weitze & Ørngreen, 2011). The ive other game elements are: 1) action
space, 2) rules, 3) choice, 4) challenge, and 5) feedback. All the game elements are intertwined and thus,
the game goals are strongly related to the other game elements, when designing a learning game.

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Figure 1. The Smiley Model. (Weitze & Ørngreen, 2011).

Because the game goal difers from the learning goal, we need to consider how we actually implement
the learning objectives in the game. The game mechanics, or which actions can be taken in the game,
what we can do, provide the structure to the game.

If all the game elements are intertwined, where are the learning goals found in a game? The “challenges”
in a learning game should be encompassing the learning goals, the learning content, and the learning
activities. For example, challenges can be, paterns you have to recognize, rules you have to learn,
tasks that should be solved, and hand-eye coordination to be learned (Koster, 2005). The framing of
the learning goals should determine which challenges are appropriate to include helping to meet the
learning goals. For example, when playing a learning game the purpose is to atain the learning goal
and to learn to master the action or to understand the patern. By playing the game successfully, the
learner will automatically show her competence when overcoming the challenges, since completing the
game would require that she knows how to solve the problem. If the student/player inds it diicult to
meet the challenge in the game, the game should provide feedback or scafolding, breaking down the
task into smaller game goals to support the player.

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Koster (2005) suggests that challenges can be paterns or skills you have to learn, and similarly, Gee
(2005) suggests that it is possible to use skills as strategies in games. Gee (2005) explains that you can
design learning in a way that lets the learner practice a skill (this skill being part of the learning goals)
as part of a strategy to accomplish the game goals she wants to accomplish. In this way, the learner will
feel like the practicing process is part of a strategy to accomplish her game goal, removing the atention
from the traditional boredom that occurs when practicing the same thing over and over again.

When implementing learning elements into the game and in this situation observing and designing the
connection between the game goal and the other game elements in the Smiley-Model the player will
make some “choices” in the game and the “rules” are determining when the game goals are reached or
not reached. If the learning goals for example are to learn algebra in the Dragonbox game, the “rules”
at the same time are a big part of the learning process since they are making the student/player reach
the “learning goals” by leting her train “basic memorization” and even relexes, by doing the same
thing over and over if she does not succeed the irst time. This learning will happen while the student
is working her way through the game (Flanagan, Hash, & Isbister, 2010).

Moreover, the 6th game element “feedback” is crucial to let the student/player know if he has reached
the goals and to assure that learning has occurred (Table 2). In fact, feedback in the game corresponds
very well with the feedback that is needed when learning (Murphy et al., 2013). If “short-term feedback”
in the game is given within one and a half seconds on the action taken (Wilms, 2011), research suggests
that this will give the student/player the opportunity to experience the feeling of “learning by doing,”
meaning developing and learning as a result of irst-hand experience (Chatield, 2010; Kirriemuir &
McFarlane, 2006). If the player does not fulill the learning goal he should have “feedback.” The “long-
term feedback” given in a game should be more instructive and can provide guidance and strategic
feedback (process-feedback) (has resemblance with formative feedback in learning) or give information
on action/performance-based data (outcome-feedback), which then will lead the learner toward the
learning goal (Sanchez, Cannon-Bowers, & Bowers, 2010) (For more details on feedback, see Murphy et
al., 2013).

Table 1. Feedback on the sixth game element in the Smiley Model

Feedback Characteristics
Short-term Within 1,5 seconds on the action taken, enables the experience of
feedback “learning by doing”

Process feedback Instructive, provides guidance and strategic feedback

Long-term
feedback
Outcome feedback Performance-based data

In the game development process and when the game is tested you have to alter, add and adjust the
diferent game elements to improve the game and reach both the learning goals as well as the game
goals (Schell, 2008).

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Case Study Two: Re-Mission 2
Re-Mission 2 is a game for young people with cancer developed by HopeLab, a research and development
nonproit company. Re-Mission 2 consists of six small games and the aim is to help young people with
cancer ight their disease. The learning goals are to teach young people to stick to their treatments
and shit atitudes about chemotherapy since these two elements are important parts of a successful
treatment that helps to ight cancer. The game aims to motivate the players to stick to their treatments
by boosting self-eicacy and building positive emotions in the players.

For children, a problem with cancer treatment is that it is a very rough treatment both physically and
psychologically. The children sometimes feel more ill ater their chemotherapy treatment, and therefore,
at times it feels like they are hurting themselves more by sticking to the treatment. But this treatment
will help them ight the disease, and therefore it is crucial that the children work with and not against
the treatment. The knowledge about the disease and treatment is normally given by doctors as writen
information and is diicult for the children to understand and learn. The game has been developed
by medical professionals, game developers, and young patients and has been designed so the children
learn about what is going on inside their bodies when cancer atacks. The game also gives the children
an idea of what power they have in defeating cancer.

The learning goals and game goals are aligned in Re-Mission 2. For example, the learning goals are:

1. That cancer can be defeated.

2. That you have diferent kinds of possibilities to take an active part in defeating cancer.
3. What is going on inside the body when cancer is atacking and how the diferent kinds of
medical treatments work.
4. That the body has weapons and there are also medical weapons that can be used to ight
cancer.
5. That there are diferent kinds of cancer cells more and less aggressive, so you have to
atack them in diferent ways.

In the game, the player is put inside the human body to defeat cancer, being able to use weapons such
as chemotherapy, antibiotics, and the body’s natural defenses. The overall goal is to defeat cancer and
there are diferent sub-goals inside each game.

In the game Nanobot’s Revenge in Re-Mission 2, the mission and game goal is to defeat the Nuclear
Tyrant and his forces. The player is the powerful microscopic robot Nanobot designed to blast away
cancer and the mission is to prevent the cancer cells completing the tumor and stop the tumor from
reaching the blood stream. The goal is thus concrete, achievable, and is designed in a way that makes
the player look forward to achieving them. The game goals also give the player an opportunity to feel
that he achieves competence, autonomy, and control when being able to defeat the Nuclear Tyrant
because he is learning what it takes to kill the bad cells. There are nested goals in the game, since there
are diferent kinds of challenges with enemy-cells to be defeated at the diferent levels in the game—all

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representing diferent kinds of cancer cells having diferent kinds of ways to build cancer and resist
the players’ atacks. The player, on the other hand, has diferent kinds of weapons with which to defeat
the bad cells (e.g., chemo, radiation, antibiotics) and the rules in the game determines if you beat the
Nuclear Tyrant and his forces (e.g., some of the bad cells can only be defeated with speciic kinds of
treatment). The sub-goals make it easier for the player to understand the game and experience small
successes while managing the diferent challenges. The game is thus designed so the learning goals are
implemented in an overall mission with an overall game goal and several sub-quests with sub-goals
on the way to the end goal. By playing the game with progression toward the game goals, the player
is learning what is going on in the body when cancer is atacking, experiencing that he has the power
to use the diferent kind of treatments to ight the bad cells and is engaged with the intended learning
goals while playing the game.

The research suggested that playing Re-Mission (the irst Re-Mission game with a gameplay that
resembles Re-Mission 2) signiicantly improved key behavioral and psychological factors associated
with successful cancer treatment and that the game had an impact on the biological level as well (Kato,
Cole, Bradlyn, & Pollock, 2008). The players showed a faster increase in self-eicacy and also showed
a faster acquisition of cancer-related knowledge. The results indicate that Re-Mission successfully
reached its learning goals through the game goals, giving a positive impact on the young peoples health
behavior. Furthermore, another study showed that the fact that the young people with chronic illness
was actually playing the game instead of just watching someone else playing the game is the main reason
for the activation of the brain’s positive motivation circuits, supporting earlier indings suggesting that
Re-Mission’s efectiveness stems from its impact on individual emotional and motivational processes.
The impact on the emotional processes leads to a shit in the young people’s atitudes and emotions,
which helps boost the players’ adherence to the prescribed chemotherapy and antibiotic treatments
(Cole, Yoo, Knutson, 2012). The Re-Mission games have thus successfully been able to align learning
goals and game goals.

Key Findings
In this section, I discuss research on indings in game goals and describe Hirumi et al.’s (2010) experiences
with implementing learning goals in the game.

Research indings on game goals

The game goals should be motivating, and this will happen if they arouse curiosity, and provide a sense
of competence, autonomy, and control (Weitze & Ørngreen, 2011). If you give the player an opportunity
to choose and adjust her own goals, research suggests that it will enhance feelings of freedom, autonomy
and give her the possibility of targeting special interests (Deci & Ryan, 2000).

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Game goals should be presented in a way that ensures that a structured low of goals following and
nested inside each other will pull you through the game. This means presenting a long-term goal or
overall goal (e.g., rescue the princess and become a hero), and medium-term goal (e.g., kill level the
dragon) and the short-term goals (e.g., collect jewels for the princess). These goals are nested such that
the small goals help progress and guide the player toward the larger goals. Larger and smaller goals
can be achieved throughout the game (Deterding, 2011). Spliting game goals into many small and large
goals will help to provide a sense of having many small successes for the player (Chatield, 2010). It is
also important to link the goals to each other in a meaningful way so the game can be experienced as
coherent (Schell, 2008).

Implementing learning goals in the game

Instructional designers may know litle about game development and on the other hand game developers
oten may know litle about training, education and instructional design. Therefore, it sometimes might
be diicult to work together for the two professions, being able to use and realize the potentials of both
game and learning (Hirumi et al., 2010; Iuppa & Borst, 2010).

Some of the diferences for learning designers and game designers can be described like this: For game
designers the goals and outcomes are important, but goals are only secondary to the gameplay itself
(Koster, 2005). For the learning designers goals, outcomes are very important and have a high priority.
The game designer will prioritize an engaging gameplay, perhaps sacriicing veracity and coherence.
This might seem to be happening in the wrong order but in learning games the goals are not more
important than an engaging gameplay. Instead the learning goals and game goals are more like “anchor
points on intersecting continua” and not opposed concepts (Hirumi et al., 2010, p. 32).

On the other hand the learning game designer should not ignore the learning goals and it is important
to choose appropriate educational strategies and plan for assessment in the game. Hirumi et al. (2010)
suggest that the key lies in inding ways to incorporate gameplay into our objectives, and to design
efective learning into gameplay design. If the game is not fun, a game designer will oten try to ind a
way to solve that situation at once, without playing the same full atention to assure that the learning
goal is met. The learning goals do not have to be represented explicitly in the game, but we can aim to
align the desired learning outcomes with the game outcomes, and at the same time aim to facilitate
learning and engagement (Hirumi et al., 2010).

Game designers and learning designers need to work together and understand each other’s perspectives.
The game designers will design challenges, quests, obstacles and puzzles at the same time deciding for
the conditions for progress and mastery. The learning designers on the other hand can elaborate on
the “Learning Task Maps,” specifying the skills that will be needed to achieve the overall goal. The
game and learning designers then move on to specifying the context, behavior, as well as the criteria
for mastery of each challenge or skill. In a learning game, the evaluation and feedback in the game has
to include evaluation of the learning goals. On the other hand, the learning designers have to learn

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and understand that evaluation has to be imbedded in the gameplay, and that this might change the
traditional strategies and sequence of learning as well as some of the challenges and strategies in the
game may go beyond traditional achievement of the learning goals.

What is actually learned in the game?

The aim is to design the game in a way that enables the player to reach the learning goal as well as the
game goal. To do this, we should also consider the diference between the two (Staalduinen & Freitas,
2011, p.44):

1. What the player can learn in the game, that is, what the game’s creator has intended in the
design concerning learning goals.
2. The skills and topics the player must learn to be able to inish the game. This should partly
be the same as what the player must learn in the game.
3. Things that the player actually has learned ater playing the game.
4. Collateral learning: This is what the player learns in the game that was not directly
intended or just was not connected directly to the subject mater.
5. “Cheats” or the things the player has learned in the game, oten by taking short-cuts or
exploring the game, but sometimes a consequence of this also is that the student skips over
the intended learning in this process (Staalduinen & Freitas, 2011, p. 44).

No mater how thoroughly you plan your implementation of the learning goals and align them with the
game goals, you need to playtest your game with real students to see if your intentions came through.

Assessment Considerations
In learning games assessment has an important role, since we want to be able to investigate if the
student has achieved the learning objectives while playing the game. Feedback in a learning game
is essential, since the possibility to give individual informative feedback to the student is one of the
advantages of learning games. Games should be able to gather data from the learner and give direct,
useful and relevant feedback, telling the student where he is in the learning process and where he
should consider going next. We need to decide how the learning objectives will be measured in the
game and how student performance will be evaluated to provide actionable and relevant feedback and
support student self-relection (Wilson, Bejar, Scalise, Templin, Wiliam, & Irribarra, 2012).

Likewise, a teacher needs to set the learning objectives, select content appropriate for reaching the
learning objectives, design appropriate learning activities, and ater having conducted these activities,
observe and evaluate/assess the obtained learning of the students, followed by giving helpful feedback
to the student aterward (Hiim & Hippe, 1997). The same type of process needs to be integrated into the
game’s design.

Evaluation should happen in the game as well as around the game. Staalduinen & Freitas (2011)
distinguishes between three kinds of player assessment in games:

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 1. Post-game assessment: Here the teacher tests ater the game with a writen or oral test
examining what the student has learned. This is not really a part of the game, but can be a
good way to test if the teacher has used a commercial game for learning.
2. Post-game debrieing or evaluation: This kind of assessment is an evaluative talk
between the students/players and the teacher about which experiences they have had in
the game. (Staalduinen & Freitas, 2011).
3. In-game feedback: The game measures progress, achievement, and scores (long-term
feedback), that is feedback on the player’s actions in the game (Staalduinen & Freitas,
2011; Wilson, Bedwell, Lazzara, Salas, Burke, Estock, Orvis, & Conkey, 2009; Salen &
Zimmerman, 2004).

Learning is situated inside learning games and therefore the assessment also can be designed to happen
continuously within the narrative context of the game. This can both happen with short-term goals (e.g.,
by solving the puzzle and moving on in the game), and long-term goals (e.g., by solving all the challenges
and reaching the inal goal). Successful performance is therefore not necessarily communicated as it
is in traditional teaching (e.g., giving marks), instead assessment in games is happening as part of the
story through real (game) world consequences (e.g., you unlock new challenges, you move to another
part of the world, you level-up when having solved one of the learning goals). In this kind of in-game
assessment it is important to understand the diference between assessment in games and in traditional
teaching and design in a way such that the learning goals also take the game context into account
(Hirumi et al., 2010).

It is important that we create a supportive environment for learning (Wiliam, 2012). When we give
feedback in games, we basically either tell the student if her current performance has reached the goal
or has fallen short on the goal. Our wish is that the student’s response is increased efort and aspiration
toward the learning goals. If the feedback gives the learner a feeling that she might fail while many
others has succeeded, she might be disengaged, deciding that it is beter to be thought lazy than dumb,
and thus she does not continue the progress toward the learning goal. Thus, to increase the likelihood
of a productive student response you should:

1. Make the game a safe place to make mistakes.

2. Let the feedback efectively convey the idea that everyone can become smart. If the learner
does not feel smart, then he is just not smart “yet.”
3. Provide the learner with the support needed in a way that acknowledges that we do not all
learn the same way, and that is okay.
4. Enable the student to focus on the comments and details of the feedback, and not on the
scores.
5. Give useful feedback only focusing on the subjects that the learner can change.
6. Give feedback in a way that gives space and place for the learner to improve the results.

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Future research
There is litle research to be found on how to align the learning goals with the game goals, therefore the
ield of learning games can beneit from further research in this area, since a number of studies conirm
the importance of aligning the learning goals with what can be learned in the game (Gee, 2011; Wilson
et al., 2009) and the need of frameworks for doing this (Akilli, 2007). There have been many pedagogical
approaches when designing game-based learning (Wu, et al., 2012; Kebritchi & Hirumi, 2008), for
example, behaviorism, cognitivist or constructivism. To be able to assess the variables in a successful
learning game, we should deine which learning theories are behind the design of the game, since
this will give an opportunity to measure the pedagogical components, among these the learning goals,
and later repeat the success in other learning games. Dede (2011) recommends establishing common
research strategies and models for educational games to aim at making studies that complement each
other in what and how they explore. One way to research how to beter align learning goals with game
goals is to observe and analyze the conditions of when learning games are successful at providing an
efective learning environment for the students and then take the following into consideration: the
pedagogical approach, the curriculum, the subject mater, the context, and the characteristics of the
students, teachers in the learning situation in question, and mapping these variables that are in every
learning situation (Dede, 2011). This will be a beter way of researching instead of aiming at universal
frameworks, which will work in every condition since no educational approach and no educational
technology will be universally efective. Then, we might be able to take all the necessary parameters into
consideration when aiming at embedding the leaning goals into the game’s goals and game’s mechanics.

Case Study Three: Research Labs

A number of research labs and centers are dedicated to the study of implementing learning into games
and how to assess the learning in and around the game.

Glasslab at Institute of Play has developed SimCityEdu (2014) a SimCity-based learning tool that allows
teachers to make use of the already provided lesson plans or to design their own lesson plans inside
the game. In SimCityEdu, students can explore the simulations created in the city. For example, there is
a challenge on how to bring the air pollution down, and at the same time keeping the employment up,
leting the students experience the complex consequences of their choices within a complex system. In
the game, the students can play the role of a mayor, responsible for the challenging work of addressing
environmental impact, while at the same time balancing the employment needs and the happiness
of the citizens in the city. In SimCityEdu, the students have individual learning experiences, and the
game aims at improving the learning process by providing formative assessment of the learning goals.
The teacher can access information about the students’ ability to problem solve, read, and explain the
relationships in complex systems.

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Institute of Play has recently released a whitepaper on how to assess student learning by formative
assessment as well as by using gameplay data, proposing a design approach that links the process of
game design with the process of assessment design (Mislevy, Oranje, Bauer, Davier, & Hao, 2014). This
paper describes some of the thoughts behind the continued elaboration of SimCityEdu and the work on
developing standards for game-based assessment.

The SimCityEdu game is built so the teachers can create their own lesson plans encompassing learning
goals, and teachers and students also have access to dashboards that give an overview. Glasslab has
developed lesson plans for SimCityEdu, which teachers are free to use. For instance, one of the units
in the physical science-based lessons is called “Power to the People.” This unit deals with energy
consumption, cost, and consequences and is designed for grades six through eight. This speciic lesson
(“Power to the People”) lasts 5 days with 45-minute lessons, with the students studying fossil fuels,
nuclear power, solar, and wind energy—all renewable energy sources. The students have to create an
energy system grid in their city in the game to supply power to everything that they build. In the game
they will experience that there are real-world consequences according to the choices they make in the
game, giving them opportunities to relect on these consequences. A teacher can see the learning goals
that the students will be working with on all ive days and there is also a list of essential questions that
the students should be able to answer ater playing the game. The assessment takes form as formative
assessment, both 1) outside the game in the discussions in the class, as well as 2) inside the game, since to
make some of the right choices in the game and move on in the game, the students have to understand
part of the knowledge in the curriculum. But the teacher can also choose to use the designed 3) pre- and
post-assessments in the game to get an idea (summative assessment) of what the students has learned
in the game.

Best practices
The following is a list of best practices for aligning game and learning goals.

Game goals
1. Goal qualities: The goals should be concrete, achievable and designed in a way that makes
the player look forward to achieving them.
2. Sense of control: The goal should provide a sense of competence, autonomy and control as
well as arouse curiosity.
3. Many small and large goals nested in the game: Make a meaningful and structured low
of nested goals in the game, from short-term to long-term goals by leting the small goals
help progressing and guiding the player to the larger goals. This will give an overview in
the game and provide a feeling of many small successes.

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Integrating game goals and learning goals
1. Backward planning: Designers need to know the student’s learning goals and the method
of assessment before planning the individual lessons, activities and game goals.
2. Elaborate missions and quests: Use the learning goals to determine the game design,
which should comprise an overall mission with an overall game goal, and several sub-
quests with sub-goals on the way to the end goal.
3. Engagement with learning goals: Let the progress toward the game goals necessitate
engagement with the intended learning goals.
4. Embed the learning activities in the game: Let the learning activities be modiied or
embedded within the game.
5. Challenges: The challenges in a learning game comprise the learning goals, the content
and the learning activities. When overcoming the challenges in the game, the learner will
show her competence since this requires that she know how to solve the problem and
atain the learning goal.
6. Purpose of the challenge: To reach the learning goal and to learn to master the action or to
understand the patern you have to recognize, skills or rules you have to learn, tasks that
should be solved, and hand-eye coordination to be learned.
7. Game goals and rules: The rules should help determine if the game goals are reached or
not reached.
8. Connection between the learning process and rules: The rules might be part of the
learning process, helping to meet the learning goal. This can, for example, be designed in
the game by leting the rules and goals invite the player to repeat or retry the task until the
challenge is solved.
9. Goals and feedback: Feedback gives the student/player a possibility to know if he has
reached the learning, as well as the game goals, thereby helping to ensure learning and
transfer.

Resources
Books
Ferrara, J. (2012): Playful design. Rosenfeld.
Fullerton, T. (2008): Game Design Workshop. Morgan Kaufmann.
Gee, J.P. (2007): What videogames have to teach us about learning and literacy. Palgrave Macmillan.
Iuppa; N. & Borst, T. (2010): End-to-end Game Development, Creating Independent Serious Games and
simulations from start to inish. Elsevier, Focal Press.
Koster, R., (2005): A Theory of Fun for Game Design. Paraglyph Press.
Salen, K. & Zimmerman, E. (2004) Rules of play: Game design fundamentals. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Games and Tools

Breakaway (www.breakawaygame.com)
Citizen Science (www.gameslearningsociety.org/project_citizen_science.php)

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Construct 2 (www.scirra.com)
Dragonbox (www.dragonboxapp.com/index.html)
Gameglobe (www.gameglobe.com)
Game maker (www.yoyogames.com)
Gamesalad (www.gamesalad.com)
Games for change (www.gamesforchange.org/2011/02/breakaway-a-soccer-game-about-gender-violence/)
Grow-A-Game-Cards (valuesatplay.org/grow-a-game-overview) and (itunes.apple.com/us/app/grow-a-game/
id657244924?ls=1&mt=8)
Hush (valuesatplay.org/play-games)
Institute of Play (www.instituteofplay.org)
Kodu (www.kodugamelab.com)
Minecrat (minecrat.net)
MinecratEdu.com (minecratedu.com/wiki/index.php?title=Teaching_with_MinecratEdu
Piano Dust Buster, Joy Tunes (www.joytunes.com/piano/)
Plants vs. Zombies (www.popcap.com/plants-vs-zombies-1)
Rayman Legends (rayman.ubi.com/legends/en-gb/home/)
Scratch (scratch.mit.edu)
SimcityEdu (www.instituteofplay.org/work/projects/simcityedu-games/)
Values at Play/ Tiltfactor (valuesatplay.org)
Unity (unity3d.com)

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CHAPTER 13

Playtesting and Iterative Design

The Most Important Process for Making Great Games

Ira Fay, Hampshire College, Amherst, Massachusets, U.S., ira@irafay.com

Key Summary Points

Playtesting is the act of observing someone play your game. It is a valuable process for any
1 game designer because it provides true insight into the game, allowing you to improve it.

For learning games, playtesting also focuses on understanding if the player is actually
2 learning anything from playing your game and ideally how well that knowledge is retained
and/or transferred.

The iterative development process is a three-step loop (design, build, test) and playtesting is
3 one of the three steps in that loop.

Key Terms
Playtesting
Iterative design
User testing
Design build test loop
Game development best practices
Playtesting for learning games

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Introduction
Many people want to make a great game that engages players and provides educational impact, but
how does one actually accomplish this goal? One process that can improve your chance of success is
the iterative development process. This process is a repeating loop: irst we design something, then we
build it, and then we test it. Based on the results, we change our design and modify what we had built.
Then we test the game again, modify the design based on the test, update the game accordingly, etc. To
maximize quality, we strive to repeat these three steps (design-build-test) as many times as possible in
the time available.

When we build something, it could be a very basic prototype (analog or digital), a speciic feature in
the game, or the inal polish on a nearly inished game. At the start of development, the quality of our
design is least certain, since we have not been able to test the game yet. If we spend a long time building
the full game before testing, we will likely discover that our design needs to change and we have wasted
a lot of time building unnecessary features. Therefore, especially near the beginning of development, it
is best to build something small (such as a prototype), which can be tested quickly to conirm the design
is on the right track.

When we talk about testing in the context of game development, we are really talking about playtesting.
Playtesting is the act of observing someone play your game with the intention of understanding that
player’s experience. This is diferent than simply watching someone else play a game. While playtesting,
we strive to truly understand what the player is thinking, feeling, and doing, and why. We then use that
understanding to improve the game.

The ability to accurately and insightfully observe players is a skill that anyone can develop with
practice. Every time you moderate a playtest, your observational skills will improve. Fortunately, we
also have many tools available to support that efort, such as cameras or touch/click tracking sotware.

A playtest involves three people or groups:

1. Player
2. Moderator
3. Development team

The player plays the game while the moderator observes and takes notes. The moderator should atempt
to track the player’s actions (e.g., clicking, touching, choices), as well as more subtle things like pauses,
points of confusion or excitement, or facial expressions. The goal of the playtest is to understand the
player’s actions and feelings, allowing the development team to improve the experience for other
players in the future.

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The moderator spends most of his or her time silently observing the player. Sometimes, the moderator
may ask a question to understand what the player is thinking at a particular moment. If the player
gets particularly stuck, the moderator may also choose to intervene, allowing the player to reach other
areas of the game. To maximize the player’s comfort and willingness to speak openly about the game,
oten the development team will also observe in a separate area, possibly via a one-way mirror or
recordings aterward. Sometimes a member of the development team may serve as the moderator, but
an unailiated person as the moderator may minimize bias and ensure that the player feels comfortable
critiquing the game honestly.

At the earliest stages of development, when the game is still far from being inished, it is sometimes
easy and eicient for a single person to be the player, the moderator, and a member of the development
team! In a certain state of mind, a person can play a game while simultaneously observing themselves
play the game, almost like an out-of-body experience. Ater the playtest, the person can write notes
about the experience and share them with the team. Ideally, such notes will be analyzed, leading to
improvements to the design and continued progress around the design-build-test loop.

For learning games, the playtesting process can be even more complicated. Not only are you trying
to observe levels of fun and how efectively the player can control the game, but you are also trying
to understand how much the player learns by playing the game. First you will need to identify what
you want the player to learn. For simple concepts, such as a fact or piece of trivia, oten this learning
is relatively binary—they either know it or not. Whether the player learned the fact can be assessed
through simple questions from the moderator, or through observation of in-game activities. For more
complicated concepts, such as understanding complex system interactions or almost any topic beyond
simple facts, you will likely need to follow up with players ater they complete the game playing
experience. Though playtesting is not a science, there are some processes that you can follow as a
moderator and playtest designer to maximize your chances of gathering useful information that is as
unbiased as possible.

In this chapter, I will discuss the iterative design loop (design-build-test), best practices in playtesting,
and how designers of games for educational impact can modify their playtesting practices to support
their specialized goals.

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Case Study One: Unearthed

Figure 1: Sample screenshot of Unearthed.

Unearthed was designed to help middle school students learn grammar, and very speciically, subject-
verb agreement. The team for Unearthed consisted of ive or six experienced game developers, who
have experience in engineering, art, production, design, audio, and quality assurance. The design goal
of Unearthed was to help middle school students learn grammar, and very speciically, subject-verb
agreement. Early in the design process I met with educational experts and middle school teachers,
discovering how the subject is best taught in classrooms. Several people suggested the idea of half-
sentence matching. Students would see half-sentences with subjects and half-sentences with verbs,
and then need to match the sentences properly. With that, we had the core idea for our game. We created
an early prototype and we quickly identiied several questions:

1. What is the best way for students to connect two half sentences on a tablet device? Touch
one, and then touch another? Touch and drag? Multitouch?
2. Should the full sentences make sense logically, or is it suicient to accept gibberish
sentences as long as the subject and verb agree?
3. Are students actually learning anything by playing the game?

As I mentioned above, whenever I playtest I strive to create questions in advance that are speciic to
my current design needs. I also create some general questions (likely quantitative) that I ask at every
playtest, allowing the team to identify any trends that emerge. Finally, I also leave some room for the
moderator to improvise questions as needed.

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Below are some examples of the questions I asked at this stage of playtesting Unearthed. Remember
that the moderator strives to answer these questions himself or herself, based on observation of the
player. These questions can likely be answered through observation, but sometimes the moderator must
ask the player a question to be more certain of the answer. Of course, when talking to someone who is
playing a game, the player’s brain is occupied and he or she may have diiculty playing the game and
talking to you at the same. Therefore, if you must ask the player a question during gameplay, try to keep
it short and easy to answer.

A. Does the player understand the goal of the game?

B. If so, how does the player naturally try to connect the half-sentences?
C. Does the player seem to understand the correct answers, or is the player oten guessing at
the right answer?
D. Does the player seem to improve over time?

Along with the sample questions for the moderator above, we also surveyed the player:

1. Demographic information (e.g., age, gender)

2. Rate the game on a scale of 1-5.
3. Rate the game on a scale of too easy/just right/too hard.
4. Name a few things that could be improved and a few things you liked. Any other
comments?

Questions (A) and (B) focused on basic usability issues, while questions (C) and (D) focused on learning
objectives. The (1) - (4) survey questions considered whether the player was having fun, though a beter
indication can be gauged by the moderator during the playtest by allowing the player to stop playing
at any time, and seeing when the player stops. Fun and engagement can be inferred by how long the
player continues to play.

As it turns out, regarding question (B), players tried to connect half-sentences in all three ways (touch-
touch, touch-drag, multi-touch). Therefore, we changed the input detection code to support all three
methods.

Regarding question (C), we noticed that many players were guessing very quickly. We had not
implemented a major penalty for guessing, nor a reward for geting many right in a row. Therefore, since
the game was timed to last 60 seconds, the optimal strategy for any player was to guess immediately,
without taking the time to read the sentences at all. Based on our playtesting, we changed the scoring
and messaging to strongly reward correct answers in a row, and we also penalized wrong answers.

For question (D), we did see some high scores increasing over time, but we cannot be sure if that was
caused by actual learning, or if it was something else like a beter understanding of the game controls.
To get a clearer answer to this question, we would need to do a rigorous study.

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Key Frameworks
I believe there is widespread consensus among professional game developers that iterative development
is a wise process and that playtesting is a useful tool for designers to employ. Playtesting allows
developers to understand how players will experience their game, leading to increased fun, sales, and
a higher quality inal product.

Therefore, instead of asking if we should playtest and iteratively develop, the more interesting question
is how we efectively playtest and iteratively develop. Fortunately, with practice and care, we can
improve our processes and our playtesting skills.

Particularly for learning games, it is important to be clear in your own mind (and your boss’s mind!) that
playtesting is not intended to be a scientiic process from which you can publish statistically signiicant
results. Playtesting is intended to be a tool for the development team, allowing the team to iteratively
improve the game. While the moderator or playtest designer may atempt to assess whether the player
has learned anything by playing the game, those results need not be scientiic, they merely need to
be useful enough to guide development. The time, efort, and cost required to create a well-designed
and scientiically rigorous assessment study simply is not practical during most development cycles.
Of course, if you have the time and money to do so, great! Such rigorous, scientiic studies of learning
games will help all developer in the long run. But for most of us, nonscientiic playtesting can suice.

As a quick introduction to moderating a playtest for those who are unfamiliar with it, I ofer the
following steps that I typically follow:

1. As moderator, work with the development team to crat the questions that you will try
to answer in the playtest, based on the team’s current stage of development. Early in
development, the team might be wondering about basic game controls or the story hook.
Later in development, the development team might want to know if level seven is taking
within the desired 120-180 seconds to complete. Either way, create a list of questions that
you will try to answer during the playtest.
2. Ater you have a list of questions, recruit players for the playtest. The players should
ideally match the target demographic of the game, and have an appropriate level of
experience with the game given the questions that are being asked. For example, if you are
trying to understand the efectiveness of the tutorial, it would be best to test with players
who have never played before. On the other hand, if you are trying to understand if the
crating system has suicient depth to retain players for ten or more hours, playtest with
experienced players.
3. Before the playtest session, create a script of events with approximate times. What do
you want the player to do irst? What questions will you try to answer during that time?
What will the player do next? How long do you want to spend with each player? A typical
playtest lasts 30-60 minutes, though it can vary widely based on your needs. Also, before

256
 the playtest starts, it is wise to ensure your recording devices are working properly, if you
intend to use them. I oten prepare an online survey for the player to complete just ater
inishing the session.
4. At the beginning of your session with a player, remind the player that he or she can stop
at any time. Not only is this ethical, it is also a very useful measure of engagement. If
players want to stop at certain points of the game, such behavior provides a helpful clue to
the development team. Also remind the player that the game is uninished, and that you
are testing the game, not the player. It is important to create an emotionally comfortable
environment for the player so that he or she is more willing to give you honest feedback.
5. During the session, it is generally best to stay quiet and focus on observing the player.
Ideally, you want the player to forget you are even present, allowing you to witness a more
authentic game playing experience. If the player asks you a question, take note of it and
answer at the end of the session.
6. Once the playtest session is done, inish any necessary notes to yourself while the events
are still fresh in your mind. Give the player a survey, if desired. Prepare to welcome your
next playtester.

The steps above provide a rough outline to moderating a playtest, but you should modify them as needed
to match your preferences. As a note, there are many existing and comprehensive books on usability
testing, which serve as a foundation for playtesting (please see the Resources section).

Case Study Two: The Tomes

The Tomes is a game designed to help middle school students learn vocabulary. Ater talking with
educational experts, we learned that one important facet of long-term vocabulary retention is using
and seeing the words in context, not merely using lash cards. Therefore, we considered a game design
that supported this learning objective and encouraged students to read and use vocabulary in context.
We setled on the idea of a choose-your-own-adventure game, with a graphic novel visual style.

We wanted the game to appeal equally to boys and girls, but due to the complexities of writing a work of
interactive iction, we decided to restrict players to a male protagonist. When we playtested the game,
we gathered basic quantitative data from players in the form of a very simple survey, similar to the one
listed above. Below are the results from the question, “How fun was the game? (1 = worst, 10 = best):”

Three boys, average 8.7

Three girls, average 4.8

While there were other variables and considerations, this result stood out. Even though the sample size
is so small, the result is still useful.

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When we saw that playtest result, we revisited the idea of giving the player a choice of protagonist
gender. It would mean a bit of rewriting and rethinking the story, plus additional art assets, but we
decided it was worth a try. This was a classic case of the design-build-test loop:

1. We designed a game with a male-only protagonist.

2. We built the original prototype with a male-only protagonist.
3. We playtested the prototype and gathered observations from real players.
4. We analyzed the results and decided to modify the design, adding the choice of protagonist
gender.
5. We updated the game by allowing players to choose a protagonist gender.
6. We playtested the new version and gathered observations again.

Figure 2: The Tomes sample screenshot, having touched a vocabulary word.

Below are the results we got when we playtested again with gender choice and the exact same survey
question:

Three boys, average 9.0

Three girls, average 8.3
(Note: these were diferent playtesters from the previous version)

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 Of course, between the two versions, other
things may have changed too. The art was
more polished, the writing had improved,
and ten other uncontrolled factors may have
changed. At this point in development, we were
reasonably sure that the gender choice had a
positive impact, but either way, the average
rating of fun increased for girls. We continued to
track the numbers over the course of the project,
and if we saw dips in the future we would try
other experiments as well. As it turns out, the
numbers stayed high and we kept the gender
choice in the game.

Figure 3: Once one touch away from starting a game of

Food Web.

Assessment Considerations
For playtesting
As mentioned above, playtesting does not oten result in scientiic, statistically signiicant results, which
is ine. Instead, playtesting is intended to provide useful guidance and feedback to the development
team. When assessing the efectiveness and value of your playtesting, consider the following questions:

1. Are you playtesting with your target audience? If your game is designed for sixth to
eighth graders in the United States and you playtest with older kids, your data may not be
as efective. While it can be useful to playtest with anyone at all, strive to playtest with
your target audience.
2. Are you reusing playtesters from session to session? This may seem obvious, but
sometimes there is a shortage of playtesters and you must reuse playtesters. In that case,
any information you are trying to glean related to their irst-time play experience may not
be useful. Instead, focus on the more advanced aspects of the game with playtesters who
have seen an earlier iteration.
3. With similar methodology, do you see changes over time? Ideally, you will establish a
playtesting process early in your development cycle, which you can then use whenever
you playtest. For example, you could ask the playtester to complete a survey, and then keep
some of the questions consistent from session to session. Over time, you may see trends in
the results that can inform design.

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For iterative development
There are a variety of sotware development methodologies that strive to facilitate the iterative
development process. For example, all the lavors of agile development are, at their core, trying to help
teams employ iterative development. A thorough analysis of all iterative development methodologies
is beyond the scope of this chapter, but here are some things to consider when thinking about your
development process:

1. Is there efective communication lowing between members of the same discipline?

Across disciplines? At diferent levels of seniority and management? Between client and
publisher?
2. Does the team regularly relect on its current process and strive to improve it?
3. Does everyone on the team remember the importance of the design-build-test loop, and act
accordingly?
4. Is the schedule and budget reasonable to support the goals of the project? Since a precise
schedule is very diicult to know at the beginning of the project, are all key stakeholders
aware of the design-build-test loop?
5. Does the team playtest regularly?
6. Is it easy for anyone on the team to get a current version of the game and play it, even
(especially!) in the middle of development?

Future Needs
There are many passionate people interested in improving educational systems and/or making fun
games. The reality is that great teaching is quite diicult, making fun games is quite diicult, and doing
both at the same time is even harder. As this aspect of the games industry continues to develop, veteran
game developers need to partner with veteran teachers to crat experiences that take the best of both
crats.

A scientiic study that demonstrates the value of playtesting and iterative development may be useful,
but may not be necessary to show their efectiveness. Anyone who has ever made a game and moderated
a playtest knows that playtesting is a valuable tool. Seeing in advance what your players think of your
game is extremely beneicial.

260
Case Study Three: Food Web
At the time of this writing, I recently inished development on a science game designed to help middle
school students learn about the food chain or food web. Speciically, the game strives to help students
learn that predators eat prey and organisms need food to survive.

The game design was inherited from a diferent team and at the beginning of the project all the key
stakeholders agreed on these four learning objectives:

1. A food web ecosystem exists.

2. Organisms have predators and preys.
3. Speciic predator-prey relationships exist in a rainforest habitat. For example, ig seeds are
eaten by Black Rail birds, which are eaten by South American Bushmaster Snakes, which
are eaten by Southern Crested Caracara birds.
4. Organisms eat other organisms for energy.

As we were nearing the end of development, we had the opportunity to playtest. I created many
questions for the moderator to strive to answer, based on the learning objectives and various lingering
design questions. Here are a few example questions:

1. When players start the app for the very irst time, do they touch the unlocked animal and
then start the game, or do they get lost in the menu system?
2. Do irst-time players understand that they need to touch next to their animal to move?
3. Do players quickly learn that predators will eat them?
4. Do players quickly learn that they need to eat prey?
5. Do players learn over time that they spend energy to move, and gain energy when eating
prey?
6. Do players learn that there are some animals that are neither prey nor predators, and that
those animals cannot be eaten?
7. Do players ever unlock a new animal by going to the Upgrade menu?
8. Do players realize that diferent animals have diferent predators and prey?
9. Do players notice the goals?
10. Do the goals drive player behavior in some way? (e.g., they notice they need to eat
mosquitoes, so they change to an animal that eats mosquitoes?)
11. Ater a while, can players name any speciic predator-prey relationships? (e.g., Agoutis eat
Fig Seeds. Bushmaster Snakes eat Agoutis.)

As you can see, there are many questions here related to usability (e.g., Can players start the game?,
Control their animal?, Notice goal messaging?, Go to the Upgrade menu?). There are also quite a few
goals speciically related to the learning objectives. When an observant and caring moderator takes
time to watch players play the game, the moderator will be able to answer questions like the ones above.
Such answers will be able to inform design.

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In this particular case, we got positive results related to the learning objectives. For example, we knew
players were understanding predator-prey relationships and naming speciic animals because we
had videos of players saying the animal names and relationships. Fortunately, we also caught some
lingering issues related to the irst-time player experience. New players would get lost in an interactive
food web, instead of geting into playing the game irst. We improved messaging, removed superluous
butons, and reduced the number of screens shown to a irst-time player before she or he started playing,
all based on the playtest feedback. While the game is still not perfect, the informal and nonscientiic
playtesting helped us make good design choices and improve the game during development.

Best Practices
When considering how to playtest, here are some guidelines to keep in mind:

1. Test early, test oten: A playtest with a sample size of even one or two people is vastly
superior to no playtesting at all. Also, the more frequently you playtest, the fewer things
will have changed between playtests, which makes it easier to determine cause and efect.
2. Create a good environment for observation: The foundation of an efective playtest is
carefully observing the player. Strive to create an environment where the moderator (and
supporting tools such as cameras and/or click/touch tracking sotware) can do their job.
For example, it is oten beter to observe a single player carefully, instead of many players
simultaneously. In the many simultaneous players situation, you will get more survey data,
but you will miss detailed observations of individual player actions. In the single player
situation, you will be able to focus on everything the player does, which will allow you to
beter deduce what is happening inside that player’s mind.
3. Practice moderating playtests: With practice, playtest moderators will get beter at
observing players, noticing subtle things, asking open-ended questions, staying patient,
and taking good notes during and ater the session. It is a skill that can be improved, so
practice it.
4. Create a good environment for feedback from the player: A moderator can observe
quite a few things, verbally and non-verbally, but it is very diicult to get at the player’s
thoughts. Oten players will not be able to accurately communicate their own experiences.
To atempt to understand a player’s experiences more fully, moderators can ask direct
questions to the player during or ater gameplay. Cultivate a welcoming environment that
exudes serious curiosity about the player’s ideas is something that can be cultivated over
time.

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 5. Create quantitative questions that you can ask consistently throughout development:
The process will not be rigorously scientiic, but you will have a few questions and answers
that you can track, which will be useful for observing possible trends.
6. Create qualitative questions as needed to support your current design questions: If you
take time before a playtest to think about your current design questions, it will be relatively
easy to create questions to match. With a list of questions to answer, the moderator can
help gather the information you need.

Resources
Brian Schrank (htp://www.brianschrank.com/capstone/resources/Playtesting_reports_template.pdf).
Holly Gramazio, the lead game designer at Hide & Seek (htp://hideandseek.net/2011/01/26/a-guide-to-
playtesting-from-h-g-wells/).
Best Practices: Five Tips for Beter Playtesting, by Vin St. John (htp://gamasutra.com/view/feature/185258/
best_practices_ive_tips_for_.php). Notice in the comments that Vin responds to the irst comment,
presumably to a random person on the internet who he does not know, “We’re constantly trying to
improve our process, so if you have any criticisms or suggestions I would welcome them.”
Finding Out What They Think: A Rough Primer To User Research, by Ben Lewis-Evans (htp://www.gamasutra.
com/view/feature/169069/inding_out_what_they_think_a_.php, htp://www.gamasutra.com/view/
feature/170332/inding_out_what_they_think_a_.php).

References
Brathwaite, B. & Schreiber, I. (2008). Challenges for game designers: non-digital exercises for video game designers.
Cengage Learning.
Fay, I. (2011). Filtering feedback, in G. Costikyan & D. Davidson (Eds.) Tabletop: Analog Game Design, Pitsburgh:
ETC Press.
Gramazio, H. (2011). A guide to playtesting from H.G. Wells, accessed at: htp://hideandseek.net/2011/01/26/a-
guide-to-playtesting-from-h-g-wells/
Krug, S. (2014). Don’t make me think. Third edition. New Riders.
Lewis-Evans, B. (2012). Finding out what they think: A rough primer to user research, accessed at: htp://www.
gamasutra.com/view/feature/169069/inding_out_what_they_think_a_.php, htp://www.gamasutra.
com/view/feature/170332/inding_out_what_they_think_a_.php
Norman, D. (2002). The design of everyday things. Basic Books.
Ries, E. (2011). The lean startup. Crown Business.
Schell, J. (2008). The art of game design: A book of lenses. CRC Press.
Schrank, B. Capstone winter quarter playtesting guide, accessed at: htp://www.brianschrank.com/capstone/
resources/Playtesting_reports_template.pdf
St. John, V. (2013). Best practices: Five tips for beter playtesting, htp://gamasutra.com/view/feature/185258/
best_practices_ive_tips_for_.php

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CHAPTER 14

Assessment

Assessing Video Games for Learning

David Simkins, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, New York, U.S.,
www.davidsimkins.org, dwsigm@rit.edu

Key Summary Points

As we assess games for learning, we should create an inclusive environment that allows for
1 a wide variety of methods.

As we publish on assessment, we should be forthright about our foundational assumptions,

2 particularly our epistemologies. We should judge the contribution of assessments taking
the stated foundational assumptions as given, but with an eye for improving methods and
practices of assessment given those assumptions.

Design and development of learning games needs to similarly own their epistemology, design
3 learning goals in keeping with them, and create experiences that conform closely to those
epistemologies.

Key Terms
Assessment
Games
Learning games
Serious games
Epistemology
Methods

Introduction
The increased interest in the use of games for instruction in formal and informal learning spaces has
led to an increased interest in assessment of learning games (Anneta, 2010; Clark, Tanner-Smith,
Killingsworth & Bellamy, 2013). These assessments originate from many diferent ields, many of which
have difering beliefs about what constitutes knowledge. These diferences are indications of signiicant

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epistemological diversity within the ield. That is, we do not all share the same premises about what it
means to know, and therefore we do not all agree on what methods we should use to gain knowledge.

Epistemological diversity is not unique to the study of games and learning. It is a characteristic source
of discussion and debate throughout education (Pallas, 2001). It is also present in the media studies and
computer science divide within games studies. Having discussion around what it means to know is
common in all academic ields, even in hard sciences such as physics where there are commonalities
among most scientists about how one might consider something “known” within the ield. Diversity of
epistemologies is much greater within humanities, social science, and education. In education research,
epistemology is a vexing issue because it not only relates to how we study learning, it relates to how
we believe people learn in the irst place. Epistemology is central to our inquiry on all levels, and
diferences among epistemological commitments lies at the center of what we believe we should do and
expect from learning (Greeno, Collins, & Resnik, 1996). For reasons beyond the scope of this chapter,
we cannot solve this problem by simply determining the correct epistemology. It is unlikely, perhaps
impossible, which we will ever resolve all questions about what it means to know. If we accept that we
will not simply resolve our diferences, this chapter is an atempt to allow us to move forward together
as a ield. Given that we will not resolve epistemological diferences, how should we go about sharing
our research indings with each other and building useful understanding?

Three core questions stand out in assessment research, and regardless of the epistemological approach
used, any study should irst consider these three questions. The three include: 1) the game’s learning
goals, 2) the core mechanics/core gameplay, and 3) the out-of-game context of play. These are, in
part, derived from central studies of games and leaning that form the foundation of the growing ield
(Clark, Tanner-Smith, Killingsworth & Bellamy, 2013; D’Angelo, Rutstein, Harris, Haertel, Bernard, &
Borokhovski, 2013; Shute & Ventura, 2013) and from my own experience assessing video games for
learning (Simkins & Steinkuehler, 2008; Simkins, Egert, & Decker, 2010; Steinkuehler et al., 2011). For
many of us, the goal of sharing studies about assessment of games is to create beter learning games.
These three questions, collectively, address the core of that inquiry, and inding a way to work together
toward inding helpful answers to these questions may help us to ind a way to act as a ield of study.

Question one: What are the learning goals?

Before making any other determinations about a study, it is helpful to identify the learning goals.
For games developed for learning, these may be easy to determine. Hopefully the designers were
prioritizing learning goals throughout their design and development process. Not all games, however,
which show promise for learning are speciically designed for that purpose. Researchers must oten
examine the game’s design and conduct prior or simultaneous research to identify the potential of a
game as a tool for learning. For example, Squire’s work on the Civilization series of games shows that
some games created for entertainment may have excellent potential as learning games (Squire, 2011).
In various studies with diverse populations, it is suggested as a useful tool for explaining alternate
theories of historical process, explaining historical contingency, and ofering a “modding” environment
for creating scenarios for Civilization that highlight historical processes, environments, and facts.

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Occasionally, even a game designed for learning may be efective in more areas than intended. What
happens when a game about scientiic hypothesis testing is also very good at developing scientiic
collaboration and communication skills among group members? Sometimes in the process of research
we discover learning afordances we had not intended to test, opening opportunities for future inquiry.
Researchers studying complex environments in the wild must oten use a variety of research tools to
identify potential learning afordances in an open-ended way. Ethnographic, grounded theory, and
various qualitative and mixed methods inquiries that apply to research “in the wild” can be extremely
helpful in identifying potential learning goals that could be used in conjunction with more targeted
game assessments.

Question two:
What are the core game mechanics and other important aspects of play?
In any good learning game, the gameplay should be aligned closely with learning goals (South & Snow,
2012). If we are studying unintended learning goals, this may be a litle more complex. Still, to assess
a game, it helps to deeply understand the game. The amount of time we need to spend understanding
a game may vary dramatically depending on the game itself. The simpler the game, the less time one
needs to spend with it to understand what is really going on in play. Even simple games can have
surprising afordances for learning, so it is helpful to have a deep understanding of the game’s play.

SimCity provides one of the earliest examples of a game created for entertainment and studied for
its potential learning content (Betz, 1995-6; Squire 2005). In the early versions of SimCity, the core
mechanic was the placement of blocks representing areas zoned for a particular purpose. As a city
planning game, the focus was on developing the infrastructure for a city, building it over time and
balancing constraints and resources, such as money, pollution, and population growth. There was no
single objective for SimCity; rather, it was a sandbox in which to explore the constraints and afordances
of the tools provided. As a learning game, it was a good example of learning through exploration. To
understand its play, however, we would need to have an understanding of how the constraints and
afordances worked together to make a challenging environment for SimCity players, challenges that
could be overcome, potentially providing a sense of accomplishment even when there were no explicit
goals.

We would also beneit by understanding the cheating mechanisms built into the game—one could enter
a code to give oneself more money, for example. I place cheat in quotes because though we may see this
as an inappropriate way to play the game, the developers did not. The ability to “cheat” was provided
to allow players to continue to have fun in the way they wish. Many early SimCity players believed
cheating was cheating and would never use the ability to give themselves extra money. For others, it
was a normal part of the practice, perhaps even a necessity for their play style. Because it is a sandbox
game, it is up to the player to identify his or her own goals and create engaging play in the space
provided. The ability to cheat or not cheat is a core aspect of its gameplay; it is not just coincidental to it.

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In the SimCity example we can quickly identify the core mechanics of the game. Understanding the
potential practices and cultures of play, however, may require us to play the game more extensively.
Even ater exploring the play in depth, we may also need to explore the culture around play, observing
other’s play and discussing play with others to get a wider sense of the varieties of play.

The goal of this second question is to understand the in-game context of the assessment. How we
use this in-game context will depend on our methods of assessment. Researchers may also need to
understand when and where to constrain the player’s options to facilitate the study of learning, based
on the target learning goals. For example, researchers may need to disable SimCity’s cheat commands
if managing resources is central to the learning goals of a particular curriculum that uses the game as
a tool for learning.

Question three: What is the out of game context?

The in-game context is not the only context relevant to learning. It is important to take account of
the environment in which learning takes place. Oten, the environment is a critical component for
facilitating learning, though it can also have the efect of distracting players away from the learning
goals. Some methodologies may require us to minimize this out of-game efect. Other methodologies
focus on understanding the out-of-game efects, requiring us to see the gameplay within a more natural
environment. The learning context is the out-of-game environment in which the game is played. In
Gee’s terminology (2012), everything in-game is the game, with a small “g.” The context around play
is part of the Game, with a big “G.” That is, it is not only the physical environment around the game
but also the virtual environment. Some companies that develop learning games are also developing
social spaces around the games, sometimes called ainity spaces (Gee, 2012), which encourage the
collaborative and social aspects of learning. A positive and constructive learning environment can be
crucial to the achievement of learning objectives, and understanding or controlling context is a part of
a complete assessment of a learning game.

When we talk about complex games, we really cannot understand the entire learning environment
without being deeply steeped in the practices that surround the game. Such is the case with any large,
multiplayer game environment. Looking at the learning that takes place in Whyville (Kafai & Fields,
2009) or World of Warcrat (Steinkuehler, 2007) both require intimate knowledge of the game’s social
structures and communities, not just what the players are doing on the screen. The games are just two
examples of game contexts that are driven by community. They are inluenced by designed structures
that facilitate constructive community and where player self-organization creates opportunities for
mentoring among players. This network of player interaction facilitates a player’s access to information
about expert play. While this development of networks to promote expert practice is player generated
for many games, some games for learning are designed speciically to mirror established practices, such
as Shafer’s epistemic games (2006), which leverage professional practices to create contextualized play.

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We can see similar ainity spaces grow around games in ways that do not directly tie back to the game
at all. In the work of Black (2008), Magniico (2010), and Jenkins (2012) on fan iction communities,
we can see the development of literacy practices through participation in the writing, sharing, and
commenting on fan iction related to, but not speciically supported by the game. In situations where
the game we are assessing contains “unsanctioned” or completely player-generated and operated
content sites, it may be necessary to ind expert informants to introduce the researchers to the player
communities.

The entire context of a game can be described in terms of circles representing diferent spaces where
players interact with games (see Figure 1). Researchers implementing assessment protocols need to be
aware of each of them, though it may restrict assessment, or even player access, to a subset of the three.
The innermost circle is the immediate physical context of the players playing the game while they are
playing. The second is deined by the opportunities for interaction around the game built speciically by
people with special authority over play, which could include researchers, instructors, game designers,
or publishers. Whether moderated or unmoderated, these spaces are to some extent controlled by and
the responsibility of non-players. The third circle is deined by the social interactions around the game
by the community of game players—the students or players themselves. The power structure of these
spaces is less formal, oten with greatest inluence by those players with the greatest social inluence
within the group.

Figure 1: Game context

Identifying the circles is merely a heuristic, and

the boundaries between them are not always
clear-cut, but understanding that communities
of practice around games are formed in several
layers can help identify which environments
the assessor needs to access to complete a full
assessment of play. In identifying the circles,
one can begin to determine where your players
are playing and in what game-related activities
they are participating. Ater which you can
determine what access researchers, instructors,
and designers can or should have to complete an
assessment.

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Case Study One: Dark Gold:
Analyzing Big Data Through Quantitative Stealth Assessment
As an outside researcher, it is not always possible to examine a massive data set. Fortunately, Sony
Online allowed a select group of researchers to access much of the in-game transaction data for
Everquest 2 (Keegan, Ahmed, Williams, Srivastava & Contractor, 2011). The resulting data set allowed
for in-depth queries about actual gameplay for hundreds of thousands of players carried out with
minimal, if any, direct efect on the players’ behavior. This level of authenticity is in line with the ideals
of stealth assessment (Shute & Ventura, 2013).

To understand the study, the researchers needed to know a great deal about the game. For example,
researchers needed to know that in Everquest 2, it was against the rules of the game to trade in-game
items for out-of-game currency or goods. They also needed to know that the rule was commonly broken,
and not merely by individuals, but by organized groups of players who would collect in game gold and
goods and sell them. The gold and goods were traded online, but no in game money was transferred.
Instead, the transaction was completed in game when irst the receiving player completed an out-of-
game real money transaction.

To complete the study, the researchers used existing research on massively multiplayer online games
to identify opportunities within the game that could be compared to out of game examples. In this
case, the researchers hypothesized that in-game “criminal organizations” will respond to game policing
in ways analogous to how criminal organizations in our society as a whole respond to policing. The
in-game “criminals” are gold farmers, who are only criminals by analogy because they do not break
laws but they do break the end-user license agreement of the game they are playing. These data were
compared to data from criminology research about how criminal organizations respond to the threat
of enforcement. These responses to law enforcement included a variety of ways in which criminals
learned and adapted to policing so that the impact of the enforcement was minimized.

The study investigated speciic in-game behaviors and compared them with the out-of-game behaviors
of criminal organizations—methods that included creating decentralized authority, and interacting
through multiple tiers of operatives. To compare to out-of-game criminal organizations, the researchers
found data with a similar scope: a longitudinal analysis of criminals and co-ofenders collected through
Project Cavier, a Canadian law enforcement task force.

While we can only assume the criminal’s learning goals to be the avoidance of prosecution, such an
assumption seems justiied. Similarly, in-game gold farmers were assumed to be actively seeking to
ind ways to continue their eforts despite enforcement of in-game rules against selling in game items
or characters for out-of-game money, established by the game’s producers.

Even with a tremendous amount of in-game data at their disposal, any action occurring outside of the
game was unavailable and needed to be inferred. The in-game markers of gold farming and information

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about the variety of interactions that occurred outside of game space were both inluenced by qualitative
research, such as that carried out by Dibbell (2006) on the Chinese gold farming industry.

The study purported to show that there was an analogy between the reaction of physical world criminals
to increased enforcement and the reaction of virtual world rule breakers to enforcement of the rules
by the game companies. If true, this opens the door to using in-game enforcement to learn about how
to investigate and enforce out-of-game criminal syndicates. It could also, potentially, indicate that in
game breach of rules may prepare one for out-of-game participation in criminal syndicates, much as
some irst person shooters have been allegedly used as training tools for terrorists (SAIC, 2007).

Key Frameworks
The focus of this chapter is on how to make sense of and use of assessments across the ield, despite
our variety of methods and underlying assumptions within the ield. To bridge diferences within the
ield, we need to communicate and be lexible in our understanding of what good studies will look like.
A principled study will be conducted within a stated point of view, with clearly indicated assumptions
and following through with data collection, analysis, and interpretation of results that are coherent
with the assumptions. No study is perfect, and all data is at least somewhat limited or compromised.
The process of critique helps our community develop beter tools for analyzing and discussing games
for learning, but such critique needs to be consistent with the stated assumptions of the study—internal
to the epistemologies of the researchers, not external to them.

To understand beter how to approach creating community across assumptions, the chapter has
followed two divisions within the ield. The irst is of epistemology. That is, the way we believe people
come to know and understand which, implicitly, also indicates what we believe to be the limits of
human knowledge. The second is overall methodology. Both I break into heuristics that are a bit rough.
Neither of them can completely encapsulate the diferences or approaches within our community, but
they should provide a general sense of the communities and breadth of the ield.

The end of the chapter discusses uses three case studies to introduce diferent models for assessing
learning within gameplay. Each is grounded in an epistemology and therefore uses methods that difer
from the others.

Methods
The goal of this chapter is to help us learn from each other. Part of this process is learning how to beter
study games and learning. This does mean evaluating each other’s methods; however, the focus of
evaluation should not be to prove one method beter than another, but to improve and reine each of the
methodologies and approaches to which our community is commited.

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Within the last few years there have seen several signiicant publications about the assessment of
learning in video games (Anneta & Bronack, 2011; Ifenthaler, Eseryl, & Ge, 2012). Generally, the methods
for assessing learning in games are the same as assessing learning anywhere, and any quality methods
text should help establish good methodological practices. Mirroring educational assessment in general,
assessment of learning games tends toward statistical analysis, conversation analysis, discourse
analysis, pragmatist methodology, critical theoretical approaches, and ethnomethodology. Education
research has a general preference toward case study, which lends to meta-analyses as well. There are
also relevant ways to use ethnographic methodologies, particularly in work on large social games played
outside of formal learning environments. In a dense, but extremely helpful discussion of the ield of
cognition and learning, Greeno, Collins, & Resnick (1996) break the ield into three epistemological
views: the behaviorist/empiricist view, the cognitivist/rationalist view, and the situative/pragmatist-
sociohistoric view. While grouping approaches can raise as many questions as it answers, the categories
they use succeed in showing the major diferences within the larger ield of learning.

Greeno et al. (1996) do a beter job than we can here of fairly describing the ield within each general
approach. At the risk of oversimpliication the three tend to fall into epistemological and ontological
camps—the largely post-positivist behaviorist/empiricist approaches that focus on repeatable
experiments in controlled environments. The largely post-structuralist cognitivist/rationalist view in
which knowledge is understood only within an individual and oten non-reproducible context. Thirdly,
the language and practice theoretical situative/pragmatist-sociohistoric view, in knowledge is shared
and constructed—understood collectively and not individually.

Whichever viewpoint one holds will be crucial in determining which methods are best pursued.
Generally, behaviorist/empiricist epistemologies tend one toward quantitative measurement and
statistical analysis. The diferences within cognitivist/rationalist or situative/pragmatist-sociohistorical
viewpoints depend, in part, on the locus of knowledge. When knowledge is maximally localized and
sensitive to context, in depth qualitative analysis is likely required. When knowledge can be generalized
to any signiicant degree, qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods approaches may be useful.

Quantitative methods
Quantitative methodologies are those that focus on measuring. That is, collecting and analyzing data in
such a way that it can be measured against other data. This almost always means collecting numerical
data and analyzing it statistically.

The general goal of most quantitative assessments will be in isolating and reproducing veriiable
results. To do this, it is important to identify learning goals that are themselves measurable. In other
words, the researcher needs to be able to identify when the goal has been met. This is oten discussed
in terms of mastery, with identiiable conditions for mastery. Once mastery of the learning goal can be
correctly identiied, the researchers need to create a use of the game that can be studied for atainment
of mastery. There is a growing interest in the use of games to show the atainment of mastery. In this
chapter we are concerned with assessment of games, not games as an assessment tool, but these can

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sometimes go hand-in-hand because measuring the success of the game usually requires measuring
student success within the game, to show that the player is improving through the use of the game as
a learning intervention. To do this, it is important for the researcher to account for the role of play in a
learning game. By understanding play, one can identify which indicators or behaviors on the part of the
learner evince mastery, which suggest a lack of understanding, and which are distractors that could be
misinterpreted by assessing researchers.

Though the intent is to create reproducible, veriiable knowledge, even in quantitative methods the
learning context is important. Context afects outcomes, just as interventions afect outcomes. It may be
desirable to create as neutral a learning environment as possible, allowing the assessment to be judged
for its learning afordances without reference to outside inluences. In many cases, however, a sterile
learning environment may be counter-productive or misleading.

Table 1. Strengths and challenges in sample quantitative methods

Strengths Challenges
Assesses player Can be diicult to ascertain correct data to collec.
In-game activity in-game. Time Requires access to game code. Limited explanation of intent.
instrumentation stamped and accurate, if
implemented well.

Relatively easy to create If not completed immediately before and ater can potentially
and implement. Can be conlate results from other learning opportunities. If completed
targeted speciically to immediately before and ater can sufer from participant exhaustion.
Pre/post-test
learning goals. Does nothing to help answer why an implementation works or fails
only whether it seems to be beneicial. Takes time away
from gameplay.

Assesses what the player Equipment can be expensive. Can result in confusing data that
Eye/head is atending to in game, shows atention but does not suggest reason for it.
tracking not just what they are
doing in game.

While there are a variety of quantitative methods used in games assessment (see Table 1), the most
common assessment method, for almost all quantitative learning and most mixed methods research, is
a pre-test and a post-test. That is, using an assessment tool to measure what the student knows about the
learning goals before the learning intervention, before playing the game, and what the student knows
following the intervention. The gold standard for this is to use a normalized and validated research
instrument, which is targeted speciically at the competencies addressed in the assessment’s research
questions. That is, we are looking to use tests that have been studied for their statistical reliability. That
is, the questions (or other analysis tools) of the test(s) used as pre- and post- tests should be constructed
so that an arbitrary selection of members of the target population of the study have the same chance

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of answering a question on the pre-test as on the correlate question on the post-test. While this gold
standard is optimal, it can also be nearly impossible to achieve within a reasonably scoped study. This is
primarily because each intervention we create has its own learning goals, oten, but not always, designed
to ill a niche in a particular region or state’s curriculum. Each assessment needs to be keyed to the
precise research questions of the assessment and the research questions are tied directly to the learning
goals. It is therefore quite expensive to create normalized and validated instruments that address each
research question for each study. Still, when a pre- and post-test is used, it is important to understand
and account for the compromises in the testing tool and process. It is possible to use some testing tricks
to approach normalization even when optimal normalization cannot be assured. If the number of
participants is suiciently high, the most efective way of handling a non-normalized and validated test
can be to randomize questions between the pre- and post-test. If each question type is represented in
each test, the questions can be distributed across the pre- and post-test within each population studied
so that half of people within each group, randomly determined within the group, receive the irst of two
equivalent questions in the pre-test, and the other half receive the other question. In the post-test, these
are switched. Unless the tests are handled by a relatively sophisticated online process, this too can be
diicult to manage, and online tests that include logins are not entirely anonymous and can be therefore
diicult to use without risking some threats to protecting human subjects. It is also important to watch
human impact on the study, including such things as participant exhaustion. A participant is not as
able to answer test questions before a long game and ater a long game session. One can help with this
problem by administering pre- and post-tests on diferent days than the intervention itself, but this also
poses many challenges, some examples include the potential loss of participants because they cannot
or choose not to participate in each day of the assessment, organizational diiculty orchestrating the
assessment across multiple days, and the potential for confounding results due to other experiences the
students have during the elapsed time. The level of normalization is a decision based on research scope
and potential impact, and compromises should be minimized, but expected.

Within a lab, a researcher might also have access to other methods of taking quantitative data. Tracking
eye or head movement during play can be easily interpreted quantitatively and the results are oten
reproducible (Gomes, Yassine, Worsley & Bilkstein, 2013). Other forms of identifying what is happening
during observed data can also be used to identify the instances or duration of behaviors. This can
include taking video, audio, or transcribed data and marking the data with identifying marks, or codes,
which indicate data where something is happening that is interesting and potentially relevant to the
researcher’s research questions. In addition to coding data, other measures can be used to identify
what is occurring. Time on task and recording how long a player is engaged in each activity within
the game, are methods of directly and quantitatively collecting data related to gameplay. Time on task
data collection is, essentially, recording the amount of time spent playing the game, oten breaking play
down into speciic tasks and determining how much time is spent with each task. Methods such as
this can provide a quantiiable measure of key behaviors that provide evidence of mastery (Bell, 2008).

The methods used are generally those that provide the greatest conidence of the learner’s level of
atainment of mastery. In explaining the limitations of the study, an account should be made of
conditions that prevented true mirroring of interventions. These may include such factors as the use

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of similar but not identical classroom populations, limits in creating uniform content instruction, or
potentially inconsistent levels of assistance given to students in performing in-game tasks. Given the
realities of learning assessment, researchers cannot always control all variables, but a complete account
helps future researchers to be aware of the limitations of the study.

Case Study Two: Assessing Martha: A mixed methods approach

The author was involved in mixed methods research on Martha Madison’s Marvelous Machines, a
learning game developed by Second Avenue Learning through a Small Business Innovation Research
(SBIR) grant (Simkins, Egert & Decker, 2012). The game is a physics game targeted to teach the properties
and uses of simple machines to middle school children, particularly middle school girls. This mixed
methods approach used a combination of pre- and post-tests to show the efect of the intervention.

The study included three parts: a technical aptitude test, a Science, Technology, Engineering, and
Mathematics (STEM) ainity test, and a content assessment targeted to the game’s learning outcomes.
The standardized technical aptitude test measured familiarity with web and PC applications. This test
was given only during the pre-test and was used to determine if the population had the necessary
skills to fully participate in the intervention without unintended efects due to unfamiliarity with the
machines and controls. The STEM ainity test was derived from existing tests that show whether to
what extent the participant sees STEM studies and STEM vocations as something in which they are
capable and competent to engage. The content assessment tested the student’s knowledge of the subject
mater covered in the game and was adapted from standardized state assessments.

The pre- and post-tests were analyzed with typical statistical measures for test analysis, in this case
one-tailed Wilcoxin signed-rank tests were used, given the sample size, controlled population, and
types of questions. ANOVAs and t-tests are standard, when they are applicable.

In addition to pre- and post-tests, players were recorded playing the game and their in-game play was
recorded. The in-game recording included a movie of each student’s upper body as they played. This
was matched with the in-game recording of their play, as their controlled characters moved through the
game. The two video streams—in and out of game—were synchronized using pre-established markers
as a beginning point for each. We did this by having the in-game characters perform a speciic action
that we recorded with the out of game camera by turning the camera on the screen. Ater the two
streams were synchronized, we used Adobe Premiere to align the two videos into a single stream, side-
by-side, for the purposes of data analysis. The side-by-side combined video was then coded using a
pre-existing coding scheme.

Once the video was synchronized, researchers segmented the combined video into ten second chunks
and codes were applied to each chunk. Using our pre-deined code set derived from similar research,
researchers all coded one arbitrarily determined ten-minute section of video, recording all the codes

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that were applied to each ten-second segment. This created 60 coded segments (10 minutes = 600
seconds = 60 chunks). This short 10-minute subset was used to determine the inter-rater reliability.
That is, to determine if there was suicient uniformity among researchers to treat one researchers
coding of a segment as equivalent to any other researchers. Once our inter-rater reliability target of 95%
accuracy was achieved (diference among codes <= 0.05), researchers then coded the thirteen videos,
again breaking the video into ten-second chunks for the purpose of coding. The videos had an average
of 219 segments, which equates with 36.5 minutes (2190 seconds) of play. Each of the codes either applied
(1) or did not apply (0) to the ten-second chunk, using criteria inalized during the inter-rater reliability
process. The coding spreadsheet included each code as a column, and researchers added chunks as rows
illing out which codes applied for each chunk (see Table 3). Codes were non-exclusive and independent.
Each code could either apply or not apply to each chunk with no assumption of positive or negative
causality between any two codes.

Table 3. Sample coding segment including 13 codes in ten-second increments.

PRO PEX EXE PAS COO STP IMP WGO ALG WEX DSF PUZ REC
5:00 x x X

5:10 x x

5:20 x

5:30 x

5:40 x X

5:50 x x

6:00 x

The outcome of this coding method was a large bank of data that could be used to test statistical
hypotheses, a form of mixed methods data collection. Since the video was maintained intact, areas of
note could also be evaluated through traditional qualitative methods, such as discourse or conversation
analysis.

These methods of coding produce anonymized collections of data that can be used to compare among
participants playing the same game or between games, so long as any of the same codes are used. Since
each code is independent from the others, the entire code set does not need to be identical, as each code
stands alone as either applying or not applying to each ten seconds of video. It is not clear as yet, but it
is likely important that the chunk size not vary between data sets, as the size of the chunk has an efect
on the relative complexity of the data coded. Longer chunks are likely to have more codes relevant to
each chunk.

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Once the data set is established, it is possible to identify relative percentages of each code, showing
trends within a given intervention. It is also possible to run statistical comparisons among the codes to
determine if there are trends of codes over time, if some codes tend to correlate with others.

There are limits of what hypotheses can be tested with this data, depending on what exactly is coded.
For example, since nothing coded particular speech paterns among players, such as turn taking, there
would be no way to look for turn taking in the coded data. Many hypotheses are relevant to the data
coded, however, and the coding process creates a data set that is largely agnostic to the kinds of analysis
one might want to perform on the data.

Mixed methods
As one might expect, mixed methods approaches supplement quantitative data collection and analysis
with qualitative data collection and analysis. Generally, the intent is to approach data collection from a
few directions, using complementary methods to heighten the strengths and mitigate the weaknesses
of each approach. This variety of approaches, called triangulation, is the most common approach for
gaining conidence in mixed methods assessments. The intent of triangulation is to accept the inability
to completely control or understand the environment and to try and overcome this limitation by
showing the alignment or disjunction of results gleaned from multiple types of inquiry. On one level,
triangulation, or the use of multiple methods in coordination, occurs in most data collection, even
within purely quantitative or qualitative approaches. The key of mixed methods research is that quite
diferent forms of collection are used, such as using ethnographic interview and qualitative discourse
analysis alongside traditional statistical methods, or by interpreting qualitative data as quantitative
data through a process of numerically evaluating qualitative data. The goal should be to increase one’s
understanding of the whole learning experience by combining several methods across the qualitative-
quantitative divide, acknowledging and working to enhance beneits and mitigate limitations of each
approach to more completely describe the learning taking place during and around gameplay.

Pre- and post-tests are staples of both quantitative and mixed methods assessments of learning. As
part of a mixed methods assessment, the test can be combined easily with other methods to triangulate
efect. Another common method is to create a close but more generalizable read of qualitative data by
identifying speciic activities during play, called coding, which can then be potentially understood
through quantitative analysis. These codes may be based on “top-down,” pre-determined rubrics, or
they may be based on “botom-up” codes developed by the researcher from ongoing research into games
and learning. A top-down coding scheme is used when the researchers already know what information
they are looking for in the study. Botom-up coding schemes are more oten used in exploratory studies,
or in ongoing process of creating sets of codes that can be applied to data. These approaches are not
necessarily mutually exclusive, and researchers may choose to make multiple “passes” through codes,
using top-down codes to identify what they know they will be interested in, and using a botom-up

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coding process to identify those activities they did not expect. This is time consuming, of course, but
possible. It is also possible, especially in a new area of study, to use a botom-up coding process on a
substantial portion of the data to identify a set of desired codes, and then to use those codes in a top-
down way to code the data.

Botom-up coding schemes are oten related to grounded theory approaches (Strauss, 1987; Glasser,
1992). In addition to grounded theory coding, thematic coding and clinical or standardized coding is
common. Thematic codes identify tendencies or themes that recur in the coded data. Thematic codes are
not justiied exactly, but are designed by experts of phenomena, or in conjunction with expert insiders,
to identify the interesting activities within a community practice. Standardized codes, including
clinical codes, are systems of codes that have been used in previous studies and which have been
given speciic, normalized and reproducible deinitions. All coding methods are also used to describe
phenomenon in learning environments. While these coding schemes are not necessarily quantitative,
they are compelling in part because they can be so easily converted into quantitative data, though
quantitative interpretation of codes are not equally meaningful. The meaningfulness of this quantiied
qualitative data depends on the way the codes are determined and the quality and reproducibility of
the coding scheme’s results. As a result, clinical or standardized coding schemes are oten produce the
most meaningful and substantive quantitative data. There are several methods of achieving conidence
in a coding system as a representation of quantitative as well as qualitative data. Central to them is
the process of inter-rater reliability, which should be involved in all substantive coding processes.
Developing inter-rater reliability involves testing the use of codes by multiple researchers coding
the same content. These codes are then compared to determine that the coders are coding the same
phenomenon the same way. To achieve parity of coding, researchers will need to engage in a process
of learning and negotiating a uniform understanding of the precise meaning of each code within the
group of researchers (Johnson, Penny, & Gordon, 2008). The somewhat arbitrary standard for acceptable
inter-rater reliability is greater than 90% agreement when using a pairwise comparison of coded data.
When comparing data between two coders, greater than 95% agreement is considered acceptable. The
95% agreement (>= 5% variance) is preferable in almost all studies.

As triangulation is generally central to mixed methods approaches, the qualitative and quantitative
methods that are chosen are coordinated to complement each other. The key is to provide a convincing
collection of data that can identify the successes and limitations of the learning environment and
intervention. While more data may always seem beter, it is important not to take data based on diferent
initial premises and epistemologies and then interpret them as if they were coherent with each other.
While pragmatist epistemologies may be able to interpret almost all methods as useful to an increased
understanding of phenomenon, and could ind useful comparisons among almost any sets of data,
positivist empirical epistemologies would have use for most qualitative data, and most post-modern
epistemologies would have litle use for data claiming to be universal.

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Qualitative methods
Qualitative methods involve collecting data on what people are doing within their context. This
involves a very close read of the actions, speech, practices, and behaviors—words that may or may
not mean the same things, depending on one’s qualitative tradition. It is also important to qualitative
researchers to provide a close read of the environment, social, cultural, and physical, and to provide, in
analysis, an account of how these phenomena efect, correlate with or interact with each other. I use the
term tradition here because multiple traditions exist within the same methodology. For our purposes
here, tradition refers to one’s qualitative research style. Methodologies relate to one’s ontological and
epistemological beliefs, which is “what is” and “how we can come to understand it,” respectively.

Regardless of tradition or methodology, qualitative methods are used to tell the story of the intervention
and the students’ passage through it. In some traditions this storytelling is a metaphor, and the story is
a description of what occurred. In other traditions, the researcher’s role is quite literally to depict a story
of what occurred through, for example, writing, ilm, or theater. In either case, the goal is to produce a
substantive and knowledge-producing account.

Qualitative inquiry can be broken into two loose categories—ethnography and case study. Ethnography
is the study of culture. It is an in depth, all-inclusive form of inquiry involving involvement in
the practices of a culture, recording of ield notes, and reporting out in a way that produces deep
understanding of the target population. One major strand of ethnography follows Geertz (1973) methods
for producing what he calls “thick description” of culture. Thick description is produced through a
multi-layer account of many events that bring into analysis multiple perspectives, which are sensitive
to and include within the description the role of as many contextual inluences as possible. While much
of quantitative analysis seeks to reduce the efect of outside inluence from the description of the event,
ethnographic analysis seeks to incorporate a rich and complete description of contextual inluences
into the description of the event. Whereas most quantitative analysis inds greatest utility in that which
can be abstracted, qualitative analysis inds greatest utility in that which can be understood wholly
only within a complex context.

In contrast to ethnography, case study is narrower in focus. Rather than studying culture as a whole,
case study takes a narrower view, perhaps focusing on a single event, person, or group. Due to its
narrower focus, case study is more oten utilized in games assessment. There are ethnographies that
focus on games and learning (Steinkuehler, 2004), but the focus on ethnography as a study of culture
oten precludes it from looking at a particular game as efective for learning. Assessment of the game
for learning may be a part of the whole, but it is only a part of the whole.

Still, while ethnography is a larger enterprise, many qualitative case studies that study the eicacy
of games make use of ethnographic methods to gain a rich understanding of what is occurring in
and around gameplay. Ethnographic observation and interviews are methods used within many case
studies.

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Whether case study or ethnography, qualitative methods require the same three stages as all research—
data collection, data analysis, and reporting. Data collection is dominated by traditional ethnographic
methods, but analysis is varied in both ethnography and case study. Contemporary qualitative research
in games and learning utilizes a variety of methods of analysis, including ethnomethodology (Garinkle,
1967), conversation analysis (Sacks, 1992), discourse analysis (Gee, 2005), expert-novice study (Chase
& Simon, 1973), narrative analysis (Bruner, 1990), and practice theory (Bourdieu, 1977). The diversity of
methods is, in part, due to the descriptive nature of qualitative inquiry, and there is signiicant overlap
and oten non-distinctive lines between diferent approaches. The best methods will be those that help
to make a case for the afordances and limitations of learning that takes place in play and helps others
to create efective learning environments or games (see Table 2). The rigor of the method is relected in
the degree to which the data is included and interpreted fairly and completely within the complexity
of its context. Its usefulness will be in the researchers ability to synthesize a meaningful narrative
from that complex data such that the reader comes away with a deeper understanding of the subject of
research, in this case the learning the occurred during play.

Table 2. Strengths and challenges in sample qualitative methods

Strengths Challenges
Deep focus on practice Time consuming. Focus on process and practice may be
Ethnomethodology/ can reveal ways in which too restrictive for most games and learning assessments.
practice theory learning turns into legitimate
participation.

Reveals language as facilitation Requires focus on a small data set. Limited use of context.
Conversation and constraint of activity.
analysis Identiied meaning, norms, and
action in text.

Contextualizing text can expand Time consuming. Requires extensive understanding and
Critical discourse
understanding of language to engagement with context.
analysis
understanding of practice.

Can show process of how Requires a prior understanding of expertise in a practice.

learners develop into experts.
Expert-novice study
Can identify paterns in error as
one develops understanding.

Able to identify the conveyed Limited coherence between “objective” learning goals and
reasons behind practice— the the participant-focused assessment of meaning may limit
Narrative analysis
“why” of practice. Identiies ways use when speciic learning goals are being studied, rather
that knowledge is shared. than the process of learning.

Thick description can provides Time consuming. Data collection and siting and
Ethnography
deep understanding of winnowing process of analysis places litle or no value on
(cultural, cognitive,
phenomena. research eiciency. Can treat culture as static rather than
etc.)
dynamic.

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As with quantitative assessment, the qualitative researcher will need to atend to the central learning
objectives of the game, and the assessment will hold the intervention to its ability to achieve these
objectives. More than with quantitative research, however, qualitative research can identify previously
unforeseen learning occurring within the phenomenon. This is in large part because qualitative
research is concerned not with describing conformity to what was expected to happen, but to accurately
describe what did happen. To do this it is important for the researcher to be able to be surprised, without
necessarily trying to be surprised, by what occurs during observations, which allows for previously
unexpected observations.

The greatest strength of qualitative research is in its ability to incorporate the efects of context and to
explain the signiicance of context within learning. It is able to mark the process of learning over time
while incorporating the context and to identify trends and changes within a single research participant.
The cost of this is high in terms of time required for data collection and analysis. The time and amount
of access required by qualitative researchers generally means that they follow a very limited number of
participants. The method of describing learning process in qualitative inquiry is not seeking wide-scale
veriiability and it would be impossible to recreate a learning environment exactly as it occurred in the
qualitative analysis.

Case Study Three: Cognitive Ethnography of Lineage

Ethnographies are well-discussed, particularly within the ield of anthropology. A rigorous, long-
term ethnographic inquiry (Geertz, 1973; Malaby, 2003; Chen, 2012; Simkins, in press) may be the best
possible approach to qualitative research, when time and access allows. Within educational research,
researchers oten lack either time or access to complete ethnographic inquiry, which requires months
of intense participation within the community, but those that are completed can provide much needed
insight into learning.

Conducting an ethnography requires a holistic approach to the understanding of culture. The social,
cultural, and physical environment is explored from a contemporary and historical perspective.
Analysis of observation involves a move between emic points of view, those from within the studied
culture, and etic points of view, those from outside the culture, usually primarily focused on the
perspective of the researcher.

One educational games ethnography was conducted by Steinkuehler (2004) over the course of two
years, through interacting with a particular community of gamers who started together on Lineage,
a massively multiplayer online game released by Korean company NC Sot. The community was on
English speaking servers, and included participants from across the world as they played Lineage, and
later moved on to Lineage 2 and World of Warcrat.

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Over the course of two years, Steinkuehler had the opportunity to play with a large variety of game
players, learn specialist language around the game, and explore the speciic practices that signify expert
game playing. The work was largely analyzed through discourse analysis, and included a number of
analytic tools including various kinds of expert-novice studies, studies of ethical play, cheating, ways
of playing that mark one as an insider or outside to the core community of the game, and how one
transitions from peripheral to central participant. A lot of time and energy is spent on understanding
what it means to be full member of the practice, what it means for one’s sense of being and identity as a
leader, follower, and member of community.

Through this inquiry, a core group of practitioners became her core participants, and playing involved
building trust and care relationships with her participants. Eventually, Steinkuehler became a
community leader in her own right, having established herself as a trustworthy and valuable member
of the community. This was not intended, nor particularly desirable for Steinkuehler as a researcher,
but it did open doors to understanding all sides of the complex negotiations that underlie forming and
maintaining a group of players within each of these games—each of which have particular challenges
and afordances when it comes to developing meaningful connections between community members.

While tools of analysis vary widely, data collection is more uniform, and both are in ample evidence
in Steinkuehler’s ethnographic data. The irst is an extensive record of observation of activities in and
around play. The second is evolving interviews with key informants who can describe and explain the
practices of the community, and help the researcher to interpret meaning of behaviors and paterns
evident in observations. These interviews may be formal interview interactions where the researcher
and participant are self-consciously engaging in an interview. It can also be informal interview
interactions that occur during normal interactions in and around the games. As with almost any other
modern research, each of the participants was aware that they were engaged in research, and each was
identiied by a pseudonym that protected them from potential social ramiications for what they might
have said. The combination of interviews and observations allowed Steinkuehler to gain an in-depth
understanding of these communities of practice as they played the three MMOs.

Best Practices
1. Identify the game’s learning goals, both explicitly and implicitly.
2. Create assessment methods that maximize access to and understanding of data
relevant to the learning goals. Ensure that the methods are compatible with researcher’s
epistemological commitments.
3. Assess the game using rigorous standards.
4. Report on your assessment, clearly identifying your epistemology, methods used, and
learning goals assessed. Include a good description of the gameplay that shows the
relevance of learning goals to the gameplay.

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