Rinat Levy-Cohen (Fordham University) & Camillia Matuk (New York University). BACKGROUND. Game Design is a promising, but under-explored context for ...
What Children Learn From the Game Design Process Rinat Levy-Cohen (Fordham University) & Camillia Matuk (New York University)
BACKGROUND Game Design is a promising, but under-explored context for developing systems thinking, design thinking, game logic and rules, and storytelling (Salen, 2007; Zimmerman, 2010). It can also promote positive identities and self-perceptions useful for future learning. • Competency beliefs are beliefs in one’s ability, and are critical for engagement and success. • Empathy involves identifying what users value and how they interpret the world around them. • A socio-technical engineering mindset involves thinking about how people will interact with the game and how the game will shape both competitive and collaborative social interaction (Salen ,2007). RESEARCH QUESTION What do children learn from the game design process?
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PARTICIPANTS Seven 14-year old maker club members (3 males, 4 females) from a private school in the Northeastern United States. Worked in 2 design teams. Participants reported playing games at least a few times a week. Female participants had previously made board games and digital games (e.g., with Scratch and Mindstorms) while male participants created games such as a Space Invader clone. DATA & ANALYSIS Pre and post-questionnaires, facilitators’ field notes and reflections, audio recordings, design artifacts, and post-interviews. Descriptive coding (Miles, Huberman & Saldana, 2014).
PROCEDURE & GAME DESIGN PROCESS
Thinking like Game Designers: While ideating, prototyping, and reflecting on their experience, students often used sophisticated game design thinking language. One student said that he learned that when you design a game you need to think about “how playable is it going to be” and that “a game needs to have a set narrative and goals.” A Socio-Technical Engineering Mindset: The game design context offered a space for participants to express socio-technical engineering mindsets. While prototyping and playtesting, students remarked that “you can’t make it (the game) perfect until people play”. They valued playtesting and their peers’ feedback and used it to inform further refinements. mindset
RESULTS More Nuanced Perceptions of Games: Participants initially viewed games as “something that makes you happy and makes you enjoy what you’re doing,” and later explained that “a game is also a complex way of thinking.” Changed competency beliefs: Participants originally expressed that game designers needed to master hard skills (e.g., science and math) in order to make games. Later, they listed teamwork, imagination, and creativity as necessary skills, which can be gained through experience. Empathy: Post interviews revealed that without explicit support from the workshop, both teams had reasoned through the empathy stage of the design process.
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DISCUSSION & FUTURE RESEARCH Findings show how participants came to view games as multidimensional: at once simple and then complex, and able to influence players both cognitively and emotionally. It would appear that this collaborative game design workshop offered a context for youth to demonstrate sophisticated design thinking skills, which are often not made visible through traditional school-based activities. Using the language of game design, students might have been assuming the identities of designers through practice. Future research might explore the rule language use and identity in game making. Future research might also explore how students came to develop empathy through game design.
