Our Stance On Video Games (In Education)

Other articles in our library have touched briefly on the pros and cons of digital tools in education. In general, they’re quite positive about their potential.

If you look at the products in our store, however, you’ll notice that almost everything is physical. I’d guess about 90% of our work, thus far, has been in board games, PDFs to print, puzzles that you play with pen and paper, and so forth. Almost as if we’re avoiding anything that’s digital!

This may confuse some people. Because we’re not necessarily against digital tools, and we have the ability to make them. For example, those who know me from my game development background will know that I’ve made numerous small video games before. We also developed our own system for digital quizzes, the most advanced one currently available. (And completely free and open source, by the way! As all our systems are and will be.)

So why are we not making more video games? What’s our stance? What are their pros and cons in education or in general?

The Dangers

Let’s start with the dangers of video games (or “digital tools in education/for kids”). These are well-known to many and we can be quite short about this.

Firstly, screens are bad for your eyes and posture. There’s a pandemic of people who need glasses these days. While research in this area is obviously young and rare, we already clearly see the relationship. If you don’t give your eyes enough variety and contrast, they won’t develop to … be able to see that. Screens are bad for this, as you’re usually glued to them, at the same distance, for a long time. But, for example, staying inside all day has the same bad effect on children’s eyesight, as they’ll be looking at the same walls all day.

As for posture, some people note that this posture is similar to, for example, reading a book. So why is it bad to be hunched over a tablet, but not to be hunched over a book? Because when reading, your eyes still get more variety, and so will your body. I often subconsciously shift position or briefly look away when reading. When using screens, most people are completely fixated on that screen. They will rarely look away, or change their posture, or even be vaguely aware of their surroundings. Which brings me to …

Secondly, screens (and apps/games) are demonstrably designed to be addictive. This is not even conjecture anymore. There’s a pile of evidence that big companies use every psychological trick in the book to make you addicted to their (social media) app or game. Their goal is maximum engagement, because that feeds their own platform’s popularity and allows them to show more ads.

This is such normalized behavior that people are copying it without even thinking about it. I’ve seen countless kids who hate seeing ads in games … but when they learn to make games themselves, the first thing they’ll do is put ads in there. They’ll also copy much more “subtle” addictive mechanics, such as loot boxes, daily login rewards, and more. All without thinking about it—without realizing that they themselves hate this and are negatively influenced by the same mechanics.

As such, even well-intentioned developers making ad-free video games, are very prone to including addictive mechanisms and game loops. Even non-profits who create wonderful educational games/apps include similar games and systems that are much better for making your toddler addicted than for teaching anything. In fact, just today, I stumbled upon a new app, which had to explicitly state (as their first line of marketing): “Not designed for addiction”. That’s how bad it’s become!

Now, you might wonder, why is this not happening elsewhere? Why aren’t board games seen as an addiction? Or going to the cinema? Well, for two reasons.

• Video games take no effort. You don’t even have to pick up cards, or move a pawn, or set up a physical board. It takes absolutely no effort to start, play, and continue playing a video game for hours.
• Video games can add loads of fancy special effects (pretty colors, sound effects, animations, etcetera). To constantly grab your attention, give you small rewards, and thus keep you hooked. (It’s also easy for them to do so randomly, and, as most people know, random unpredictable rewards = addiction.)

Games are not the problem. Any activity that is fun or leads to learning is, by default, addictive. Because who doesn’t want to keep having fun? Who doesn’t want to keep learning, and growing, and solving puzzles? But you don’t get stuck in a loop because it takes effort to get this fun, and at some point your energy or attention has run out. That’s good. That’s healthy. Video games are simply the perfect mixture of elements to create addiction, even by accident.

Thirdly, lack of social contact has been shown to be the biggest reason for lack of learning, lack of motivation and cognitive decline. Especially in kids. Humans are social animals. Being social triggers our entire brain and makes us so much happier and smarter. Video games are almost always played alone. At best, a toddler plays and an adult looks over their shoulder from time to time.

It’s always been funny to me how board games have this stigma of “oh, board games are for lonely boring nerds”, while video games have become cool and standard in the past decades. Why? How!? Board games MUST be played with other people. All board games have a huge social, creative, human element to it. I’ve met so many different people, and had so many amazing shared memories with others, thanks to board games. While video games … are you, sitting in your bedroom, alone, for hours.

Even the smartest kid will do poorly in skill and stop learning if they’re lonely. If they lack social contact and bonding time with their parents/family. Social behavior is our default. It’s the strongest indicator of mental and physical health throughout your entire life, but especially when young.

As such, creating video games feels like moving in entirely the wrong direction. We want to promote doing activities together. That’s why we create board games, escape room experiences, quizzes to play in large groups, stories that you must read to your child, and so forth.

I think these three points are a nice succinct summary of the dangers.

The Benefits

Okay, with that out of the way, what are the advantages of creating educational video games / digital tools?

Firstly, they’re easy on the parent/student. Just install and click play. Nothing to set up beforehand, no material to actively teach, no answers to manually check afterwards. Quite obviously, if you let 99% of your work be done automatically by a computer, this saves you a lot of time and effort.

There are many board game ideas of ours, for example, that could be turned into a video game. And the only thing that really changes is that we can remove all “bookkeeping” sectiona in the rulebook (“deal everyone X cards”, “draw back up to X cards”, “count points and see who won the round”) and just let the computer do it for you.

Secondly, kids are attracted to them more easily. Thanks to the sound effects, the flashy colors, the moving bits, kids are engaged more easily. They’re attracted to a video game, all you need to do is open it/show it. Even better, most games can be controlled by just a few buttons. It’s pretty easy for kids, even the youngest ones, to figure out “oh if I press this button I jump”. Soon, they are playing the game all by themselves!

Thirdly, playing video games, in itself, teaches certain skills. It teaches how to use a computer and its peripherals. It teaches hand-eye coordination, or rather, in most cases, fine motor skills. It teaches … learning to lose. It will happen a lot, but it’s a bit of a “soft failure”, because there’s nobody to be mad at and you can instantly restart and try again.

Video games are not easy! Even the simplest ones require timing your input, tracking what’s happening on screen, predicting things ahead of time, understanding when a round is over or what gives you more/fewer points, etcetera. That’s why game developers work very hard to simplify as much as possible and get you to try the game in the first place. By simply playing a few times you’ll practice a lot of skills already. Even if the game is extremely simple and not at all meant to be “educational”.

Fourthly, they provide opportunities that other types of games simply can’t. For example, most teachers have used (or at least heard of) “Kahoots”. You can play a sort of quiz with 30 students no problem, because it’s digital and each one can connect with their own phone. Playing a board game with 30 people … not ideal.

Of course, an entire class is an extreme example. But the same thing is still true for a typical family of four. It’s just easier to give everyone a controller and play a video game together, than laying out a board game and teaching it. I love board games and have probably made some of the simplest rulebooks ever designed … but you simply can’t argue that those will ever be simpler and more accessible than video games. One of the reasons I started developing video games all those years ago, while I liked board games more, was because people would actually playtest video games with me.

Despite accessibility, there are other inherent game mechanics that are easy in a video game but impossible in a board/physical game.

For example, secrecy and randomization are hard in board games. Say you have a murder detective game. A computer can just generate a random victim and clues, and everyone can play. In a board game, you’d likely need one player to be the “game master” … who can’t play but has to set up the murder for you.

Or, say, you have a video game about an essential math skill. The computer can just instantly check if you did it right. And it will check perfectly. In a board game, there must be at least one other player who can perform that math skill, and they might even make mistakes and falsely tell their kid they did something right. (Not all adults are equally proficient at complex multiplications or additions. Shockingly, finishing school does not actually guarantee you have the skills they say you should have. We’re working hard to remedy that and have education actually educate!)

In short, video games are much easier to “sell” to people (kids and adults alike). They’re easier to scale to groups (instead of playing alone or with 2/3) and can perform mechanics/rules/systems that are simply impossible (or veeeery impractical) in other games. And they do all of this while reducing the overhead and effort needed by parents/teachers tremendously.

As stated in the introduction, there are clear pros and cons to them. I’ve made enough video games, for enough platforms, in enough different systems, to know all the good and the ugly by heart. With all this context in the back of your mind, now let’s see how our online store handles this.

Digital Tools, Used Wisely

Let’s first give our general principle about “digital tools”. (Video games, specifically, will be discussed next.)

We mentioned our “digital quiz system” at the start. It’s a powerful framework that takes the questions and assets we prepared, and turns it into a beautiful quiz that you can interactively play in any browser. Just double-click the file and it should work.

You know what we also implemented from the start? The ability to create a printable version of the quiz. Every single quiz on the store includes some PDF files to play the quiz physically. You get all the questions and answers in a nice format (just like playing digitally), you get a custom answer sheet tailored to this exact quiz. This makes it your choice whether you want to use this tool/resource digitally or physically.

At time of writing, all our other planned frameworks aren’t done yet. For example, we’re busy copying our board game generator (from Pandaqi) over to this store’s pipeline too. But the ability to choose whether you use this tool digitally or not is a core part of all of them. It’s one of the few essential things we’ve wanted to support from the start.

This means that we can freely create digital tools whenever it makes sense and provides these benefits. And you, the buyer, can not use them digitally when your specific situation doesn’t call for it.

Now, for video games specifically, our rules are simple.

• We only create local multiplayer games. That is, you must play with 2 players (or more), in the same room/behind the same screen.
• Our games include no ads, no addictive systems, no online functionality, and no data retention.
  • Of course, we can still make mistakes or subconsciously add some evil element that hooks your kid. But fully excluding the things mentioned makes this very unlikely, to the point of it being impossible.
  • With “no data retention”, we mean there’s nothing that rewards you for logging in more often. You don’t have an “account”, there is no “currency” to acquire or spend. You start the game afresh, play it, and when you close it … that previous session is basically forgotten.
• Our games have short, well-defined sessions. They’re not open-ended (“play as long as you like”), which means there’s no clear point where you might take a break or stop. They also don’t have rounds that could take an hour to play, for that obviously makes you play longer than is healthy too.
• Our games are paid executables. It’s the only sustainable model; it’s only fair. (An “executable” means you download to your computer and run. It’s not a “web game” that you can play in the browser, because support for gamepad input and other basic technologies we need is iffy. For now, the games also won’t appear on gaming consoles like the XBox, for that requires a large sum of money and their approval for every single game.)

For the most part, these principles come together in an invention of mine called One Button Games. It’s pretty self-explanatory ;) Every player who wants to play gets only a single button. This means you can play with 10 people if you want, just by having a single keyboard or two gamepads (for example).

• This makes the gameplay extremely simple and accessible. Anybody understands “press that button to do X” and is happy to play along. No need to plan elaborate gaming sessions with your kid—hop in and out as your schedule allows.
• It also means you’re required to work together to achieve goals, whatever they may be. (It might be a sports game where players are put into teams and try to score. It might be a game where you’re all running a restaurant together.)
• It means rounds have to be short, because there’s not much you can do with a single button. The gameplay has to be very focused on the one thing you’re doing. (And when the round is over, the buttons shuffle around, so you get to do something else/sit somewhere else next round.)
• It also means that all of our games can use the exact same framework behind the scenes. Any bugs found, any crashes, can be fixed in that framework and subsequently be fixed for all games. In general, fixing issues and making sure the games run on any device is much easier in games with such an elegant structure.

I’ve made a few One Button Games now and I can’t tell you how excited I am that I figured this out. It took a few tries to get a solid system, interface, and more. (For example, allowing anyone to hop in or out while playing required some … deep thought.) But I was even able to get my parents playing these games, for hours, with a group of 6+ people all having fun. If there’s any type of video game we want to put our faith (and resources) into, it’s this one.

We hope to have launched the first few of these games when this article goes live. But, as stated, video games are not our priority and take the most resources to make … so we’re not making any promises ;)

Conclusion

These were our considerations about the advantages and disadvantages of video games, and how this informed our principles.

In summary, our digital tools use our own frameworks that allow both digital and physical usage. Our digital games use a unique structure that minimizes addiction or health side-effects, while ensuring social contact and having a focused, fun, educational session together.

As I write this, the online store is still in an early stage. There’s a lot to do, a lot to make, a lot of details to figure out. It might be a while before the fruits of these principles can be harvested, but now you know what’s coming. And maybe this can help you inform your own work or perspective on digital tools in education.

Keep playing, keep learning,

Tiamo