Learning Game Design, Reflecting on Life: Collaborative Lo-Fi Games for Student Analysis of Higher Education

DB Bauer, PhD, Arizona State University

This assignment invites students to experiment with hands-on, lo-fi game design while applying foundational games studies concepts and utilizing the unique characteristics of games and play to inspire critical thinking and foster classroom rapport.

Assignment Context and Overview

As faculty in The GAME School at Arizona State University (ASU), I develop and teach games-based courses for my program’s BS in Game Design curriculum. One such course, “People at Play: The Cultural Significance of Play, Games, and Toys,” presents the larger context of games and play through scholarly, historical, and cultural perspectives. A major assignment in this class, “Gameify ASU” (Appendix A) invites students to work together to create a game based on their experiences as ASU undergraduates students in the here and now.

Students apply foundational concepts in games studies (e.g., gamification [Deterding et al. 2011] and critical play [Flannagan 2009]) to their lived experiences of undergraduate life through collaborative game making. The assignment includes three steps in which students:

1. Design an analog game as a group using technologies and materials of their choosing,
2. Play other groups’ games, and
3. Reflect on the experience in a written paper.

Students assemble into groups of three to five people and have four class sessions (~5 hours total) to create their games and two sessions (~2.5 hours) to play the games. To serve both majors and nonmajors, “Gamify ASU” establishes a shared language of foundational concepts through hands-on, collaborative game making and play. Beyond conceptual praxis, the assignment centers design, play, and games as unique lenses for critical thinking and explores the value of games and play in fostering student social bonding and an engaged learning environment.

The assignment is designed to meet these goals through varying design choices. First, analog games may be more accessible and less intimidating, as students often express more familiarity with analog games (e.g. board, card, and tabletop games) than video games. Further, the lo-fi approach encourages students to focus on their games’ ideas and not on polished aesthetics. Second, collaboration operates as an icebreaker to encourage peer rapport and more expansive understandings of the shared and unique aspects of the student experience. Though group size may vary, the target size ensures multiple perspectives in the design process and that design teams can also function as play teams. Third, students are asked to complete a reflection paper to process takeaway points at their own pace. If time allows, I facilitate a brief large-group discussion to conclude the module so students may share these reflections. Facilitators should consider these details and adapt as needed.

Results

The results below draw from forty-three students’ games and written reflections from Spring (22 students) and Fall 2023 (21 students), including direct quotations from ten individual students who have been anonymized. The sixteen games (Figure 1) in this study underscore how games provide a unique analytical frame to explore concepts in media studies, including themes, conflict, and tone, as well as those specific to games studies, including core loops, objectives, and win conditions.

Some groups created games by hand with basic craft supplies, while others used digital tools combined with 3D- and large-format printing and laser cutting. Often, design elements take on ASU-based themes, including university colors (maroon and gold), mascots (sun devils and Sparky), messaging (e.g., “innovation”), and campus knowledge (e.g., high-profile employees, campus buildings and layout, etc.). Many games remix others, including Candyland (Hasbro), Dungeons & Dragons (Wizards of the Coast), The Game of Life (Milton Bradley), Mario Party (Nintendo), and Taboo (Hasbro).

Graduating is the main objective for the majority of games (81%). Because of this, a common core loop (with academic years as game rounds and other similar linear analogies) represents the semester-by-semester experience that is both a “monotonous tiresome crawl” and a “race to graduate.” Along this path, most games present players with randomized events—both academic (e.g., acing a test or getting caught cheating) and those part of everyday life (e.g., getting a flat tire or becoming sick)—that are representative of shared and individual experiences that hinder or foster progress. Students often reflect on these unexpected “curveballs” that require “adapting and pushing through.” As such, games call out the stressful struggle to achieve work/life balance while juggling, as one student wrote, “health, finances, social interactions, and grades.” Of the three games whose objectives were not based on reaching graduation, one focused on the importance of personal growth and the other two were outlandish: one on starting rumors about important people on campus and another that pitted players against each other to be the last player standing with the least amount of debt.

Outcomes

“Gamify ASU” allows students to translate their experiences into the language of game design, while also miniaturizing and fictionalizing real life. This approach not only develops and applies critical analysis to everyday life, but moreover, it does so through a spirit of playfulness that fosters critique and jest in an environment in which students may cathartically bond over their experiences.

In their reflections, students expressed similar takeaway points across learning goals and often noted the value of games as tools for reflection, inquiry, and analysis. First, students expressed that applying game design to everyday life was “eye opening” and made them more observant. Specifically, fictionalizing the mundane transformed common experiences and locations into game objects that, as one student wrote, “allow[ed] [students] to watch and interact, and even think of the environment [they] constantly walk around in, in a different light.”

Second, the playfulness of games allowed students to express levity through shared catharsis (often tinged with dark, tongue-in-cheek, or satirical humor) and critique of the institution. For example, one student wrote: “Games allow us to make fun of the things that happen to us while not putting any actual consequences on the players.” Reflecting on critique, another student wrote, “[w]e are not given many opportunities to voice our concerns directly to the university. The games were a medium for these discussions.”

Finally, the majority of students expressed that collaboration, something students often find challenging and unrewarding, was essential to positive outcomes, particularly through identifying and discussing shared and unique experiences. For instance, one student wrote, “this game definitely made me rethink my undergraduate college experience. I recounted times where I felt my experience was the same as everyone else’s, and times when I felt like I had a completely different experience from others.” This sharing of experiences through a playful lens led several students to report increased comradery, bonding, and a greater sense of belonging due to these realizations that they are not alone in their struggles.

Assignment Limitations

Despite positive outcomes, the assignment also revealed areas that limit student creativity, critical thinking, and intentionality. Simply, the title shapes outcomes: “Gamify ASU”—as opposed to a title that suggests a more general student experience—seems to encourage students to reskin extant games with ASU-themed institutional branding (e.g. an ASU-branded version of Monopoly) as discussed above.1 This approach often limits projects to the existing structure, aesthetics, and other elements of the original games—elements that may not be well-suited for learning goals. This issue is further exacerbated by the optional instruction that games may “remix” an extant game. In these cases, students may simply choose a well-known design so they may get started quickly instead of brainstorming and creating an original design. On one hand, reskinning and remixing may limit critical engagement with intentional design, but on the other, they may also foster unique insights and student camaraderie through the rich lenses of critique, satire, adaptation, and so on. To avoid these potential limitations, I suggest facilitators discuss the importance of design rationale with students to clarify expectations and desired outcomes.

Conclusions

The first time I observed this assignment in action, I was caught off guard by students’ energetic peer interactions (especially laughter), expansive creativity, and engagement with the projects. Beyond exploring core concepts through applied learning, students develop rapport that fosters engaged participation and interaction for the remainder of the semester. Game design applied to everyday life inspires critical reflection, social connection, and valuable insights for students and instructors all while coming from, as one student put it, “silly” games.

References

Appendix A

“Gamify ASU” Assignment Overview

In your group, you will apply the concept “gamification” to being a student at ASU. This is a chance to “gamify” a common experience you all share, in this case, what it means to be an ASU undergraduate student here and now. This project also asks you to apply the concept “critical play” to use games/play to think critically about the world around you as designers and to use a game to inspire that kind of thought in players. It also encourages us to think about how game design and play can be used, in reverse, to reimagine and redesign the world around us.

TL;DR: Draw on play and game design to define and call attention to what it means to be a student at ASU. 

In addition to the above, adhere to the design constraints below:

• Games must be fully analog. Despite this, you may use digital tools to create and fabricate your games (laser cutting; 3D printing; Photoshop; etc.).
• Games must be playable.
• Games must have documentation (i.e. the booklet that comes with the game that includes title, instructions, objectives, etc.). This will help student peers play your game independently (i.e. without assistance from the group who created the game).
• (Optional) Games may remix existing games, if needed. Your game may be drawn from the themes, dynamics, gameplay, rules, and so on of other games.

Game Share

Groups will set up their ready-to-play games. Then, groups will circulate and play other groups’ games.

Game Design Statement

Individually, each student will write a game design statement to provide more detail about the game their group created and discuss various course concepts from the first module of class.

The design statement should include the following:

• Description of the game.
• Connections to course materials.
  • How does your game connect to course concepts? Examples include, but are not limited to:
    • The magic circle (Huizinga [1938] 2014; Salen and Zimmerman 2003).
    • Gamification (Deterding et al. 2011; Bogost 2015).
    • Critical play (Flannagan 2009).
    • Bleed (Hugaas 2024) or seepage (Gorgeous 2020).
    • Critical making (Ratto 2011).
    • Speculative design (Auger 2013).
• Reflection on experience. Answers may address both the process of creating the game or playing the games.
  • Potential questions to address:
    • How did this experience shape your understanding about what it means to be an undergraduate student?
    • What issues came up for your group? In your game? In others’ games?
    • Did anything surprising or unexpected come up?
    • What did these games reveal about how to improve the student experience, either at ASU or beyond?

The game design statement should be at least two pages double spaced (12 pt font; times new roman).

About the Author

DB Bauer, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Games and Interactive Media in The GAME (Games, Art, Media, & Engineering) School at Arizona State University who specializes in media and technology studies, games studies, applied media practice, and curriculum development. Specifically, Bauer’s research analyzes the technocultural aspects of digital and physical media through transversal media theory, research creation, and design-based perspectives. Bauer’s pedagogical approach centers participatory learning, game-based methods, and hands-on design. Bauer is the founding co-director of both the TechnoMaterials Lab and the Games Studies @ ASU Research Group.



This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.