{"id":8883,"date":"2019-09-11T13:59:35","date_gmt":"2019-09-11T13:59:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/citejournal.org\/\/\/"},"modified":"2019-12-11T16:24:11","modified_gmt":"2019-12-11T16:24:11","slug":"the-fun-of-its-parts-design-and-player-reception-of-educational-board-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citejournal.org\/volume-19\/issue-3-19\/general\/the-fun-of-its-parts-design-and-player-reception-of-educational-board-games","title":{"rendered":"The Fun of Its Parts: Design and Player Reception of Educational Board Games"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Games\nmay be a hot topic in current educational technology studies, but learning\nwith, through, and around games is nothing new. Educational claims about games\npredate the advent of modern video games (e.g., Abt, 1970; Raser, 1969). The\ntwo-player strategy game morabaraba<\/em>,\nfor example, has been enjoyed by players for hundreds of years in South Africa\nand is embedded with mathematical concepts that draw from indigenous knowledge\nsystems (Nkopodi & Mosimege, 2009). Similarly, the game of chess \u2014 with\nroots dating back to seventh century India \u2014 has been used to teach a variety\nof topics from managerial skills (Cannice, 2013) to medieval European history\n(Pagnotti & Russell, 2012). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, analog\ngames (e.g., board, card, and tabletop games) have the potential to serve alongside\nvideo games as useful educational technologies. Not only do analog games share\nmany of the affordances of digital games, but they may also have affordances\nthat digital games do not, such as greater openness and flexibility (Greenhalgh,\n2016). Furthermore, hobby board games are increasing in popularity (\u201cNot\ntwilight, but sunrise,\u201d 2015; Roeder, 2015), and research has found that\nplayers of these games are generally accepting of their educational potential (Staudt\nWillet, Moudgalya, Boltz, Greenhalgh, & Koehler, 2018). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In recognition of\nthis potential, educators in various contexts have used analog games as\neducational resources (e.g., Amaro et al., 2006; Fukuchi, Offutt, Sacks, &\nMann, 2000); for example, Gray, Topping, and Caracary (1998) examined the\neffectiveness of a board game intended to help secondary students learn the\nUnited Kingdom\u2019s Highway Code. In contrast to these games explicitly designed\nfor educational contexts, educators also have the possibility of integrating\ncommercial off-the-shelf games into learning contexts. For example, librarians\nhave used the game Apples to Apples to help second graders build vocabulary\n(Copeland, Henderson, Mayer, & Nicholson, 2013), and one teacher has\nmodified the rules of the game Battleship to allow students to experience a\nsimulation of the differences between the U.S. Constitution and the Articles of\nConfederation (Bridge, 2014). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite this resurgence of interest in analog games and their continued use and recognized value in educational contexts, noteworthy gaps remain in terms of both practical support for teachers and teacher educators and contributions to the research literature. First, few teacher education programs introduce preservice teachers to game-based learning strategies or provide opportunities to learn the complex process of selecting (or designing), integrating, and facilitating game play (Franklin & Annetta, 2011; Sardone & Devlin-Scherer, 2010). Second, most of the guides available to support teachers as they integrate games into the curriculum tend to offer advice that assumes a game has already been selected (e.g., Charsky & Mims, 2008; Van Eck, 2006) and, therefore, offer little help for teachers looking for criteria to use in choosing a game that will be well-received by students. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Furthermore,\nthe educational technology literature is characterized by an overwhelming focus\non digital<\/em> games. For example, several\nrecent major handbooks in the field of educational technology contain chapters\non the potential of games for education, but the authors of these chapters have\nexplicitly articulated their focus on digital games (Dawley & Dede, 2014;\nKafai & Dede, 2014; Steinkuehler & Squire, 2014; Tobias, Fletcher,\n& Wind, 2014). As in other academic disciplines (see, for example, Torner,\nTrammell, & Waldron, 2014), digital games have pushed their predecessors to\nthe margins in the field of educational technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This\nmarginalization is not without consequence for those seeking to use analog\ngames in educational settings. Educational scholars studying digital games have\nasserted that not all games are appropriate for all contexts (Van Eck, 2006) \u2014 rather,\ndifferent game designs \u201creflect underlying pedagogical strategies that allow\nfor learning in different content areas\u201d (Foster & Mishra, 2009, p. 34). Furthermore,\nboth researchers and game designers have suggested that many \u2014 or even most \u2014 digital\ngames designed for educational purposes are neither as fun nor as engaging as\nentertainment games (Bruckman, 1999; Tobias et al., 2014; Van Eck, 2006). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These\nobservations are likely to also hold true for board, card, and other analog\ngames. The ability to make distinctions in analog game design and comment on\nhow these distinctions might influence pedagogical affordances or player\nreception is, therefore, necessary for effective decision-making when employing\nthese games for educational purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The purpose of this study was to identify some of the design elements that characterize educational analog games and to model how these elements influence player (and potential learner) reception of those games. To carry out this purpose, we use crowd-sourced data from the website BoardGameGeek (BGG; www.boardgamegeek.com<\/a>). Using player-generated data from this website acknowledges that online communities can both play an important role in the analog gaming hobby (as is also the case for digital games; Gee, 2004; Squire, 2008) and serve as the source of \u201cdigital traces\u201d that researchers can then collect and analyze (Lazer et al., 2009; Welser, Smith, Fisher, & Gleave, 2008) to learn more about these phenomena. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, these features mean that the\nBGG data lends itself to an analysis of how players distinguish between games\nand how those distinctions influence their reception of them. Such distinctions\nare helpful for providing teacher candidates, in-service teachers, and teacher\neducators with a vocabulary and framework for comparing educational games to\neach other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Background<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Those employing, studying, or designing educational board games can benefit from thinking of them as educational technologies. All educational technologies afford and constrain certain behaviors (Koehler & Mishra, 2009). Thinking of digital games in this way has allowed scholars to provide guidelines for ways specific games might most productively be used in educational settings (e.g., Foster, Mishra, & Koehler, 2011). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Contrary to popular perceptions, educational<\/em> technologies are not limited to digital<\/em> technologies (Koehler & Mishra, 2009; Nickerson, 2005),\nmeaning that such an approach is also appropriate for evaluating the\neducational potential of analog games, whether in broad terms (e.g., Greenhalgh,\n2016) or when considering particular games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When anticipating either the educational\npotential or player reception of games \u2014 whether digital or analog \u2014 specific\nelements of a game\u2019s design can be considered to be affordances or constraints.\nFor example, someone considering a game can examine how its design might\nsupport or impede particular pedagogical objectives (e.g., Foster et al., 2011)\nor player reception of that game (Koehler, Arnold, Greenhalgh, & Boltz,\n2017; Wang, Shen, & Ritterfeld, 2009). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although player reception of a game\nis not a guarantee of its pedagogical effectiveness, it remains a worthy\nconsideration in evaluating games. Much thinking about the educational\npotential of games is closely tied to the fact that games are generally\nconsidered to be fun, engaging, or otherwise popular (Gee, 2007; Kafai &\nDede, 2014; McGonigal, 2011; Prensky, 2003; Steinkuehler & Squire, 2014). Indeed,\nmany advocates for educational games worry that students will not receive them\nwell (Bruckman, 1999; Tobias et al., 2014; Van Eck, 2006). Furthermore, teacher\ncandidates have identified questions of fun and motivation as key to their own\nconsideration of games\u2019 educational potential (Devlin-Scherer & Sardone,\n2010; Sardone & Devlin-Scherer, 2009, 2010; Shah & Foster, 2015).  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How might the design of a game be\nthought of in terms of affordances and constraints for educational purposes or its\nreception by players? The design of a game can be conceived of in a wide\nvariety of ways. For example, some researchers have made efforts to develop\ncomprehensive lists of the kinds of design features that describe a game (e.g.,\nBedwell, Pavlas, Heyne, Lazzara, & Salas, 2012; Wilson et al., 2009) or what\nmakes it fun (e.g., Wang et al., 2009). These lists refer to a range of\nfeatures, including humor, storyline, and characters (Wang et al., 2009), possibilities\nfor interaction with other players (Bedwell et al., 2012), and the objects represented\nin a game (Wilson et al., 2009).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\ncontrast to these detailed lists, we used a simple conceptual framework in this\nstudy that recognizes three foundational categories of game features: themes,\nmechanics, and genres. Game designers and scholars have devoted a great deal of\nattention to the relationship between themes and mechanics (Bogost, 2007;\nBrathwaite & Schreiber, 2008; Koster, 2004; Sicart, 2009), suggesting that\nthese two kinds of features account for a significant part of a game\u2019s design. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Furthermore,\ngenres are already frequently used to classify educational games (Breuer &\nBente, 2010; Foster & Mishra, 2009; Foster et al., 2011), making them a\nuseful concept for further research. Indeed, in previous, exploratory work, we\nhave used the mechanics, themes, and genres framework to great effect. For\nexample, we have found that mechanics, themes, and genres with intuitive\nconnections to education (e.g., genres like Children\u2019s Game and Trivia)\nfrequently appeared in educational board and video games but also that games\nwith these features tended to be rated lower by players than games with\nfeatures more frequently associated with entertainment games (Greenhalgh,\nBoltz, & Koehler, 2014). However, these findings were limited to\ndescriptive statistics, necessitating future research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the following paragraphs, we describe themes, mechanics, and genres; give examples of each category; and summarize existing research that connects these categories with both teachers\u2019 use of games and player reception of games (including studies reporting on concepts such as enjoyment, engagement, fun, and motivation). Table 1 supplements these descriptions with a sample of themes, mechanics, and genres from three board games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Table 1 <\/strong>
Three Board Games With Examples of Associated Themes, Mechanics, and Genre <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\n\t\n\t\n\t
Game <\/strong><\/th>Description <\/strong><\/th>Example Theme<\/strong><\/th>Example Mechanic <\/strong><\/th>Example Genre <\/strong><\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n
Axis and Allies<\/td>Players take the role of the major powers of World War II and compete for military victory. <\/td>World War II<\/em>
\nsimulates battles of the Second World War<\/td>		Dice Rolling<\/em>
\nplayers move the game forward by rolling dice<\/td>		Wargame<\/em>
\nuses dice, cards, etc. to simulate battles and conflict<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Carcassonne<\/td>Players add tiles to a growing map and play pieces to claim parts of the map, which earn them points. <\/td>Medieval<\/em>
\nthe game is set in the 13th century<\/td>		Tile Placement<\/em>
\nplayers move the game forward by laying tiles on a surface<\/td>		Territory Building<\/em>
\ninvolves players\u2019 expanding claims on board<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Chess<\/td>Players try to capture their opponent\u2019s king piece with an \u201carmy\u201d of 16 pieces of six different types. <\/td>n\/a<\/em>
\nalthough there are themed sets, chess itself does not have a strong thematic component<\/td>		Grid Movement<\/em>
\nplayers move the game forward by moving pieces around the game grid<\/td>		Abstract Strategy<\/em>
\nstrong themes and chance-based mechanics are absent<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n\n

Themes<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

A\ngame\u2019s theme can be thought of as its \u201cdressing\u201d (Koster, 2004, p. 85) or its\n\u201cfictional world\u201d (Sicart, 2009, p. 33). For example, games may have themes\nrelated to history, science fiction, or pirates. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Theme\nis an important \u2014 but not the sole \u2014 consideration for evaluating an\neducational game. Sardone and Devlin-Scherer (2009) found that teacher\neducators take content (i.e., theme) into consideration when judging the value\nof an educational game. Sometimes, however, the apparent theme of a game may\nbelie learning outcomes that are quite unexpected. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For\nexample, many educators have recently incorporated the role-playing game Dungeons\nand Dragons into their classrooms. Perhaps surprisingly for a \u201csword and\nsorcery\u201d game based on fantasy and magic, teachers using the game reported that\nit encouraged students to develop competencies in science, math, computational\nthinking, and creative problem solving as well as foster social skills (Darvasi,\n2018). Similarly, Mayer and Harris (2010) discussed the example of Oregon, a\nboard game about the settling of the American West, which may actually be well\nsuited for a math classroom because of the way it is played (i.e., its mechanics<\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\nterms of player reception, Yee (2006) found that many players mentioned game\ndesign elements associated with theme when describing their motivations for\nplaying video games. However, Williams, Yee, and Caplan (2008) later found that\nhigher affinity with theme-related elements predicted spending less time\nplaying a particular game (and, therefore, presumably poorer reception of that\ngame). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nimplications of this finding are not entirely clear for the relationship\nbetween themes and player ratings. The authors suggested that it may have\nresulted from their study\u2019s focus on a single game with comparatively few\nthematic features. Nonetheless, they described the finding as \u201cunexpected and\ncounterintuitive\u201d (Williams et al., 2008, p. 1010). Furthermore, the authors of\nthese studies were more focused on why people choose to play games than on how\nparticular themes affect players\u2019 reception of them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mechanics<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In\na game, a mechanic<\/em> is a \u201cprocess by\nwhich game play proceeds\u201d (Mayer & Harris, 2010, p. 6). For example, game play\nin the board game Monopoly typically proceeds through mechanics such as rolling\ndice and drawing cards. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Educators have\nalso reported using a game\u2019s mechanics to evaluate its educational potential\n(e.g., Farber, 2016; Mayer & Harris, 2010). For example, the theme of the\npopular board game Pandemic is focused on global outbreaks of disease, but\nFarber\u2019s (2016) chief interest in the game was the way that its mechanics\nsupported middle school students in exploring the concept of global\ninterconnectedness. Berland and Lee (2011) divorced the educational potential\nof Pandemic even further from its theme by examining how its mechanics acted as\nalgorithms and how its players engaged in computational thinking. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Game\nmechanics are believed to influence player perceptions of games, but many\nquestions remain about the nature of that influence. For example, Mayer and\nHarris (2010) have suggested that certain mechanics are more or less engaging\nthan others but provided no empirical evidence for these claims. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On\nthe other hand, Yee\u2019s (2006) work on player motivation suggested that some\nplayers are driven by an interest in the mechanics in the games they play. He\nused principal components analysis to identify players\u2019 self-reported sources\nof motivation; the 10 components that emerged from this analysis included one\nfocused on mechanics. Later work determined that player achievement \u2014 that is,\na mastery of the mechanics \u2014 was the motivation that best predicted time spent\nin a particular game (Williams et al., 2008). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although\nthis work on motivation likely has implications for the present paper, these\nstudies focused on the existence of an effect rather than what causes that\neffect. This approach prevented these authors from determining \u201cwhich game\nmechanics satisfy which [player] motivations\u201d (Williams et al., 2008, p. 1010),\na discovery that would allow designers to \u201cleverage game mechanics into . . .\ncontexts such as educational games\u201d (p. 1010).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Genres<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Strictly\nspeaking, genres<\/em> are not design\nfeatures of a game so much as categories of games distinguished by common themes,\nmechanics, or other features. The concept of genre is, naturally, not unique to\ngames; indeed, genre has been used to describe a variety of \u201cartifact types and\n. . . interpretive habits\u201d (Spinuzzi & Zachry, 2000, p. 172); that is,\ngenres are associated not only with common features of certain media but also\nthe social and cultural contexts surrounding these media (Russell, 1997). Thus,\ngenres describe what games have in common (as perceived and defined by one or\nmore gaming communities) and may, therefore, indicate the educational potential\nof a game (Breuer & Bente, 2010; Foster & Mishra, 2009; Foster et al.,\n2011).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Game\ngenres tend to follow conventions regarding length of time required to play the\ngame, the openness of a game\u2019s goals, and its affordances for creative\nexpression (Squire, 2011). One example of a genre of board games is the wargame<\/em>: Although wargames represent a\nvariety of different game designs, all have related themes (e.g., conflict and\nwarfare) and use similar \u2014 or sometimes identical \u2014 mechanics (e.g., dice\nrolling and vying for control of spaces on a map). For this reason, genres\nindicate general patterns in a game even though they do not indicate specific\ndetails of its design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Strategy games\nlike Diplomacy and The World Peace Game have been used by educators to\ncomplement lessons on history, diplomacy, and international relations (Arnold,\n2015; Fink, 2013). From an educational perspective, the affordances of this\ngenre tend to emerge from their reliance on cooperative play, the negotiation\nof competing interests, awareness of historical\/cultural context, and creative\nproblem solving. On the other hand, card and memory games have been used in the\nclassroom to effectively support learning outcomes that involve recall and\nrecognition of features and properties \u2014 such as radiological image quality\n(Ober, 2018), word recognition (Copeland et al., 2013), and mineralogy\n(Spandler, 2016). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A\nnumber of authors have used genres as a means of indicating different\naffordances related to player reception. For example, Dickey (2005, 2006)\nsuggested that different genres may employ different means of engagement (or\nuse the same means of engagement in different ways) but did not support this\nclaim empirically. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On\nthe other hand, some researchers have determined that players of certain genres\nof digital games are more likely to exhibit signs of addiction or problem\nbehaviors (Elliott, Golub, Ream, & Dunlap, 2012; Kim et al., 2010), an\nimplicit\u2014if troubling\u2014manifestation of a game being received well by players.\nHowever, these studies also note that there are other factors (i.e., gender,\ndisposition) that may contribute to this relationship (Elliott et al., 2012;\nKim et al., 2010); that is, genre may not be the most critical variable for\ndetermining how long players spend with a game (and, therefore, their implicit\nreception of it). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Purpose<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The purpose of this study was to identify key design elements that characterize educational analog games on the BGG website and to model how these elements influence reception of the games by the BGG community. Theory and research provide compelling reasons to assume that design elements affect a game\u2019s pedagogical affordances and its reception. Identifying the design elements that players use to distinguish games will, therefore, provide teacher candidates, in-service teachers, and teacher educators with a vocabulary and framework for comparing educational games to each other. Furthermore, modeling the relationship between a game\u2019s design features and its reception by players will provide basic guidelines for identifying games that are likely to be well received. To support this purpose, we focused our study on the following research questions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. What themes, mechanics, and genres emerged from the BGG community\u2019s classification of educational analog games? <\/li>
  2. How did these themes, mechanics, and genres influence BGG ratings of educational analog games? <\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Method<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    Data Sources<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    This study exclusively used secondary data from BGG \u2014 a website that incorporates elements of both social networking websites and online databases to collect and share information about board, card, dice, and other analog games. This study began in 2015, and the data presented here represent the data on BGG at that time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The\nBGG database is crowd-sourced (i.e., data is generated by BGG users rather than\nby a staff) and contains game reviews, game ratings, photos, tags designating\nvarious game features, and a great deal of other data. However, while our focus\nwas specifically on educational games, BGG is universal in scope, in the sense\nthat its mission is to catalog any and all analog games. We, therefore, limited\nour study to games meeting the following criteria:<\/p>\n\n\n\n