What is Power, and How Do We Get to Peace? Global Youth Have Answers.
Our Year of Knowledge-Building, Knowledge-Sharing & Play
Teen-Centered Co-Design Gets Us To a Playful Solution to Online Extremism
Making Civic Learning Meaningful With and For Young People
FEMA’s New Game, Built on iThrive Sim, Preps Teens for Natural Disasters
New One Love Game Uses SEL to Help Young People Learn to Love Better
Make It A Gameful School Year: Meeting Teens Where They Are With Play
iThrive Games Named a 2022-2023 Tools Competition Winner
We Asked Gamers About Their Hard Days at Play NYC. Here’s What We Learned.
Our Biggest Takeaways from the 2023 Games for Change Festival
Co-Designing Wellness-Supporting Games with and for Teens
When Museums Design Experiences for How Teens Learn and Develop
Your Workforce Development Program Needs This Crucial Component
Questions to Ask When Creating Meaning-Making Experiences for Teens
The Social and Emotional Learning Opportunities in Video Games
Discovery, Expansion, and Design: Our Five Most Popular Blog Posts in 2022
Fugees Family, iThrive Launch ‘Our Threads’, A Connection-Building Card Game
iThrive Sim: What Embodied Play Ignited in a HS Social Studies Class
Five Game Design Skills You’ll Build as a Teen Playtester or Co-Designer
Game Design for International Relations: iThrive Studio in Olang, Italy
Supporting a Friend in an Unhealthy Relationship Takes Courage. Teens Say That Takes Practice.
Curiosity Propels Discovery. How Are We Supporting It in Teens?
SEED Designers Share History & Harm of Surveillance in New Escape Room Game
Teens Know What They Need to Be Healthy and Thrive. It’s Time We Listen.
New Narrative Game Raises Awareness of ACEs & Their Impact on Youth Mental Health
HS Students Learn How to Be Conscious Consumers of Media Through Play
iThrive Shares Wins with Affordance, SEED Institute at 2022 Serious Play Awards
How Games and Play Support Transformative Civic Engagement in Teens
SEEDs’ New Game Pushes for Change in Massachusetts’ Child Welfare System
The Teen Mental Health Crisis is Real. Game Designers & Developers Can Help.
New PLAY Program Invites Teens to Design Games That Explore Policy Issues
SEED Designers Bring Games & Experiences to The Heller School at Brandeis
In Times of Stress, I Turn to Cooking Games. Here’s How They Help Me Cope.
One Thing Mental Health Practitioners Who Work With Teens Must Know
What Playing Video Games Taught Me about the World and the People in It
Game Design Supports Deep Learning. Here’s How It Can Help School Communities.
How Social and Emotional Learning Nurtures the Teen Brain
How Are We Teaching Teens to Prepare for and Respond to Natural Disasters?
A Love Letter to UNO and the Connection the Classic Card Game Creates
Refugee Students Use Game Design to Support Schools Welcoming Refugees
iThrive’s 2021 Annual Report Celebrates Teen Genius, Community, and Play
Teen Mental Health: Five Tips for Making the Most of Your Social Media Use
Join iThrive’s Teen Advisory Council and Co-Design Exciting Gaming Experiences
Teen Mental Health: Use This 2-Min. Exercise When Difficult Emotions Surface
Leveling Up: How Playing Video Games Helped Me Find Passion and Purpose
Vol. 3 of Journal of Games, Self, & Society Examines How Games Transform Us
2021 Was a Year of Co-Creation, Collaborative Learning, and Play
iThrive Sim Helps Homeschoolers Connect And Collaborate With Play
Let’s Start Calling Social & Emotional Skills What They Are—Essential Skills
What Teaching Hard History Does for Teens’ Social and Emotional Learning
New Game Design Toolkit Supports Teens in Leading Systems Change
Creating ‘We’ and Restoring ‘Us’ with Civics and Social-Emotional Learning
Use This SEL Activity to Help Your Students Explore Their COVID-19 Emotions
iThrive, Middlebury Institute Awarded DHS Grant for New Simulation Game
High School Teachers, Share Your Feedback on the New, Improved iThrive Sim
Stories Add Heart to History. This Project Uses Them to Teach About Migration.
Teens Have Big Emotions. How Can We Help HS Students Navigate Them?
Game-Based Learning Reads: Three Books That Will Make You a GBL Believer
World Affairs Council of Philadelphia Uses iThrive Sim to Prep Future Leaders
iThrive Sim: Lives in Balance Wins Gold at AAM’s 2021 Muse Awards
Youth Designers Collaborating with iThrive Games Win Serious Play Award
Burgeoning Journalists Try on Their Roles in New Media Literacy Game
Add Play to Your Summer School Schedule: Virtual Conferences in July
History Informs Our Understanding of Our Country. Let’s Tell It Truthfully.
Media Literacy and Responsible Civic Engagement Go Hand-in-Hand
Learn about the Power of Play at these Upcoming Conferences
Civics Ed and Social-Emotional Learning Today, A Stronger Democracy Tomorrow
Use this SEL Activity to Help Your Students Process Pandemic Grief and Loss
iThrive Sim: Lives in Balance Named a 2021 GLAMi Award Winner
Exploring Juvenile Justice and Mental Health with Teen Game Designers (Part 2)
Exploring Juvenile Justice and Mental Health with Teen Game Designers (Part 1)
iThrive Sim Named a Finalist for Two 2021 EdTech Cool Tool Awards
The Science of Political Division and How SEL Skills Respond to It
Conflict Resolution: Using Role Play to Practice Disagreeing Respectfully
2020 Annual Report: A Year of Play, Co-Creation, and Community
Designing for Equity: Five Principles for Curriculum Development
Diversify Your HS ELA Reading List With These Poems by Writers of Color
10 YA Novels by Authors of Color for Your HS English Classroom
Self-Awareness: Nurture It in Your Students with This SEL Exercise on Values
Purpose: Helping Students Explore How to Impact the World Around Them
An Insurrection Happened. Here’s an SEL Tool to Help Students Process It.
2020 Wrap-Up: A Gameful Year of Connection, Creativity, and Play
Civics Is Social and Emotional. We’re Using Play to Teach It That Way.
The Power of Play: Finding Hope and Community in World of Warcraft
Virtual Classroom Management Tips: Supporting Connection With Play
Help Us Innovate Civics with Play and SEL: Vote for iThrive Games at SXSW EDU
Power of Play: Finding New Friends and Perspectives in Destiny
iThrive Games to Join The Great Exchange: Student Engagement Summit
iThrive’s Juvenile Justice System Project Fosters New Partnerships
Virtual Classroom Management Strategies: Norm Setting in 3 Steps
Self-Care Tips for Educators: Discover New Practices at The Lounge on 10/28
Welcome to The Lounge: A Place for Teachers to Connect and Share Ideas
Call for Abstracts: Volume 3 of Journal of Games, Self, & Society
Call for Nominations: iThrive Games’ Educator Advisory Council
Game-Based Learning 101: How to Choose A Video Game for a HS English Class
Reflecting on the Power of Play: The Game of Life is Not a Game at All
Engaged Students, Engaged Citizens: iThrive Content Now on Composer
Urban Assembly Students Create COVID-19 Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Story
Civics and Gameplay: What Teens Say About iThrive Sim: Lives in Balance
#EdChat: The Importance of Universal Design for Learning (UDL)
Play and Possibility: Highlights from Games for Change (#G4C2020)
Power of Play: Tackling First-Day Jitters With a Game of CNUNO
How to Choose a Video Game for Learning in HS English Classrooms
Role-Playing Simulations Offer Unique Opportunities for Teen Engagement
Connect with iThrive Games at the 2020 Games For Change Festival!
iThrive Games Receives NEH CARES Grant for Distance Learning Program
Three Reasons Embedded Social and Emotional Learning Works
Power of Play: Teens Explore Connection and Meaning Through Gameplay
iThrive Games Foundation: Statement on Racism and Police Brutality
Announcing New Game-Based Unit Created for Distance Learning
How Game-Based Learning Can Take Your Class to New Heights
Three Ways to Prepare a Supportive Online or Remote Environment
Virtual iThrive Game Design Studio Melds Design Thinking and SEL
New Issue of Journal of Games, Self, & Society Suggests New Paths in Game Design, Accessibility
Staying Connected While Social Distancing: Working from Home Edition
COVID Self-Care Package: Practicing #SELatHome
Staying Connected While Social Distancing: Games for Emotional Coping
Atlanta Teens Use Game Design Studio to Explore Injustice in Schools
Games To Play While Social Distancing: MMORPGs
Four Ways to Fight the Virus of Misinformation with Media Literacy
Social Distancing and Staying Connected Through Games
Expanding the Power of Play with Game Design Studio
Talking to Your Teen About Healthy Gaming
Expanding Our Vision for Civics Education: iThrive Sim Intersects Play, Civics, & Social and Emotional Learning
Coming Soon: New Issue of Journal of Games, Self, and Society
Game Design with the Next Generation of Changemakers
About iThrive’s Journal of Games, Self, and Society (JGSS)
Super Mario Maker 2: No Limits
Teen Perspectives on Sleep and Social Media: What Research (and Game Design) Reveals
Exploring Youth Experiences of the Juvenile Justice System in Boston
Constructing Worlds: Where Games, Making, and Meaning Meet
Evolving Our Mission and Vision
A Window into Playtesting with Teens
iThrive’s Juvenile Justice System Project Aims to Support Black Youth
From Our Founder: iThrive’s Origin Story
Animal Crossing: An Example In and Out of Game
Persona and The Unintended Influence of Game Design
Octopath Traveler and Helping Others
Designing with Teens, For Teens
Tabletop RPGs and Learning to Live with Failure
Meet Our New Teen Blogger!
Journal of Games, Self, & Society: Issue 1
Mental Health Awareness Month
Introduction to iThrive’s Clinicians Guides
Extra Credits and Mental Health Month
Video Games and Suicide Prevention
Game-Based Social and Emotional Learning for High School English Class – Part Two
Call for Abstracts: Issue 2 of the Journal of Games, Self, & Society
Exploring the Intersection of Video Games and Mental Health
Grief and Job Loss: Tips for Coping with the Social and Emotional Impact of Layoffs
Game-Based Social and Emotional Learning for High School English Class
New Year. New Website.
Live Action Role Playing To Support Healthy Teen Development
UNESCO MGIEP TECH
The Power of Teens
A Canadian Game Jam On Mental Health and Teens? Mais Oui!
About iThrive's Critical Strengths Engine
Game Culture is As Important As the Game
The 2018 Design Hive: Plenty of Buzz, and a Real Bee
Virtual Reality and the Search For Happiness
Friendly Competition: Starting an eSports League at My High School
Put a Badge On It! Using Digital Badges to Support Social and Emotional Learning
Student Game Developers Win for Compassion in Accessibility
Seeking Contributors to iThrive's New, Peer-Reviewed Journal of Games, Self, and Society
Gaming Disorder and the World Health Organization
Overwatch Endorsements and Promoting Player Kindness
iThrive’s Resources for Educators: Using Games to Engage the Whole Teen
How Difficult Video Games Inspire Me in My Career at Microsoft
"Link"ing Games and Therapy: A Triforce Intervention
Mental Health in Games: 3 Design Tropes that Need to Die
Game-Based Learning in the Classroom: 3 Essential Questions
Co-op Therapy: Using Video Games to Connect with Teen Clients
Sea of Thieves: Anchored in Positive Design
How Games Change the World by Modeling the Truth
An Interview with Kinful: Bringing Cross-Cultural Empathy to Schools with VR
Nier: Automata – True Kindness in Games Requires Sacrifice
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice – Why the World Needs a Hero with a Mental Illness
Wallop! You Died (Again): Growth Mindset and Cuphead
Meaningfully and Realistically Using Games in the Classroom
About Game Jams
VR and Empathy: Tread Carefully
How Bad Data Have Given Video Games a Bad Rap (and How To Read Beyond the Headlines)
We Can’t Design Games for Teens Without This
Oxenfree: Spooky and Meaningful Halloween Play
My Favorite Games from IndieCade 2017
That’s a Wrap on Design Hive 3
Making a Game in One Hour: The Power of Our Choices
Heidi McDonald Has Been Promoted to Senior Creative Director of iThrive Games
Putting It in Context: Using Commercial Video Games in Education
Psychology and Game Design: One Possible Future Path
Come See iThrive Games at IPPA and Serious Play!
Games for Personal Growth: A Design Process
Seeking Contributors: Special Issue of Well Played
GUIDE: A Video Game for Challenging Your Fears
Zest in Video Games: Teens Need Some Excitement
Brie Code: Cultivating "Tru Luv" for Video Games
Purpose in Games: Empowering Teens To Explore Who They Are
John Krajewski, "Eco" Developer, On Play that Saves the World
From Angst to Engagement: Insights from our DePaul University Game Jam
Doris Rusch, Deep Games Developer, Talks Designing for Empathy
Congrats to Colleen Macklin: HEVGA Fellow and Game(s) Changer
Video Games: A Safe Place to Wonder
Curiosity Takes Us to the Mun an Beyond
Celebrating Random Acts of Kindness
I Haven’t Leveled Up…Yet: Growth Mindset in Video Games (Part 2)
I Haven’t Leveled Up…Yet: Growth Mindset in Video Games (Part I)
Design to Thrive: The MAGFest 2017 Game Jam
Video Games Can Boost Empathy
Why Do Teens Play Video Games?
Thriving Teens Use Their Superpowers

What is Power, and How Do We Get to Peace? Global Youth Have Answers.

By iThrive Games

October 27, 1962, was a day that could have changed the course of world history. 

That Saturday, the U.S.S. Beale dropped a series of non-lethal depth charges onto the B-59, a Soviet Union-operated and nuclear-armed submarine found near the U.S. blockade line around Cuba. Used to deter underwater warfare and intended as a warning, the charges sought to force the B-59 to the water's surface.

The captain aboard the B-59 had no way of knowing these were intended as warning shots. He had no contact from Moscow for several days, meaning no instruction, and after plummeting deeper into the waters to shield from the U.S. Navy's pursuers, his sub could not pick up or monitor radio traffic. Mistaking these warning shots as live explosives, the captain angrily convinced his men to arm the sub's nuclear-tipped torpedo and prepare for an attack under the belief that he was witnessing the start of World War III. If it had not been for the protocol that required all three of the B-59's senior officers to agree before initiating a nuclear launch, it could have been. 

Though the captain was in favor, the sub's second in command refused to give consent. Instead, he calmed the captain down and coolly convinced his fellow officers to wait for Moscow's orders. His deliberate, careful action in a moment colored by fear and threat, real and perceived, eventually brought the B-59 back to Russia without incident. Most people did not know of his impactful decision until over 40 years later. 

Like many events during the four decades of global political tension known as the Cold War, this close call signified the world's fragility at the time. The decision-making on the B-59 also mirrors how crucial the social and emotional were, as it motivated and underpinned every geopolitical move that could, if not made carefully, segue and cement doomsday. 

Over the last year and with funding by the XQ Institute, the iThrive Games team has been co-designing Diplomacy in Action, a innovative learning experience (LX) that invites high school students in U.S. history classrooms to explore how the social and emotional show up in the intricacies of Cold War geopolitics. The co-design team includes The History Co: Lab's Fernande Raine, Ludic Learning's Paul Darvasi, Professor Jeremi Suri, the Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin, XQ's Matt Owens, and over 60 young people. Over the LX's six weeks, students are immersed in the Cold War. Through constructive and collaborative play and inquiry- and project-based learning, students assemble their historical insights and social and emotional skills into what becomes a Peacekeeper's Toolkit. As they step into their roles as U.S. diplomats to foreign countries in the LX's concluding iThrive Sim multiplayer simulation game experience, the Toolkit is their practical guide, helping them manage conflict alongside their peers. By the end of the game-based learning experience, students walk away with a deeper understanding of how fear and threat states impact decisions, of how power steers and shows up in global and domestic conflict, and real-time practice of critical thinking, responsible decision-making, and negotiation in tense times—social and emotional skills transferable to their real lives.

A CO-DESIGNED LX: BRIDGING INTENT WITH APPROACH

At iThrive Games, we firmly believe that empathy narrows the gap between intent and impact.

In the early envisioning of the Diplomacy in Action LX, our collaborative team of subject matter experts with backgrounds in history, adolescent development, social and emotional learning, serious game design, and game-based learning shared hopes of this LX being a memorable one for teens, intended to be interactive and deeply engaging for them. To ensure this, iThrive employed its strengths-based, co-design approach with teens and young adults, engaging them as thought and design partners throughout the LX's development.

Learn more about iThrive's co-design approach here.

 

Knowing we further our empathy through community and co-design, we made it a priority to create co-design contexts supportive of discovery for young people, ones that supported their emotional safety, challenged them cognitively, and helped them surface and express their ideas. By enlisting their expertise, genius, lenses, and experiences through co-design, the youth co-designers who've worked alongside us have been vital to helping make the LX all the more relevant to the teens it will reach. 

WHAT GLOBAL YOUTH CO-DESIGNERS SAY

Co-designing with young people is always a joy, and last November, when the iThrive team gathered virtually with 16 teens and young adults living in more than a dozen countries, was no different. Through the Global Nomads Group, a nonprofit that connects youth across difference and distance, our design team met with interns from their Content Creation Lab across two sessions where they helped us co-design surrounding elements of the LX and playtest a prototype of its simulation game component. 

Aligned with our intent to make this learning experience one that effectively considered power in multiple expressions and culturally responsive definitions of what power is, it was truly an honor to welcome a global lens in the creation of it. By interweaving it with the views and perspectives of young people from across the globe, the LX becomes even more resonant for the learners it reaches, reflecting both the diversity in today's world and the inclusion that will be central to it.

Here are a few of the takeaways from our last co-design session with the Global Nomads Group, marking some of our most memorable moments of knowledge-building and knowledge-sharing:

'US VS. THEM': UNPACKING POLARIZATION

Our design team, seeking to make the Diplomacy in Action LX applicable to the real world, invited young people to share their views on division and unity in today's world.

Their perspectives and thoughts helped our team think even more creatively about how to meet young people where they are in how they view polarization—a phenomenon that, throughout the Cold War and history, concentrated power in echo chambers and reinforced and exacerbated conflict.

With their thoughts, our team expanded its operating understanding of powers' multiple expressions.

ASSESSING POWER OVER, POWER WITH, AND POWER TO

The 'Power Y' infographic appears frequently throughout the Cold War-inspired Diplomacy in Action LX and is a visual representation of three expressions of power—power over (meaning control), power to (meaning capability to do something), and power with (meaning shared power grown through partnership and collaboration).

To support the instructional design of a lesson plan for the LX that encouraged students to explore these expressions of power, our design team invited Global Nomads Group's youth interns to map and share how power manifests in their lives, communities, and screens.

Their insights influenced how the LX prompts learners to plot power plays and chart diplomacy, using real-life examples to help them understand how power was expressed throughout the Cold War.

THE MAKINGS OF AND PATHWAYS TO PEACE

One of our favorite questions presented to youth co-designers throughout this LX's development prompts them to dive into the makings of peace. Our design team asked the group about the tools needed to combat division, manage conflict in today's world, and unite people across differences, much like Global Nomads Group's mission.

We asked the co-designers to convey what's needed at a micro and individual level and the tools leaders today need to make peace real. Many of their responses captured an array of skills, practices, and initiatives they viewed as necessary to achieve that goal.

From their thought partnership came directive and discernment on which surrounding elements were ultimately weaved into Diplomacy in Action's six-week LX of the many aspects of the Cold War that could've been included and explored. Their thoughts on what would be in a toolkit meant to support peace helped us shape the inquiry-based learning tracks throughout the LX, ensuring they align with what they view as vital to diplomacy today.

A special thank you to the young people at the Global Nomads Group, their facilitators, and all who joined us to help co-design Diplomacy in Action and co-create an offering reflective of ideas beyond our borders. Below, check out a highlight reel of the full co-design session, and sign up for iThrive's mailing list to be notified when the LX is available for piloting!

Our Year of Knowledge-Building, Knowledge-Sharing & Play

By iThrive Games

Joy enriches. As a connector, joy helps realize the 'we' and nourishes the 'us' that directs how we gather, steers how we imagine, and inspires what we create. 

This year, joy guided our work alongside young people, nonprofits, government agencies, school communities, research institutions, game developers, subject matter experts, and learning experience designers. With teens and our partners, we built knowledge, shared knowledge, and co-designed transformative experiences for teens supportive of their learning, mental health, and thriving.

Throughout 2023, partnership propelled impact and possibility, helping us and those we collaborated with expand it in places where teens learn and play. Collaboration and community-building were consistently parts of all we did this year— from our co-design sessions that led to co-created games and learning experiences to the conferences and panels we were part of. In togetherness, we pooled strengths with teens and others. We leveraged the diversity of our experience and expertise and those we merged genius with to accelerate progress toward the world we each yearn—one where young people have the tools to live full, safe, healthy, and purposeful lives. It was amazing.

In celebration of what the year has been and all that is to come, here is a look back on eight joy-filled memories in no particular order, as well as our favorite collaborative moments, and unforgettable highlights from 2023: 

#8. PLAYTESTING CADENCE FORD AT PLAY NYC

At Playcrafting's Play NYC this year, an event that magnified the power of play and brought hundreds of game industry professionals, indie game developers, and game designers together to exhibit their games to players and peers, we shared an iteration of Cadence Ford, the single-player, text-based strategy game we created with the One Love Foundation and Playmatics, LLC.


Building on One Love's mission to empower young people with the life-saving prevention education, tools, and resources they need to see the signs of healthy and unhealthy relationships, Cadence Ford supports young people in learning to love better, in being with partners who practice healthy Love and communicating with loved ones who are in unhealthy relationships. While New Yorkers of all ages played the game demo and shared feedback, teens, many of whom went on to become members of our Teen Hub, were particularly moved by the game's storyline, mechanics, and captivating 2D art. Read about Cadence Ford's co-design process and the forum for listening to and learning from young people we created at Play NYC.

#7. OUR CO-DESIGN WITH TEENS AT THE NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY 

For the students from Thomas A. Edison High School who gathered at the New York Historical Society with us, History Co: Lab, a graphic notetaker, and others in Educating for American Democracy (EAD)'s network in November 2023, the co-design workshop presented an opportunity rare in their worlds—a chance to share how they envision democracy and impact civic learning that supports the future of it.

Our Game Design Studio model at the center of the co-design experience engaged them not just as students at the end of learning experiences but also as thought partners in co-designing them, setting the stage for meaningful co-creation. The teens, who ended up devising and developing a prototype for a new interactive EAD-inspired card game created to inspire high-quality civic learning experiences by the end of the workshop, called it "promising," "progressive," "unique," "revitalizing," and "relief." Read how the model brought many across the civic education ecosystem together and what came of the teens' collaborative experience. 

#6. THE LAUNCH OF OUR DESIGNING FOR TEEN THRIVING MAILING LIST

Impact-driven nonprofits, youth-serving programs, and government agencies trust us to preserve their commitment to teen wellness and thriving.

This year, we launched Designing for Teen Thriving, a mailing list that gives people like them access to the resources and insight of iThrive's game designers, learning experience designers, and teen social and emotional development experts. Subscribing to the list helps individuals looking to create developmentally nourishing experiences and wellness-supporting games for teens (with us or on their own) ensure what they create meets young people where they are and supports their thriving. 

Join the Designing for Teen Thriving mailing list today!

#5. THE SOFT LAUNCH OF DISASTER MIND, AN ITHRIVE SIM GAME MADE WITH FEMA

The work of disaster preparedness, response, and recovery is as emotional as it is manual. Disaster Mind, the single-player simulation game built on the iThrive Sim platform with Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Region 8, supports young people's understanding of it. 

This year, the FEMA Region 8 team soft-launched the game after one and a half years of development. 

Young people who've playtested the game have reported feeling more confident in preparing for an emergency, managing the associated stress, and understanding the intentional mindset that underpins disaster preparedness. Many also have relayed plans to turn their awareness into action, mentioning specific disasters and sharing plans to talk to their families about exit plans, emergency kits, and meeting locations. Dive into the Disaster Mind's co-design process and explore what teens had to say about its readiness and resilience-building play experience.

#4. OUR CO-DESIGN WITH H.S. STUDENTS FROM THE GLOBAL NOMADS GROUP

Also this year, as part of an exciting learning experience design project currently underway with History Co: Lab and the XQ Institute, members of the iThrive Games team had the opportunity to gather virtually with high school students from the Global Nomads Group across two co-design sessions. 

True to our norm of iterating for impact, the young people, hailing from several countries across the world, met with us to go over parts of the game-based, social and emotional skill-building experience we're creating, lending their ideas, feedback, and expertise to make it as engaging, accessible, inclusive, and resonant as possible. The play-filled meetings featured icebreakers, stretches, constructive questions, and Jamboards. It was an honor to learn from them while supporting their design thinking in the connective experience.

#3. ITHRIVE SIM NAMED A LEARNING ENGINEERING TOOLS COMPETITION WINNER

This year, the iThrive Games team was named one of the 32 winners of this year's Learning Engineering Tools Competition, selected from over 1,000 edtech innovation proposals submitted worldwide. 

The win and accompanying $100,000 Growth Phase award in the Transforming Assessments track enables our team to expand iThrive Sim, our playful engine that hosts, powers, and evaluates immersive and interactive role-playing simulation games, with new ways to measure and assess the teen social and emotional learning fostered in them while developing alongside others in the growing learning engineering discipline. We are honored to share this win with our software development partners at Affordance Studio and EdTech Recharge's Kripa Sundar. Learn more about the Tools Competition and the expanded iThrive Sim to come.

#2. THE CONFERENCE CONNECTIONS

Attending game-filled, educational, and ed-tech conferences was an absolute favorite for us this year. 

At Games for Change, we learned tons from designers, researchers, and changemakers, and at ED TECH WEEK NYC, we explore how tech innovation continues to support access, learning, and workforce development.

Members of our team also had the opportunity to showcase our co-designed games at ED Games Expo and PLAY NYC and lead discussions elsewhere too. In March, as part of MA Civic Learning Week, we shared on iThrive Sim's transformative civic learning games for high school classrooms. At ASU+GSV Summit in April, our Executive Director and Chief Scientist Susan Rivers talked about the necessity of social and emotional skills in today and tomorrow's careers on an American Student Assistance panel alongside others invested in the thriving of this generation's learners. At NSLA's Summer Learning Summit in October, she joined the Education Innovation Stage with other thoughtful experts to discuss learning and youth development that can inspire, challenge and deepen summer learning. 

Each space we shared with others was carried by joy and animated by an eagerness to connect and collaborate with others eager to merge genius and create better systems of care and learning.

#1. OUR CREATIVE COMMONS-LICENSED, GAME-BASED LEARNING LIBRARY

Access enables impact. This year, we opened access to our game-based, social and emotional learning educational resources by licensing them under Creative Commons. Educators and teen-serving adults who care deeply about young people's thriving can merge it with their work and expertise.

Each iThrive Curriculum unit, iThrive Sim curricular surround, iThrive Game Design Kit, iThrive Game Guide, and iThrive-authored PDF resource can be remixed, redistributed, and built upon. Dive into them!

Whether you're a teen who co-designed or playtested with us, a partner or collaborator who co-created with us, an educator who brought our resources to your students, a game designer who used our game-making resources, or a supporter who read our blogs and cheered us on, we appreciate each of you for the many ways you engaged with us this year. A heartfelt thank you for sharing in our vision of teen learning and thriving, and happy new year to you and yours!

Teen-Centered Co-Design Gets Us To a Playful Solution to Online Extremism

By iThrive Games

Teens deserve our care and commitment. 

At iThrive Games, our why starts with this simple fact. Young people are doing the work of adolescence in a world marked by unique features and challenges. They thrive when they are supported by systems of care and learning that strengthens their resistance to those challenges. Connecting them to tools that help them live fully and safely is how we do this.

As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, our work is always impact-driven. Our team of adolescent development, game design, and learning science experts, alongside a network of teen co-designers and collaborators, have spent the last six years co-imagining playful solutions that transform learning and wellness in youth-serving settings and spaces. Since our founding in 2014, iThrive's  'why' has been grounded in our vision of a world where teens are actively engaged, seen, and valued by society, have the necessary support to live healthy, purposeful lives, and where the adults in their worlds have social and emotional learning tools they can bring to the young people they teach and gather with that are as effective as they are engaging.

Shoulder to shoulder with the museums, government agencies, nonprofit organizations, libraries, schools, and research institutions we've worked with, we've fortified our why and discovered more nuanced ones alongside them that share in the same vein of commitment to teen thriving. The impactful games and learning experiences we've made with and for teens mirror and echo our why, bringing it and our learning-science-backed design principles to domains ranging from transformative civic education and disaster preparedness to dating violence prevention and school community-building.

Incidents like what happened at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, last May cement our why. Marked by an act of white supremacist violence, that Saturday lives in infamy. An 18-year-old, self-described in a manifesto as an ethnonationalist, entered a Tops in a predominantly Black neighborhood armed with a semi-automatic weapon and attacked the people in it. His hate crime, which took ten lives and injured three more, was broadcasted via Twitch, a video game live streaming platform. Communication technologies and social media platforms of the like were used to plan, prepare, and publicize this domestic act of terror. The same tools significantly contributed to his radicalization.

Extremist actors are increasingly targeting adolescents online for recruitment, and while hate in today's digitized world grows more accessible to them, Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE) programs still fail to accurately address the specific needs of this audience. High schools across the United States—hubs for their growth and learning—remain unequipped to contend with the escalating challenge.

With funding provided through the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) FY21 Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention (TVTP) Grant program and in partnership with the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism (CTEC) at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies, the iThrive Games team has spent the last two years developing a new role-playing simulation game, designed for teens to develop their awareness and resistance to radicalization and build their resilience within their local networks. 

To make this a game-based learning intervention that effectively equips adolescents with a lifetime of resilience and helps schools build capacity for P/CVE program administration, iThrive Games has been employing its co-design approach with select schools across the country, inviting young people to take part in participatory design activities that support their voice, design thinking, and agency. The co-creative experience thus far with educators and teens hailing from different neighborhoods in Monterey, CA, Middlebury, VT, Boulder, CO, New York, NY, and Boston, has been another testament that how we create is as important as what we create. Through teen-centered co-design, we innovative, responsive, and relevant solutions, and through the empathic listening it enables, we affirm our why.

CREATING A CONTEXT FOR DISCOVERY AND DESIGN

Participatory design is impactful design. What comes of iThrive's co-design approach with teens—both the context for discovery it creates and the thought partnership it fosters—proves it. 

iThrive has facilitated in-person and remote co-design sessions as part of this DHS TVTP FY21 grant-funded project, bringing over 90 young people together with adult stakeholders nationwide. Our Game Design Studio model—a strengths-based, participatory one that rejigs and revolutionizes the typical focus group—invites teens to the table to share their wisdom, beliefs, and perceptions related to extremism and radicalization and empathize, define, ideate, and imagine playful solutions together. Through it, empathy maps turn into affinity ones that have informed and inspired the game-based learning experience we've been developing with the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism (CTEC) at the Middlebury Institute in Monterey, CA.

Our co-design sessions are designed to engage teens thoughtfully, centering their wisdom of their own lived experiences. We  merged learning science together with subject matter expertise, established norms for psychological safety, employed design thinking prompts supportive of experimentation, reflection, and learning, and engaged in empathic awareness and listening to enrich the co-creative space.

The parts that make the whole of a co-creative space led primed for impactful design and shared discovery.

THE DESIGN THINKING

Our Game Design Studio (GDS) model combines the science of teens' social and emotional development, systems thinking, and gamemaking to leverage the power of play and the breadth of game design to magnify teens' strengths and support meaningful co-creation. The design thinking activities folded into a co-design session via the GDS model helps guide a collective investigation into a social issue, in this case, radicalization and extremism, where teens are creatively prompted to define the human needs that underlie it, map their own experiences, ideate alongside experts, and create solutions reflected in games they envision and prototype.

In line with the model, each co-design session introduced teens to the social issue and invited them to respond to visuals, existing game prototypes, and open-ended prompts that elicit their experiences and perceptions related to the radicalization of young people. Their reactions to hypothetical situations and responses to questions about misinformation, authority, isolation, and more were documented.

Explore iThrive's free-to-download Game Design Studio Toolkit which, includes examples of learning-science-backed design thinking activities created to deeply engage teens.

After reflecting on definitions, understandings, strengths, and vulnerabilities related to extremism and radicalization, teen co-designers took part in the imagining, designing, and refining of game components, like characters, rules, mechanics, win and loss states, folding in their expertise, experiences, and awareness to support the development of the game to come.

THE SUBJECT MATTER EXPERTISE

Vital to each lab of discovery and design assembled as part of this project were the subject matter experts who've enriched each co-creative space with rich, tailored insight. The specialized expertise of the SMEs who worked with us and our partners at the CTEC at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies added to the knowledge-building and knowledge-sharing that animated the experience. Their research, paired with our teen co-designers' takes and lived experiences, got us to a simulation game prototype that supports community resilience to extremism.

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY

Norms matter in spaces shared with young people, especially when those spaces strive to be generative. To support the psychological safety of the teens who participated in the co-design sessions, facilitators, stakeholders, and participants were asked and reminded not to disclose any private health information, self-incriminating information, or political, religious, or ideological beliefs. Participants were also asked to abstain from naming or identifying anyone involved in criminal or radical activity. By being transparent about these norms, we set expectations that helped establish the co-design session as a safe and secure place for teens.

THE LEARNING SCIENCE 

Learning is situated, active, and socially constructed. We orient teen and adult co-design session participants around this truth so the games and learning experiences they imagine with us create equitable outcomes in the young people they reach. Learning science, as both a design principle and a lever for research, encourages co-designers to consider accessibility, engagement, representation, action, and expression as they brainstorm. This shared understanding of how learning happens awakens a social and collaborative view of it in our co-design sessions, and the lens supports the innovative and impactful thinking that happens.

THE EMPATHIC LISTENING

At iThrive Games, we make it a point to listen empathically to the teens we co-design with to ensure what they and adult stakeholders share gets captured in the game-based solution we co-create. Empathic listening practices, like mapping similarities in experiences, embracing silence, and affirming others' input by restating and paraphrasing, show up in the space, be it in person or virtual, to set the scene for in-depth reflection, dialogue, and imagining. The result is a participatory environment where all involved feel included and have a stake in shaping the solution that's brought us together.

"Our co-design approach invites teens to share in the duty of devising a sustainable solution," shares iThrive's Executive Director and Chief Scientist Susan E. Rivers, Ph. D. "As thought partners, they are taking part in the co-imagining and building of transformative interventions and designing for change. The game-based learning experience to come seeks to support teens' awareness, well-being, and resistance. Every component of it is a reflection of our teen experts."

THE GAME-BASED P/CVE SOLUTION TO COME

"Sometimes they're the only people you know."

"People have a strong desire to be a part of something."

"People deserve love and support. Some people feel that love from their friends that they don't get at home."

"You wanna know the group will be there to defend you and protect you."

"You want someone you can rely on."

Transcriptions of co-design sessions facilitated over the course of this project reveal an undoubtable throughline in the lived experiences of teens coming from rural, urban, and suburban backgrounds—the role and power of the peer. Unpacking both needs and challenges via the Game Design Studio model with them and counterrorism experts from the Middlebury Institute for International Studies brought all to understand that connection and community matter, and that the trusted peer is an agent of change in teens' worlds, uniquely able to intervene in friends' lives and influence friends' behavior.

The tech-supported simulation game we're creating with specialists at CTEC on the iThrive Sim platform magnifies this critical understanding and uses examples based on real-world extremist recruitment efforts to develop a play experience that helps young people recognize the signs of potential grooming and exploitation by extremist actors, comprehend the impact of offensive, racially charged, violent, and hateful comedy and satire, build awareness of the indicators of extremist recruitment in communities, and resist extremist influence in online and physical communities.

The role-playing game's latest iteration invites players to take on the duty of a peer and assume various roles in the fight against extremism, like researchers, teachers, law enforcement officers, community members, and media members, to combat radicalization in their schools and communities. Coming Spring 2024, the game's 'learn-by-doing' approach will activate awareness and social-emotional skill-building in the high school students it reaches. Developed for teens and with teens, the P/CVE solution strives to support young people in being young people. In line with our why, it is care in action. 

SIGN UP TO BE NOTIFIED WHEN THE ITHRIVE SIM ROLE-PLAYING SIMULATION GAME CREATED WITH TEENS, COUNTERRORISTS, AND ANTI-VIOLENCE EXPERTS IS AVAILABLE.

Making Civic Learning Meaningful With and For Young People

By iThrive Games

"Promising." 

"Progressive."

"Unique."

"Revitalizing."

"Relief."

When Moiz, Tanisha, Ibad, Jaiden, and Samirah were asked to describe in one word the workshop they took part in with designers and museum educators from Educating for American Democracy's civic learning community earlier this month, the students from Thomas A. Edison CTE High School shared these, capturing how resonant and rewarding the co-design experience was for each of them.

Through iThrive's Game Design Studio, the playful, strength-based participatory design model that steered the afternoon workshop, the teens were engaged as equals and experts as they spent three-and-a-half hours vision-setting, imagining, and ideating alongside others in the civic education ecosystem. For the 17-year-olds, the collaborative space presented an opportunity rare in their worlds—a chance to share how they envision democracy and impact learning that supports the future of it. "[This] really gave me reassurance," shared Ibad. "There are people working to make our future better using our own opinions."

Brought together at the New York Historical Society by a project with Educating for American Democracy (EAD), an initiative working to reimagine history and civics education and make it a national priority, the students joined with iThrive Games, History Co:Lab, and Every Museum a Civic Museum, museum educators from Intrepid Museum, the New York Public Library, and the National Museum of American History, curriculum developers from Re-Imagining Migration, and graphic notetaker Aaron Mayper to create a versatile tool that supports the design and development of inquiry-based civic learning experiences.

Pairing the teens with learning-science-backed tools to help them mine their genius and craft playful solutions alongside peers and subject matter experts, iThrive's Game Design Studio model facilitated the day's knowledge-building and knowledge-sharing, setting the stage for meaningful co-creation. By the end of the workshop, we had a paper prototype of an interactive card game that animates and amplifies driving questions in EAD's Roadmap. With the session carried by teens' curiosity, creativity, and wisdom, the day was a testament to what teen-centered co-design can do and the impactful solutions it brings forth through radical collaboration.

CO-DESIGNING FOR MEANINGFUL CIVIC LEARNING

Civic learning supports both individual and collective thriving.

Studies conducted by the National Conference on Citizenship and researchers show that civic learning  inspires socially responsible civic engagement, increasing a person's likelihood of voting. Beyond motivating the fulfillment of civic duties, when high-quality civic learning experiences prompt students to think critically about current socio-political events, students are more likely to engage in civil discourse with their peers. Despite this benefit, 92% of teachers are reported to shut down and stop conversations between students when argumentative or contentious.

There is a clear need for high-quality civic learning curricula that effectively supports inquiry and triggers curiosity in young people while accounting for what they and those who educate them experience. Only through radical collaboration and intentional partnership can we hit all the marks. The learning-science-backed Game Design Studio model brings both into shared spaces. Its use earlier this month at a synergetic workshop with HS students to create an interactive learning experience design tool reveals what the inventive and playful co-design method can do for civic education.

THE DESIGN CHALLENGE: BUILDING THE DECK

When teen and adult participants gathered at the New York Historical Society to co-create with each other, the goal of the session was clear—develop a resource that helps educators in all public spaces devise and design civic learning experiences that stimulate discussion, debate, reflection, and critical thought about American democracy. The resource needed to align with EAD's Framework and support the imaginations of educators and learning experience designers while being user-friendly and versatile enough for use across all grade levels. 

Drawing inspiration from XQ Institute's competency cards, everyone in attendance knew early on that whatever we created together would, by design, support a rethinking of educational experiences. In this case, that meant enlivening civics and history in a communally defined and teen-centered way.

THE CO-DESIGN EXPERIENCE

The Game Design Studio (GDS) model was devised by social psychologists, accessibility experts, and learning scientists to create a supportive context for discovery where teens feel safe, seen, and heard, and where they connect about issues important and relevant to them (not just what adults think is important). 

Explore the activities inspired by  iThrive Games' Game Design Studio model in our Game Design Studio Toolkit.

True to the model, the session at the New York Historical Society started with the students learning more about the day's opportunity to influence civic learning for democracy. After they were given an overview of the goals and intended impact of the Educating for American Democracy's Roadmap, adult participants began to trickle in and when everyone was in attendance, the workshop kicked off with play. Educators, teachers, and designers played Our Threads, a connection-building question card game iThrive developed with Fugees Family, Inc., to warm up to each other and after playing a few rounds and reflecting on what a card game can do, joined forces to create a vision for the day. While naming these goals, the workshop's participants also talked through their definitions of a democracy that is inclusive of and healthy for everyone. These high dreams anchored us and our work together as the co-design session progressed.

Aaron Myper, a graphic notetaker, supported the co-design session with drawings and doodles that helped record the insights shared.

The icebreaker conversations and play were followed by empathy mapping exercises, where teens and educators reflected and shared their lived experiences as students and teachers. Deepening everyone's understanding of what the other feels, thinks, and does helped the group define success criteria together and clarify all that our learning experience design tool needed to address in order to be effective.

Then came the brainstorming.

Working collaboratively in small groups, students and educators began ideating ways to reflect the experiences and needs of students and teachers in an interactive card game that pulled from themes and design challenges in EAD's roadmap. Small groups shared their ideas with the larger group for feedback in support of fine-tuning.

Teens join with teachers, learning experience designers, and museum educators to co-design. As part of the collaborative experience, teens explore the XQ Institute's competency cards.

Ideas came to life when groups created prototypes that were tested and refined. Toward the end of the workshop, teens pitched to the larger group on the creative solutions they devised with others. An early prototype of the interactive card game to come, developed with the support of graphic notetaker Aaron Mayper, seeks to help educators create civic learning experiences for teens that prompt them to ask difficult questions and answer them through analysis and discussion.The first iteration of the game asks users to pick a card from a deck of 'big' questions from the EAD roadmap, like "What is power?" and "What is a social contract?" and pair it with contextual factors like year, racial identity, gender, and location from another deck that modify how the question is answered. Teen co-designers also suggested adding 'to me' wild cards to the game's deck to encourage learners to reflect deeply on their own identities and values. 

The co-design experience was an impactful one that encouraged teens to define meaningful civic education and invited their influence over how its envisioned by educators. From their hands-on role comes a tool that inspires civic learning experiences in public spaces everywhere that are relevant to them, reflective of their hopes for democracy, and responsive to their educational needs.

THE POWER OF 'CO' GETS US TO IMPACT

"My voice as a student was heard," shared Moiz. "My opinion was valued."

"I realized that as a young person my voice does align with those older than me," echoed Tanisha.

"This workshop has changed the way I think about democracy. I have learned that my voice matters and makes a difference. Even if I cannot vote, I can still make an impact by sharing my perspective in this space."

Using the Game Design Studio model, teens are engaged as experts and thought partners throughout the co-design experience.

For the high school students who took part in this co-designing workshop, as well as the adult participants, the Game Design Studio (GDS) model that anchored the day helped create an all-embracing experience. By designing civic learning experiences in this collaborative way with teens, we integrate their vision for the world they will one day inherit in the planning of them with a method of cooperation that affirms and empowers them.

"Today's youth are tomorrow's future," shares iThrive's Executive Director, Susan E. Rivers. "When the Game Design Studio model is brought to the civic learning space to support the co-design of compelling learning experiences, it disrupts a limiting view of young people as just learners by engaging them from the start as thought partners too."

The co-creative space both teens and adults helped establish that Wednesday afternoon attests to how radical, intentional, and inclusive collaboration can inspire new ways of thinking, doing, and being.The output of the joint experience—an interactive card game and learning experience design tool—are the creative and impactful solutions that come from thoughtfully merging teen genius with subject matter experts. The teen co-designers' reflections show the GDS model's impact on the personal level and its unique ability to deeply engage teens in building better systems of learning. 

"The only way to design a new system is not just to "involve" young people in the process: we have to engage in intergenerational co-creation," shares Fernande Raine, CEO and Founder of The History Co:Lab. "Many organizations create token roles for youth that are little more than fig leaves on blatantly adult-centric systems. We want to create spaces for the genius of the teen brain to help imagine and steer us towards the future that this world needs."

Our co-design model and approach honors the strengths of teens who are uniquely wired to learn by fully engaging them in their genius, and with it we are accelerating progress toward a world where young people are heard, healthy, and co-creators of systems supportive of their thriving.

CONNECT WITH THE HISTORY CO:LAB AT THE 2023 NCSS ANNUAL CONFERENCE IN NASHVILLE, TN, TO PLAYTEST OUR PROTOTYPE OF THE INTERACTIVE CARD GAME!

FEMA’s New Game, Built on iThrive Sim, Preps Teens for Natural Disasters

By iThrive Games

With natural disasters come disruptions and decisions.

Disaster Mind, a game created by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in partnership with iThrive Games, simulates all three in an immersive experience that makes the power of preparedness clear to all who play it.

The game puts the player in a world where they must navigate severe weather events, stay informed, and make decisions that impact how the story unfolds. Players expand their understanding of disaster preparedness as they contend with the unexpected, manage its accompanying stress, and act timely and effectively while under it.

Disaster Mind has been both thought- and action-provoking. The teens and young adults who have playtested it tell us that they are applying their game-based learnings to their real worlds and real lives soon after playing. "I should go home and make sure my family is prepared just in case something happens, " shared one teen after playing. "I've discussed with my family about disasters. We are making plans for them and intend on making them as clear and as direct as possible for everyone to stay safe during disasters," shared another. 

As a resilience-building game, Disaster Mind seeks to empower young people with transformative education that helps them reach similar realizations. The impactful gameplay aims to activate and support their planning, involvement, and leadership in their network's preparedness efforts. "Young people are agents of change in their households, schools, and communities," shares Daniel Nyquist, the National Preparedness Deputy Director of FEMA Region 8. "iThrive helped us lean into their wisdom and lived experiences to design and produce Disaster Mind, and in the end, we have a compelling game that meaningfully helps their peers build skills supportive of their resilience and practices reflective of an intentional mindset."

DESIGNING FOR IMPACT: THE CO-DESIGN PROCESS

Our co-design process with and for teens is care in action and when brought to collaborations with partnering organizations, like FEMA, helps create a supportive context for discovery and powerful game design.

Explore some of the activities that make up iThrive Games' Game Design Studio model here.

The development of Disaster Mind began with co-design workshops with teens living in the states and territories served by FEMA Region VII (twenty-nine Tribal Nations, Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming). These gatherings sought to gauge their needs and understanding of the challenge Disaster Mind seeks to address. Teen co-designers surfaced themes that were top-of-mind for them, including the wellbeing of their pets, resource coordination, knowing which experts to trust, and cultivating the emotional ability to cope with disasters.

A snapshot of a Google Jamboard from an early co-design session held with teens virtually.

"Throughout this process, teens have been vulnerable, open, and generous in the sharing out of their ideas and wisdom. In their self-awareness, they've tapped into their firsthand experiences with hard topics to help make Disaster Mind relevant and responsive to their needs," shared Jane Lee, Senior Director of Operations and Mental Health at iThrive Games after our first co-design session in March 2022.  "What they have contributed with their time, creativity, and retelling of their experiences navigating disruptions and shifts, has translated into a resonant resilience-building activity for their peers." 

The themes and experiences teens shared with the design team and FEMA's emergency management specialists turned into actionable insights that informed Disaster Mind's content, ensuring the play experience we created was relevant, memorable, and responsive for teens. 

MINDSET MATTERS IN DISASTER MIND 

The work of disaster preparedness, response, and recovery is emotional. To convey this authentically and meaningfully in Disaster Mind, iThrive Sim—an award-winning platform that hosts single-player and multiplayer social and emotional skill-building simulations—was selected as the game's engine.

"iThrive Sim supports a 'learn by doing' approach where teens' emotions are ignited and used to support their active social and emotional skill-building," shares Dr. Susan Rivers, iThrive Games' Executive Director and Chief Scientist. "Each game offered via the platform is steered by teens' improvised interactions and real-time decisions, while the tech enables the modulation of stress and monitors in-game behaviors taken in response."

Screenshots of Disaster Mind, hosted exclusively on the iThrive Sim platform.

Using iThrive Sim's game mechanics, Disaster Mind invites players to practice social and emotional skills, like emotional regulation and responsible decision-making, while strategizing and solving their way through the game. By scaffolding this valuable skill-building with educational content meant to prepare teens for disasters, players grow familiar with the practices to lean on when complex emotions surface and the constructive mental pathways to call on when a natural disaster occurs.

Mindset matters as gameplay supports young people in being aware and actionable. Teens come to see through Disaster Mind's impactful play experience that underpinning the creation of a supply kit, or emergency go bag is an intentional mindset where one believes emergencies can happen to them and knows how to prepare.

'KNOW WHAT YOU PLAN TO DO': WHAT TEENS SAY ABOUT DISASTER MIND

True to our co-design process, teens across the country have been playing and testing Disaster Mind ahead of its launch later this year. Players reported feeling more confident in being able to prepare for an emergency and in managing the associated stress. Most report that they intend to talk to their family about an emergency preparedness plan, with many mentioning specific disasters, exit plans, emergency kits, and meeting locations.

After playtesting Disaster Mind, teens shared the following:

  • "This game made me realize these types of disasters can really happen to anyone and you should always be prepared for the worst."
  • "I think that it would be important in terms of cell service or other accidents to have a solid plan."
  • "I now know to have a defined plan to be prepared if there were to be a natural disaster, especially if the family gets split, we should have a meeting spot."
  • "Like it said in the game, you never know or never expect it to happen to you but it very well can."
  • "I do intend on asking my parents if we do have a plan for if there were an earthquake. Living in an earthquake prone place, I realized that it is essential to have a plan with my family."
  • "After [this] simulation, I feel like it is important to know what you plan to do."

The post-game reflections shared by young people attest to the power of the simulation. "Natural disasters are a challenge in today's world and will surely be one in the world teens and future generations will inherit," shares Stephanie Poore, the National Preparedness Branch Chief of FEMA Region 8." With Disaster Mind, our goal is to ensure teens are ready, aware, prepared, and practicing the skills that support their capacity when they strike." 

GET NOTIFIED WHEN DISASTER MIND LAUNCHES

New One Love Game Uses SEL to Help Young People Learn to Love Better

By iThrive Games

One in three young people will have an unhealthy relationship before reaching adulthood. 

Interpersonal violence remains the third leading cause of adolescent death, contributing to one in every five teen suicides.

The need for more awareness-building and preventive interventions that help teens live full, safe, and healthy lives is unmistakable. Cadence Ford, a new mobile game made by the One Love Foundation in partnership with iThrive Games and Playmatics, LLC, responds to it with a safe and playful space for young people to familiarize themselves with unhealthy behaviors that may surface in relationships. As players interact with each story in the game, they are tasked with figuring out how to talk with their friends about uncomfortable issues and how to offer assistance in each of their unique circumstances. Through play, the game meets teens and young adults where they are to support their social and emotional learning and practice of constructive relationship skills.

"Cadence Ford builds on One Love's mission to bring life-saving prevention education to young people and expands on our honoring of Yeardley Love—a daughter, friend, and student-athlete whose life was tragically cut short by an ex-boyfriend in 2010 three weeks shy of graduating from the University in Virginia," shares Madeline Hopper, Senior Product Manager at the One Love Foundation. "Our goal with this game is to equip young people with the tools to love better, be with partners who practice healthy love, and advocate for healthy relationships. Because those tools are social and emotional, we were glad to have iThrive Games—experts in young people's social and emotional learning—be our partners throughout its development."

Our team joins One Love, and the teens and young adults who have played the game so far in hopes that Cadence Ford helps every person it reaches be aware, self-preserving, and better support systems for their friends in a world where antisocial interactions and unhealthy relationships are likely to be encountered. "We want all who play Cadence Ford to come to it with curiosity," shares Susan Rivers, Ph.D., iThrive's Executive Director and Chief Scientist. "And we want them to leave it empowered and better prepared to be ambassadors and practitioners of safe love and healthy communication."

MEANINGFUL GAMEPLAY, MEANINGFUL LEARNING

Cadence Ford sets forth a time-bending adventure in a charming town. Clocks have stopped, and the once-thriving community has fallen apart. The player must travel back to meet former friends, explore their stories, solve their mysteries, unearth past mistakes, and change the future before the present takes hold.

To do this, the player must make critical decisions throughout the game with how they communicate and interact with those past connections. Words must be chosen carefully since their friends' futures depend on it.

iThrive's teen social and emotional health expertise helped direct Cadence Ford's development cycle and supported the team's decision to make the game a text-based strategy one. In doing so, the play experience would build players' relationship skills by enabling their agency to make decisions and learn from them. "Games have always been microcosms of the real world, making them a springboard for exploring new ways of doing and being," shares Jane Lee, iThrive's Senior Director of Operations and Mental Health. "With Cadence Ford, we wanted to create a low-stakes, thought-provoking environment for young people to arrive at new understandings of who they are and the world around them. By making it a choice-filled offering, we offer young people a context to think expansively, arrive at learnings authentically, and fail safely."

The game's mechanics assist players in navigating uneasy settings. Each of its interactive character stories helps sharpen the players' ability to listen actively, attend to conflict through productive communication, better understand restorative practices, recognize unhealthy behaviors, and uphold healthy ones.

Young people demand and deserve an ecosystem of care to do the social and emotional work that starts in early adolescence safely. Cadence Ford fits into that ecosystem by connecting them to this transformative social and emotional learning through play—a tool they're familiar with.

CO-DESIGNING STARTS WITH AND NOURISHES TEEN GENIUS

Beyond just using play as a lever for meaningful learning, the resonance of Cadence Ford is due mainly to its development alongside teens. iThrive's innovative co-design approach with young people was employed from the beginning to support us in folding in the wisdom of teens whose insights and feedback were integrated into the final play experience.

Everyone involved in the design and development of this game values the inquiry and imagination of young people. Teens and young adults in One Love and iThrive Games' networks were at the table from start to finish and developed their game design and social and emotional skills throughout the process. 

Explore some of the activities that make up iThrive Games' Game Design Studio model here.

The Game Design Studio model at the heart of our co-design approach is a strengths-based one, and bringing it to the young people we co-created Cadence Ford with helped them uncover and share their thoughts. In co-design workshops, they shared perceptions on the importance of healthy relationships, defining what healthy and unhealthy signs of a relationship look like in their worlds and minds, and exploring with peers how to best navigate discomfort when it appears in the body and in peer relationships. Each of the co-designers and playtesters who lent their genius to Cadence Ford was compensated for their ingenuity as thought partners throughout this shared endeavor. 

WHAT YOUNG PEOPLE SAY ABOUT CADENCE FORD

The play experience in Cadence Ford is yet another testament to the power of game-based learning. When young people who played the game for the first time were asked, "What did you learn about talking to friends in unhealthy relationships?" they shared responses that reflected their sharpened relationship skills and communication practices like "star[ing off small before jumping into the topic" and aiming to "understand their situation while encouraging healthy habits." Others shared that through the game, they "learned some new lines to help [themselves] and friends cope with relationship and friendship situations," "how to spot unhealthy behavior in a relationship," and "how to respond in situations where you see someone you know in these unhealthy relationships."

Like the many who have played the game and been a part of its making, we want Cadence Ford to assist young people in learning to be champions of healthy love and be with partners who practice it. "Yeardley's legacy of joy lives on in this game," shares Hopper. "At One Love, we work to change the statistics around relationship abuse one conversation at a time. With Cadence Ford, we're promoting that change one play session at a time."

DOWNLOAD AND PLAY 'CADENCE FORD' ON THE APP STORE

Make It A Gameful School Year: Meeting Teens Where They Are With Play

By iThrive Games

"I'm always going to enjoy a lesson where you can learn and have fun... It helps keep the students focused and even helps motivate them. I know I'm motivated to find out what happens next," shared a high school senior who, along with peers in his humanities class, was one of the first to gather around an Xbox One, play What Remains of Edith Finch, and meaningfully learn from it using our iThrive Curriculum unit, Museum of Me.

Games like What Remains of Edith Finch merge mechanics, worldbuilding, and challenges to deliver emotional and immersive experiences to all who play them. For the 85% of teens in the United States who play them (International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction), they are a solid and steady source of joy, connection, and entertainment.

At iThrive Games, we see the curiosity, embrace, and eagerness activated in teens by a never-before-seen start screen as a launchpad for social and emotional learning (SEL)—a transformative skill-building practice proven to protect and promote their mental health. Our team folds in what we know about the transcending and emotion-evoking power of games into a unique multidisciplinary, user-centered, and participatory approach that brings teens, researchers, game developers, and our adolescent development experts to the table to envision, create, and test tools that support teen thriving.

The games and game-based learning experiences we've co-designed alongside libraries, museums, schools, and youth-serving organizations we work with fully recruit the feelings conjured through play to create a wellness-supporting experience that centers teens' social and emotional needs. We use play to bring SEL to young people in a developmentally responsive way with games that invite them to uncover and nourish their strengths, craft and answer their own questions—activities that expand their understanding of themselves, others, and the world around them. 

Beyond enthusiasts, we are ambassadors of play. Our team's first-hand witnessing of what games do (and can do) over the last five years has affirmed our belief in their unique capacity to support young people's thriving. We fully encourage educators, program coordinators, and all working with teens this school year to bring them into the spaces they share with them to see the power of play first-hand, too. Keep reading for resources, recommendations, and insights that support the integration of games in teen-serving settings and their use in teen-centered ways.

WHAT PLAY DOES (AND CAN DO) FOR TEENS

Play is beneficial for all of us, but for teens especially. Here are five things play does for young people, and can support, enable, and elevate when brought into the spaces where young people gather and learn:

Play activates deep learning and personal growth. Games present opportunities for teens to engage interactively and think expansively. Environmental storytelling coupled with mechanics that govern and guide the player's actions and the game's response to them give way to an experiential context where teens build knowledge while exercising personal agency—the conditions for deep, meaningful learning. "Games offer teens the ability to fully inhabit the world of a video game, to embody characters with agency along with the chance to impact the world and characters around them," shares Susan E. Rivers, PhD, iThrive's Executive Director & Chief Scientist. "They offer the agency and low-risk experimentation that teens rarely get but sorely need to discover who they want to be."

Play supports social and emotional development. Games make us feel. They delight us, challenge us, calm us, frustrate us, and excite us. They can prompt problem-solving, conflict resolution, and empathy, provoking opportunities that support teens' social and emotional learning. Social and emotional learning is defined by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) as "the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions."

"How Social and Emotional Skills Shore Up Teen Mental Health." iThrive Games. https://tinyurl.com/what-sel-does-for-teens

Games provide a social space ripe with opportunities for young people to lean into these tasks, as well as developmental ones like identity exploration, establishing and exercising independence, and finding their place in community.

Play soothes. Games transport and immerse teens in new worlds, and with the space to interact as a new character and confront conquerable challenges comes the opportunity for stress reduction, self-gratification, and flow states. In countless co-design sessions with teens, we've heard that games are an outlet for relaxing and unwinding, providing a constructive space for coping, breaking for a bit, and pressing pause in challenging moments. 

Play fosters connection. When teens play with peers, be it competition or collaboration, they socialize and connect, tasks paramount to their mental health. In the connective spaces games offer, teens can share their triumph and joy with others. They can work together toward a shared in-game goal and, sometimes, tackle the fallout of a shared loss in powerful bond-building experiences.

INTEGRATING PLAY WHEREVER TEENS LEARN AND GATHER

The work of adolescence has always been social and emotional, and young people need tools and strategies to help them navigate it. What games do for teens make them a useful means of support, and when enlisted by adults in their world as a medium of engagement, they are further solidified as valuable parts of young peoples' toolkits.

For all looking to leverage the power of play this school year while in community with teens, here are three ways to do so:

1. Pull in a game-based learning curriculum, or create your own. 

Game-based learning supports educators in using the power of games to define and support their students' learning outcomes. When lesson plans leverage video games—an entry point familiar to most teens—they pave the way for a culturally responsive learning experience supportive of innovative thinking, deep learning, and in the case of our standards-aligned iThrive Curriculum units, A Moment in Time, Museum of Me, and Sam's Journey) that center themes relevant to teens like navigating identity exploration, relationships, and social media, their social and emotional development too. For educators who value accessibility also, game-based learning aligns with Universal Design for Learning principles. As a stark differentiation from traditional learning approaches, games help educators reach and engage teens with a practice that acknowledges that teens are vast and wonderful, engaging with concepts from different access points. Here's how to choose a video game for a high school humanities or English class and a case example of how iThrive Games does so.

2. Employ role-playing simulations to support a 'learn by doing' approach. 

Role-playing simulations engage teens in a high-energy experience with hands-on learning as they are challenged to strategize and act. Multiplayer ones, particularly, invite them to interact and investigate with each other and pursue shared goals. The embodied learning accompanying the role-playing propels their curiosity and motivation to explore possibilities transferable to real-life contexts.

High school students playing iThrive Sim: Lives in Balance. See the gameplay in action here.

The simulations offered via iThrive Sim, our award-winning simulation platform that hosts dynamic role-playing games that scaffold educational content with social and emotional skill-building activities, encourage teens to learn by doing. Each one in our core civics library (Lives in Balance, Leading Through Crisis, and Follow the Facts) invites teens to play alongside their peers, prompts them to draw on their own experiences and their social and emotional skills while making decisions, demonstrate critical thinking, acquire and interpret information, and navigate challenges collaboratively. Dive into the social and emotional skill-building and civic learning that happens in each iThrive Sim game experience here.

3. Unleash teen creativity by inviting them to be game designers.

Why? As teens progress through adolescence and develop their capacity to reason thoughtfully and think critically, this three-letter question becomes all the more important and prominent in their lives. The cognitive growth teens undergo propels them to investigate the 'whys' that shape how they live and see their world. They move from thinking concretely and heavily relying on physical observations to thinking abstractly about possibilities. In this last major phase of development, where teens are primed to learn and adapt, curiosity becomes a growth point, and game design uniquely nurtures it in them. Our Game Design Studio Toolkit, developed in collaboration with EdTogether, sandbox games like Minecraft, and game-making tools like Roblox, provide teens with a springboard for unpacking complex challenges, investigating questions, and stepping fully into their creativity.

Games are unsurpassed in their ability to engage teens in physical and virtual worlds deeply. They offer teens a safe space to wander and wonder, exercise their innate curiosity, and build new understandings of themselves and each other. When used as a medium for engaging with young people in the spaces where they gather, they become more than entertainment—they become levers for social and emotional support.

How are you using play this school year? Let us know on Twitter by tweeting us @iThriveGames using the hashtag #GamesforThriving, and stay updated with our game-based resources and game design work, done with and for teens, by subscribing to our monthly newsletter.

iThrive Games Named a 2022-2023 Tools Competition Winner

By iThrive Games

NEWTON, MA - Today, iThrive Games was named one of 32 winners of the 2022-2023 Tools Competition. The nonprofit, which leads the development of wellness-supporting games and interactive experiences designed with and for teens, joins teams from 12 countries being awarded more than $4 million to develop and expand tools that will impact 35 million learners by 2026.

As winners in the Transforming Assessments track and recipients of a Growth Phase award, iThrive Games will receive $100,000 to expand its proprietary simulation game engine, iThrive Sim, with new ways to measure and assess the teen social and emotional learning (SEL) happening on the platform through play.

iThrive Sim authors and delivers immersive and interactive simulation games for teens that translate into meaningful learning experiences in the spaces (in-person and online) where they gather. Since launching in 2020, the game engine, built with iThrive Games' software development partners Affordance Studio, has been cemented as an ed tech tool supportive of deep and enduring social and emotional learning, peer connection, and collaborative problem-solving, earning recognition for its innovative approach to learning and unique response to the educational needs of the COVID-19 classroom. Explore iThrive Sim's dynamic features here.

The Tools Competition win enables the iThrive Games team to build new data collection and assessment capabilities onto the iThrive Sim platform that will allow teens, educators, and teen-serving adults who facilitate games on the platform to measure and evaluate the social and emotional skill-building iThrive Sim games facilitate, expanding the game engine's responsiveness to a growing demand for holistic and experiential learning tools that support social and emotional needs as well as academic ones. Self-reported assessments and expanded monitoring of in-game behaviors will help teen players reflect and become aware of how they collaborate and respond to stress and connect them with tools to calibrate. With the expansion too,iThrive Sim game facilitators will be able to access individual and aggregate reports after each play experience, empowering them with valuable insights to support the planning of personalized SEL interventions.

"iThrive Sim embeds SEL opportunities to support and enliven teen-centered learning across so many topics, from civics education to counterterrorism, from game theory to emergency preparedness, and more," says Susan Rivers, Ph.D., iThrive Games' Executive Director and Chief Scientist. "This Tools Competition win enables our team to continue designing interactive experiences with and for teens on the iThrive Sim platform that are as fun as they are impactful, ones that not only amplify teens' strengths but also equip them with a play-driven way to measure and grow them."

As one of the largest edtech competitions in the world, awarding nearly $10 million to 80 ed tech innovators to date, the Tools Competition aims to grow the field of learning engineering by spurring ed tech innovations that leverage big data to support learning science research and the needs of learners worldwide. This year was its third cycle, generating more than 1,000 proposals from 73 countries.

The 32 winning teams from the 2022-203 cohort hail from institutions and organizations across North America, Europe, Asia, South America, the Middle East, and Africa, and it is an honor for iThrive Games to be among them. Recognized and supported through the Tools Competition, the win recognizes and supports each team in tackling solutions to improve students' K-12 math competency following the sharpest declines in decades, address equity in education, bolster students' problem-solving and emotional skills, and unlock career training opportunities for adults via virtual reality. The next cycle of the Tools Competition will launch on September 21, 2023. To learn more, sign up to attend the virtual competition launch event here

"It's been an honor to take part in the Tools Competition this cycle and learn alongside other ed tech innovators who are bridging their expertise with others from different disciplines to craft solutions that accelerate learning and maximize our understanding of what works for young people's wellness and learning," shares Dr. Rivers and the iThrive Games team. "Our work as a nonprofit over the last five years has centered young people's learning and their social and emotional health. We're eager and excited to build on this mission and on what we know already to deliver even more transformative solutions powered by iThrive Sim and impactful play."

To stay updated with iThrive Games' impact-driven game development and experience design work as well as iThrive Sim's expansion, subscribe to iThrive's monthly newsletter here.

A full list of the 2022-2023 Learning Engineering Tools Competition winners and their projects can be found here.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Eghosa Asemota, Senior Director of Marketing and Communications, eghosa.asemota@ithrivegames.org   

ABOUT ITHRIVE GAMES

iThrive Games Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that leads the development of wellness-supporting games and tools, designed with and for teens. Our team of adolescent development experts builds on 30+ years of combined instructional and game design experience to create compelling and accessible experiences that nurture teens' genius by folding in social and emotional skill-building—a practice proven to nourish mental health and learning.

ABOUT THE LEARNING ENGINEERING TOOLS COMPETITION

The Tools Competition ran two funding opportunities this year: The Learning Engineering Tools Competition focused on Pre-K-12 learners and was supported by Schmidt Futures; Kenneth C. Griffin, Citadel, and Citadel Securities; the Walton Family Foundation; the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; and AlleyCorp. The DARPA AI Tools for Adult Learning opportunity is supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The competition is administered by Georgia State University and The Learning Agency.

We Asked Gamers About Their Hard Days at Play NYC. Here’s What We Learned.

By iThrive Games

Our ability to feel is what makes us human. It is fundamental to who we are, underlying how we connect and the realities we co-create.

It supports our sense of self, helping us unpack our thoughts and reactions, build awareness of what's happening around us, and deepen our knowledge of ourselves in relation to the world we live in.

Games make us feel. They delight us, challenge us, calm us, frustrate us, connect us, and excite us. They're also uniquely captivating, not just in what they portray aesthetically and demand mechanically, but because of the state of embrace they insist on those who play them. Encountering a never seen start screen or the unopened box of a new tabletop game, we are ready, willing, and receptive to knowledge. Play's ability to get us to put our guard down, be curious, and engage with new possibilities helps create the conditions for transformation and meaningful learning.

Earlier this month, the iThrive team showcased at Playcrafting's Play NYC—an event that magnified the power of play and brought hundreds of game industry professionals, indie game developers, and game designers together to exhibit their games to players and peers. There, we shared Cadence, a single-player, text-based strategy game we created with the One Love Foundation and Playmatics, LLC. Cadence invites players to explore three of their friends' stories and converse with them via real-time dialogue choices that affect their friendships and outcomes. Building on One Love's mission to empower young people with the life-saving prevention education, tools, and resources they need to see the signs of healthy and unhealthy relationships, Cadence supports young people in learning to love better, in being with partners who practice healthy love, and communicating with loved ones who are in unhealthy relationships. While New Yorkers of all ages played a demo of the game and shared feedback, teens, many of whom went on to become members of our Teen Hub, were particularly moved by the game's storyline, mechanics, and captivating 2D art.

Beyond the valuable feedback we received on Cadence, slated for release later this year, the experience provided another opportunity for our team to create a forum for listening to and learning from young people. At PLAY NYC, we marked a large glass bowl with the question, "What makes you feel better on your hard days?", and teens and young adults anonymously shared the following:

ARE WE LISTENING?

Tucked in each of these answers is a guidepost for innovation—caring, joy, connection, self-expression. Creating safe spaces where teens are heard and listened to with the intent to understand them has guided our game development and experience design work over the last five years, and empathic listening and design is what has made the impactful play experiences we've designed with and for teens possible. The needs echoed and desires illuminated in the responses we elicit from young people in the safe spaces our social and emotional learning experts create (in this case, a glass bowl, and lime green Post-it notes) are folded into the game concepts we envision with clients and collaborators

Empathic listening has long been a driver of breakthrough thinking. Being in community with teens and young adults has helped us think expansively and collaboratively. We've found that empathy, when practiced consistently, is essential to transformative change and central to the knowledge-building and knowledge-sharing that informs the design of meaningful solutions.

iThrive's co-design approach, which gives teens the tools to step into their genius and explore their needs, is care in action. Our approach creatively empowers young people with new ways to tap into their genius, share their experiences and wisdom with others, advocate for the support they deserve, and create with us the experiences they want to see.

With the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reporting that nearly half of U.S.-based high school students are experiencing persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness, it is on all of us in the game design ecosystem to create the spaces, in person and digital, to listen and effectively gauge the thriving of end users. With over 90 percent of teens and young adults self-identifying as gamers, every game designer, developer, and writer has the tools to meet them where they are and equip them with valuable knowledge, tools, and support. It is on all of us always to ask, "Are we listening?"

ARE WE SUPPORTING?

The learning that comes from listening allows all designers and developers to respond constructively, and offer support in meaningful ways. Games are already socially and emotionally valuable, and when tailored to teens and young adults' strengths, developmental needs, and insights, they become vessels for further social and emotional support. 

Our adolescent development experts work with and for young people, and in partnership with libraries, museums, government agencies, and organizations that care about them, fully recruit the feelings that play evokes to support teens' social and emotional health. The science of adolescence and evidence-based practices that support positive teen growth are folded into the games, game-based tools, and interactive learning experiences we create. Questions like "How does this enliven teens to practice healthy skills like exploring their identity, engaging with their community, and taking purposeful action in the world?"; "How does this invite teens to regularly notice emotions, helping them notice the thoughts, sensations, and behaviors that accompany their feelings?"; or "How does this normalize help-seeking?" steer the game development process we lead, ending in a play experience that nourishes young people in ways supportive of their wellness, learning, and thriving

At Play NYC, we shared questions like these on a printout version of our 10 Things to Know When Designing for Teens resource, given to other game designers and developers eager to go beyond listening and to start responding and supporting young people's social and emotional needs. We're happy to now make that resource accessible to everyone and downloadable via the Resource Hub on our website.

Asking and listening helps us understand people and ideas. That insight and evidence-based practices nudge us toward wellness-supporting games and more impactful play experiences for young people. For the design team or studio looking to elevate the impact of the games they create for young audiences, connect with us today for a consulting report benchmarking your game in development against the science and sharing recommendations on ways to fold in social and emotional skill-building—a practice proven to protect and promote teen mental health.

Together, we can and should advance wellness wherever young people are. Join in.

Our Biggest Takeaways from the 2023 Games for Change Festival

By eghosa

The 2023 Games for Change Festival marked the 20th anniversary of a cross-sector gathering of game developers, designers, journalists, writers, scientists, researchers, educators, changemakers, and more—all connected by their love of play and belief in its power to drive social change. Like its predecessors, this year's Festival continued its legacy of generating knowledge-building and knowledge-sharing, with talks that nudged us all to think expansively about our work and mindfully about our influence leveraging a medium played by millions of people.

Members of the iThrive Games team had the honor of attending both days of the 2023 Games for Change Festival in New York City, where we swapped stories, shared experiences, and made new connections. We had the honor of sitting in on sessions led by game design teams, funders, and nonprofit professionals that left us inspired, affirmed, and eager to join forces with others also designing transformative wellness and learning experiences powered by play. We collected many insights and possibilities relevant to our mission to design meaningfully with and for teens.

AFFINITY ELEVATES IMPACT, AND INTEGRITY IS BY DESIGN.

Impactful games and play experiences begin with intention. In a talk titled "How Our Values Impact Our Games' Cultural Influence," Kate Edwards, CEO of Geogrify and CXO/co-founder of SetJetters, explored games' cultural contribution, nudging listeners to remember that all content carries culture, all culture is a reflection of values, and the values we uphold and embrace consistently are what catalyze change. Her talk made clear that all of us in the game development space—from triple AAA studios to indie hubs—have a duty to think critically, iteratively, and unpretentiously about what is real and represented in the games we create, and how our values show up in them. If we pride ourselves on being impactful game designers who care about social change and inclusivity, it is on us to do the work to figure out how our games will be perceived by those they'll reach.

Jeffrey Burrell, Global Head of Social Impact at Riot Games, spoke on how the game design company has enlisted the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a framework to inform and support their overall impact strategy. He also highlighted what happens when intentions are accompanied by a values-based approach and a commitment to understanding problems as framed by those most affected by them. Jeffrey implored us all to embrace an 'outside-in' approach that elevates what players care about rather than an 'inside-out' one that centers what designers think they care about. In pulling on the SDGs, as well as using in-game surveys to understand better the hopes and values of players residing in the 20+ regions Riot Games has a presence in, the company has been able to maximize their direct impact on those players' lives under the pillars of education, citizenship, opportunity, and sustainability.

It felt amazing to hear others affirm and share through their experiences how participatory approaches have animated and preserved the intentions of other game design teams and supported their impact. At iThrive Games, our co-design model with teens enlists their genius and perspectives in the exploratory research that begins before game development, throughout the design process, and during playtesting to ensure what we create with and for them and our clients and partners is truly impactful and wellness-supporting. Beyond just a value that lives statically on our website, our co-design model creates an affinity with young people, allowing us to reach and engage them better, effectively supporting their social and emotional development through play. We consistently use our co-design model to be in integrity with our mission as a teen-serving and impact-driven nonprofit.

 

RESTORATIVE AND TRANSFORMATIVE JUSTICE OFFER SOLUTIONS AND GUIDEPOSTS FOR ALL OF US.

A throughline across several talks, project briefs, and topic tables our team attended were transformative and restorative justice principles and practices increasingly being recruited and embodied by game industry professionals, researchers, and program coordinators earnestly committed to harm reduction and co-creating a better world, online and in real life.

Jae Lin's talk, "So You've Been Canceled. Now What?" began with the powerful words of Mariame Kaba, inviting us to explore how an apology can effectively communicate and capture both accountability for and acknowledgment of harm. Centering transformative justice, as Jae shared, supports us all in making space for multiple truths, separating guilt from shame, interrupting patterns of harm, and minimizing defensiveness. Their unpacking of an apology truly aligned with harm reduction supports us all in creating a culture of healing and restoration in the gaming and game-making communities we're a part of and beyond.

Restorative justice principles surfaced too in the "You've (Not) Been Warned: Content Warnings, Psychological Safety, the Audience, and You" project brief led by Take This's Community Director, Dr. Kelli Dunlap, as she covered the necessity of content warnings and the duty all interactive media designers have to provide them. Restorative justice heralds respect as an integral component because it enables a safe experience for all involved. Dr. Dunlap emphasized this point, stressing that psychological safety requires consideration for the player. "Trauma is not comfort," she shared. "And no one can grow while in survival mode."

Another resonant session iThrive members had the honor to join was led by Mishka Palacios De Caro, President of Fundav and coordinator of Demeter, a game-making education program administered in prisons in Argentina. In their heartfelt sharing of the program's goals as well as the stories and games that came of it, we were reminded of why restorative and transformative justice principles are needed in all places where we learn, play, and gather—to support a collective shift from a punitive mindset to an empathetic one that supports a safer, healthier world for everyone.

Generative magic comes from gathering with like-minded people, united by a shared commitment to social change and impact. All who participated in the two-day Games for Change Festival experienced this firsthand as they connected with others across sectors to start engineering new collaborative, playful solutions. Like them, the iThrive Games team looks forward to following up, learning more, working with, and gathering again with those we connected with at #G4C2023. Happy playing!

Co-Designing Wellness-Supporting Games with and for Teens

By eghosa

The work of adolescence is a social and emotional lift. Too often, adults in teens' worlds forget that, choosing to define young people by their vulnerabilities in an increasingly tumultuous world rather than by the magnificence they embody every single day to navigate it.

Doing teenhood in today's world is unparalleled to previous experiences. Mental health outcomes in young people have worsened with the prevalence of social media and the life-altering changes brought forth by the pandemic. In March 2022, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officially declared a youth mental health crisis.

There is a role that each of us in the game design world can play to help create and positively contribute to the ecosystem of support that teens need to live healthily and thrive.

Our 10 Things to Know When Designing for Teens resource, available exclusively to our Designing for Teen Thriving newsletter subscribers, shares insights and guiding questions crafted by iThrive's adolescent developmental experts that help designers center teens' strengths and vulnerabilities in the experiences they create for them. 

What follows are two case examples that capture how iThrive's collaborative game design work has applied the resource's insights to create impactful play experiences. The science of adolescence paired with our unique co-design model have made each of the games highlighted here a springboard for social and emotional skill-building, connection, and exploration. 

ITHRIVE GAMES' CO-DESIGN MODEL

Teens demand our care and commitment. At iThrive Games, our co-design model with teens is care in action. The model, devised by teen mental health and learning experts, equips teens with cognitive and creative tools that help them step into their genius. By centering teen magnificence  with its strengths-based approach, iThrive's co-design model sets the scene for teens to feel safe to share their thoughts and experiences, heard about the issues they care about, and challenged to think through solutions with their peers and subject matter experts. It revolutionizes standard focus group setups and UX research strategies with immersive, hands-on activities, creating a supportive, teen-centered context for discovery. As a core part of the collaborative design approach we bring to our clients and partners, iThrive's co-design model is a throughline in these case examples.

CASE EXAMPLE #1: DISASTER MIND

                                 

Severe weather events over the last few years prompted the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to explore new ways to prepare communities in times of crisis. In late 2021, FEMA reached out to iThrive Games, fully understanding that young people would be integral to their efforts. As positive influencers, teens are uniquely capable of bringing the message of disaster preparedness to friends, families, and communities. Disaster Mind, a single-player web-based game launching later this year, equips teens with vital emergency management skills and knowledge, training and activating them to be prepared for natural disasters.

Last year, the United States experienced 18 natural disasters, including winter storms, cold waves, heat waves, floods, droughts, tornado outbreaks, and three tropical cyclones. The intensity and frequency of these incidents firmly establish it as a stressor in the lives of teens, especially the ones living in areas more vulnerable to natural disasters. Disaster Mind offers teens an immersive, readiness and resilience-building experience that will help them develop and practice skills to respond to the need for ways to cope with and navigate natural disasters.

To create a Disaster Mind we drew on our evidence-based 10 Things to Know When Designing for Teens design principles. One insight is that teens are still learning to control impulses and emotions. With connections still developing in their prefrontal cortexes, it is relatively more challenging for most teens to gauge the consequences of their actions than it is for most adults.  Another is that teens are also facing a lot of stress during their adolescent years and need flexible ways to cope and navigate the stressors they contend with in their daily lives.


Screenshots from Disaster Mind (beta), built with FEMA on the iThrive Sim platform.

iThrive Sim's tech enables the modulation of stress experienced by each player and monitors in-game behaviors taken in response.

Hosted on iThrive Sim, a platform that authors and hosts playful, social, and emotional learning experiences, the game's storyline and mechanics work together to help players notice the connections between their emotions, thoughts, sensations, and behaviors as they make decisions while immersed in a crisis. With each decision impacting how the game unfolds, teens also practice responsible-decision making and self-management.

True to our co-design model, Disaster Mind  was created with emergency management experts at FEMA Region VIII, which serves 29 Tribal Nations, Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming, and teens from those states who each helped inform the game's learning outcomes and story elements. Their wisdom and contributions highlighted a deep concern for their pets, a wishful desire for coordinated plans, and a need for strategies that combat feelings of loneliness and helplessness. These insights and wisdom were folded into Disaster Mind to ensure it reflects how teens frame challenges. By doing so and tactfully responding to teens' developmental needs, Disaster Mind delivers a resonant, teen-centered play experience that helps all who play it understand that stress management skills, the right mindset, preparation, and essential conversations with family and community members can prevent an emergency from becoming a full-blown catastrophe. "An engaging simulation is a fantastic tool for laying down the mental pathways we need to activate in times of crisis," shares Daniel Nyquist and Stephanie Poore from FEMA Region VIII. "That's why we are thrilled to be designing a disaster preparedness simulation with the iThrive team. iThrive's unique co-design approach is illuminating how to mobilize young people's creativity and distinct strengths in service of building mindsets and skills needed for resiliency across disaster preparedness, response, and recovery."

CASE EXAMPLE #2: CADENCE

            

One in every three young people will have an unhealthy relationship before they become adults. Interpersonal violence remains the third leading cause of adolescent death, contributing to one in every five teen suicides. Founded to honor the life of Yeardley Love, a daughter, friend, and student-athlete whose life was tragically cut short by an ex-boyfriend weeks shy of graduating from college, the One Love Foundation has worked to bring life-saving prevention education to young people over the last thirteen years. In 2022, they approached iThrive Games, seeking to amplify their educational programming with a new medium—a game. From the clear need for more accessible, awareness-building, and preventive interventions to support teens in living full, safe, and healthy lives comes Cadence, a text-based strategy video game launching later this year. The goal of Cadence is to equip all teens who play it with the know-how and skills to have and advocate for healthy relationships.

Our evidence-based 10 Things to Know When Designing for Teens resource guided our creative design choices for Cadence. Teens are working hard to figure out who they are in their adolescent years. To do this self-work productively, they need social spaces to interact, experiment, negotiate, and resolve conflicts safely. Teens also need access to experiences, environments, and relationships that help them grow positively. Cadence, produced by iThrive Games and developed with Playmatics, LLC, responds to these needs by providing a playful, low-risk, and low-stake space where teens can engage in self-work and practice relationship skills.


Screenshots from Cadence (beta), currently being play tested by iThrive's teen advisory members and teens in One Love's network.


The single-player game invites teens to go back in time and explore critical events in three of their  friends' lives. While interacting with each story, players must notice details of their friends' lives and figure out how to talk with them about uncomfortable issues. Meaningful gameplay fosters meaningful learning as teens practice having difficult conversations and familiarize themselves with unhealthy behaviors that may surface in relationships.

As a direct-to-teen experience, the development of Cadence began with iThrive's co-design model, allowing our design team to fold teen wisdom into the playful experience. The co-design process began with group discussions where teens in One Love's network and ours shared their perceptions on the importance of healthy relationships, defined what healthy and unhealthy signs of a relationship look like in their worlds and minds, and explored how they navigate discomfort in the body and in their peer relationships. Ultimately, their insights and ideas along with  the science of adolescence,makes Cadence a wellness-supporting experience for players. "Cadence provides a low-stakes space for players to practice supporting a friend navigating an unhealthy relationship while providing the player with life-saving prevention education for themselves as well," shares Megan Shackleton, Chief Program Officer at One Love. "iThrive's co-design model was vital to making this game truly teen-centered - everything from ensuring the interpersonal challenges in the game were reflective of their worlds to the game dynamics being engaging and fun. From iThrive's careful partnership with youth comes a relatable and impactful play experience we're excited to share with the world."

A CALL TO ACTION FOR ALL GAME AND EXPERIENCE DESIGNERS

With 90% of teens self-identifying as gamers, games are an unparalleled lever for accessing and 

supporting young people at a critical time in their development. With this access comes the opportunity to empower them with real-world applicable knowledge and opportunities to strengthen and practice social and emotional skills vital to protecting and promoting their mental health. 

At iThrive, we're committed to taking part in the knowledge-building and knowledge-sharing that add to the ecosystem of affirmation, love, and support all young people deserve. As we work alongside teens with our clients and partners, we continue to build, share, and co-design our way toward a world where every teen is valued, proactively challenged, and cared for. We're reminded that in synergy, there is impact, and in this shared commitment to teen thriving, there is progress and a horizon full of teen wellness-supporting possibilities to explore. 

Our team is eager to support your experience design needs. Share more about your project with us today.

When Museums Design Experiences for How Teens Learn and Develop

By iThrive Games

The COVID-19 pandemic affected all spaces where gathering happens—museums included.

In the face of unprecedented shifts and challenges, museums innovated and devised new ways to engage with young people safely. iThrive Sim: Lives in Balance, for example, is a tech-powered simulation game we created with the masterminds behind the Situation Room Experience at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum to bring forth new digital spaces for teen collaborative learning and play at their museum. The in-person and virtual classroom-optimized experience won a gold American Alliance of Museums (AAM) MUSE Award and a bronze MuseWeb GLAMi Award in 2021. 

As museums work to recover pre-pandemic visitation numbers, the opportunity to lean into innovation presents itself once again. Building appeal to teens, who are already deepening their social awareness in informal spaces and are actively engaged in civic discourse, offers a promising pathway for increasing visitation and cultivating a pipeline of lifelong museum supporters and allies in the missions of museums too. Data from the National Awareness, Attitudes, and Usage Study shows that over 60% of adult museum visitors first attended them as adolescents, building the case and design directive for more experiences meaningfully showcasing history to young people. The science of adolescence lends valuable insight that can support the design of exhibits and experiences that are engaging, relevant, and accessible to teens—ones that prepare them for the world they are already asking questions about and are eager to inherit. Centering how teens learn supports museum design teams in building on these entry points meaningfully and fostering transformative learning in each of their youth visitors.

WHY YOUTH VISITATION AT MUSEUMS MATTERS

Curiosity has always been the emotional engine behind discovery. When young people visit museums, they exercise curiosity as they engage with history, art, cultures, science and more. The social awareness they build is vital in a world where empathy inspires and steers co-creation. "Museums offer critical spaces, beyond the walls of the classroom, where effective learning can, or rather needs to take place," says Dr. Fernande Raine, founder of History Co:Lab. "Museums are a chance for young people to see what is possible, what dreams have been held, what fights have been fought, what pitfalls must be avoided, and which horizons we might steer towards. When museums really invite young people in, they have the chance to activate them as changemakers."

HOW MUSEUMS SUPPORT SOCIAL AWARENESS IN YOUNG PEOPLE

Museums hold cultural knowledge and are a celebration of our collective heritage. Highlighting the genius and experiences that have existed throughout human history, museums support youth visitors in exploring stories different from their own, deepening their understanding of other cultures and perspectives, naming our connective threads, and developing an appreciation of them. The Music HerStory: Women and Music of Social Change exhibit at the National Museum of American History: Kenneth E. Behring Center, for example, expertly weaves and displays media collections from the Smithsonian Libraries and Archive and the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage to highlight the central role women changemakers, groundbreakers, and tradition-bearers have played in shaping America's musical landscape and steward social progress. Experiences like this deepen social awareness in young people of our connectedness and catalyze wonder and curiosity into how the past connects with our present.

Museums also cultivate togetherness by creating a communal space where all attendees, young and old, seek and engage with novelty at the same time. This shared activity brings forth a sense of coherence that museum educators have used as a springboard to enhance community and enrich young people's understanding of the world and their place in it. For instance, the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) in Washington, DC hosts artifacts like Harriet Tubman's hymnal and Nat Turner's Bible and highlights the richness of the African-American experience and the profound influence of African-Americans. Striving to ignite critical thinking and stimulate thinking that supports community-building, NMAAHC provides educational resources that foster discussions and reflections on race and identity that helps youth attendees arrive at the understanding reflected in James Baldwin's words displayed on its atrium wall: "...history is literally present in all that we do."

Reflected in each of these museums is a desire to empower visitors to take the learning they acquire to the world. Creating compelling experiences and exhibits at museums that engage young people in their genius ensures this happens at scale, as teens, now and always, have always been the disruptors of norms and devisers of change. "We need our museums to choose to intentionally design their spaces for young people so that the social awareness they build while there effectively prepares them to lead social change," shares Dr. Raine. "When we connect young people to experiences that prompt their curiosity and sharpen their capacity to fully engage in it, we're prepping them for the world they'll inherit."

DESIGNING MUSEUM EXPERIENCES FOR YOUNG PEOPLE

When exhibits and experiences are designed to evoke curiosity in young people, museums enable them to deepen their grasp of the past, present, and future, and engage in empathy and perspective-taking while doing so. This work falls in the realm of social and emotional learning—a process defined by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) as one where young people "acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions."

Over the last five years at iThrive Games, we have partnered with museums, libraries, nonprofits, and youth-serving programs to co-create games, tools, and experiences for and with teens that center what they want, need, and how they uniquely learn. Folding the brain science of adolescence into each of these has allowed us to turn them each into social and emotional skill-building experiences that are developmentally nourishing and memorable for young people.

TIPS FOR DESIGNING MUSEUM EXPERIENCES FOR TEENS

With social awareness already in play, museums have a one-up in adding transformative, social and emotional learning-rich experiences and exhibits to their museums that are appealing to teens, invite them to meaningfully exercise their curiosity, and add to a resonant showcasing of history. Here are five expert-informed tips and recommendations for museums looking to build their appeal to young visitors and create resonant experiences for youth groups:

AIM TO CREATE AND FACILITATE MEANING-MAKING LEARNING EXPERIENCES, NOT DIRECTIVE ONES. 

In adolescence, teens reach a cognitive peak and get wiser about the world. They easily see through attempts to manipulate or preach to them and don't respond well to hypocrisy, unfairness, or imposition. The most supportive and engaging form of learning for young people at this stage of development are experiences that invite meaning-making

Meaning-making experiences effectively account for what teens already know and the questions they are asking themselves while empowering them to be active in their learning. "The best museum exhibitions and interpretive programs ask visitors to make meaning for themselves," shares Sarah Jencks, History Co: Lab's Deputy Director of Museum Learning. "They establish dialogic frameworks, asking visitors to connect their personal experiences and the current world to their collections and places and the stories and people that bring them to life. The work of museum educators is to cultivate curiosity and empathy in visitors, setting up conditions that allow the visitors to make their own meaning and then, in the right circumstances, to share them with one another."

When meaning-making experiences happen at museums, they become settings for young people to construct valuable knowledge and learn lifelong understandings.

ENLIST THE BODY IN TEENS' LEARNING AND DISCOVERY. 

As white matter increases in the brain's command center during adolescence, teens' brains form new connections, optimizing how they communicate information and how quickly they process it. Uniquely wired to learn, teens have an expanded ability to troubleshoot, problem-solve, multitask, and turn what they think, feel, see, hear, taste, and experience into wisdom. Embodied activities that enlist the body in teens' discovery and construction of new knowledge can be offered at museums to fully engage and build on this magnificence. At iThrive Games, we advocate for play and often enlist it in the tools and experiences we co-create with our partners as a lever for meaningful learning. "Play, both solo and interactive, invites new ways to be creative," shares Dr. Susan Rivers, iThrive Games' Executive Director and Chief Scientist. "It forces a novelty on all involved, often evoking emotions and compelling full-body engagement—two parts that make games uniquely nourishing spaces for young people to learn."

SUPPORT TEENS IN CRAFTING THE WORLD THEY'RE YEARNING FOR.

A 2022 survey developed by CIRCLE at Tufts University reported that 32 percent of youth have signed a petition or joined a boycott, and 1 in 7 have participated in a march or demonstration. The Tufts survey also revealed that 76% of respondents believe they have the power to change the country. Creating experiences at museums that sharpen teens' social and emotional skills, especially relational ones, help teens take on the 'wicked' challenges of the world they are already curious about. iThrive Sim games, for example, invited digital youth visitors of the Reagan Museum to strengthen their capacity to make responsible decisions, disagree constructively, analyze problems, and solve complex issues through collaborative play. Experiences that prepare young people for the problems of today and tomorrow empowers them with the wisdom and cognitive tools to co-create the world they are yearning for.

DESIGN FOR ACCESSIBILITY TO DESIGN FOR IMPACT.

When museums account for the diverse ways young learners gain access to, interact with, or benefit from the information in the experiences and exhibits they offer, they become all the more impactful. The best accessibility practices, like the ones outlined in Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles, affirm that multiple means of engagement, representation, and action/expression optimize relevance, value, and authenticity for learners and promote deeper understandings. When these practices are paired with robust testing across different groups of young people, the end results are transformative museum experiences and exhibits that make an impact on how teens view themselves, each other, and the world.

"There is an opportunity," shares Dr. Gabrielle Rappolt-Schlichtmann, Executive Director and Chief Scientist at Ed Together and long-time iThrive collaborator, "for museums to affirm young people's identities, respond to their diverse learning styles, and also present more productive and generative ways of gathering to the world." Dr. Rappolt-Schlichtmann says, "How we invite young people into the work of learning is how museums facilitate transformative impact."

By designing experiences and exhibits that account for how young people learn and what they want to learn, museums can create compelling and accessible invitations for teens to work in their genius and be curious about the past and present while developing the skills and wisdom essential to building the future they're eager for. iThrive and its network of collaborators are excited to take on this design challenge with museums and steer this innovation together.

LOOKING FOR MORE INSIGHTS ON HOW TO CREATE MUSEUM EXPERIENCES FOR YOUNG PEOPLE? 

Join our Designing for Teen Thriving mailing list for free resources and tips on how to design meaningful youth programs, products, and experiences informed by the science of adolescence.

Your Workforce Development Program Needs This Crucial Component

By iThrive Games

Today's workforce development programs crafted for adults and young people draw their directive from the everpresent skills gap in the U.S.'s ever-evolving labor force.

Seeking to sustain a pipeline of talent for the estimated 165.4 million jobs that will exist by 2030, these programs enlist an array of approaches that address the mismatch between the abilities employers want in a candidate and those that job seekers possess. Creating pathways for high-attrition sectors with growing needs at a time of unseen technological sophistication has brought forth programmatic focuses on industry-specific and technical skill-building. 

Lacking in emphasis are the social and emotional skills vital to any collaborative setting. And all jobs are collaborative when they encompass human interaction. Be it a high-tech, low-tech, or no-tech job, having a growth mindset, the ability to work collaboratively, responsibly, constructively, adaptively, and empathically, and the competence to manage stress and regulate emotions is remarkably valuable.

These essential skills are powered by social and emotional learning (SEL). SEL, defined by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), is "the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions." SEL needs to be folded into workforce development programs, especially those designed for young people, to enhance the resilience and capacity of tomorrow's problem solvers, communicators, and critical thinkers, arming them with the tools to show up in the workplace productively in a human-centered way.

THE SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL SKILL GAP IN THE U.S. WORKFORCE

A wealth of data exists that builds the case for integrating social and emotional learning in workforce development programs preparing candidates for the demands of today's world and tomorrow's.

WHAT EMPLOYERS SAY, WANT, AND VALUE

A recent Zety survey of 200 hiring managers revealed that 61 percent of people in recruiting positions view transferable social and emotional skills as more important than technical ones in the U.S. workforce, ranking teamwork, emotional awareness, decision-making, and stress management amongst the top 10. A 2018 McKinsey Global Institute discussion paper affirms too that social and emotional skills are becoming more crucial as artificial intelligence takes over more physical, repetitive, and basic cognitive tasks, reporting that the top three missing in automated industries are problem-solving or critical thinking, the ability to deal with complexity and ambiguity, and communication skills. [1]

'THE TALENT MISMATCH'

Research not only shows that employers view the skills acquired through social and emotional learning as necessary for employability, but it also shows they face a real challenge in finding job candidates that possess them. A report shared by the Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE), the National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education (CTE) Consortium, and the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21) reported that 31 percent of employers in the U.S. and globally find it hard to recruit qualified workers because of "a talent mismatch between workers' qualifications and the combinations of skills employers want." [2] In the manufacturing industry, for example, while prospects have the necessary technical skills, problem-solving is the number one skill deficiency employers report. [3]

Your Workforce Development Program Needs This Crucial Piece

Responding to the current demand for social and emotional skills, multiple workforce development frameworks recommend that employers support their employees with lifelong learning and training opportunities. To build a workforce for the future, these approaches also call for sustained efforts and initiatives to strengthen youth's employability and work readiness that reflects the behavioral and technical skills valued both in the workplace and society. When delivered in a way that accounts for how young people learn, social and emotional learning is the lever through which this meaningful preparation of youth happens.

INTEGRATING SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL LEARNING INTO YOUR YOUTH WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM

Our work with teens and young adults over the last five years at iThrive Games gives us the honor to witness their genius firsthand and join our wisdom with theirs to bring a deep understanding of what youth need and want to programs, initiatives, and products aiming to support them meaningfully. Our team's expertise in adolescent development and learning, along with our co-designing approach, has effectively made the result of every design challenge our partners present us with into a wellness-supporting tool or experience for young people.

WHAT THE SCIENCE OF ADOLESCENCE SAYS

Integrating social and emotional learning into workforce development programs geared to engage youth makes those vital career readiness initiatives wellness-supporting ones too. Brain science shows that young people are neurologically wired for lifelong learning and are shaped by the experiences they are connected to. [4] Presenting them with meaningful experiences allows teens and young adults to experiment, build vital social and emotional competencies, and develop a growth mindset that is psychologically nurturing and supportive of the emotional intelligence needed to thrive in all collaborative spaces, including the workplace.

HOW TO ADD SEL TO YOUR YOUTH CAREER READINESS OR WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM

For anyone looking to cultivate career readiness for youth that accounts for the importance of emotional intelligence in the workplace, here are three evidence-based and expert-informed tips on how to integrate social and emotional learning in a youth job training and workforce development program, proven to support youth meaningfully:

MAKE IT A COMMON PRACTICE TO DELIBERATELY MODEL SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL SKILLS, BEHAVIORS, AND ATTITUDES.

Demonstrating and modeling bodily awareness helps young people build their skills for recognizing and naming emotions, which is critical to being able to manage them, and supports their comfort in displaying and communicating them with others. "Being able to name emotions with specificity, especially unpleasant ones, actually helps to lessen their intensity," shares iThrive's Dr. Susan Rivers. "When the adults in young people's lives work to expand their own emotional vocabulary and share with youth how emotions show up in their lives, they create a transformative precedent. Being fulfilled requires being aware of our emotions, and not knowing how to label feelings as they arise can create feelings of shame, and unexpressed shame can be incredibly destructive." 

INTEGRATE RESTORATIVE PRACTICES THROUGHOUT YOUR WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM.

Restorative practices outlined by organizations like the Center for Restorative Process and the National Education Association (NEA) align with the aims of social and emotional learning by helping to create an intentional setting that allows teens to build familiarity with the behaviors, skills, and norms of engagement most conducive to community-building and collective thriving.

CREATE OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYFUL EXPERIENCES THAT DYNAMICALLY ENGAGE YOUTH (AND ADULTS). 

Despite the heat that video games get, it has been proven that teens learn best through play—a tool they know well. "Playfulness allows for a deliberate shift into curiosity and readiness to learn and engage with others and with new knowledge," says Dr. Susan Rivers. "We approach play with an open mind and often with anticipatory joy, this reduces  some of the pressure to perform and impress." In these spaces, young people are free to try on different ways of thinking, relating, and interacting with each other and the world, expanding their flexibility and repertoire of skills for navigating the real world. Our iThrive Sim role-playing simulation games, for example, offer a playful addition to any youth program seeking to support teens in strengthening their capacity to make responsible decisions, disagree constructively, analyze problems, and solve wicked and complex challenges.

Social and emotional learning is an always practice that has a permanent place in a world where relational work exists. Integrating it as a component of workforce development programs, especially career readiness ones developed for young people, favors a holistic approach that not only aligns with cross-sector demand but also accelerates progress toward a world where all have the tools and opportunities to live full, healthy, safe, and purposeful lives.

LOOKING FOR MORE INSIGHTS AND TOOLS TO HELP ENRICH YOUR WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM?

Join in on the knowledge-building and knowledge-sharing at the 2023 ASU+GSV Summit on Tuesday, April 18, from 2:30 to 3:10 pm PT for Skills for Tomorrow's Careers, an insightful and interactive panel discussion on youth career readiness featuring Next Gen HQ's Dylan Gambarella, iThrive's Susan Rivers, America Succeeds' Stephanie Short and Data Science 4 Everyone's Zarek Drozda and moderated by Skillsline's Courtney Reilly. In the meantime, join our Designing for Teen Thriving mailing list for free resources and tips on how to design meaningful youth programs, products, and experiences informed by the science of adolescence.

References:
[1] McKinsey Global Institute, Skills Shift Automation and the Future of the Workforce (May 2018)
[2] Association for Career and Technical Education, National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium, & Partnership for 21st Century Skills. (2010). Up to the challenge: The role of career and technical education and 21st century skills in college and career readiness.
[3] Committee for Children, Why Social and Emotional Learning and Employability Skills Should Be Prioritized in Education
[4] Matthias J Gruber, Yana Fandakova. Curiosity in childhood and adolescence — what can we learn from the brain. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2021.03.031.

Questions to Ask When Creating Meaning-Making Experiences for Teens

By iThrive Games

Knowledge is personal. Learning happens in context.

As mirrors, makers, and conduits of life, our brains are influenced by our surroundings. What we know reflects the sum of our past experiences in the settings we've navigated. What we learn rests on how we integrate new discoveries with what we already know. We construct novel understandings as we work to make sense of what we learn — to make meaning of it. 

This psychological process, termed meaning-making, is an active one that uniquely meets the needs and strengths of the magnificence of the teen brain. Research shows that when encouraged in educational settings, meaning-making nourishes the developing brain, maximizing learning for teens.. For everyone working in teen-serving spaces and settings, then, the design challenge is to create more experiences that enable discovery, ones that prompt the construction of knowledge rather than the passive acceptance of it. [1]

WHAT MEANING-MAKING EXPERIENCES DO FOR THE TEEN BRAIN

For teens, meaning-making experiences are psychologically nurturing. They are also formative experiences for teens because of how they uniquely respond to the activity and changing connectivity of their growing brains. As myelin (or white matter) increases in the frontal lobe (the brain's command center) throughout adolescence, the neurons in teens' brains form new connections, optimizing how information is communicated and how quickly it gets processed. This strengthened neurocircuitry supports an enhanced ability to troubleshoot, problem-solve, multitask, and turn what young people think, feel, see, hear, taste, and experience into wisdom. [2] The brain's emotional centers in the limbic system also develop during this period of neurological change, prompting a hypersensitivity to risk and reward, and a tendency to react quickly in response to surroundings. [3]

Teachers and students share reflections on the meaning-making experience in iThrive Curriculum: Museum of Me, a game-based learning curricular unit designed for 11th and 12th-grade classrooms.

Meaning-making experiences meet teens where they are developmentally by creating the settings for teens to safely engage in identity exploration, novelty seeking, and other behaviors that accompany this time of rapid brain maturation.

DESIGNING MEANING-MAKING EXPERIENCES AND ENVIRONMENTS

At iThrive Games, we know teens' personal interpretations, including their emotions, are pedagogically significant. We value their interpretations, and our co-design experiences leverage and expand them. From our iThrive Sim role-playing games developed with museums and government institutions to the downloadable game-based curricular units we've co-authored with educators, the meaning-making experiences we create with our clients and partners are intentionally designed to build social and emotional skills vital to teen thriving. 

We ask ourselves four fundamental questions when engineering meaning-making experiences for teens. We encourage others who are designing meaning-making experiences to ask these as well. 

WHAT WILL LEARNER ACCOUNTABILITY LOOK LIKE?

Creating optimal pathways for learner-generated understandings means there will need to be multiple methods to demonstrate learning. True to Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles, we design meaning-making experiences that place as much importance on the process of learning as the demonstration of learning. We invite teens to exercise their need for agency as they make choices in how they express and reflect on their learning. 

WHAT OPPORTUNITIES ARE THERE FOR INTERACTIVE AND/OR INQUIRY-BASED LEARNING?

Hands-on activities that present wicked challenges, create dissonance, and support experimentation in teen learners help create meaning-making experiences for them that enable real-world applications.

HOW ARE KNOWLEDGE AND AUTHORITY SHARED? 

Meaning-making experiences often shift the power dynamics traditionally seen in educational settings where teens learn "from" rather than alongside teachers. Deliberate norm-setting discussions, like the ones included as Pre-Sim activities in our iThrive Sim curricular surrounds, support turning the teacher's role from a directive one to an interactive and facilitative one where learners' questions and interests are elevated, and learners direct their learning.

HOW DOES EMOTION SURFACE IN THE LEARNING PROCESS, AND HOW DOES IT ENRICH IT?

Because emotions substantially influence cognitive tasks like perception, regulation, recollection, reasoning, and problem-solving, they also guide meaning-making. Embodied activities, like playful ones that enlist the body and mind in the learning process, use emotion to maximize meaning-making experiences, enriching them with opportunities to sharpen teens' social and emotional skills.

The wondrous changes that occur in the teen brain uniquely wire young people for learning, and meaning-making experiences help add to this magnificence. Our duty as adults who care about positive teen development is to connect young people to meaning-making experiences along with other preventive and protective tools that serve their wellness and thriving. 

Get actionable insights, resource-rich tips, and updates on our work partnering across sectors to design experiences for teen learning and wellness by signing up for our monthly newsletter and following us on LinkedIn!

References

[1]  Elliott, S.N., Kratochwill, T.R., Littlefield Cook, J. & Travers, J. (2000). Educational psychology: Effective teaching, effective learning (3rd ed.). Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill College.

[2] Arain, M., Haque, M., Johal, L., Mathur, P., Nel, W., Rais, A., Sandhu, R., & Sharma, S. (2013). Maturation of the Adolescent Brain. Saint James School of Medicine, Kralendijk, Bonaire, The Netherlands: Dove Medical Press Ltd. Neuropsychiatric disease and treatment, 9, 449-461.   https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3621648/ 

[3]  Giedd, J.N., Blumenthal, J., Jeffries, N.O., Castellanos, F.X., Liu, H., Zijdenbos, A., Paus, T., Evans, A.C., & Rapoport, J.L. (1999). Brain development during childhood and adolescence: a longitudinal MRI study. Nature neuroscience, 2(10), 861-863. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10491603/

The Social and Emotional Learning Opportunities in Video Games

By iThrive Games

The Last of Us. Elden Ring. Oregon Trail. Pokemon.

Though these popular video games vary in genre and generation, they share a throughline of social and emotional skills. 

Video games, often microcosms of the real world, mirror daily stressors, challenges, and relationship dynamics. They also reference the emotional tools we lean on to navigate them. The ideas and questions that surface while playing video games, reflected in their characters, plots, elements, and mechanics, provide us with springboards to try on and construct new understandings of self, others, and the world around us. As one teen author shared in our Power of Play series, "Gaming is not just a simple time waster...It has the power to connect and teach people like no other media can."

Immersive and interactive by nature, video games are unparalleled in their potential to help all who play them reflect on, practice, and familiarize themselves with the skills, attitudes, behaviors, and values that support wellness and thriving. Their social and emotional value makes them powerful levers for social and emotional learning.

What Social and Emotional Skill-Building Play Does for Teen Wellness

Play is a bolster to wellness for all of us, but for teens especially. 

The work of adolescence has always been social and emotional. Young people need tools and strategies to help them navigate it. Gameplay offers a way to meet them where they are and offers transformative and fun experiences. 

At iThrive Games, we fold what we know about the transcending and emotion-evoking power of games into a unique multidisciplinary, user-centered, and participatory approach that brings teens, scientists, game developers, and adolescent development experts to the table to envision, create, and test tools that support teen thriving. With over 90% of teens playing video games, we put forth play as a lever for deep learning to the libraries, museums, schools, and youth-serving organizations we work with. 

Games are unsurpassed in their ability to deeply engage teens in physical and virtual worlds to support their social and emotional development. They offer teens a safe space to wander and wonder, exercise their innate curiosity, and build new understandings of themselves and each other. The game-based tools and experiences we've created with partners and clients invite teens to practice how to disagree constructively, how to critically evaluate media messages, and how to manage stress. Performing these activities, tasks, and challenges, teens explore and experiment, sharpening the essential social and emotional skills that protect their mental health and support their wellness.

Download iThrive Games' How Social and Emotional Skills Shore Up Teen Mental Health infographic here.

A Look at the SEL Springboards in Your Favorite Video Games

Countless video games support players' social and emotional learning, presenting them with tasks, storylines, and challenges that reference or enlist the use of core social and emotional skills. Here's a look at a few:

  • Self-Awareness in games can look like players self-selecting based on characters' strengths and weaknesses (Super Smash Bros. Ultimate), adopting a growth mindset (Minecraft), or them developing resilience to feedback (Super Meat Boy).
  • Social Awareness in games can look like players empathizing with characters (That Dragon, Cancer), engaging from multiple perspectives (NieR:Automata, Octopath Traveler), or reflecting on how decisions impact other players or characters (This War of Mine).
  • Relationship Skills are practiced in cooperative play experiences (Fortnite, Destiny 2) and can entail negotiating, problem-solving, and collaborating with others.
  • Responsible Decision-Making in games can look like players weighing and watching the consequences of their choices to inform future ones (The Wolf Among Us) or trying different approaches and assessing results (Mass Effect).
  • Self-Management presents itself in all games that invite players to persist through difficulty, prompting the feeling and managing of emotions like pride, frustration, gratitude, betrayal, guilt, forgiveness, complicity, and triumph.

Designing for teen thriving has led us to develop social and emotional skill-building games that deeply engage and connect young people in civics, media literacy, and current events. Our game guides offer tips for mental health practitioners who want to leverage games to connect with their teen clients. Our game-based curriculum units help teachers to transform learning in their high school English classrooms. These offerings are inspired by the wondrous magic of play and the potential games have in accelerating progress where all of us, young people especially, have the tools to thrive socially, emotionally, and cognitively. 

Join our mailing list here to learn more about our work designing for teen thriving.

Discovery, Expansion, and Design: Our Five Most Popular Blog Posts in 2022

By iThrive Games

Imagine a world where every teen has the tools to live a full, healthy, and purposeful life.

At iThrive Games, we view play as a vehicle capable of supporting the shaping of that world and the realization of it. Games, with their lure and immersiveness, invite and reward a wonder that nourishes young people's social and emotional selves by offering them safe spaces to reflect, discover, inquire, experiment, and sharpen essential skills. Our team of adolescent development and instructional design experts see these playful spaces as generative ones ripe with entry points for meaningful learning and mental health support. Working closely with and for teens, we develop social and emotional skill-building games and experiences that bring wellness to the spaces they learn and gather in. The iThrive approach has helped organizations, institutions, and schools that care deeply about teen thriving, envision, create, and test interactive tools that complement and expand on their work and mission while accelerating progress toward a world where young people can thrive. 

In 2022, our work continued with more co-design and co-creation, more knowledge-building and knowledge-sharing, and more insights and moving stories shared on our blog that highlight the genius of young people and the transformative power of embodied play. Here is a list of the top five most-read pieces of the year:

New Narrative Game Raises Awareness of ACEs & Their Impact on Youth Mental Health

The SEED Institute, a collaborative effort between Transition HOPE, iThrive Games, and BMA Ten Point Coalition, was a game design studio led by youth of color (ages 14 to 28) who used their experiences in and adjacent to the cradle-to-prison pipeline to create games that depict inequities and advocate for social change. The tabletop, desktop, and virtual reality (VR) games and game prototypes SEED designers created were developed using the iThrive Studio model. Take a look back at this write-up on Children of the Flame, a game envisioned by the young designers in partnership with iThrive and FableVision Studios. The design team's goal: Get everyone who plays it to understand the impact of adolescent childhood experiences (ACEs) and commit to trauma-informed practices that help reduce the harm.

Teens Know What They Need to Be Healthy and Thrive. It's Time We Listen.

At iThrive, we have long centered social and emotional skill-building in our understanding of teen thriving. In adolescence, this is important, but it is not sufficient in the world young people are navigating. From being in community with teens over the last five years and asking them what thriving means to them comes our new, expanded definition of teen thriving that amplifies what they most want and need. Here's how it will instruct iThrive's next chapter of co-creation.

HS Students Learn How to Be Conscious Consumers of Media Through Play

Teens live in a digital world marked by a never-ending stream of information. Supporting their ability to access, evaluate, analyze, communicate, and act on that information is a crucial part of their thriving. iThrive Sim: Follow the Facts builds these media literacy skills through immersive play, inviting high school students to step into the newsroom as journalists and editors tasked with reporting on a breaking story. The game, hosted exclusively on the iThrive Sim platform, mirrors the stressors members of the media navigate providing teens with opportunities to flex and sharpen their social and emotional skills. In July, students at the Collegiate School in Richmond, VA played the simulation game in groups of five. Read what they took away from it.

Game Design for International Relations: iThrive Studio in Olang, Italy

iThrive Studio: Olang, hosted by iThrive's Susan E. Rivers, PhD and History Co:Lab's Fernande Raine, PhD in October, as part of Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes' Summer Academy, invited university students to use game design as a tool for unpacking challenges in international relations. Using history as a guide and design as a lever for imagining and calibrating ideas, 20 students conceived, constructed, and pitched six game prototypes by the end of the two-week experience, each presenting solutions to social issues that matter to them. Read what the student game designers learned about power and play

Supporting a Friend in an Unhealthy Relationship Takes Courage. Teens Say That Takes Practice.

This year, we continued our work supporting One Love, a foundation that connects young people to life-saving prevention education, on a game that will empower the teens who play it with the know-how and skills to recognize and reduce unhealthy behaviors and advocate for healthy relationships. Core to the game's development are the teens we are co-designing with and learning from. Read what they've shared with us so far.

This year has been one of exciting collaboration and tremendous learning. Whether you're a teen who co-designed or playtested with us, a collaborator who trusted our insight, an educator who brought one of our resources to your classroom, or a supporter who cheered us on, we appreciate each of you for the many ways you engaged with us this year. A heartfelt thank you for your commitment to teen thriving!

Fugees Family, iThrive Launch ‘Our Threads’, A Connection-Building Card Game

By iThrive Games

BOSTON—Earlier this month, the Fugees Family in partnership with iThrive Games launched Our Threads, a question card game envisioned and created to help set the scene for empathy, connection, and curiosity in schools, especially between refugee and non-refugee students.

Our Threads was sparked by a question posed to 22 Fugees Academy high school students at an iThrive Studio: "What do you want teachers and other students to know, feel, say, and do when they connect with students who are new to this country and to their school?" After two days of stories, knowledge-sharing, collaborative thinking, and play, answers to this question began to take shape in games that highlighted a universal desire for empathy and tools to help facilitate it. 

"Empathy is essential to the world we all want to live in," shares Luma Mufleh, founder of the Fugees Family, which works to advance educational justice for refugee and immigrant youth by reimagining schools and retraining teachers. The Fugees team is also steering meaningful work to support the 60,000 estimated Afghan refugees resettling in the United States. "At Fugees Family, we lead with empathy. Our hope is that Our Threads helps spread the message and model that so much of what we seek to address and redress in the world is uncovered in community and while in connection to one another. It all begins with listening to and understanding each other."

In the generative space that was iThrive Studio: Fugees, students, reflecting on their stories, jotted down hundreds of connection-building questions that would be useful to anyone tasked with welcoming new students into a school community. After brainstorming questions, swapping decks, and iteratively testing them in groups, students decided which questions to keep. The iThrive Studio experience and the creations that came of it demonstrate the unique avenue game design provides to young people. It supports them in exercising their creativity, thinking analytically, and contributing meaningfully toward creating the world they want to live in.

"The beauty of Our Threads and the intent behind the game mirrors the magnificence of its young designers," says Susan Rivers, Executive Director and Chief Scientist at iThrive Games, a nonprofit that uses games and game design to support teens' social and emotional development, wellness, and thriving. "Whenever young people are given the reins to imagine freely along with the tools to delve deep into issues affecting them and their communities, we're reminded of why co-creation with them is vital to all that seeks to be sustainable. No one can take on a design challenge the way the young mind can."

For over 16 years, the Fugees Family has effectively used soccer as a tool for supporting students resettling in towns and cities across the U.S. in feeling understood, welcomed, and cared for. Our Threads, with its thoughtful mix of 108 light and thought-provoking questions and ornate, patterned covers representative of the 22 countries Fugees students hail from, builds on the same model - one in which play becomes a lever for care, compassion, and connection.

Our Threads ($34.99) is available now for anyone to purchase and is guaranteed to make a wonderful gift and addition to any holiday festivity. Purchase it exclusively on The Game Crafter website here.

iThrive Sim: What Embodied Play Ignited in a HS Social Studies Class

By iThrive Games

Play—like the learning and connection it fosters—is transformative.

To psychologist Peter Gray, Ph.D., play is an imaginative and active pursuit where the means are valued more than the ends. At iThrive Games, we know its power and use it to engage teens in their genius and meet their unique developmental needs, like identity exploration, social engagement, creative expression, and novelty. 

A recent Nature article written by researchers from the UCLA Center for the Developing Adolescent affirms what we've known from being in community with teens over the last five years: experiences matter. The data shows that as the teen brain develops, nurturing it with opportunities for young people to explore, make meaning, connect, and discover purpose fosters mental health and reduces the likelihood of a crisis. The interactive, embodied learning experiences we create with and for teens expertly embed these wellness-supporting opportunities, enlisting the body, mind, and emotion-evoking power of play to build social and emotional skills vital to teen thriving.

The experiences our iThrive Sim role-playing simulation games have created in classrooms across the nation are testaments to what embodied play can and continues to do for young people. Using online play and tech—two mediums teens know well—standards-aligned civic learning is fully integrated  with interactive opportunities for self-regulation, peer connection, and real-world applications. Since iThrive Sim launched, over 2,500 middle and high school students have played a game on the platform, where they have had the chance to compromise, negotiate, and collaborate meaningfully with peers in real-time to work through complex crises and 'wicked' challenges. Middle and high school educators who have brought iThrive Sim into their classrooms and facilitated one or more of its tech-supported games have remarked on how the experience enriched their classroom with a new way of learning and connecting. 

Below, high school social studies educator Anthony Maida from the Methacton School District in Philadelphia, PA, shares his experience bringing iThrive Sim: Follow the Facts to his classroom and witnessing firsthand transformative learning in his students.

Q: What is your philosophy on teaching and how does iThrive Sim: Follow the Facts fit into it?

A: I guess I'd sum up my philosophy of teaching by saying that this job isn't really academic. Much like parenting, teaching seems much more like a relational pursuit than an academic one, so building good relationships with kids is the most important step in the educational process for me. With that, I'm trying to create experiences and opportunities in my classroom that move away from the transactional relationships that students and teachers often have with one another and more toward the transformational experiences necessary to show true student growth. This is where iThrive and Follow the Facts stand out to me. I've watched 17- and 18-year-old students who might otherwise be disengaged in their own learning step up and take an active role. I'm seeing kids with their own challenges really engrossed in what they're experiencing.

Q: What does social and emotional learning (SEL) mean to you, and how has iThrive Sim: Follow the Facts supported it in your classroom?

A: When I hear social and emotional learning (SEL), my mind immediately goes to building and fostering empathy in students. More than any content I teach, I'm hoping that kids walk out of high school in their senior years a little more willing and able to understand what their peers might be experiencing. While running Follow the Facts, I can see students interact with peers they may have never spoken to or even considered in their previous 12 years of school together. The content on the platform is so engaging that it brings together a group of students with really diverse backgrounds and experiences, and they all work toward a common goal.

Q: What shifts or moments during the play experience stood out to you?

A: When my classes are going through Follow the Facts, I am listening and watching as they have conversations with one another surrounding the issues presented in the Sim, such as keeping people safe or being honest in their reporting. It is no secret that many students are coming to schools today experiencing anxiety around a whole host of issues, especially in the wake of the pandemic. The most rewarding part of the experience for me was seeing students who may experience some level of anxiety in every other interaction during their day come out of their shells and totally engage with their peers in a way that might not otherwise have been possible. Students who might have struggled to find their voice in a large class suddenly spoke up, advocating for a position in our class simulation. I think that gets to the transformational part of education.

Learn more about iThrive Sim and register to bring iThrive Sim: Follow the Facts and our other tech-supported simulation games to your classroom.

Five Game Design Skills You’ll Build as a Teen Playtester or Co-Designer

By iThrive Games

Game design

Behind the games we know and love are teams of dedicated individuals committed to creating play experiences that transform and connect us. At iThrive Games, we embrace the same spirit of collaboration in the wellness games we envision, test, and co-design with and for teens. 

Our paid co-design and playtesting sessions invite teens to apply their wisdom and genius to the development of games that engage and support them and their peers meaningfully. In our shared engineering of impactful and interactive experiences, teens, often gamers themselves, build skills foundational to game design. Here are five ways the knowledge and familiarity teens acquire from co-designing and playtesting support their pursuit of careers in those fields:

  1. Playtesting and co-design strengthen analytical skills. Having an analytical frame of mind supports game designers in poking, prying, and evaluating their way through problems and to new solutions and ideas. When teens playtest or co-design with us, they nurture their analytical skills as they assess play experiences and note pain points, opportunities for improvement, and ideas for expansion.
  2. Co-designers and playtesters deepen their understanding of core game design components, like scripting and concept art, and game development themes, like agility and iteration. By the end of a co-design or playtesting session with iThrive, teens who've participated are exposed to the many cogs involved in the creative process, building familiarity with the language used to describe its parts and the activities it takes to get to launch.
  3. Great playtesters and co-designers are great communicators. Core to the work of a game designer is communicating and coordinating with artists, programmers, and other stakeholders. Providing clear feedback to team members, technical and non-technical, is vital to supporting their work toward a compelling end product. Teens who co-design and playtest games at iThrive are prompted to practice effective communication when evaluating play experiences and share critique that fosters actionable insights.
  4. Playtesting and co-designing sharpen creativity and conceptual thinking. Creativity powers innovation in game design and beyond. Playtesters who offer feedback on games they get to exclusively preview are adding their genius to the well of creativity that makes our play experiences memorable and meaningful to young people. Joining in the creative collaboration, teens who work with us often conceptualize new ideas and share them with our team, spurring add-ons that enrich the playful experiences iThrive creates.
  5. To co-design or playtest is to be adaptable. The task of co-designing and playtesting insists on an openness to new experiences, practices, and techniques. This openness is common to game designers who often and actively seek out new ways of doing things and embed their learnings in the play experiences they create. 

Teens who playtest and co-design with iThrive have remarked that the experience "allowed me to meet new people who were also interested in the same things I was" and "add my ideas to a project that will someday become a reality." Invite the teens you know to join in on the game design process and take part in the development of our new, exciting collaborations by joining THE HUB!

INVITE THE TEEN YOU KNOW TO JOIN 'THE HUB'

Game Design for International Relations: iThrive Studio in Olang, Italy

By iThrive Games

Nestled amidst the beauty of northern Italy is Olang, a predominately German-speaking comune (or municipality) home to less than 5,000 people. In September, iThrive's Executive Director and Chief Scientist Susan Rivers, PhD, joined forces with History Co:Lab founder Fernande Raine, PhD, for an iThrive Studio hosted as part of the Summer Academy for university students hosted by Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes. Amongst the over 100 students attending the Academy, 20 participated in the two-week experience, creating five game prototypes, each reflective of international relations and social issues that matter to them.

History Co:Lab and iThrive Games' shared belief in the genius of young people and their creative potential to build and imagine a better world surfaced in the discussions and interactive activities that colored each day of the summer program. History Co:Lab, an incubator for systems change and of youth-led media products that bring history to life, prompts young people to engage constructively with the past and use it as a springboard for independent thinking, mapping purpose, and activating change-making. 

"From the work I do across the globe, I know young people are committed and ready to take action on the challenges and opportunities of today and tomorrow," shares Fernande. "But they need to deeply learn history; history is the foundation, guide, and inspiration for imagining a better world. Centering play is essential to create conditions for the transformative learning that young people crave."

Play is central to the iThrive Studio model. In partnership with schools, universities, and youth-serving organizations, iThrive Studios uniquely challenge and nurture the genius of young people, strengthening cognitive, social, and emotional skills vital to their thriving through collaborative game development. With them, we invite teens and young adults to unpack challenges, construct solutions with their peers, create and test games that reflect those solutions, and ignite social change.

What transpired in Olang was a testament to both organizations' commitment to supporting the thriving of young people through experiential learning. In the first week, students led discussions from the syllabus Fernande, a social entrepreneur and historian, curated to explore themes vital to international relations and the work of sustainable world-building. On Monday, students explored state power, new and old, examining how factors like technology and military capability influence it. On Tuesday, they reflected on the alchemy of peace, unpacking the parts, values, and vision that could advance it. The rest of the week saw rich discussions where students defined community and the economic models and systems, real and envisioned, that can help or hinder it.

iThrive's Susan Rivers, Ph.D. and History Co:Lab's Fernande Raine, Ph.D., joined 20 university students in Olang, Italy last month for a powerful exploration of international relations through the lens of game design.

Weaver, historian, and founder of History Co: Lab, Fernande Raine, PhD, at Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes.

In the second week, Susan facilitated iThrive Studio sessions that immersed students in systems and design thinking working with the content they covered in the first week. The game design workshops invited them to meaningfully reflect on the world they live in and envision the world they want to create, all while discovering and affirming the strengths they have and can use with others to make that world real. The game prototypes that students created as part of iThrive Studio: Olang addressed real-world challenges, including climate change, an international issue, amid conflicting state agendas and the crafty "tricks" used in disinformation spread. The prototypes also explored the power of voice and public speaking, the rules and dynamics of political negotiation, and the connectedness of themes across moments in history.

iThrive's Susan Rivers, Ph.D. and History Co:Lab's Fernande Raine, Ph.D., joined 20 university students in Olang, Italy last month for a powerful exploration of international relations through the lens of game design.

Game pitches presented by students at the Summer Academy, hosted by Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes.

When asked about the most exciting part of the experience, students shared that it was their unique introduction to game design and a newfound grasp on what play can evoke in minds and in the world. In completing their first game design project using iThrive's approach, students gained a new understanding of "[the] connection between theoretical international relations and the implications for a game," "[the] psychological effects of games," "[how] emotions help to learn," and "how to introduce complex concepts in a playful way."

"There's an incredible richness in what young people can learn and uncover from playing and designing games," shares iThrive's Susan Rivers. "iThrive Studio nourishes the magnificence they already possess by sharpening their creative problem-solving skills and supporting their ability to be in the world with curiosity and empathy."

Students left iThrive Studio: Olang motivated and inspired by the opportunity to work fully in their genius, thinking critically about how we design communities that care for self, others, and the planet, and voicing their perspectives on the systems that affect them. The connection-building and social and emotional learning fostered in this uniquely generative space invoked lasting knowledge each designer could take into the real world. Summed up perfectly by the students, "making a game takes creativity and openness,"..."my biggest takeaway from this experience is to follow the creative impulses, dare more, and think outside of the box."

Supporting a Friend in an Unhealthy Relationship Takes Courage. Teens Say That Takes Practice.

By iThrive Games

Adolescence is a time of rapid social development. The bonds teens make during this time play a crucial role in helping them begin to establish independence from family and make their way into the wider world. Healthy peer relationships are a reliable support for teens as they navigate and cope with the wonders and challenges that come with growing into young adulthood. Unhealthy relationships, on the other hand, can gnaw at self and safety and may have life-altering consequences.

Social and emotional skills are the building blocks of healthy relationships. Far from 'soft,' they are essential. At iThrive Games, we use play to build these crucial skills in teens to support their thriving as individuals, members of their communities, and members of the world at large. Our social and emotional learning games and tech tools nurture empathy and curiosity in young people while strengthening their ability to name and understand their emotions, and recognize and reduce unhealthy behaviors. 

We are excited to continue our work supporting emotional resilience in teens with a new collaboration with One Love, a foundation working toward a world of healthier relationships by educating and empowering young people to bring life-changing relationship education to their communities. 

One Love shares immersive content as part of its work to empower young people with the tools to identify unhealthy relationship behaviors. Unhealthy Connections is their latest public service announcement (PSA) campaign spotlighting unhealthy digital communication.

One Love is creating a game that builds on its mission of connecting young people to life-saving prevention education, empowering all who play it with the know-how and skills to have and advocate for healthy relationships. iThrive is supporting the design process with positive youth development insights that make the game a meaningful opportunity for teens to build social and emotional skills.

"Meeting teens where they are means meeting them in the digital spaces they spend time in and with the tools they are familiar with," shares Jane Lee, iThrive's Senior Director of Operations and Mental Health. "The game One Love is creating builds on what we already know about play and its unique ability to inspire young people to try on new ways of being and doing. The goal is to support One Love in creating something teens can take into their communities and use in their own personal lives."

Both iThrive and One Love center young people's genius and rely on their strengths, creativity, and influence to create tools with a wide-reaching impact. We're co-designing with teens to build nuanced understandings of how they view the work of helping a friend navigate an unhealthy relationship. Asked how they would define care and support in this circumstance, here are some the insights teens shared:

  • Care and support start with building knowledge and sharing resources. In our co-design sessions, teens who knew the 10 Signs of Unhealthy Relationships and completed a One Love workshop rated their confidence and responsibility to help a friend much higher than those who had not. "We know the signs and have the ability to help." "We all have a responsibility to do something when we see something wrong, especially for those of us who have the resources and the information." Strengthening teens' ability to recognize unhealthy relationship behaviors empowers them to intervene when they surface. 

  • Being curious is a critical part of care and support. Teens shared that their genuine care for friends helps them gauge changes in their friends' emotional states and moods. "You want to see your friends happy, and when a friend is in an unhealthy relationship, they're not happy." "Friends can be losing parts of themselves; their identity." When friendships are close, care in them often looks like keeping a pulse on what's inhibiting thriving, and asking questions to help restore health.

  • Having the opportunity to role-play or practice having hard conversations would help teens build the courage to follow through. Teens shared that having the ability to practice what to say and see the possible outcomes of hard conversations with friends about their relationships would support them in building confidence and courage to help a friend. Games excel at providing these opportunities for safe practice. When young people are immersed in worlds that mirror their own, prompted to confront similar tensions, and exposed to all plausible what ifs, they build skills they can bring back to their real lives.

iThrive is eager to fold these insights into the game One Love is creating and help make a meaningful play experience where teens learn skills they need to actively take part in creating a healthier, safer, and more loving world. Follow One Love on Facebook and Twitter to be notified when the game is available for play!

Curiosity Propels Discovery. How Are We Supporting It in Teens?

By iThrive Games

Why?

As teens progress through adolescence and develop their capacity to reason thoughtfully and think critically, this three-letter question becomes all the more important and prominent in their lives. The cognitive growth teens undergo propels them to investigate the 'whys' that shape how they live and see their world. They move from thinking concretely and heavily relying on physical observations to thinking abstractly about possibilities. In this last major phase of development, where teens are primed to learn and adapt, curiosity becomes a growth point, and game design uniquely nurtures it in them.

One of the best things we can do for teens as adults who care about their learning and wellbeing is strengthen their ability to poke, pry, and imagine with purpose. For us here at iThrive, care is a verb. We show our care for teens by actively centering their magnificence, creating experiences with and for them that build on their genius and support their thriving. Our iThrive Studio programs and workshops bring collaborative game development experiences to teen groups that meaningfully engage them in complex and creative thinking about the world they live in, the systems they navigate, and the social change they would like to see.

This summer, we partnered with the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy to co-host the Policy Leadership Advocacy by Youth, or PLAY, Program on the University of Virginia campus. With funding from the Jefferson Trust, 50 high school students experienced a weeklong exploration of policy that featured resume-building workshops and lunch-and-learns with real-world policy leaders. Each day of the PLAY Program began with an iThrive Studio workshop where teens used activities from our Game Design Studio Toolkit to dig into the social issues they care about and the big questions they have in the space of a game. A suite of teen-developed game prototypes came from these daily workshops, each centering a societal challenge and possible solutions.

Curiosity drives discovery. Here's how our iThrive Studio programs use game design to nurture it in teens, helping them poke, pry, and imagine with purpose.

Artifacts made by teens who participated in the Policy Leadership Advocacy by Youth, or PLAY, Program held at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy.

Game design is a powerful lever for schools, organizations, and programs looking to support and maximize the creative potential of the teens they teach, know, and gather with. Here are three ways the game design approach we use in iThrive Studio programs helps young people build the social, emotional, and cognitive skills to be curious and stay curious.

  • Design thinking activates systems thinking. As designers, teens outline rules, characters, ways of progressing, and win and loss states to craft structured games. To create a play experience that holistically represents the systems they want to examine, teens must break down components to understand a bigger picture and, in doing so, are nudged to delve deep and think concretely about the specific changes they want to see. "There are so many ways that you can help solve world problems," shared one teen in the PLAY Program. "I learned new ways to think about them."

  • Game design supports metacognition. The design challenge teens are presented with during an iThrive Studio program invites them to think critically about what they want people to feel, think, say, and do after they play the games they create, along with the mechanics needed to facilitate those responses. As teens work through the challenge, they are constantly thinking about thinking as they consider how closely their creations have embodied their perspectives and how others view and respond to the same ideas. "When making a game promoting policy, it needs to be committed to the topic," shared one teen on the last day of the PLAY Program. "The game should make you feel what you're trying to address about a policy issue."

  • When creating a game, experimentation is rewarded. iThrive Studio programs create opportunities for teens to share their game prototypes with their peers, gather feedback, and revisit their creations to fine-tune and configure new ideas. This iterative practice supports teens' divergent problem-solving skills as each snag pointed out in a playtest becomes a pathway to new learnings and discoveries. From this expanded view comes a more comprehensive understanding of the power teens have and the role they can play in addressing issues they care about. "It's the fact that no matter how few or how many, or who you are as a person, you can make a difference in your world," shared one PLAY participant on the last day of the program.

Core to our vision of teen thriving is helping young people connect with and contribute to their communities and supporting them in noticing a desire for greater meaning and purpose. Curiosity plays an integral role in each of these aims as a precursor for empathy and an engine for ingenuity. Our iThrive Studio programs provide teens with a generative space to exercise their curiosity, and safely explore, try on, and configure new ideas. The social, emotional, and cognitive skills that teens strengthen while immersed in the program support their capacity to take on the design challenge of shaping the world they want to live in together and joining in the work with a spirit of inquiry. Learn more about our iThrive Studio programs and contact us to start the process of bringing one to your school, organization, or group this year.

SEED Designers Share History & Harm of Surveillance in New Escape Room Game

By iThrive Games

BOSTON—The SEED Institute, a youth-led game design studio collaboratively launched by Transition HOPE, BMA TenPoint, and iThrive Games, was awarded a Summer of Healing grant in July 2022. The funding enabled SEED Designers to bring As They Watch Us, the latest addition to their game library, to shared spaces in Boston, MA, and use its eye-opening play experience to foster conversations about surveillance rooted in truth and restoration with community members.

The SEED Institute creates games that amplify its design team members' lived experiences and perspectives on the cradle-to-prison pipeline, inviting all who play the games to join in their commitment to disrupting its harm. SEED Designers continued their social change work this summer with The Heller School's Racial Justice and Tech Policy Initiative (RJxTP). From their research and discussions with graduate students, researchers, and policymakers came the prototype for As They Watch Us, an escape-room-style PC game that powerfully names and shares how Black and Brown bodies have been surveilled and overpoliced throughout history and to this day.

"As They Watch Us is a game based on the injustice that comes with surveillance and how it affected and still affects the world around us today," shares Jordan, a SEED Designer. "To make it, we researched the oppression that was and still is surveillance, and that research is the very lifeblood of the game. You look through texts, images, and other aspects of four different rooms representative of four different time periods - slavery, the Civil War, the Civil Rights Movement, and today - to find and put together all the pieces of the puzzle about surveillance and its impact."

As They Watch Us uniquely illustrates the throughline of surveillance in Black and Brown communities and its harm in an immersive way that invites players to make meaning of what they encounter as they explore. Using iThrive Games' game design studio approach, SEED Designers merge design thinking with systems thinking. They carefully examine their lived experiences, the historical origins of oppressive systems they navigate or witness, and the policies that enable their ongoing structural harm. "A game presents a compelling and concrete way to think about systems, and the critical thinking involved in that is high level," shares Susan Rivers, Executive Director and Chief Scientist at iThrive Games. "From that critical thinking comes opportunities for SEED Designers to name how things were, how things are, and how things could be."

This summer, SEED Designers brought a prototype of As They Watch Us to We Belong, a youth leadership program led by Boston Police officers Jeff Lopes and Jorge Diaz at Northeastern University. Community members playtested the game and shared learnings and feedback with SEED Designers. Like those who've played games developed by the SEED Institute, community members applauded the play experience for its creativity, resonance, and truth-telling.

The Summer of Healing grant was awarded by Heal America, a movement to fight racial injustice with love and redemption. For SEED Designers, amplifying truth, be it historical or personal, fosters an understanding that sets the scene for reform and reparation. "SEED is trying to teach what is not being taught," shares Jordan. "The racism that has rotted in this country is there and has been there for hundreds of years, so why haven't people been educated? That is the reason for this game. To educate younger generations on surveillance and inequities in technology, to create policies that protect the privacy of Black and Brown communities, and to amend policies that disproportionately harm them."

To Janelle Ridley, founder of Transition HOPE and Associate Director of RJxTP, this centering of young people's perspectives and voices is necessary to disrupt surveillance tactics and the top-down approaches to policy solutions that perpetuate them in different forms throughout history. "We rely heavily on the adults who make these decisions, but they're not the ones that are boots on the ground," she shares. "They're not proximate to the community, and they're not proximate to the system itself. Youth need to inform what policies need to look like and where the changes need to be made."

The spaces, dialogue, and action that the SEED Designers have hosted and ignited with As They Watch Us and the other games they've created is a testament to the brilliance and boldness they've channeled throughout the game development process in advocating for themselves and their communities. "SEED is not an external intervention that people helicoptered in and dumped on the community," shares Rev. David Wright, Executive Director of BMA Ten Point. "This is homegrown. This is organic. This is an intervention that helps people build the resiliency within themselves to be able to make the change that they want to make."

And to Jordan, "all of this is for a better future."

Learn more about the SEED Institute and its library of games at www.seed-institute.com.

Media Contact
Eghosa Asemota
Director of Marketing and Communications, iThrive Games
eghosa.asemota[@]ithrivegames.org

Teens Know What They Need to Be Healthy and Thrive. It’s Time We Listen.

By iThrive Games

What does it mean for teens to thrive?

At iThrive, we use games and game design to support teen thriving. In our 2017 white paper, we defined teen thriving as teens' "accumulating intrapersonal and interpersonal assets while progressing forward through adolescence." This is true, but it's not sufficient.

We see and hear firsthand that teens are uniquely positioned to see injustices and hold society to a clear and higher standard. Over the past 5 years, we have asked hundreds of teens what thriving means to them, and what they most want and need to thrive. We have listened deeply as we've worked side-by-side with them to envision and design elements of a more just, supportive world.  

Our revised definition reflects the heart, admiration, and dedication we see and feel when we do this youth-centered work. They come away from it saying things like, "I realize now the change I can have on the world" and "This process ... has given me the empowerment not only to make decisions in my daily life but also to learn about how the systems that have already been created work and how to disrupt them through games. I feel very happy to be part of this and help promote social change." 

Our revised definition also incorporates the latest scientific advancements in the teen brain and evidence about what works in positive youth development, social and emotional learning, and mental health.

The world and our perceptions of it have undergone seismic shifts in the years since iThrive was formed, and the ways we define and aim to support teen thriving have adapted in kind. The work of adolescence has always been social and emotional, but it is uniquely demanding for teens today who are navigating unprecedented social issues, all of which require action and accountability. At the forefront of movements demanding both are young people who are imagining what a just, supportive world could be and who are diligently and inventively pushing for new possibilities in the world they'll inherit. But their vital engagement in the world is being threatened by a youth mental health crisis that has been deemed a national emergency, so there is great urgency for adults and society at large to do more to support teens' mental health and well-being.

A NEW DEFINITION

Teens thrive when they, and the settings that serve them, take full advantage of the unique magnificence of the teen brain to optimize personal growth and well-being, establish healthy interdependence in supportive and affirming communities, and propel progress toward a more just world and a healthier planet.

"THE UNIQUE MAGNIFICENCE OF THE TEEN BRAIN."

What's uniquely magnificent about the teen brain? Research in the last two decades has revealed that the teen brain changes at an astonishing rate and is more "plastic" than it will ever be again. When teens have supportive relationships, experiences, and settings, the brain changes they're undergoing result in young people who, compared to adults, are generally more zestful and vibrant, more willing to take healthy risks, better positioned to think creatively about innovative solutions to problems, and more driven to engage and connect socially. In a world in which teens are thriving, both teens and the settings that serve them are aware of and supporting the development and healthy channeling of these amazing superpowers. 

Of course, a magnificent teen brain exists within an individual self, nested within a community of people and resources, further nested within the world at large. Teen thriving needs to consider and encompass what is happening in each of these domains.

SELF: "OPTIMIZE PERSONAL GROWTH AND WELL-BEING."

Teens who are thriving in the domain of "SELF" feel physically and emotionally healthy and "alive" and are engaged in regulating their behavior and pursuing and accomplishing things that matter to them. OR, they have the internal awareness and tools they need to notice when something feels "off" and to skillfully manage difficult emotions or advocate for extra help. Settings that support teens to thrive in the domain of "SELF" meet their physical and emotional needs (including the need to build social and emotional skills) and provide meaningful opportunities to learn, achieve, and grow on each teen's unique path.

In teens' words: Thriving is "passion," "feeling confident in themselves," "being happy with where you are mentally, physically, and socially," "having goals and working towards those goals," and "being organized" and "able to deal with pressure."

COMMUNITY: "ESTABLISH HEALTHY INTERDEPENDENCE IN SUPPORTIVE AND AFFIRMING COMMUNITIES."

Teens who are thriving in the domain of "COMMUNITY" can make meaningful contributions to social settings where they experience caring and connection with people who affirm their evolving identities by offering them freedom and time to be themselves. They are also learning and using the skills of interdependence, balancing trust and reliance with satisfying levels of autonomy. OR, they are noticing a mismatch between their needs and available resources and are learning the skills to identify and advocate for how their communities could better support them. Settings that are supporting teens' thriving in communities see and affirm all teens for who they are, connect them with services and resources they need, and set high expectations for teens accompanied by the guidance and opportunities to meet those expectations.

In teens' words: "Teens thriving means that they are in an environment where they can be completely themselves," and "where their needs, both mental and physical, are heard, understood, and met." Thriving means having "a space of love" and "sharing your ideas with each other and helping people in need," like through "volunteering, cleaning up places, or advocating for small-scale reform." It also means "having a healthy balance between home and school life," "time for activities one enjoys as well as opportunities to recharge," and "time to process and explore our identities."

At the PLAY (Policy, Leadership, and Advocacy by Youth) Program last month, high school students from across the Piedmont region of Virginia gathered with staff from iThrive Games and UVA Batten for a week-long program. There, they used game design activities from our Game Design Studio Toolkit to explore policy issues that impact them and today's teens along with potential solutions. In response to one of our world-building activities, teens shared and illustrated their visions of thriving (pictured above).

WORLD: "PROPEL PROGRESS TOWARD A MORE JUST WORLD AND HEALTHIER PLANET."

Finally, teens who are thriving in the domain of "WORLD" show a curiosity and striving towards understanding the "bigger picture" and having an impact beyond their immediate lives and surroundings. OR, they can notice a desire for greater meaning and purpose and seek guidance on healthy ways to establish that meaning. Settings can support teens' thriving in the "WORLD" domain when the adults within them model ethical and effective leadership and informed and prosocial cross-cultural engagement, and when they remain open to the innovative and out-of-the-box solutions to global problems that teens are uniquely positioned to try. 

In teens' words: Teens who are thriving are "going out of their comfort zone to give their input and effort to a situation or problem that needs help" and "advocating for change where we can and when we can." Some teens said, "My friends and family and getting to learn and experience new things gives my life purpose or meaning" and "I derive meaning out of my everyday life, I have goals that I would like to achieve..., I have friends and family I care for, and I have things I enjoy doing....I'm just alive so I might as well find purpose in the things that come my way every day."

The question of 'how do we support teens?' cannot be answered unless we are in community with teens and commit to actively listening to them. Their perceptiveness and ingenuity inspire us and guide the programming, resources, and partnerships we put into the world in support of their thriving.

Stay tuned to learn more about how our work is supporting this vision of teen thriving and sign up for our newsletter to receive updates on ways to get involved. 

New Narrative Game Raises Awareness of ACEs & Their Impact on Youth Mental Health

By iThrive Games

"Afraid."
"Disturbed."
"Sad."
"Aware."

These are some of the emotions that Malik, Dana, and Luisa—three of the SEED Designers behind Children of the Flame—want people to feel while playing it. Expanding the SEED Institute's library of games that gives voice to their lived experiences as young people, Children of the Flame is a trauma-informed, single-player narrative game that invites players to engage with a set of characters in a meaningful and awareness-building way. All characters are young people of color who attend the same predominantly white high school and are enrolled in a METCO program there. One afternoon, all characters end up in the same detention room. The player behind the headset must figure out what led the characters to be in trouble. Clicking on each character enables the player to be transported to that character's home, where they can explore their room and neighborhood to learn more about their life, family, and community.

A look at this first vertical slice of the single-player virtual reality (VR) game, Children of the Flame.

Children of the Flame's immersive story structure weaves in generational trauma and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines ACEs as potentially traumatic events that happen in childhood (0-17 years). "Everyone experiences ACEs differently and not all young people who experience them will be impacted negatively. Of course, the more ACEs that one experiences, the more likely there is to be a negative impact," says Dr. Lora Henderson, an assistant professor and licensed clinical psychologist who collaborated with SEED Designers on a workbook that'll accompany the game and deepen understanding of the impact of ACEs and trauma. "ACEs and the subsequent trauma they can cause often result in physiological and psychological responses that get in the way of typical adolescent development." 

Understanding the need to protect young people's physical and psychological development, the young architects behind Children of the Flame intend for it to be educational and preventative for teenagers in middle and high school. In each character's roombuilt with game development partners at FableVision Studios—SEED Designers nested opportunities for players to familiarize themselves with ACEs, supporting young people in understanding their developmental impact and influence on physical and mental health. As Luisa said, "having a little bit of knowledge can make a difference." "ACEs can affect anyone," Dana echoed. "Everyone can have trauma or a blocked memory that does not let them see that they also suffer from ACEs too."

The games SEED Designers make and share with the public help create the conditions to better support young people as they develop into adulthood. iThrive Games works closely with the youth design team supporting them with mentorship and guidance that helps them apply and translate their lived experiences into games that reflect the nuances of their journey to stakeholders and advocate for the systems change they'd like to see. Janelle Ridley, Director of the SEED Institute, sees the use of game design as a valuable method for telling stories in a resonant way that ignites action. "This allows other young people to tell their stories in a way that doesn't keep them at guard," shares Ridley. "[It] is a way of having uncomfortable conversations in a manner that allows people to really grasp at what the context and the content of what is actually happening."

Teens who play Children of the Flame and go through its accompanying workbook learn to identify how ACEs and trauma affect how bodies and brains develop. The rich dialogue and visuals in each character's backstory expose teens who have had ACEs to ways that they can seek support, including finding a trusted adult and using language to communicate to others the help they need.

The in-depth research and conversations with mental health practitioners and community members that supported the design and development of Children of the Flame helped SEED Designers make sense of their own experiences. From their introspection and unpacking of their own trauma came supportive tips shared from a place of hope and a desire to disrupt harmful cycles. "[Making this game] helped me reflect and re-evaluate my own life." shares Malik. "I want [players] to know it's not normal what they're going through. And it's not too late." 

Advocating for structural supports that will reduce the impact of ACEs, Children of the Flame is also a way for police officers, members of community organizations, school personnel, and other adult stakeholders to deepen their awareness of the need for trauma-based approaches, their understanding of trauma-informed practices, and their commitment to adopting those practices in their work."Trauma-informed practices and approaches create a sense of safety and humanity for young people who are involved in systems," says Dr. Henderson. "By using trauma-informed approaches, systems can ensure that they are not re-traumatizing their young people and that they are uplifting their voices and including them in making decisions that impact them."

Reducing the occurrence of ACEs cannot happen without awareness, and the development of systems that mitigate the impact of ACEs on young people's life outcomes cannot happen without youth voices and ideas steering the change. The social change that SEED Designers want to see and contribute to with Children of the Flame is rooted in this belief. As we observe National Minority Mental Health Awareness Month this July, we're reminded that the unique mental health challenges faced by communities of color are exacerbated by a system that demonstrably over-polices and under-protects them. "Children of the Flame provides a gameplay experience that speaks truthfully about young people's lived experiences in this system," shares Susan Rivers, Executive Director and Chief Scientist at iThrive Games. "This game springboards support to young people, calling all who care about them and staff the spaces they navigate to embody the trauma-informed practices that help reduce the harm."

The first chapter of Children of the Flame is slated to launch later this year as a virtual reality experience and desktop game. The game along with its accompanying workbook will be used to engage stakeholders and raise funds to support its full development. Sign up today to be one of the first people notified when the first chapter of this game becomes available.

HS Students Learn How to Be Conscious Consumers of Media Through Play

By iThrive Games

How are we preparing teens to thrive in the world they'll inherit?

At iThrive Games, this question has guided us since the start, shaped our values, and prompted the co-design approach we take with young people, which magnifies, nurtures, and builds on their brilliance. We believe teen thriving goes hand-in-hand with teen genius, and to a significant degree, the latter informs the former. Recognizing the magnificence of the teen brain has led us to co-create with young people experiences that meet them where they are, nourish them socially and emotionally, strengthen their 21st-century skills, and deepen their understanding of themselves, others, and the world. iThrive Sim: Follow the Facts, a tech-supported role-playing simulation game hosted on the iThrive Sim platform, is a byproduct of the collaborative work we, along with our partners at the Situation Room Experience, did with teen co-designers and playtesters across the nation whose ideas and feedback continue to inform the iterative design process behind the game. The result of our ongoing partnership with young people is an engaging media literacy skill-building simulation game for teens that brings civic learning to life in a meaningful, relevant, and memorable way for them through play.

Recently, high school students from Collegiate School in Richmond, VA, playtested a beta version of iThrive Sim: Follow the Facts. Making use of iThrive Sim's flexible tech, which works in any space with access to a Wi-Fi connection and 1:1 devices, students, both virtually and in person, stepped into their roles as journalists and news editors tasked with reporting on a breaking story with accuracy and without bias. Working in editorial teams of five, students contended with information shared via social media chirps, direct messages, and updates from government institutions and members of the public that they received through the iThrive Sim platform. In doing so, teens practiced how to source information and identify and respond to bias, using what they deduced to inform the content of the story they shared by the end of the game. 

In playing iThrive Sim: Follow the Facts, teens learn by doing. After playing through the two-episode, 60-minute simulation game together, students at Collegiate School shared that the game helped them see firsthand how the media shapes public opinion and informs civic behavior, and that they felt the responsibility of that role. "It was fast-paced, which made the game fun and intense," shared one student. "Our team had to communicate to maintain a high trust level with the public, so it was good to form connections." Another remarked, "The best part was seeing the public's responses to decisions we made."

iThrive Sim: Follow the Facts mirrors the stressors members of the media navigate, providing a meaningful social and emotional skill-building opportunity for teens through embodied learning. Students navigate some of the pressures that accompany the 24-hour news cycle together and self-manage while under stress. From this, Collegiate School students deepened their understanding of the dynamics in the digital space and their impact on the institutions we all navigate. "The experience felt very real," shares one teen. "I learned that even random, anonymous people on the internet can cause public riots and outrage."

As with all things that come with doing hard work with others, students at Collegiate School shared the following about the new friendships and connections they built with their peers as they worked through the decisions that led to the story they broke together: 

  • "It was fun to make decisions as a team and think through the best course of action."
  • "We sat at the same table and talked about it all with our group. It was really fun to investigate."
  • "It was really fun to interact with my teammates. This brought us closer, and we had a lot of laughs." 
  • "I enjoyed collaborating with some of the students I hadn't talked to."
  • "I enjoyed the experience and how it helped me get closer with my teammates and learn about a career I wouldn't have thought about doing."

Teens navigate a digital world marked by a never-ending stream of information. We see the ability to access, evaluate, analyze, act on, and communicate information as core skills that support teens in meaningfully contributing to the world they'll inherit and steer change in together. In iThrive Sim: Follow the Facts, teens practice how to effectively source information and learn how to evaluate the quality and truth of what they encounter. Co-creating this role-playing simulation game with teens like the students at the Collegiate School has enabled us to put forth into the world an immersive civic learning experience that helps teens build an awareness of bias and its impact on reporting and interpreting information. We invite you to bring the beta version of iThrive Sim: Follow the Facts to your youth group this summer or to students this fall at no cost and use play to support teen thriving.

iThrive Shares Wins with Affordance, SEED Institute at 2022 Serious Play Awards

By iThrive Games

For Immediate Release: June 29, 2022

BOSTON— iThrive Games is pleased to announce two shared wins from the 2022 International Serious Play Awards, a program that honors outstanding commercial and student-developed games created for educational use.

iThrive Sim: Lives in Balance, created with our software development partners at Affordance Studio and the masterminds behind the Situation Room Experience, won a gold medal in the K-12 Education category, while Selling Dreams, the latest from youth game designers at the SEED Institute, won silver in the Non-Profit Training category.

Both digital games are hosted on the iThrive Sim platform, a lever for embodied learning and real-time interpersonal connection launched in 2020 to support the unique educational needs of the COVID-19 classroom. On an easy-to-use interface, players are asked to adopt roles, and are presented with unique information and decisions they must wrestle with in real-time. The players make choices that have ripple effects and drive the game forward. The device-agnostic, web-based software uses synchronous and asynchronous information delivery mechanisms to get players to work together and engage with the information they encounter in different ways. The immersion that iThrive Sim facilitates promotes enduring understandings that can be built upon in post-play debriefing sessions.

iThrive Sim: Lives in Balance, played by over 1,600 students and counting, uses iThrive Sim's dynamic features to enliven teen civic learning through student-led connection, improvisation, and embedded opportunities to grow 21st-century competencies. The interactive experience invites teens to play as government officials tasked with making tough decisions in response to a fictional pandemic. As players work through the 35-minute, tech-supported experience together, they evaluate data and lean into social and emotional skills like collaborating, advocating for their points of view and constituents, and compromising with each other to chart a path forward in uncertain times. Curricular surrounds and activities pair with the role-playing simulation game to deepen and extend the civics educational experience.

Selling Dreams, launching later this summer, uses iThrive Sim's immersive platform to tell SEED Designers' stories in an honest and resonant way that names the structural harm and shortcomings they've observed and experienced in Massachusetts' child welfare system. The single-player game invites case workers and youth-serving adults to take on the role of a Guardian tasked with meeting the needs of the young people they encounter and helping them through their unique challenges. In their role as a supportive actor, each Guardian must stay on top of files, messages, and relevant news sent to them about the youth they serve. Players must make decisions throughout the game using the insight they gather about how to engage with those in their care. With the 30-minute game, SEED Designers highlight the demands and stressors experienced by case workers tasked with disrupting the harm while providing a meaningful training opportunity to think critically about the behaviors that encompass truly responsive care and support.

Both digital games attest to the boundless creativity the iThrive Sim authoring platform supports. The content management system used on the platform allows for the development and editing of role-playing scenarios that fit the unique needs of each audience. The iThrive team is excited to invite new partners to use iThrive Sim and support them in creating new interactive, accessible, and scalable learning experiences.

"The iThrive Sim platform is embedding social and emotional learning opportunities to enliven teen-centered learning across so many topics, from civics to relationship health, to emergency preparedness, and more," says Susan Rivers, iThrive Executive Director and Chief Scientist. "One of iThrive's greatest joys is in co-creating new iThrive Sim scenarios with partners — young people and adults alike — in various sectors to amplify teens' strengths and interpersonal connections and make deep learning not only possible but immensely fun and impactful."

To learn more about the iThrive Sim authoring platform, click here. To contact us for questions related to licensing and developing experiences on the iThrive Sim platform, click here.

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Media Contact: Eghosa Asemota (eghosa.asemota[at]ithrivegames.org)

About iThrive GamesiThrive Games prepares teens to thrive by meeting them where they are and working in partnership with them to co-create a world where their brilliance is honored, nurtured, and amplified. We use games and game design to equip teens with the social and emotional skills they need to be healthy and resilient.

How Games and Play Support Transformative Civic Engagement in Teens

By iThrive Games

The teen brain is magnificent, and youth-led efforts to organize and realize gun safety, climate action, and reparative racial justice within their lifetime attest to it.

Our work as adults who care about young people is to meet them where they are developmentally and shower them with experiences that build on and add to the breadth of their genius. Games engage teens deeply and can prompt the connection, reflection, and creativity needed to support them in building the social and emotional capacity to co-create transformative solutions together.

Transformative civic engagement that centers our collective well-being begins and ends with our sense of community. This definition of community widens as we deepen our understanding of ourselves, others, and the world around us. By providing a safe space to wander, learn, test, and create, games become learning environments for young people to do this. Games offer contexts where young people can explore and practice self-awareness, social awareness, responsible decision-making, navigating relationships healthily, and regulating emotions. These core social and emotional skills are civic skills that help young people be informed and responsible members of society.

At iThrive Games, we create with and for teens game-based learning experiences that support them in being in the world they'll inherit with empathy and curiosity. Our resources and the games we've co-designed and launched offer experiences that build teens' social and emotional competence in a meaningful way. In Accidental Queens' A Normal Lost Phone, for example, players are invited to explore a lost smartphone and uncover the story of who it belongs to. Players must stay in the space of curiosity to 'win' the game. In doing so, they build their social awareness of how others think, behave, and feel as they sift through the phone's content and decode what they encounter. High school students who've played the game while using iThrive Curriculum: Sam's Journey in their classrooms have remarked on the transformative learning that comes from the game's immersive storytelling and the investigative lens players put on while working through it. After playing the game, one high school senior shared, "We had a long discussion about our original perceptions of people. This just completely changed my understanding. It made me feel a certain way. It made me think a certain way."

This approach of using play as an avenue for young people to practice core social and emotional skills is also enlisted in our iThrive Sim collection of games. Like A Normal Lost Phone, iThrive Sim role-playing games enable embodied learning that nurtures young people's change-making abilities. Young people are invited to play as government officials who must gather information sent in real-time, analyze it, and think critically about alternatives and consequences before making decisions in times of crisis together. Teens who've played through an iThrive Sim game try on new perspectives and get needed practice as they embody the self-management that negotiation and compromise require, learn to honor dissent, and strengthen their ability to make responsible decisions in collaborative settings. These faculties are central to a well-functioning society.

Games mirror our world and have the capacity to ignite new possibilities in it and in the young people who play them. We see games not only as valuable tools for social and emotional learning but also as springboards for knowledge-building and knowledge-sharing. At this year's Games for Change Festival, iThrive's Executive Director and Chief Scientist Susan Rivers will be continuing the conversation with a virtual session titled, 'Designing Games for Civic Skills: The Power of Creation.' There, she'll be diving into how iThrive's Game Design Studio approach uniquely supports systems thinking in young people through game design, helping them magnify their civic voice, and co-create solutions to challenges in their communities. Register to tune in on Saturday, July 16 at 2:30 p.m. EDT and be a part of the discussion!

SEEDs’ New Game Pushes for Change in Massachusetts’ Child Welfare System

By iThrive Games

"The system is set up against our community, and it shouldn't be this way," says Kaleya, one of the young designers at the SEED Institute behind Selling Dreams, a single-player online simulation game developed on the iThrive Sim platform. "This game is a wake-up call."

Selling Dreams invites players to take on the role of a Guardian tasked with meeting the needs of the young people they encounter and helping them through their unique challenges. In their role as a supportive actor, each Guardian must stay on top of files, messages, and relevant news sent to them about the youth they serve. Players must make decisions throughout the game using the insight they gather about how to engage with those in their care. These decisions are all final, have different consequences, and can impact the Guardian's 'Respect Meter,' which gauges the level of trust and rapport the young people have toward the player.

"This game shows you what kids are facing—false promises that are being made by the system," shares Bernado, the lead designer behind the SEED Institute's award-winning board game, The Run Around. Like its predecessor, Selling Dreams mirrors the lived experiences of SEED (System Educated Expert Disruptors) Designers who navigate or have navigated Massachusetts' juvenile justice and child welfare systems. The SEED Designers' stories and experiences inform the game's content, reflecting the interactions and relationships they've had with adults to prescribe what was needed in the crucial moment they were in. The designers are training the case workers tasked with disrupting the harm they've personally experienced by inviting them to confront similar harms in the game, and think critically about the behaviors that encompass truly responsive care and support. "Selling Dreams gives the player hands-on experience at taking on the role of a guardian," says Justin, a SEED Designer voicing several of the videos and audio clips featured in the game. "You get a caseload of different youth and have to make the best decisions in order to help their cases."

 

The short simulation game not only aims to transform the behaviors of the people who staff MA's youth-serving systems but also advocates for structural change by those who design those systems. "There are many stressors and competing demands experienced by adults who are charged with supporting young people in the juvenile justice or child welfare system," says Kaleya, "and these systems heavily affect the youth in our community." These factors in Selling Dreams mirror the real-life circumstances of caseworkers in MA and across the country, reflected in each Guardian's assigned caseload and the pacing of updates they receive. "There's a huge pressure on the Guardian to make the right choices and focus on their cases," says Justin. As the SEED designers note in the impactful play experience they've created with Selling Dreams, part of the work to support young people is making the delivery of responsive care structurally possible in Massachusetts and across the nation.

Amidst an intensifying youth mental health crisis, the work to support the well-being of young people demands that we challenge our assumptions about what is needed to keep them safe and support their health and thriving. It takes honesty to design a system of support that meets young people; core to that honesty is the voice of young people. Selling Dreams tells the SEED Designers' stories in an immersive and truthful way that names the structural harm and shortcomings in Massachusetts' child welfare system. The game provides a meaningful training opportunity for youth-serving adults to think critically about how they're showing up for adolescents. It is the SEED Designers' hope that in this current system where young people are functionally voiceless in expressing their needs, this game equips all adults who work in systems that impact young people like them with the insight to approach, engage, and respond to them meaningfully. As shared by SEED Designer Bernado, the goal is for those who play Selling Dream to walk away from the experience with a renewed commitment to "paying attention, listening to the kids, and creating more opportunity for them." In realizing these behaviors, we create an ecosystem of youth-serving actors rooted in care, empathy, and intention.

This summer, Selling Dreams will join the SEED Institute's growing library of games played with stakeholders in Massachusetts and shared with the world to advocate and ignite systems change. Sign up here to be notified when the online game launches and is available for purchase.

The Teen Mental Health Crisis is Real. Game Designers & Developers Can Help.

By iThrive Games

This post is the last in our five-part series, Supporting Teen Mental Health, which shares tools and insights that support educators, parents, and youth-serving adults in showing up for teens in this moment of need. Read earlier posts in the series about mindfully managing difficult emotions, using social media actively and intentionally, nurturing the teen brain with school-based social and emotional learning opportunities, and applying culturally responsive approaches in therapeutic interactions with teens

Veteran game designer, Jason VandenBerghe, wrote for iThrive Games in 2018 that "If we want to make a large, positive change in our world, I believe the best route is to focus on providing teens with better models for the world." If teens needed better models for the world four years ago, how much more do they—and all of us—need them in 2022? 

This month alone, two 18-year-olds separately made the ruinous decision to commit mass murder—one in a racially charged event in Buffalo, NY, and the other in Uvalde, TX. U.S. teenagers wake up every day to more evidence of gun violence, societal strife, greed and corruption in places of power, shrinking opportunities for financial security, and the threat of climate catastrophe. It's no small wonder that rates of mental health struggles among teens are higher than ever.  

Video games and social media are too often the easy scapegoats for teens' mental health challenges. In reality, the impact of digital technologies on youth mental health and well-being is complicated, and conclusions in the research are mixed. We know that's largely because "digital technologies" vary as widely as the teens who use them and the circumstances in which they're used. Of course, playing video games under some conditions can be disruptive to the healthy functioning of some, and can facilitate the healthy functioning of others. So, what's the responsibility of a game designer or developer? 

At iThrive, we value and know that it is both possible and imperative to empathize deeply with and design ethically for teens. One of the best ways we've found to do this: Co-design with teens the digital tools they use. A youth-centered approach to digital technology design is among the recommendations put forth by the U.S. Surgeon General in his Advisory on Protecting Youth Mental Health. When we design with teens, for teens, the digital experiences they engage with are both likelier to do no harm at this vulnerable developmental moment, and likelier to amplify teens' immense capacity to thrive emotionally, socially, cognitively, and physically. 

There's so much that's fascinating and motivating about the teen brain and how it's changing. For designers, we've boiled it down to a list of 10 things to know when designing for this unique window of both opportunity and vulnerability to best support teens' mental health.

TEENS ARE:

  • BUILDING HABITS FOR LIFE: Teens' brains are undergoing the last major restructuring of development, making the teen years the perfect time to build skills and habits that help them throughout life. But negative habits "stick" more at this time, too.

  • CATCHING ONTO YOU, FAST: Teens are getting wiser about the world. They're reaching a cognitive peak and learn very quickly. They easily see through attempts to manipulate or preach to them and don't respond well to hypocrisy or unfairness.

  • IN NEED OF POSITIVE CONNECTIONS: Above all, teens need access to strengthening experiences, environments, and relationships that help them grow in positive ways. They want to be close to adults, even as they figure out how to be more independent.

  • MORE TOLERANT THAN TEENS USED TO BE: Teens today value diversity and acceptance even more than previous generations. They care about authentic inclusion and diversity.

  • NOT JUST "WEIRD:" Obvious, but worth remembering, teens aren't just Western, Educated, and from Industrialized, Rich, Democratic countries. They need their uniqueness and diversity to be reflected in the spaces where they spend time.

  • SENSITIVE TO REWARDS, ESPECIALLY SOCIAL ONES: Teens have more dopamine circulating in their brains than adults. They are very sensitive to "feel-good" rewards like those in video games. Teens do riskier things when other teens are around, partly to earn status and respect.

  • STILL LEARNING TO CONTROL IMPULSES & EMOTIONS: Teens are still developing connections in the prefrontal cortex. They have a more challenging time controlling impulses and emotions and predicting the consequences of their actions than they will in the future.

  • IN NEED OF MORE SLEEP: Teens need more sleep than adults to thrive, and they might need support to make the best choices and set boundaries for their health.

  • FACING A LOT OF STRESS: Teens are under a ton of pressure. Also, if they are going to appear, most mental illnesses show up between early adolescence and young adulthood. Teens need ways to cope and to be able to seek help without stigma.

  • TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHO THEY ARE: Teens want to try on different roles and expressions and figure out where they belong. They need social spaces to interact, experiment, negotiate, and resolve conflicts. But toxicity and bullying should be proactively prevented in these spaces.

So, if you're a designer or developer of experiences teens use, how much do you think about their needs at this developmental moment? What models of the world are you making for them? And are teens a part of your design process?  

Creating spaces that foster teens' mental health and well-being is a team effort. iThrive is here to support you. We offer Game Design Kits, evidence-based guides to designing for mental health, and specific components of teen thriving like growth mindset and zest. We also specialize in custom design services that draw on teens' genius and creative problem-solving energy. Reach out to find out how you can use our co-design approach at your studio or organization.

New PLAY Program Invites Teens to Design Games That Explore Policy Issues

By iThrive Games

As agents of change, teens have the curiosity to ask the big questions, the tenacity to unpack social issues, the brilliance to dream up solutions that respond to them, and the willpower to make those solutions real. At iThrive Games, we work with and for teens, creating learning experiences that center play and game design to meet them where they are, engage them in their genius, and nurture their change-making abilities and social and emotional skills.

This summer, we're excited to join forces with the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy and build on our library of teen-centered learning experiences with the PLAY (Policy, Leadership, and Advocacy by Youth) Program. The PLAY Program will bring 40 high school students from across the Piedmont, VA area together for an all-expense-paid, week-long program at the University of Virginia. Students will use game design activities from our Game Design Studio Toolkit to explore policy issues and potential solutions that impact them and today's teens. 

From policies around mental health to education to homelessness to gun control, teens will also connect with real-world policy leaders and gain exposure to the practical "toolkits" they use in their own impactful careers. Professional development opportunities like resume- and college essay-writing workshops will complement other interactive activities like a field trip to the Moton Museum—the birthplace of the U.S. student civil rights movement-and a graduation luncheon.

Thanks to a generous donation from the Jefferson Trust, all expenses, including meals and transportation, will be covered. The program will run from Monday to Friday, July 18 to 22, from 9 a.m. - 4 p.m. daily (ending at 1 p.m. on July 22). Participants should be high school students committed to engaging with other teens throughout the program and making a positive impact in their communities at its conclusion. Invite the teens you know to apply by Wednesday, June 15th!

APPLY TO JOIN THE PLAY PROGRAM






SEED Designers Bring Games & Experiences to The Heller School at Brandeis

By iThrive Games

This summer, youth designers at the SEED Institute are bringing their expertise (and games) about the harmful systems they've navigated to graduate students at The Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University.

Those who are most impacted by systemic harm know what's needed to disrupt it.

This belief is a foundational one at the SEED Institute, a collaborative effort between Transition HOPE, iThrive Games, and the Black Ministerial Alliance-Ten Point Coalition. At the Institute, young people are SEEDs—System Educated Expert Disruptors. Synthesizing their lived experiences navigating systems of oppression into structured games, SEED Designers use play to advocate for meaningful change in youth-serving institutions. They then bring the games to sessions with community stakeholders throughout Boston, where the designers facilitate play-based conversations to share knowledge, identify and unpack inequities, and imagine possibilities for systems that truly nurture youth. The work of the Institute so far has been powered by SEED Designers' inventiveness and their commitment to building relationships and facilitating conversations that ignite and inspire action.

For a few designers at the SEED Institute, advocacy began with Transition HOPE's Summer of HOPE 2018, an initiative that paired them with graduate students and faculty at The Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University. Working as research assistants over seven weeks, the SEED Designers had the opportunity to learn more about how structural violence impacts day-to-day life. Meanwhile, the graduate students and faculty learned more about how to best support young people.

This year, the SEED Institute will continue this vital work with The Heller School's newly launched Racial Justice and Tech Policy Initiative (RJxTP). Through this initiative, SEED Designers will engage in research and develop a game as part of the Hidden Bias Research Prize. RJxTP aims to create more opportunities for knowledge-building and knowledge-sharing between and among youth designers, graduate students, researchers, and policymakers. SEED Designers will use their stories, wisdom, understandings, and ideas to contribute to the dismantling of systems of injustice. Check out the video below for a glimpse of the collaborative work ahead:

Stay in the loop! To quote one of the designers at the SEED Institute, "awareness is like a fire—and that's what we're here for; to spread that fire and spark change in somebody's mind." Keep up with the SEED Institute's design team as they develop and launch new games, and press forward with their advocacy and awareness-building through play, by signing up for our mailing list today.

In Times of Stress, I Turn to Cooking Games. Here’s How They Help Me Cope.

By iThrive Games

The Power of Play blog series invites teens across the nation to share stories and reflections that highlight the ways games have helped them learn more about themselves, create new bonds, and better understand others. We're excited to continue the series with a reflection written and submitted by Ashley, a high school student based in Philadelphia, PA, on the ways cooking games have helped her destress and connect with herself in crucial moments.

Many people play games to pass the time and because they enjoy the effect games have on them. They have a relieving effect, and they are a way for people to forget about their problems temporarily. 

Typically, I am a person who relies on other people to help me cope with whatever crisis I'm in to help get me through it. I also rely on games to help get me through it. Games are a one-stop type of thing that will never leave you. Games are there for you whenever, any time of the day. I am such an overthinker and struggle with self-confidence. When something devastating happens in my life, all I can think about is all the negative consequences that it will bring. That's it. Nothing. No one else. But having games, something to go to at any time of the day, has been really helpful. Playing them helps me forget about my problems in that moment. 

I enjoy baking and cooking and the excitement that comes as I savor every second, minute, and hour before the food is ready. Cooking has always been a way for me to be and feel productive. I love the feeling that comes with making good food. You are so busy thinking about how good you want the food to be or how you do not want to mess up a recipe that you just feel more present and focused. Nothing else matters.

I found that same feeling in cooking games. Games like Cooking Mama, Cooking Fever, and Diner Dash help me take a pause from the world. I usually play anything that involves clear goals and the use of my time management skills. Cooking games mean a lot to me. Ever since I was a little girl, I have always had a passion for cooking because my mom cooks every day. Even if we have so much food leftover from the previous night, she will still cook something new the following day because of the relief it brings. I use cooking games in the same way. They help me deal with the problems I wish to overcome. In these games, there are numerous restaurants where you have to make and serve your "customers" food and drinks, and you earn money in exchange. The higher the level, the harder the difficulty range will be. The harder you push, the more productive and focused you feel.

These games are close to my heart not only because it brings me joy to serve others but also because, even if only for a little bit, it makes me forget about unpleasant things I can't control. These games also allow me to express my creativity through food. And what's not to love about that?

We are always looking to amplify teens' voices and share their stories that attest to how games help us understand ourselves, each other, and the world around us. Have something to share? Send us your thoughts, stories, ideas, and reflections at contact@ithrivegames.org  with a brief blurb about yourself to see it on our blog this year!

One Thing Mental Health Practitioners Who Work With Teens Must Know

By iThrive Games

This post is the next in our series, Supporting Teen Mental Health, which shares tools and insights that support educators, parents, and youth-serving adults in showing up for teens in this moment of need. Read earlier posts in the series about mindfully managing difficult emotions, using social media actively and intentionally, and nurturing the teen brain with school-based social and emotional learning opportunities. 

Teens' mental health difficulties and needs have peaked since the start of the pandemic, culminating in what leading U.S. child and adolescent health organizations have deemed a national emergency. As mental health practitioners strive to meet diverse teens where they are at this time of crisis—in part one spurred on and exacerbated by racial inequities—they need tools and approaches that offer authentic entry points for building rapport and trust. 

The U.S. Surgeon General's 2021 Advisory, Protecting Youth Mental Health, stresses the need to "recognize that a variety of cultural and other factors shape whether children and families are able or willing to seek mental health services. Accordingly, services should be culturally appropriate, offered in multiple languages (including ASL), and delivered by a diverse mental health workforce." Using culturally appropriate tools and approaches invites teens and their families to engage as equal partners in improving and maintaining young people's mental health. Critically, this approach also amplifies and celebrates existing strengths and connections that are unique to each young person's cultural background and social network. 

At iThrive, we've witnessed how games can be a powerful part of culturally responsive approaches to supporting teens' social and emotional skills, which are critical for mental health across the lifespan, both in schools and in therapeutic settings. That's because games of all kinds have the power to tell compelling stories, not just about the characters within them but about the players who play them, revealing truths about who they are and the world they inhabit. As one high school senior said of iThrive Curriculum: Museum of Me, our unit based around the game What Remains of Edith Finch: "You learn some things about yourself and others. It's nice to know that your [sic] not alone in seeing yourself a certain way. It's kind of relieving to know other people feel the same ways about themselves."

In an effort to help youth-serving practitioners better support teens with culturally responsive tools and approaches, iThrive's Senior Director of Learning Michelle Bertoli  interviewed Lora Henderson, a licensed clinical psychologist, former educator, and assistant professor at James Madison University who specializes in supporting the mental health of young people in underserved populations. In the interview transcribed below, she shares best practices and tools — including game-based approaches — for engaging authentically with diverse teens in support of their health and healing. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Michelle: In your own work, how do you identify and define culturally responsive tools and practices?  

Lora: I work at the intersection of education, mental health, and social and emotional learning. I define culturally responsive practices, or CRPs, as actions practitioners can take to build on students' strengths and cultural frames of reference. In the classroom, this might mean drawing connections between the curriculum and students' home lives and cultural experiences. In a clinical setting, it might include showcasing materials, games, books, and posters that reflect students' cultural backgrounds and experiences. 

Michelle: And how do you get a sense of what's going to be culturally relevant and useful to students? It takes time to get to know them and you don't want to make assumptions.

Lora: Yes, that can be difficult because you don't want to fall into stereotypes about groups. We often go into our interactions with children and families with our own biases and assumptions about their cultural groups. Sometimes those things map onto their experiences and other times they don't. So, I do a lot of building relationships with kids, asking them what they did over the weekend, how their family celebrates holidays. Those small things aren't therapy, per se, but are really important to getting to know kids and their families and what culture means to them and looks like in their own contexts. 

Michelle: At iThrive, we design our games and game-based tools with equity, representation, and accessibility as core pillars. From a practitioner's perspective, how do these design principles make a difference for supporting teen mental health and well-being?

Lora: We can expect youth to have improved outcomes when they can connect to the materials, games, or information being shared with them. When we design with youth, put them at the center, and make them experts, like everyone at iThrive really does, it can maximize positive youth engagement with the tools you're creating. At iThrive, it's a bidirectional process: the youth designers get to build social and emotional skills and increase their well-being, and peers who play the games also get to learn from the youth designers' expertise and experiences. That process can have large positive effects for the designers and their peers alike. 

Michelle: What tools, including games or game-based approaches, do you use to strengthen young people's awareness and embracing of their cultural identities? 

Lora: From my time as an elementary school teacher to my current role as an assistant professor and licensed clinical psychologist, my first job is to build rapport and authentic relationships with youth. All of the other positive outcomes are couched in that initial positive relationship that creates a safe space for youth and families to feel accepted. That's how I demonstrate my respect, openness, and acceptance of their cultural identities. In my classroom and therapy office, I ensured that the books, pictures, and posters reflected the diversity of my clients so that youth could see themselves in my office and know that it was a safe space to be themselves. 

In therapy, I play lots of tabletop, board, and card games with youth. As one example, I've played a lot of Spades with Black families who play it at home, to bring an aspect of their culture into the room. I have emotions/feelings playing cards, so as we're playing Spades, and they get a "9" with an angry face on it, we talk about times when they were angry or observed someone else being angry, and how they managed those feelings. I really like to incorporate games that youth are already playing and then infuse mental health and social and emotional components into them. In in-patient settings, youth have taught me card games that they learned while in the hospital or juvenile detention. I let them lead the play. It's one way I demonstrate that I accept and value their lived experiences.

Michelle: How has embracing your own cultural identity as a practitioner helped you hone your professional skills? How have games played a role in this?

Lora: As a Black woman, I have had to examine my own biases and experiences to help me acknowledge the systemic racism that I experience in this country AND the privileges that I have as an employed, cisgender professional with a doctoral degree. While games have to be facilitated thoughtfully and in a sensitive way, gameful activities like "Step in the Circle," "Cross the Line," "Four Corners," and the "Privilege Walk" have helped me with my own personal exploration. I have moved away from the "Privilege Walk" activity because it visually moves privileged individuals ahead and those with less privilege behind and can perpetuate bias, but it was a meaningful activity for me when I did it about 10 years ago. It was the first time that I was really able to reflect on my privileges and challenges as a Black woman. The other activities that I mentioned still have the visual component of stepping into the circle, crossing the line, or going to the corner that aligns with youth experiences, but they remove the cumulative visual effect of moving further ahead or further behind.

Michelle: How would you recommend other clinicians who are not as practiced in culturally responsive approaches with young people begin to build those muscles?

Lora: The best way to become more culturally responsive is to engage with youth and listen to them. Reading the literature and learning about cultural responsiveness, humility, and competence is important, and still there's nothing like just talking to youth. Inevitably, they'll tell you that it doesn't work exactly how it's explained in textbooks or scholarly articles. 

But before talking to youth, anyone who wants to be culturally responsive needs to engage in self-reflection about their own biases and assumptions about people from other cultural groups. It can help to have a group that you talk to about these things for accountability and outside perspectives. I can't stress how important doing that personal work is before stepping into work with youth. We don't want them to be our test subjects or to cause unintentional harm by doing things we think are culturally responsive but might be missing the mark and actually doing harm. 

Talk to youth about what they like to do, what they enjoy, how they celebrate holidays. Get to know them in an authentic way.

Michelle: How can practitioners manage the fear or uncertainty they may have about making mistakes or unintentionally doing harm when striving to be more culturally responsive?

Lora: I think mindfulness-based techniques are really helpful. If you feel yourself getting nervous or unsure, stop and take a few breaths. Center yourself and remind yourself why you're doing this work. So many of us go from meeting to meeting to facilitating a workshop, etc. Sometimes just taking that breath can help settle your nerves and get you ready for those intersections.

Also, I think it can be fine and even acceptable to acknowledge differences between youth. You can highlight both obvious differences and similarities to help youth notice commonalities they share. Let youth know that you're trying, that you're maybe from a different cultural background and you might stumble, and you want to know about it if you do so you can do better next time. You need a safe space, too, in order to learn when you've made a mistake. It all comes back to authentic relationships because if you don't have that and you miss the mark, youth won't tell you. They might keep trucking along with the program or activity but the outcomes may not be as positive as they could have been.

Michelle: What are some resources you would recommend to practitioners who want to learn more about culturally responsive practices?

Lora: I lean heavily on the Double-Check framework. It's from education but applies in therapy as well. A shorthand tool it uses is the acronym CARES: Connections with curriculum, Authentic relationships, Reflective thinking, Effective communication, and Sensitivity to students' cultures.

For people who want to go even deeper, I also recommend this review of CRPs from an education perspective. 

Michelle: Thank you so much for your time and insights, Lora!

[End of Interview]

Mental health practitioners seeking to find new ways to meaningfully engage and support teens from a diversity of backgrounds can also find inspiration in iThrive's Game Guides, which highlight unique ways to check in with teens and touch on their emotional experiences through the lens of some of their favorite games including Minecraft, Fortnite, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

iThrive's Game Design Studio Toolkit is another rich resource for using games as systems to engage teens in complex, aspirational thinking that has its roots in awareness of their unique personal experiences. Individuals who aspire to something even more innovative can also make use of iThrive's design services to envision and realize completely fresh game-based approaches. 

What are some ways you use games or game-based approaches in therapeutic interactions with young people? Let us know at contact@ithrivegames.org!

What Playing Video Games Taught Me about the World and the People in It

By iThrive Games

This post is the next in the Power of Play blog series, which shares posts from teens reflecting on the many ways games have helped them connect with others, find community, explore new perspectives, and discover new possibilities for themselves. We're excited to continue the series with a reflection written and submitted by Tony, a high school student based in Philadelphia, PA, who shares some of the ways video games have mirrored, enriched, and influenced his world.

Video games have played an important role in my life and shaping how I perceive things. Although they may not be real, some video games portray the real world and make you ponder on things you normally wouldn't. Video games have been a gateway to great things for me. I have met some of my best friends and have gotten through hardships with games as they shape who I am and my life. Three video games specifically have altered my way of thinking, those games being Detroit: Become Human, Life is Strange 2, and Batman: The Telltale Series.

In the game Detroit: Become Human, we are taken into a futuristic period, one in which humans have created cybernetic androids to perform tasks and labor for them. This takes a turn when the androids become conscious and want to be treated as equal and not merely property. This game was one of the first in which I thought about ethics and what the morally correct thing to do would be. This game developed my critical thinking due to its really creative way of displaying discrimination. Although they're not human, the androids still have a consciousness and make choices. This game helped shape some of my thought processes. 

Life is Strange 2 is another one that comes to mind when I think of games that are a key element of who I am. This game follows the story of two boys who are living in an ordinary life until an instance occurs that immediately resonated with me. The boys, who are Mexican, have an altercation with a white male and the police arrive. The policeman immediately points his gun at the Mexican boys. This happens all of the time in real life in black and brown communities and I'm glad the game showed this. Police often see people of color as a threat when that's not the case. Things like this being mentioned in video games are another reason why video games are so great to me.

In another game, Batman: The Telltale Series, one of the most important themes and takeaways is how people around you and events can alter you and your perception of life. Batman witnessed his parents die. Joker becomes the Joker due to the manipulations of others and things of that nature. Recently, I had an event which altered the entire way I perceive life and how I go about it. Batman: The Telltale Series showcased to me how environments and circumstances shape who we are and how we live our lives.

Overall, I feel that although video games have this negative stigma associated with them, for me, and most likely others, video games are meaningful. They help me not only better understand myself but also the world and environment around me. They highlight questions about ethics and showcase real-world issues that need to be discussed like police discrimination against people of color. In my life, video games have been an escape from all the craziness and helped calm me. They are a key element in making me who I am. 

We are always looking to amplify teen voice and share their stories that attest to how games help us understand ourselves, each other, and the world around us. Have something to share? Send us your thoughts, stories, ideas, and reflections at contact@ithrivegames.org with a brief blurb about yourself to see it on our blog this year!

Game Design Supports Deep Learning. Here’s How It Can Help School Communities.

By iThrive Games

Engaged learning and connection help us get to the world we're all yearning for—one where we all have the social and emotional faculties to work collaboratively with empathy and curiosity in support of our collective thriving.

At iThrive, we see game design and play as springboards for both, creating connective pathways for knowledge sharing and knowledge building. We invite teachers and students to be game designers as a way to activate deep learning. In using game elements like rules, characters, ways of progressing, and win and loss states to craft a structured game reflective of lived experiences, the game designer has the chance to think concretely about the specific changes they want to see in the systems they navigate. The game they create, in turn, offers a play experience that opens up space for dialogue, exploration, and empathic listening, setting the stage for deep reflection that inspires movement from aspiration to action.

On March 30, iThrive's Susan Rivers and Transition HOPE's Janelle Ridley brought game design to High Tech High Graduate School of Education's Deeper Learning 2022 Education Conference in a deep dive crafted to engage educators in innovative and collaborative thinking. Attendees of their "Game Design for Understanding and Learning" workshop were invited to use game design techniques to reflect on their experiences, connect with other educators who care deeply about student thriving, and envision new practices that support deep learning.

Pulling from our Game Design Studio Toolkit, the four-hour workshop began with play. We played The Run Around, a game created by SEED Designers, and a prototype of one of the games developed by Fugees Family students. These served as an introduction to iThrive's unique use of game design in youth-centered spaces to support generative thinking and social change. Play and icebreakers were followed by empathy mapping, where educators were invited to reflect on their lived experiences as learners and teachers. After analyzing their reflections and noting the shared themes among them, participants synthesized the themes to define core needs, challenges, and possibilities. Working collaboratively in groups, educators then gathered to ideate ways to represent their stories and experiences using game mechanics and world-building tactics. Those ideas came to life in the participants' prototyped game boards and accompanying materials, which were exchanged and playtested by other groups for feedback. From this interactive experience came deep reflection on the needs and wants of students and educators, how things are in education, and how things could be.

The Warm-Up, Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test sequence taken from the Game Design Studio Toolkit.

By the end of the "Game Design for Understanding and Learning" deep dive, 25 educators created four game prototypes that focused on topics such as the importance of designing learning experiences for student agency; the unreasonable demands placed on teachers; how a culture of deeper learning, in contrast to a culture of testing, leads to student success ; and supporting students to embrace productive struggle. Each of these games was demoed at the Deeper Learning Showcase later that afternoon.


Game prototypes shared at the Deeper Learning 2022 Showcase. 

Participants in the deep dive shared that crafting a game based on their lived experience was a great way to solidify their thoughts, think critically about systems they've navigated, and identify ways to change those systems. All were excited and engaged by the deep learning and reflection that surfaced from the experience, with teachers afterward calling game design "collaborative," "relevant," and "an interesting way to view issues and problems."

"The openness and curiosity that comes from play, which is energy giving, creates opportunity for imagination, and to think about what could be next," shares iThrive's Susan Rivers. "Bringing the Game Design Studio approach to Deeper Learning was an opportunity to support teachers in reflecting on new ways of doing and being in and outside of the classroom in service of young people's thriving."

For educators and administrators interested in unpacking challenges in their school communities or sparking new ideas that contribute to educator and student thriving, we invite you to use design thinking activities from our Game Design Studio Toolkit in your brainstorming. Activities included within the complete kit support active listening, needs mapping, and iterative testing to ensure the solutions you dream up with your team are relevant and responsive to your school's unique goals.

Here's a glimpse of what's on the other end of the exploration the Toolkit guides its users through in the context of education:

Game Design Supports Deep Learning. Here's How It Can Help School Communities.

Interested in using game design to support design thinking and program development in your school community? Contact us to explore facilitation options crafted to help educators and administrators co-design youth-centered solutions with their students.

How Social and Emotional Learning Nurtures the Teen Brain

By iThrive Games

This post is the next in our series, Supporting Teen Mental Health, which shares tools and insights that support educators, parents, and youth-serving adults in showing up for teens in this moment of need. Read earlier posts in the series about mindfully managing difficult emotions and using social media actively and intentionally. 

"My understanding of myself changed a great deal." 

"I learned how to be a better friend."

"I was able to deal with aspects of myself that I never really had before."

"It's nice to know that you're not alone in seeing yourself a certain way."

Each of these quotes shared by teens is a testament to what happens when schools provide them with meaningful opportunities to actively explore who they are and who they want to be in the world and to build the social and emotional skills that support their mental health and development.

Adolescence is the last major window of neuroplasticity, a time when the teen brain is open to incredible learning potential, on one hand, and heightened vulnerability, on the other. Half of all serious mental health disorders in adults begin by age 14, making early prevention and intervention critical. High quality social and emotional learning interventions have been linked to reduced symptoms of anxiety and depression and lower levels of emotional distress among young people. But even teens who are not experiencing mental health struggles have specific developmental needs when it comes to maintaining and improving mental health. These include having opportunities to figure out who they are, to experience autonomy and independence, and to refine their relationship skills as interactions with both peers and adults in their lives become deeper and more complex. Each of these skills, and many more, are the aim and outcome of quality school-based social and emotional learning efforts.

The U.S. Surgeon General's Advisory on Protecting Youth Mental Health notes the role school communities can play in helping young people find "a sense of purpose, fulfillment, and belonging," supporting them in "managing their mental health challenges." Accordingly, they recommend that educators, school staff, and school districts continue to "expand social and emotional learning programs and other evidence-based approaches that promote healthy development." Mental health supports fall on a continuum of care, and high quality social and emotional learning programs are a "Tier 1" intervention, meaning they provide fundamental coping skills all students in a school community need, even as some students will require more intensive and targeted types of mental health support. 

The Advisory mentions that creating the foundation for "a healthier, more resilient, and more fulfilled nation" where young people can thrive begins with creating "accessible space in our homes, schools, workplaces, and communities." To us, "access" means meeting teens where they are developmentally with tools they are familiar with and inviting them to the table when those tools are being developed to share how and what they want to learn. At iThrive, we specialize in creating social and emotional learning experiences that enlist the power of play and respond to teens' unique developmental needs. By design, we prioritize teen voice, personal relevance, and student choice in what we create with and for young people. The genius, creativity, and insight of the teens we work with continues to steer our game and curriculum development work, resulting in memorable and meaningful learning experiences that engage them deeply.

For educators and administrators looking to prioritize their students' mental health, social and emotional learning opportunities and the core skill-building they foster can be a powerful and transformative lever.

HERE ARE THREE WAYS TO ENHANCE YOUR SCHOOL OR DISTRICT COMMUNITY'S COMMITMENT TO SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL SKILL DEVELOPMENT IN TEENS: 

1. CALL SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL SKILLS WHAT THEY ARE: ESSENTIAL SKILLS. 

We've written about it before, and it bears repeating. How we talk about something impacts how it is received and regarded. In a world where polarization and hatred threaten our unity, we can't afford to downgrade competencies like self-awareness, self-regulation, showing empathy and care, effectively advocating for ourselves and others, and making responsible decisions for the greater good to "soft skills." Raising the profile of these core skills to an educational and humanistic priority sets the scene for innovative programming and instruction that responds to and addresses students' needs. To quote a member of our Educator Advisory Council, "Education is not an academic pursuit, it's a relational one. They listen to me because of the relationship, not because I'm the teacher." Meeting social and emotional needs is, simply put, the foundation for effective learning.

2. FIND TOOLS THAT EMBED SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL LEARNING INTO CORE ACADEMIC CONTENT

Social and emotional learning efforts are powerful when evidence-based tools are embedded into the content students are already learning, and there's often a natural alignment. Our iThrive Sim role-playing simulation games designed for high school social studies classes, for example, build on the natural synergy between civics education and social and emotional competencies. As students collaborate to make decisions that drive each iThrive Sim scenario forward, they expand their civic knowledge while practicing core social and emotional skills like managing stress, regulating emotions, and making responsible decisions. Likewise, iThrive Curriculum's learning units pair with immersive games to support high school English and humanities educators in discussing self- and social awareness, self-management, and relationship skills with their students. As students work through these curricular units together, the narrative at the center of the game becomes an organic springboard for meaningful reflection and conversations about identity, relationships, and communication.

3. ADOPT AN EQUITY LENS. 

Emotions and social connections drive learning. In that sense, social and emotional learning is ultimately about ensuring students' preparedness and ability to learn; all students deserve that fair chance. Implementing high-quality and evidence-based social and emotional learning experiences is a key step toward equity in your school or district community. Taking it a step further, social and emotional learning experiences themselves should be designed with equity and access in mind. iThrive's tools are designed to be representative of and accessible to diverse learners in line with our commitment to equity and universal design for learning principles. Gabbrielle Rappolt-Schlichtmann, an internationally recognized expert in learning science and accessible learning, calls our offerings, "the most innovative, integrated social and emotional learning work I've seen in the high school space."

Social and emotional learning opportunities tend to teens' whole selves. They help young people look inward and deepen their ability to know themselves, name their needs, regulate their feelings and behaviors, and embrace others with empathy and curiosity. Committing to these three practices to support social and emotional learning efforts will meaningfully move school communities toward helping students develop core skills and competencies that support their mental health and emotional resilience, setting them up for thriving far beyond school walls.

How Are We Teaching Teens to Prepare for and Respond to Natural Disasters?

By iThrive Games

2021 saw a record number of catastrophic natural disasters and weather emergencies throughout the United States. Wildfires ravaged the West Coast, destructive flooding engulfed the East, extreme temperatures enveloped the South and Pacific Northwest, and the Atlantic hurricane season—the third-most active one in history—produced 21 storms.

The intensity and frequency of these natural disasters prompt important questions about disaster preparedness—what can we do to ensure our safety and the wellbeing of our communities in times of crisis? We think the answer must enlist the creativity and perspectives of young people, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) agrees. They view young people as "positive influencers" uniquely capable of bringing the message of preparedness home to their families. Like FEMA, we believe that equipping young people with emergency management skills is a crucial part of engaging whole communities. Together, we're creating a new iThrive Sim scenario that strengthens teens' emergency preparedness through play.

The new hands-on learning experience, designed in partnership with Federal Emergency Management Agency Region VIII, will be hosted on the award-winning iThrive Sim platform, which uniquely merges tech, role-play, social and emotional learning, and online gameplay to deeply engage teens with rich storylines and with core content. The resulting role-playing simulation scenario will help FEMA increase access to training opportunities and better reach young people living in underserved and rural communities.

"While nothing highlights the importance of emergency preparedness quite as well as the visceral experience of a natural disaster, we don't want it to come to that," share Daniel Nyquist and Stephanie Poore from FEMA Region VIII. "An engaging simulation is a fantastic tool for laying down the mental pathways we need to activate in times of crisis. That's why we are thrilled to be designing a disaster preparedness simulation with the iThrive team. iThrive's unique co-design approach is illuminating how to mobilize young people's creativity and distinct strengths in service of building mindsets and skills needed for resiliency across disaster preparedness, response, and recovery."

A core principle of iThrive's co-design process is involving teens in the development of products, programs, and services that seek to engage them. As we work with FEMA to create this new tool for Region VIII, which serves 29 Tribal Nations, Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming, we've been in community with teens from those states to gauge their needs and weave their input into each step of the game design process. An initial co-design workshop with 15- and 16-year old teens surfaced themes that were top-of-mind for them, including ensuring the safety of pets, coordinating resources, trusting experts, and cultivating the emotional ability to cope with disasters. These themes are actionable insights that will inform the game's content and ensure what we create is relevant, memorable, and meaningful for teens.

How Are We Teaching Teens to Prepare for and Respond to Natural Disasters?

A snapshot of a Google Jamboard from a recent brainstorming session with teens featuring their responses.

As we work through the game development process, the wisdom of the teens we're working with continues to be both instructive and inspirational. "Teens never cease to impress me with their generosity, openness, and vulnerability when sharing about difficult topics—they get right to the heart of the issue with self-awareness and a solution-focused drive," shares Jane Lee, Senior Director of Operations and Mental Health at iThrive Games. "These teens have been through a remarkably challenging time, and it's only strengthened their resolve to build the skills and relationships they need to grow in their resilience." 

The iThrive Sim scenario, launching in late 2023, will support teens and their families in knowing what to do in an emergency situation, covering disaster preparedness and response. To stay updated with its launch, be sure to join our mailing list today.

A Love Letter to UNO and the Connection the Classic Card Game Creates

By iThrive Games

This post is the next in the Power of Play blog series, which shares posts from teens reflecting on the many ways games have helped them deal with life, discover possibility and purpose, and question the way things are in the world. We're excited to continue the series with the following post written and submitted by Carmen, a high school student based in Philadelphia, PA. Carmen shares a heartfelt appreciation for the classic card game UNO and its connective power.

I've played many games in my life. A lot of these games can sometimes end in arguments. Some games never even end-such as Monopoly-until everyone just gets up and walks away. But, there is one game that everyone knows and loves-a game that people of all ages, ethnicities, shapes, and colors play. That game is UNO.

Now, UNO may seem like a very basic game to choose, but it is truly amazing. I've never seen another game bring so many people from different backgrounds together. UNO is one of those games that people tend to make up their own rules for, so a group playing this game can get loud but it's all fun. Not only is UNO a good game to play to pass time, it's also very beneficial.

When playing this game it is very easy to escape the world. In UNO you have to pay attention to your hand and what the other players are throwing out. The goal of the game is to get rid of all of your cards before anyone else. The way you do this is by using either the color of the card or the number on it. There are a couple of special cards used in the game to keep it interesting, such as Reverse, Draw Two, Draw Four (which allows you to change the color), and Wild Card. 

UNO has really helped me through some hard times. It can easily change a group of strangers into a family. There have been times when I was going through things at home and a simple game of UNO with friends and family made me very happy and helped me to keep a positive spirit.

We are always looking to amplify teen voice and share their stories that attest to how games help us understand ourselves, each other, and the world around us. Have something to share? Send us your thoughts, stories, ideas, and reflections at contact@ithrivegames.org with a brief blurb about yourself to see it on our blog this year!

Refugee Students Use Game Design to Support Schools Welcoming Refugees

By iThrive Games

"What do you want teachers and other students to know, feel, say, and do when they connect with refugee students?"

On the morning of Wednesday, February 10th, members of the iThrive team posed this question to a group of experts—22 high school students from Fugees Family, a community-based school designed to meet the unique academic, social, and emotional needs of refugee students acclimating to life in the United States. What followed was two and a half days of deliberation expressed in story-sharing, collaborative thinking, imaginative drawing, and play, the insights from which will inform the creation of tabletop games that communicate an answer.

In December, Luma Mufleh, founder of the Fugees Family, approached iThrive and shared her desire to co-create with Fugees Family students resources that would highlight their expertise, communicate their experiences, build empathy, and ultimately, support schools across the nation who are accepting incoming communities of refugee youth. We knew then that game design, and the cognitive process it entails, was the way to go.

"Games are a safe way to learn about something," shares Luma. "We want to create empathy, so the games' content needs to come from those with lived experience. The games have to be through the lens of those who've experienced what it's like to be a refugee and enter a new country, school system, community, and lifestyle. And that's why it is super important to bring refugee students into the design."

iThrive's Game Design Studio program offers schools and youth-serving organizations a unique design thinking and social and emotional learning experience where teens play, analyze, reflect, connect, and design games that express their ideas and prompt change in those who play them. In bringing the Game Design Studio to Fugees students, our objective was to join the Fugees Family in their commitment to amplifying the voices of refugee youth. We committed to using what their students shared to develop games that center and highlight their courage, creativity, and resilience, and humanity.

Here's a snapshot of what was surfaced, shared, and dreamt up in our time together:

DAY 1: PLAY, IDEATION, AND MOOD BOARDS

The first day of the Game Design Studio began with play. Introductions were made during an icebreaker activity where each student and staff member shared their name and a dance move that everyone else in the group repeated and mirrored. The icebreaker was followed by an opening design activity that added new layers and variations to Rock-Paper-Scissors and invited students to name and explore mechanics that can be added and taken away to games to make the play experience more collaborative and comprehensive. Reflections on the 'Rockstar' and 'Giants-Wizards-Elves' versions of the classic game led to even more ideation as students played an array of board and card games, noting each game's components and reflecting on whether or not they'd like to incorporate them in the ones they were co-creating.

In the second part of the day, students explored how design can evoke emotions that enrich a game experience with depth and intention. After being assigned an emotion card that they were asked not to show to their peers, students grabbed a piece of paper and sketched out a scene reflective of the word on the card. Once done, students posted what they created on a board and did a gallery walk, making predictions about what mood each board communicated and noting how certain colors, imagery, patterns, and dialogue spurred visceral emotional reactions.Refugee Students Use Game Design to Support Schools In Welcoming Refugee Youth

Mood boards created by students from Fugees Family.

DAY 2: CHARACTER DESIGN, WORLD-BUILDING, AND PAPER PROTOTYPES

"What does your refugee superhero look like?"

The second day of the Fugees Family Game Design Studio kicked off with this prompt and an invitation to dream up game characters. Students thought critically about the parts of every superhero's story—their origin, transformations, life shifts, weaknesses, superpowers, and strengths—conceptualizing characters reflective of the students' own personal stories and brilliance. After drawing and documenting these characters, students were asked to draw the world that surrounds their character, one that encourages them to step into and stay in their full power.

Refugee Students Use Game Design to Support Schools In Welcoming Refugee Youth

Worlds and characters designed by students from Fugees Family.

With worlds and characters in hand, students reflected on a critical question: "If your superhero was stripped of their superpowers and taken from the world that supports their thriving and special abilities, what could empower them? What could discourage them?" Pulling from both their lived experiences and imaginations, students, working in groups, began to map out the attitudes, actions, and behaviors they associate with a genuinely welcoming environment along with the ones they see as othering and isolating. By the end of the first part of the day, together, students had created 100+ cards with insights that will be incorporated into future games and learning tools to support the work of Fugees Family.

The remainder of the day was dedicated to paper prototyping and playtesting. On a game board template, students worked in groups to assemble games that centered and used the cards they made and behaviors they mapped. In brainstorming together, students laid out their game's learning objectives, mechanics, rules, and win and loss states. The iterative process of playtesting their games with others and then fine-tuning them based on observations and feedback led to the development of five paper prototypes with components that will be incorporated into the final games.

DAY 3: PLAYTESTING, STORY-SHARING, AND LIFE MAPS

A common thread in each of the five prototypes developed by the designers on Day 2 was a desire to create a gameplay experience that helped teachers and students—refugee and non-refugee students—learn more about each other. On the morning of the last day of the Game Design Studio, students built on this throughline. Working in pairs, they drafted questions and conversation starters on index cards. Once done, they swapped decks with another team of student designers and playtested their questions, ensuring they were all accessible, welcoming, and connection-centered questions. By noon, students had compiled over 200 conversation starters that will be shared in a future game.

The last few hours at Camp Twin Lakes were full of personal stories and reflections on what refugees leave behind, what they encounter on their way to refuge, and what life is like when they arrive. After Luma shared her grandparents' story of fleeing Syria during the Assad regime, students, gathered in a circle, used it as a springboard to dig deep into their own stories and note the similarities in their experiences. 

For the last design activity, students spent time outdoors sketching out a life map that outlined the emotional journey of their lives so far. These maps, along with the creations and ideas generated up until then, will inspire a suite of games for teachers and non-refugee students that will support the welcoming of refugee youth who, as one student shared, "just want to be treated as human beings." As students and staff loaded onto the Fugees Family buses and left the camp, we were all reminded of what can come from co-creation and the role it plays in imagining new solutions.

"When we desire to imagine what a better future can be and needs to be, there's no one better to imagine and co-create with than teens," shared Susan E. Rivers, Executive Director and Chief Scientist at iThrive Games. "The teens from Fugees Family are the experts and the ultimate design partners in designing the tools schools and communities need to welcome families who have been forced to flee their countries. These teen designers bravely and candidly brought their lived experiences and expertise to Game Design Studio with the goal of helping schools offer safe and supportive and empowering environments for all students, including refugees. The schools they imagine are ones where all students—refugees and non-refugees—feel cared for and respected, where shared humanity is the connective tissue."       

The Fugees Family model, centered in soccer, encourages every student to work as a team member to support collective thriving and well-being on and off the field. We see the tabletop games that will be generated from this Game Design Studio session with Fugees Family students as an extension of that model. The students' genius and honesty will lead the way for better support of refugee students and help schools get better at togetherness. Sign up for our mailing list today to be one of the first people notified when the games launch.

To learn more about the Fugees Family and their mission to advance educational justice for refugee and immigrant youth, visit their website at www.fugeesfamily.org

iThrive’s 2021 Annual Report Celebrates Teen Genius, Community, and Play

By iThrive Games

Connection brings healing the same way co-creation brings innovation—through intention.

In 2021, we intentionally leaned into both, connecting with teens, educators, game developers, university partners, museums, and youth-serving organizations across the globe to co-design meaningful learning experiences that enlist the power of play to support teen thriving.

True to our mission and vision, we actively sought partners who want to engage young people in their genius and support them in developing the social and emotional skills to be in the world they will one day inherit with both empathy and curiosity. Bridging our partners' subject matter expertise with our co-design approach ensured that teen voice remained at the center of every tool, experience, and resource that sought to engage them. Our 2021 Annual Report, Building Community In Service of Teen Thriving, highlights all that we co-created, refined, and shared last year. Here are a some of the report's highlights:

  • Our commitment to knowledge-building and knowledge-sharing brought us to conferences where we connected, learned from, and shared with game designers, researchers, educators, administrators, policymakers, and other intersectional experts across the globe.
  • iThrive Sim, our award-winning ed tech tool that hosts immersive civic learning experiences, expanded with two new role-playing simulation scenarios: Leading Through Crisis and Follow the Facts, both of which were created with guidance and input from students, teachers, and subject matter experts.
  • In May, we launched iThrive Curriculum's third game-based learning unit, A Moment in Time, an eight-lesson social and emotional learning experience that pairs with the mobile game Florence and supports teens in reflecting on relationships, grief, loss, and life shifts.
  • Working in partnership with iThrive, youth designers at the SEED Institute created and launched The Run Around, a board game that mirrors their lived experiences in the juvenile justice system, authentically communicates its harm, and advocates for structural supports capable of disrupting it. Since launching, The Run Around has garnered press in The Boston Globe and won gold at Serious Games' 2021 Serious Play Awards.
  • Working with High Resolves Group and Rise, an initiative of Schmidt Futures, we have been working on curating transformative educational experiences and making them widely available through Symphony, a new online tool that supports student-centered and self-directed learning.

An all-of-us approach is needed in supporting youth as they navigate the complex challenges of this time. A special thank you to every teen, educator, and collaborator who connected with us in 2021 and joined us in our commitment to creating learning environments and shared spaces that ignite and value the potential of young people. 

READ OUR 2021 ANNUAL REPORT

Teen Mental Health: Five Tips for Making the Most of Your Social Media Use

By iThrive Games

This post is the next in our series, Supporting Teen Mental Health, which shares tools and insights that support youth-serving adults in showing up for teens in this moment of need. Click here to read the first post in the series about mindfully managing difficult emotions.

Social media use gets a bad rap, and there are certainly reasons for caution. As shared in the U.S. Surgeon General Advisory's recent report on teen mental health, in 2020, 81% of 14- to 22-year-olds said they used social media either "daily" or "almost constantly" and in some circumstances social media use has been linked to poor mental health outcomes.

These findings may be alarming to adults who care about young people and want to protect them online, but as one teen shared with us, "To a high schooler, representation on social media is a huge deal...they don't want authority stepping into their fun zone." Even though guidance and support can be helpful, adults often lead with fear and hammer on the dangers of social media without identifying the opportunities. Yes, we all can strive to be intentional in our use of social media. Adults can model that intentionality. Adults also can reframe social media as one important tool young people and adults can use to support things that matter to them. 

ACTIVE SOCIAL MEDIA USE VS. PASSIVE SOCIAL MEDIA USE

How well social media connects or isolates us depends partly on the behaviors we embody while using it. The Advisory reports on an important distinction between passive and active social media use, highlighting how healthier the latter is. 

An active social media user uses its platforms to enrich and simulate real life. They use social media to connect, share and talk to the people they know, and actively engage with communities that offer new perspectives or that share their interests and hobbies. On the other hand, a passive user does not directly engage with others on social media platforms. Instead of actively interacting with others, they wait for content to come to them. Research shows that passive use of social media induces feelings of isolation, sadness, and depression often spurred by viewing the lives of others. If we're all aware of the behaviors that support more positive and healthier experiences on social media, we know which usage patterns to strive for whenever we're online.

HOW TO USE SOCIAL MEDIA ACTIVELY AND MAKE THE MOST OF IT

We spoke to a few of the teens we've worked with to co-create learning experiences for high school classrooms and asked about how they engage with and on social media. Their answers point to how social media, when reframed as a relevant tool for teens and when used actively, supports self-regulation and social connection along with the exploration of self, emotions, thoughts, and interests. Whether you're a teen or an adult, these five tips can help you make the most of social media use so you can post and peruse with purpose:

1. SET YOUR INTENTION.

Why are you going on this social media platform right now? What are you looking for or hoping to feel? If it's simply to escape and avoid anything heavy for a little while, that's valid! Since these platforms are designed to pull you in and keep you on as long as possible, just notice without judgment when your use is drifting from your initial intention and take a pause to bring yourself back to it.

2. CONSIDER SOCIAL MEDIA USE AS ONE PART OF A HEALTHY MENTAL DIET.

Social media use can promote connection and contribute to mental and emotional health when used mindfully and in balance with other healthy behaviors like sleeping enough (7-9 hours for adults, 8-10 for teens), keeping your body moving, spending time with others in person, taking time to reflect on who you are and what you want, and more. Over a few days or weeks, notice what portion of your mental health "plate" social media takes up, and look for opportunities to continue to fine-tune your best balance.

3. CREATE AND EXPRESS.

Especially for teens, social media is a great place to make content and express the many aspects of a dynamic personal identity. Try your hand at making up a dance, sharing artwork, or narrating an experience that reflects who you are and what you care about. You can also make it a point to actively appreciate content you love that others create, like by adding your comments and reactions. This can be a good first step if you typically spend your time online consuming others' content without deeper engagement.

4. FIND YOUR PEOPLE.

Social media platforms connect us to the wider world. What a fantastic opportunity to both expand our perspectives and find others who help us to feel a sense of belonging. For teens, especially those struggling to find acceptance at home or in school for various reasons, reaching out for support on social media can be a lifeline. Search for (or create!) a group around a special interest. Request to join if the group is private, and then introduce yourself to get a conversation and connection started.

5. MAKE A DIFFERENCE.

Now more than ever, social media is a platform that can ignite support for causes that better the world. Teens are so often at the forefront of changes like these. To really level-up your social media use, start an online petition or relief fund and share it with your friends and followers, or look for opportunities others have initiated where you can lend your voice, time, and talents. 

Social media offers meaningful opportunities and can be a sacred "fun zone" for teens. If you're an adult who cares about teens, reinforce those meaningful opportunities by highlighting them when you notice them. If you're a teen, consider sharing with the adults in your life about what social media allows you to do for your mental health and what intentional use looks and feels like to you. 

At iThrive, we are building engaging learning experiences where teens can experiment without judgment with different ways to express themselves and connect empathically with others. To stay up-to-date on our offerings and the latest posts in the Supporting Teen Mental Health series, sign up for our mailing list today.

Join iThrive’s Teen Advisory Council and Co-Design Exciting Gaming Experiences

By iThrive Games

Do you love playing games? Have you dreamt of creating a few? If you said yes, then we need you on iThrive Games' Teen Advisory Council.

Teens tell us all the time how games help them connect with friends, de-stress, strategize take-overs of new worlds, feel a sense of belonging, inspire new ways to learn, and so much more. At iThrive, we love games for all these reasons too, and our mission is to use them to make the world a better place. 

We have found that our game designs are better when we design them with teens. Teens challenge us, inspire us, and offer world views and perspectives that we admire and appreciate. 

We are launching a Teen Advisory Council and are looking for teens who love games and believe that game design and gameplay can make the world a better place. Members of iThrive Games' Teen Advisory Council are high school students—ages 13-17— who want to:

  • Brainstorm, co-design, and test new games and share feedback with game writers, game designers, and our game development team
  • Brainstorm new game designs and meaningful, immersive game-based learning experiences with us
  • Use their voice in writings, recordings, or designs to share their point of view and experiences about what teens need most right now on topics that may range from game reviews, new game designs, learning, wellness, and more

All members must be between the ages of 13 and 17. Members will serve for a one-year term (February 24, 2022 to February 24, 2023) with an option to renew and will receive a monthly stipend ($150/month).  Each month, we will ask you to engage with us on different activities which may include: 

  • Co-designing and testing new games or courses 
  • Providing feedback on design or content ideas for our games or courses
  • Completing brief surveys to share your ideas and opinions 
  • Attending a virtual meeting with members of the Teen Advisory Council  

We expect that monthly activities will take no more than 6-8 hours.

Applications to join the iThrive Games' Teen Advisory Council have been closed. Follow us on Facebook or Twitter for future updates and opportunities to beta test and consult on games.

Teen Mental Health: Use This 2-Min. Exercise When Difficult Emotions Surface

By iThrive Games

Unprecedented times come with unprecedented challenges, and the ones that today's young people face are tough to navigate. The data shared in the U.S. Surgeon General's Advisory on Protecting Youth Mental Health confirms this. National surveys show that one in three high school students experiences persistent sadness or hopelessness. The world-shifting consequences of an ongoing pandemic coupled with the big emotions that accompany adolescence make our collective need to support teen mental health and well-being both urgent and necessary. 

INTRODUCING THE SUPPORTING TEEN MENTAL HEALTH SERIES

The prevalence of mental health challenges amongst youth requires an all-of-society effort to facilitate the individual and structural changes needed to support and protect teen thriving. Over the next few months, we'll be sharing vetted tools and actionable insights as part of a new five-post blog post series titled, Supporting Teen Mental Health. Mapping back to the U.S. Surgeon General's recommendations, each post will feature helpful tips and resources designed to support all youth-serving adults in showing up for teens in this moment of need. 

To kick off the Supporting Teen Mental Health series, here's a quick and effective exercise that can be used and shared with teens (and adults!) to support them in getting grounded when big emotions surface.

PAUSE-BREATHE-NAME: A 2-MINUTE GROUNDING EXERCISE

Whether you're a teen or an adult, chances are you've had moments, shifts, and shocks in life that have brought up strong emotions. In those moments, it can be difficult to regulate those feelings. Pause-Breathe-Name is a quick exercise that can help us manage:

Pause: Start by noticing that a strong feeling has shown up for you and allowing yourself to take a pause before your next word or action.

Breathe: Next, take a couple of breaths. Allow your exhale to be longer than your inhale. This will help to calm your nervous system. As you breathe, try to notice where the strong feeling is showing up in your body. We often feel sadness in our throat, fear in our belly, and anger in our upper back, neck, and jaw. Joy tends to show up all over.

Name: Finally, work on naming the feeling in your head or out loud before returning to what you were doing. The act of naming emotions, especially the more unpleasant ones, actually helps lessen the intensity of those feelings. 

This exercise is part of the many social and emotional learning activities in our iThrive Sim role-playing simulation experiences. Students have shared that this exercise has helped them acknowledge moments of discomfort, frustration, and uneasiness they felt while playing as their character, and prepared them to  unpack those moments with their classmates. These skills are needed when we have difficult conversations, and practicing these skills helps to strengthen them. 

You can use the Pause-Breathe-Name exercise to ground yourself in times of stress and to name the feelings showing up in your body in those moments. What are some other exercises and practices you turn to to get grounded in times of stress? Share with us at contact@ithrivegames.org and stay updated on the latest in the Supporting Teen Mental Health blog series by joining our mailing list today

Leveling Up: How Playing Video Games Helped Me Find Passion and Purpose

By iThrive Games

Games have the power to transport us to new worlds where we can safely explore new possibilities and perspectives. They delight us, challenge us, calm us, frustrate us, connect us, excite us, and invite us to uncover new ways of doing and being. Anyone who's played a game, be it digital or tabletop, knows this firsthand.

At iThrive Games, we see springboards for transformation in play's social and emotional value. We believe that when the emotions games evoke are recruited for learning, the learning that happens goes deeper and lasts longer. We champion play as a constructive avenue for academic, social, and emotional growth, co-designing game-based learning experiences with high school students and teachers that leverage the power of play and support teen thriving.

Last year, we launched the Power of Play, a blog series that shared posts from teens reflecting on the many ways games have helped them deal with life, discover possibility and purpose, and question the way things are in the world. We're excited to resume the series this year with the following post from avid gamer Jacob Rivers, an incoming college freshman, who shares a heartfelt story about how video games supported his self-discovery and becoming, preparing him for his next level in life.

"Jake, enough with the video games and get your work done," a phrase I have heard over and over again since elementary school. Being diagnosed with ADD at a young age, school never came easy to me. However, when I opened my Nintendo DS for Christmas, instantly, I was fascinated playing just about any game I could get my hands on, and it helped me become more focused. Once the bus had dropped me off from school, I would run up to my room and immediately play video games. As school got harder and I was about to enter middle school, video games became a sense of escapism for me.

Middle school can be difficult, especially for me who had just moved to a new town and started a new school. Coming from a large city to a small town where I only knew three people was daunting. Although joining a baseball league in sixth grade alleviated the apprehension, I continued to rely on video games. It was around this time that I began to watch Youtubers to learn more and improve my skills. Once I noticed myself getting better, I started to explore the platform of multiplayer. As I transitioned into high school, I became more competitive, and my passion for video games increased.

I was fortunate enough to sign up for an elective as a freshman called App Inventor. It was this class that sparked my interest to one day make my own video game. Knowing what kids enjoy as entertainment and creating something on my own felt like an achievement I could accomplish, and it motivated me even more. Every chance I had, I would take classes to improve my knowledge in the field I wanted to pursue. During sophomore year, one of my friends built his own computer, and this intrigued me. After I had turned sixteen, I got a job to save up the money to make this project happen. It took a lot of time and research to learn how to build a computer and have all the necessary parts. When I completed it, I felt proud, and I knew this was only the beginning of my abilities with computers. As the pandemic hit, I took a leave of absence from work; this caused me to isolate myself from society, and I became more involved with the gaming aspect. When junior year rolled around, I returned back to work. A month later, I was hit by a car, and fortunately enough, I only broke my wrist. Even with this setback, I maintained good grades, and the gaming continued to keep me in check.

As I finish my senior year, I will have the opportunity to take an online coding class where I will learn how to use Python, Java, and C++. This will add to my expertise and give me a head start for what I wish to pursue in college. Looking back at my younger self coping with ADD, I've realized how much I have grown. With gaming, my struggles of focusing in school lessened. With my wish to major in Game Design, I hope one day to make a game not just for amusement but to help kids who have fought with similar learning disabilities like me. I have finally completed this "level" in my life. Now, it's time to start the next one.


We are always looking to amplify teen voice and share their stories that attest to how games help us understand ourselves, each other, and the world around us. Have something to share? Send us your thoughts, stories, ideas, and reflections at contact@ithrivegames.org with a brief blurb about yourself to see it on our blog this year!

Vol. 3 of Journal of Games, Self, & Society Examines How Games Transform Us

By iThrive Games

BOSTONJanuary 6, 2022. The global COVID-19 pandemic marked a time of unprecedented social isolation. With it came an uncovering of new ways of doing and being, ones that met our social and emotional need for safe but hearty connection. Amid stay-at-home orders, games played an integral role in cultivating spaces for people to gather, connect, learn, collaborate, and wander. The newest volume of the Journal of Games, Self, & Society examines the ways play supports this level of connection in young people at a crucial time, highlighting the ways games accompany and ignite transformation in how we understand ourselves, others, and society.

Produced by iThrive Games Foundation, published through ETC Press, and guest-edited by Claudia-Santi F. Fernandes and Grace Collins, Volume 3 of the Journal for Games, Self, & Society features novel insights into gaming behaviors that emerged during the pandemic. Finja Walsdorff, Claudius Clüver, and Max Kanderske share a fascinating analysis of how 'tend-and-befriend' games like Animal Crossing: New Horizons, a game that soared in popularity in 2020, respond to human needs and behaviors in times of uncertainty and crisis. 

Vol. 3 of the Journal also features a valuable case study for designers looking to create games that highlight systems of harm and erasure, and invoke an empathy capable of disrupting it. In an in-depth retrospective on the design choices made while creating Resilience—a game that centers the stories and plight of refugees, Drexel University's Lily Lauben, Justin Roszko, Alex Gallegos, and Zach Perry share how they cultivated an understanding of refugees' lived experiences that are not their own to create a transformative gameplay experience.

In addition to these two articles, Volume 3 of the Journal of Games, Self, & Society features two book excerpts from some of the most recent scholarship on game-based learning. In an excerpt from Gaming SEL: Games as Transformational to Social and Emotional Learning, Matthew Farber Ed.D discusses the emotions evoked by play, and how educators can leverage them to support growth and connection. The introductory excerpt of Karen Schrier Ed.D's We the Gamers: How Games Teach Ethics and Civics included in this volume of the Journal explores how games supported humanity and connection amid social distancing, and how they encourage teen civic engagement and responsible decision-making.

The Journal ends with an announcement of the Games + Learning + Society (GLS) Conference's return in 2022 and a call for proposals from all who are interested in games and their contribution to cognitive/behavioral change, social movements, sustainability, and joy. 

The Journal's editor-in-chief, Susan Rivers, Ph.D., who is also the Executive Director and Chief Scientist at iThrive Games Foundation, says that she hopes the insights featured in this volume support the creation of compelling games and game-based learning experiences for teens that recruit emotions to supercharge learning.

"This volume of the Journal of Games, Self, & Society emerged during the COVID pandemic," she shares. "The scholarship and writing included reflects novel games and design approaches that reflect this moment and inspire new ways for connection, learning, and transformation." 

 

About the Journal
The Journal of Games, Self, & Society (JGSS) is a peer-reviewed journal created and edited by iThrive Games Foundation and published by ETC Press. The journal highlights work focused on how games, game design, and gameplay contribute to a deeper understanding of learning, health, and humanity. It was created to foster interdisciplinary research, conversation, and community around game studies and games-related scholarship. Scholars from all disciplines are encouraged to participate.

About iThrive Games
iThrive Games Foundation prepares teens to thrive by meeting them where they are and working in partnership towards a world where all have the voice, choice, and agency to reach their full potential. We use games and game design to equip teens with the social and emotional skills they need to be healthy and resilient, tools to support and protect their mental health and well-being, systems thinking they need to recognize inequity, and meaningful opportunities to imagine and design a better world.

Media Contact
Eghosa Asemota
Manager of Marketing, iThrive Games Foundation
eghosa.asemota[at]ithrivegames.org

2021 Was a Year of Co-Creation, Collaborative Learning, and Play

By iThrive Games

Whenever we are in connection, we learn about ourselves and each other. We entered 2021 with this belief in mind, seeking community with teens and educators to fully understand their challenges, desires, and needs in the classroom and beyond. From our commitment to knowledge-building came co-creation, and the development of new meaningful and collaborative learning experiences that resonate with young people, support their social and emotional development, and meet them where they are through play.

We were happy to release iThrive Curriculum: A Moment in Time, grow iThrive Sim's library with two new scenarios, Follow the Facts and Leading Through Crisis, and launch the Game Design Studio Toolkit after five years of collaboration. After equity reviews of Sam's Journey and Museum of Me, we updated both game-based learning units to include more means of engagement, representation, and action/expression and ensure all learners feel valued, seen, and supported in their genius. At the SEED Institute, we pressed forward in our partnership with Transition HOPE and engaged youth with lived experiences in the cradle-to-prison pipeline via game design, which led to the launch of The RunAround, a board game that highlights the hardships that lie in the journey from 'Maximum Security' to 'Home,' and opportunities to disrupt and dismantle them.

This year, we worked to provide teens with transformative opportunities to see possibilities they never before imagined, open up their thinking about themselves, each other, and the world, and build essential social and emotional skills that support them in stepping fully into their genius. Whether you downloaded an iThrive Curriculum unit, brought an iThrive Sim role-playing simulation scenario to your classroom, or read an article we shared, we appreciate you for the many ways you engaged with us this year. Below is a snapshot of the top five blog posts our readers viewed the most this year:

1. Teens Have Big Emotions. How Can We Help HS Students Navigate Them?: A rapidly developing brain in an increasingly complex world makes for big emotions. How can we help teens cope with them? HS educator and co-author of our game-based learning unit iThrive Curriculum: A Moment in Time Lauren Geschel shares: "recognize them as individuals," "validate their feelings," and "help them be self-aware and deliberate." 

2. High School Teachers, Share Your Feedback on the New, Improved iThrive Sim: Read about iThrive Sim's teacher-friendly interface, a feature recently added to the award-winning tool to support high school educators in customizing, facilitating, and steering iThrive Sim's role-playing simulation scenarios in a way that best meets their students' social, and emotional needs. 

3. Game-Based Learning Reads: Three Books That Will Make You a GBL Believer: With game-based learning, teachers use play to engage their students in their own learning, embracing student agency over student compliance. Read what seasoned educators and game-based learning experts Matthew Farber, Kat Schrier, and David Seelow say about it in this aggregate book review of their latest reads.

4. Burgeoning Journalists Try on Their Roles in New Media Literacy Game: In this digital age, more data is produced in a second than can be consumed in a lifetime. Our new role-playing simulation game iThrive Sim: Follow the Facts centers media literacy and nurtures players' ability to analyze, evaluate, and report on that data. Read what playing it did for two dozen high school students and burgeoning journalists at the Arizona State University's Summer Journalism Institute. 

5. Use this SEL Activity to Help Your Students Process Pandemic Grief and Loss: For teens, grief and loss have been palpable both personally and collectively over the last two years. This social-emotional learning activity invites your students to unpack and process their experiences of these emotions during the pandemic.

As the year winds down, we hope you continue prioritizing connection and wellness throughout the holiday season. Stay connected with us next year by signing up for our monthly newsletter, stocked with updates on our game-based learning products along with exclusive opportunities to try them with your students. Here's to more community, co-creation, and play in 2022.

iThrive Sim Helps Homeschoolers Connect And Collaborate With Play

By iThrive Games

iThrive Sim's first role-playing scenario launched in late 2020, a year that inspired us to elevate and prioritize human connection, and prompted new ways of fostering it. At the time, we heard educators voice a desire for resources that not only met the logistical needs of remote learning but also tended to the social and emotional needs of their students navigating a world of great uncertainty. Responding to this, we developed iThrive Sim: Lives in Balance in partnership with teens, teachers, and the makers of the Situation Room Experience, creating an immersive experience that supported new ways of connecting and engaging with others in learning spaces and beyond. Since launching, over 3,000 people have played an iThrive Sim scenario, activating and nurturing their social and emotional skills in a one-of-a-kind collaborative gaming experience awarded for its innovation and responsiveness.

Educators who've brought iThrive Sim to their in-person or virtual classrooms know firsthand how these civic learning experiences uniquely support engagement, connection, and social and emotional learning through play. Michael Hilbert, co-director of Cupola Academy, a nonprofit that offers weekly collaborative programs for homeschooled students, brought iThrive Sim to two cohorts of teens earlier this year. In the interview that follows, Michael shares how the tool aligns with Cupola Academy's belief in the value of collaboration and curiosity, and supports the learners they serve in embodying and exercising it.

Q: What was your experience using iThrive Sim with your homeschooled students? 

My group played Lives in Balance and Leading Through Crisis. My students were very interested in Leading Through Crisis because when we played the simulation, states were actively discussing [the applicability of the 25th Amendment]. The simulation was unfolding in front of them in the news every day, and they enjoyed being able to play out a very contemporary issue. They enjoyed Lives in Balance because of the application of the Constitution to everyday lifeit helped to drive home the point that the Constitution is a living document.

Q: How easy was it to use iThrive Sim? What resources did you find particularly useful?

As a group facilitator, I really appreciated the support materials that are available to students, such as the text of the amendments addressed in the simulations. [iThrive Sim] was very easy to use and supported student play though they were not all in the same physical location. The interface is very intuitive for young people, so the amount of tech support needed was very minimalthis makes implementation with homeschoolers very easy. 

Q: One throughline in the feedback we get from educators who've used iThrive Sim is the joy that comes from witnessing their students work collaboratively to address the crises in each scenario. From what you observed, how did the experience support connection?

I believe that iThrive Sim is a component of what we strive to achieve in all our programming — creating community and connection. The simulation provides a shared experience that nurtures the group's sense of community. I think that participating in the simulation helped them feel more connected because it creates situations where young people are given responsibility for a role, asked to participate in a fun and engaging way, and end up sharing values and beliefs with others (which is how you build relationships).

Q: Overall, how did the iThrive Sim experience support your engagement approach with homeschoolers? How did it respond to your student(s) learning style(s)? 

I believe that the online simulation was an excellent tool for interactive learners. The iThrive Sim platform allowed me to have the freedom to be present in the simulation, take notes on the decision-making process, and have content questions that lead to richer reflection and a complete learning experience.

Q: At iThrive, we like to say that civics is social and emotional, meaning that showing up for ourselves, our communities, and in the world requires social and emotional skills that support us in doing so with care, tact, and empathy. Were there any instances that you observed while your students were playing that attests to this? What do you hope your students take away from their gameplay experience?

Going through the simulations emphasized the difficulty in adhering to a respectful, empathetic process when under challenging time frames to make decisions. My students noted in both situations that they frequently ran out of time to make challenging decisions while having everyone's opinion fully heard, a very frequent situation with governing bodies. One of the opportunities for my groups was initiating a process-conscious approach for decision-making before they entered the next scenario. The reflection element of these exercises is so vital for the social and emotional growth of young people.

Sign up for our mailing list for exclusive opportunities to play and test new iThrive Sim role-playing scenarios. Learn more about iThrive Sim here.

Let’s Start Calling Social & Emotional Skills What They Are—Essential Skills

By iThrive Games

Before you read this article, take a look at your news feed.

You are more than likely to encounter an event or sentiment that attests to the increasingly polarizing and often unsettling world we live in and navigate. A recent survey published by USA Today shows that roughly half of Americans (48%) predict more destructive disagreements over the next ten years, but 93% say it's vital to reduce the country's current divides. How can we move toward realizing this unity amidst enduring divisiveness? We must build social and emotional skills. Social and emotional skills help us get better at togetherness. They are not 'soft'; they are essential, and nurturing them supports us in moving toward the more harmonious, just, and loving future we crave.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) refers to social and emotional skills as "weapons against the greatest threats of our time: ignorance - the closed mind; hate - the closed heart; and fear - the enemy of agency." Social and emotional skills support us in taking an honest look at ourselves, really seeing each other, working together to find solutions to the complex challenges we face, and then persevering in enacting those solutions. Within education, thoughtful and equitable attention to social and emotional skills demonstrates a real commitment to equity more broadly; we can't expect equal outcomes unless we ensure all students are equally ready to learn in the first place. Social and emotional skills are undoubtedly critical to this readiness.

For this generation of teens especially, social and emotional skills are not just important; they are necessary. Social and emotional learning is the process of building and practicing social and emotional skills in schools. At iThrive, we embed this process in the game-based tools we create for and with teens, and use the connective and reflection-prompting power of play to build their social and emotional skills. Our iThrive Curriculum units, Museum of Me, Sam's Journey, and A Moment in Time, pair standard-aligned lesson plans with immersive video games to create learning experiences relevant to teens in high school English classes. These game-based learning experiences use digital media to encourage them to explore their identity, their emotional landscape, and how they navigate social relationships. Our civics-centered iThrive Sim games, Lives in Balance, Leading Through Crisis, and Follow the Facts, engage teens not just by supporting their understanding of the mechanics of government but of themselves, their identities, values, and communities. Each of these online simulations presents an opportunity to try on new perspectives, embody constructive decision-making techniques through role-play, and reflect deeply on how decision-making affects others.

These offerings for high school classrooms and youth-centered spaces were designed to encourage teens to develop the social and emotional resources that enable them to think for themselves and join others, with both empathy and curiosity, in learning, building, and imagining a better world. They also support teens and the adults they share space with in understanding that social and emotional skills are relevant to all subjects and aspects of life. The language we use to describe and advocate for social and emotional learning should reflect its standing as an essential part of the future we're all striving to attain—one that empowers us to live, work and thrive collaboratively, resiliently, and productively. Raising SEL's profile from that of a 'soft skill' to an educational and humanistic priority helps get us there.

What Teaching Hard History Does for Teens’ Social and Emotional Learning

By iThrive Games

Teaching hard history helps students understand the implications of our past and their connections to our present. With this understanding, students are better positioned to confront future challenges and are primed to embody the social and emotional competencies that support them in being engaged, informed, and responsible members of society. 

At iThrive, we're committed to creating civic learning contexts that equip teens with the curiosity, practical experience, and social and emotional learning skills to handle and navigate the complex world we live in. Our iThrive Sim online role-playing simulation games, for example, invite high school students to step into the role of government officials tasked with making high-stake decisions that impact the public in profound ways. As students collaborate to analyze data and sources and chart a path forward in each of iThrive Sim's content-rich scenarios, they practice how to navigate sensitive themes and challenging issues in a healthy, curious, and thoughtful way.

On Wednesday, November 17 at 6 pm EST, we're excited to join forces with Facing History and Ourselves and Generation Citizen at Composer's "Teaching Tough History Through Civics & Social Emotional Learning" webinar to discuss strategies that support the integration of civic and social-emotional learning into history lessons that address tough themes and topics.

Teaching Tough History Through Civics & Social Emotional Learning

Register to join Composer's "Teaching Tough History Through Civics & Social Emotional Learning" webinar here.

There, our Senior Director of Learning, Michelle Bertoli, will highlight some of the social and emotional skill-building opportunities we've embedded in all of iThrive Sim's role-playing scenarios. Attendees will also learn from Dr. Shawn Clybor, who'll share how Composer, an award-winning curriculum design tool, helps teachers like him create dynamic learning experiences that prepare students for transformative civic engagement and meaningful civic action.

When teens who've played an iThrive Sim scenario share that the experience prepares them for "real-life situations and issues" or prompts them to reflect on what "we're all collectively facing, and why and how we should do a certain task," we're reminded of how teaching hard history supports them in showing up for themselves, their communities, and the world

At the individual level, teaching hard history topics enables them to see themselves as part of the larger historical narrative of our communities, country, and society. This supports students in building the self-awareness to challenge their assumptions, define their values, and figure out where things they love and are skilled at overlap with a need in the world. At the community level, teens build social awareness and relationship skills that support them in developing the competence to try on others' perspectives while expressing and refining their own. In learning about heavy historical topics and events, students also develop an informed worldview along with an understanding of systems of harm and injustice. This understanding equips them with the knowledge and motivation to advocate for a more just society and make responsible decisions for themselves and the collective. 

Teaching hard history can be challenging and may raise complex emotions for learners and educators alike, but when integrated with social and emotional learning, it becomes a powerful experience for students to reflect deeply about the world around them and the world they wish to live in. We're excited to dive into this topic further at the "Teaching Tough History Through Civics & Social Emotional Learning" webinar with educators across the globe. We hope to see you there


Composer is the first digital platform to offer a comprehensive collection of resources for activating a deeper sense of civic responsibility in students. As a one-stop marketplace, Composer enables educators to access a whole ecosystem of content providers in one place. They can search for and find resources that span civics, social justice, social and emotional learning, and global competence. Composer features over 1,000 high quality learning experiences from over 35 organizations, and provides research-based tools and guidance to support educators with curriculum planning. Serving educators working with grades 6-12 in both schools and non-traditional learning environments (afterschool programs, summer camps and/or home school), Composer is free to access for educators around the world. 

New Game Design Toolkit Supports Teens in Leading Systems Change

By iThrive Games

Games are microcosms of the real world, making play and game design springboards for possibility.

At iThrive, we use games to support teens in discovering new ways of doing and being. Our approach centers on their developmental needs, wielding the power of play and emotions to deepen their civic and social and emotional learning. At the core of each tool or experience we've created for and with young people is an unwavering belief in their genius and creative potential to build and imagine a better world. The Game Design Studio Toolkit, created in collaboration with EdTogether and made possible by the generous support from the DN Batten Foundation and the William T. Grant Foundation, assists them in uncovering this within themselves, using game design to reflect, connect, ideate, and lead systems change.

The Game Design Studio Toolkit features 50+ activity guides and accompanying worksheets that merge design thinking, social justice, and social and emotional learning to support teens in exploring societal issues that they experience while thinking collaboratively and creatively about how to respond to them. As teens work through these activities together and create their own games, they engage in individual and collective reflection and action as they challenge their assumptions, redefine problems, and imagine new solutions.

"These field tested activities invite teens to consider their own expertise from their lived experience as they work to understand the systems that surround them," shares Susan E. Rivers, Executive Director and Chief Scientist of iThrive Games. "The activities tap into and build skills like self-reflection and self-expression, empathy and compassion, collaboration and critical thinking as a means to unpack the rules and structures that shape relationships with parents, teachers, and other adults in the many systems teens encounter. Game design offers an amazing, engaging way to merge systems thinking, design thinking, and social and emotional learning."

An identity-safe environment is essential to help teens feel valued, accepted, seen, and welcomed. Tips and design principles found throughout the Toolkit help adult facilitators create this and set the scene for sharing and belonging—two parts integral to co-creation.

"We know that emotion is the driver in learning and in life. It is the thing on which we base our relationships and orientation to the world," says Gabrielle Schlichtmann, Executive Director and Chief Scientist of EdTogether. "With this in mind, we designed the activities in the Game Design Studio Toolkit to fully engage teens in playing games, analyzing games, and making games. The activities tap into and foster their social and emotional skills." 

The social and emotional learning opportunities nested in each activity featured in the Game Design Studio Toolkit support the fostering of knowledge and attitudes across each of CASEL's five areas of social and emotional competence: self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, responsible decision-making, and relationship skills. Each activity prompts teens to nurture and exercise these essential skills in areas necessary for individual and collective well-being.

"As youth work together to design games and grapple with important issues, they are developing the necessary SEL skills to make change in their schools, communities, and beyond," shares Lora Henderson, a clinical psychologist, Assistant Professor at the James Madison University, and contributor to the Game Design Studio Toolkit. "We have grown accustomed to manualized social and emotional learning (SEL) programs that teachers implement in the classroom but game design offers a flexible and innovative approach that allows youth to use and further develop SEL skills while also engaging in activities that require both critical and systems thinking."

The Game Design Studio Toolkit invites young people to unpack complex social challenges and understand the human needs involved so they can imagine, create, and test games that prompt new solutions. Built across 5-years of inspiring collaboration with teens and adults across the US, we hope the Toolkit encourages and supports teens in creating the world they want to live in.

Download the complete Toolkit to bring it to the teens in your school, out-of-school program, museum, library, and summer camp today. And let us know how you are using it!

Creating ‘We’ and Restoring ‘Us’ with Civics and Social-Emotional Learning

By iThrive Games

Transformative civic engagement that truly benefits collective well-being begins and ends with our sense of community. Widening our definition of community requires empathy and connection. How do we create meaningful experiences for teens that support them in practicing this? And how do we support them in recognizing different perspectives, understanding them, and applying that understanding to pursue common goals?

Our answer to these questions lies in the immersive civic learning and social and emotional skill-building experiences we create with and for teens that enlist the connective power of play. iThrive Sim's online role-playing simulation games invite students to take on roles—such as government officials, state governors, or reporters—who must work strategically with their peers to analyze and respond to complex challenges. Collaboration, critical thinking, and connection drive each iThrive Sim game forward as teens practice regulating emotions, exercising curiosity, and making decisions that consider self, others, and the world, developing needful wisdom and practical experience in a safe space.

History, social studies, and humanities educators across the globe have used our game-based approach to civic learning to nurture the social and emotional learning competencies that support transformative civic engagement in their classrooms. In the interview below, one of our iThrive Sim users, Karalee Wong Nakatsuka, an 8th grade history teacher based in Arcadia, California, shares how vital belonging, representation, and community-building are in her approach to teaching history and how iThrive Sim helps support that approach.

Q: Tell me about your passion for civics education. What inspires you, and why do you believe civic learning is so valuable for students?

A: I believe it's very important for everyone to see themselves as part of the whole. When I was in school, I didn't see myself in history, so I wasn't as civically engaged because I didn't see myself as part of the whole. Later on, through mentors, great civics conversations, and learning history through someone who looks like me, I did start to see myself as part of the whole and where I fit into the larger picture. Every Friday, I attend History Matters with Joan Freeman, and it's really helped me to make the connections between the past, and the present, as well as to reflect on how our empathetic understanding of history helps to inform our thoughts and actions as citizens of this democracy. History and civics need to be examined empathetically because laws and rules affect people, government decisions affect people, and voting affects people. I want my students to be able to connect with the past and the present. Representation is important, both in history and in life, and I want my students to see both people who do look like them, and those who do not. I want them to know they have power, responsibility, and that they can make a difference in many small ways, not just when they are old enough to vote. Being an engaged member of society as an 8th grader can mean being nice to a 6th grader, or picking up a piece of trash. Civics needs to be tangible and inclusive, and can be as simple as someone who shows up. 

Q: When teaching civics, what have you seen work really well with students? 

A: I teach in a school district where Asian students make up about 70% of the population. Asian American history, often left out in history classrooms, really resonates with my students, for both Asian and non-Asian students. They need to see both people who look like them to connect and those who don't to understand diversity and inclusivity. I use a global lens in my teaching to help students understand that history is not just American history and decisions that we make in America don't just affect people in our country. History across the globe is intertwined, and decisions we make locally affect people all over the world. 

Q: How has iThrive Sim supported your approach to civics education and your students' civic learning?

A: I used iThrive Sim this Spring and it invited students to learn about the government by participating in a challenging, engaging simulation, where they check public opinion, examine data, negotiate, and make informed decisions. It was great to have the opportunity to do iThrive Sim with all of my classes. There was one class where the group was quite engaged and one student in particular was really taking his job seriously, thinking about how to represent his constituents. That was a really powerful moment, and a great example of the impact of civic learning. 

Q: How have you seen the impact of civics on students long-term or outside of the classroom?

A: My school is in Arcadia, a small city which is in Los Angeles County. A few years ago, there was a controversy when the city council voted to get rid of a basketball court. One council member said he didn't like "the type" of people the court was attracting. Many felt it was a racist argument and the fight to save the court reflected the city's desire to be an inclusive welcoming community for all. Many people, including myself and some of my students, went to the city council meeting where people of all ages and backgrounds spoke about the importance of the basketball court. One of my students got up to speak, basketball in hand, and in the end, the basketball court was saved. Not only was I very proud of my students, but it was a great learning experience and example of civic action.

Q: In your experience, how did civics education change during the pandemic and remote learning? Now that your school is back in person, are those changes still reflected, or are there other shifts that you are seeing? 

A: Students are certainly happy to be back. They are more engaged, and community-building is so much easier in person. When we were remote, I would always keep the chat open during virtual learning to keep the communication going, help them build respect for each other, and ensure they felt heard. Given the circumstances, it worked well, but now we have in person weekly community circles where we do check-ins and shares. There are some students who are behind, and there are subtle differences in their skills, but we are working together. I have a cube-shaped microphone that I throw around to whoever is speaking. It's a great way to literally amplify student voices and ensure their peers are listening. We all want to be heard, so I want them to feel that their voices matter. In the day-to-day, it's easy to get caught up in content and forget to create community, and forget to talk to students. There isn't always an obvious community or 'we' in America, even though we all need that. This makes it easy to 'other' people, but also all the more important to create community with students.

Use This SEL Activity to Help Your Students Explore Their COVID-19 Emotions

By iThrive Games

"A mixed bag."

When asked about the emotions they have seen expressed/felt in their classroom since returning to in-person instruction at a recent iThrive Educator Advisory Council meeting, Lauren Geschel, a HS teacher and co-creator of iThrive Curriculum: A Moment in Time, shared this response. For many educators and students, the back-to-school experience can be described in a similar way: a mixed bag of emotions—some that point to pain from what's been lost over the course of this pandemic, but also many that point to possibility in what's to come.

Tending to the emotions that come with this moment in education requires both understanding and empathy. At iThrive Games, we use play as a tool to foster better understanding of self, others, and the world in high school classrooms, crafting game-based, social and emotional learning experiences that support educators in creating connection and presence, while honoring the wholeness of the teens they teach. So, when Lauren later shared the journal writing exercise that got her HS seniors present, engaged, and reflecting on the 'mixed bag' of emotions they've experienced over the last year and a half, we knew we had to share it. 

Activity: Pandemic Shifts

Providing in-class opportunities for students to explore their emotions helps create community in the classroom. Try dedicating some time during your next class session to Pandemic Shifts, a social-emotional learning activity that supports teens in being self-aware and reflecting on the shifts they've experienced and witnessed over the last 20 months:

  • In preparation for this activity, legibly write the following five-question prompts on five large sheets of paper (one per paper), then post them throughout your classroom:
    • What was the most shocking part of the pandemic period for you?
    • What was one positive that came out of the pandemic for you personally?
    • What have you realized about yourself during this time? 
    • What do you think has changed about the world that will never go back to the way it was before the pandemic? 
    • What scares you the most about the future? 
  • Have students take out five sheets of paper. Read each of the questions above aloud, allowing two to three minutes after each for students to respond to it. Let them know that their responses can be anonymous.
  • When students are done, ask them to tape their responses under the respective question prompts posted throughout the class. Allow 10-12 minutes for students to walk the room and read their peers' responses.
  • Once students have had a chance to read through their classmates' responses, allow 10-12 minutes for reflecting together about the activity. Remind students to be respectful of their peers. Here are some sample debriefing questions:
    • How did that experience feel?
    • What are some common threads and throughlines you noticed in your classmates' responses?
    • What are some norms we can create this school year that consider these responses?

For educators who bring this activity to their classrooms, we would love to hear how it went with your students. Please share your experience with us at contact@ithrivegames.org, and be sure to stay updated with our growing library of social-emotional learning offerings by signing up for our newsletter today.

iThrive, Middlebury Institute Awarded DHS Grant for New Simulation Game

By iThrive Games

Earlier this week, iThrive Games, in a joint project with the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, was awarded one of 37 grants from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) under the Fiscal Year 2021 (FY21) Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention (TVTP) Grant Program.  

iThrive Games and the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies will work together to create a novel, game-based learning experience that educates and empowers adolescents to become more aware and more resistant to radicalization, thus building resilience within their local networks.

Our approach to role-playing simulations embeds social and emotional learning and integrates tech and online play. iThrive Sim's role-playing simulations illuminate systems in the world that can be largely invisible until a person is invited to work and improvise within them. Experiences like these can propel students' curiosity and motivation to explore new ways of interacting and making decisions that can improve dysfunctional systems, counter extremism, and produce a better world for all.

"Using games to foster belonging and connection is what we are about," said Susan E. Rivers, Ph.D., Executive Director at iThrive Games. "We are saddened by the weaponization of belonging to advance radical agendas. This project is aligned with our mission to use game-based learning to support teens in recognizing true belonging and strengthening prosocial behavior."

Since teens are highly attuned to their emotions and social status, the experiential approach of role-playing meets them right where they are developmentally. The role-playing simulation game that will be created as a result of this grant will be designed to offer students opportunities to think about and practice self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making.

Part of the work of the grant will be supporting the local community-building the capacity at the administration and school level for delivery of the game-based learning experience. 

According to a press release issued by the DHS, "The FY21 TVTP grants expand on the Department's new approach to prevention, which centers on providing local communities with evidence-based tools to help prevent violence while protecting civil rights and civil liberties and privacy rights. These grants will help local communities strengthen online and in-person prevention efforts, including by addressing early-risk factors that can lead to radicalization and violence."

High School Teachers, Share Your Feedback on the New, Improved iThrive Sim

By iThrive Games

iThrive Sim, designed to support high school educators in providing a deep civics learning experience role play through the lens of social-emotional learning, will soon be ready for teachers to facilitate! Since its debut, iThrive staff have facilitated the learning experience. We heard that educators want to be in the drivers' seat, running the simulations in a way that responds to their needs. We listened and are developing a new teacher-friendly interface for our three iThrive Sim scenarios that allows educators to run their own simulations in their in-person, virtual, or hybrid classroom.

Are you new to using iThrive Sim with your students? Each game merges online gameplay, immersive tech, and a content-rich storyline to engage HS students in a unique civic learning experience where they step into the role of leaders to make high-stakes decisions that impact the communities they represent. The new, self-guided versions of our iThrive Sim games are a great way to bring play, civics, and social-emotional learning to your high school classroom. Experience the best of our games, with the added benefits of being in the drivers' seat:

  1. Logistical Flexibility. Need an activity to engage your high school students on the spot? Want to run a simulation over multiple class periods? With self-facilitation for an iThrive Sim scenario, you'll have as much flexibility as you need. No need to schedule your classroom's Sim with a facilitator. 
  2. Customize Roles and Groups. You know your students best. Think a particular student would benefit from a challenge? Or do you have students that are extra competitive or reserved? With you as the facilitator, you will have a full range of assigning roles and groups to meet your high school students' needs best. Place them where you know they will thrive and have the best experience possible. 
  3. Engage with Your Students: Good facilitating fosters authentic engagement. When you know you're leading the discussion, you'll naturally be more engaged throughout the entire simulation and your high school students will too.
  4. Continued Support: Self-facilitating an iThrive Sim scenario does not mean you'll be totally on your own. When you sign up, you'll receive resources, checklists, prep materials, accompanying lesson plans and more, to support you in running a successful Sim for your class of high school students. Plus, our team is just an email away; we're always happy to answer any questions and provide technical support.
  5. Tie the Sim to Other Lessons: When you're in the driver's seat of an iThrive Sim scenario, you can easily reference previous lessons you've completed when relevant to the discussion and student experiences. In turn, you can challenge your high school students to draw more connections between content, resulting in a holistic learning experience. 
Interested in using an iThrive Sim scenario in your high school classroom?

We're looking for high school educators who can pilot our new self-guided version of iThrive Sim, and give us feedback on the new teacher-friendly interface and process. We know you're busy, so we are paying $100.00 for your time.  The pilot program will include:

Sign up below and we'll be in touch to get you and your high school students set up to play!

Stories Add Heart to History. This Project Uses Them to Teach About Migration.

By iThrive Games

This summer, iThrive Games, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum, Re-imagining Migration, Got History, and the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum invited educators to collaborate on Moving Stories: From Personal to Policy, a project sparked by a desire to support teachers in facilitating challenging conversations with students around topics and events in history. 

The north star of the collaboration was three-fold: 

  • To model co-creation of learning experiences that are inspiring and help students not only learn about a historical moment but also connect more deeply with their own identity, realize the connection of personal story to policy, and take away a new commitment to/plan for advancing justice through civic engagement.
  • To create model learning experiences that can help shift the historical teaching paradigm away from single-narrative content-sharing to a place- and document-based democratic pedagogy that incorporates inquiry, awe, and play to achieve deep learning on core ethical, civic, and historical concepts.
  • To expand the networks and communities of practice of some amazing educators looking for cutting-edge ways to engage students.

Over the course of the four days, participants dove into primary source materials, co-created lesson plans, and had the opportunity to listen deeply to and learn from each other about how the topic of migration touches their personal lives and family stories. 

"Migration is a theme that connects all of humanity, and that was obvious in hearing the stories of each individual who made up this learning community," said Michelle Bertoli, Senior Director of Learning at iThrive Games. "It was amazing to see everyone's unique perspective and teaching/content expertise blend into cohesive peak learning experiences, with embedded social and emotional learning opportunities, that I feel confident will engage teachers and students in new and deeper ways of teaching and learning." 

The endeavor was not without challenges, such as finding ways to approach and meaningfully use primary sources with often an abundance of language that is now considered outdated, offensive, and exclusionary. One member of the learning community challenged the group to make sure they were not promoting "learning at the expense of someone else's trauma." With migration as a sensitive topic that's intimately tied to themes of othering, marginalization, xenophobia, oppression, and violence, participants contended with questions such as "How do we approach this critical topic in a way that invites rather than shuts down emotional engagement, for whom, and to what end?"

Participants also discussed the tension between historical sources that are in themselves "neutral" and the very real experience that reading them can cause deep pain, anger, and even feelings of shame for people who belong to and identify with groups who have historically been marginalized. 

These tensions highlight the need for social and emotional skill-building to be embedded within the learning experience. 

"Both self and social awareness, especially as they relate to refining identity and building empathy, were central throughout this process," said Bertoli. "Coming to the awareness that migration touches and connects us all and that even that common experience can play out so differently for people across backgrounds and contexts was a key theme of the workshop."  

Ultimately, the educational materials created are meant to serve teens in engaging more deeply with history so they can play a role in charting a new path forward.

"The activities we participated in and created made history feel alive, relevant, and emotional in a way that I have rarely experienced," said Bertoli. "I believe teens will truly come to the table for this type of experience: one where their personal, emotional, and familial connection to topics in history is not just included but actively highlighted and centered in the service of deep engagement, social and emotional development, and motivation to act justly in the present. I think these resources will invite those teens who avoid or merely "put up with" learning history to think and feel differently about engaging with and applying it."

The next steps for this project include refining the materials before sharing them more broadly and building on the co-creative process the group engaged in. For participants, moving the work forward remains essential. 

"Migration is essential to our shared social and economic future," said Adam Strom, Executive Director, Re-Imagining Migration.  "Yet, approaches to migration in schools are often fragmented or incomplete. As educators, we need to be laser-focused on developing the knowledge, skills, and habits that will prepare the next generation to work and live with people whose cultures, experiences, identities, and accents will increasingly be different from their own. Programs like this one are essential because they build understanding and support for reimagining the way we talk and teach about these foundational experiences."

Stay updated with our work co-designing learning experiences with history and social studies teachers by subscribing to our monthly newsletter!

Teens Have Big Emotions. How Can We Help HS Students Navigate Them?

By iThrive Games

Teenagers have big emotions, and many already have a lot of unresolved grief at that age. Normalizing big emotions and offering tools for navigating this reality can is why social-emotional learning tools are necessary in high school classrooms.

I have been teaching high schoolers for about 20 years, and I am always asked how I manage the classroom so effectively and get them to be so responsive and receptive to my lessons. The short answer is that I recognize them as individuals. I validate their feelings. And I help them be self-aware and deliberate.

Even though many students need their hand held when it comes to recognizing and then communicating emotions and feelings, many of them are more than willing to do so in a safe space. If you can create such a space for your students and if you can reach them on a deeper personal level, the results will astound you. So, how do I do that? One way is to start with iThrive Curriculum: A Moment in Time.

iThrive Games invited me to co-create a lesson plan that would pair with the immersive media game Florence. The first step was to download the app and "read" the story: one that navigated the day-to-day life of Florence, an Asian-Australian 25-year-old whose aimless nature is universal and timeless for many young people.

There was much to unpack before I set about writing the lesson plans. What would I want my students to get out of this story? What lessons could be learned? What universal truths appear?

I immediately saw an opportunity to showcase lessons on non-verbal communication and symbolism, both of which can apply to real life. The story was told entirely with no words spoken; even when the characters are arguing, there is sound but no words. The power of communication was shown through images, sounds, movement, and gestures. This created an opportunity to discuss how these kinds of communication are prevalent in the students' everyday lives, even though they may not realize it or even think about it. The beauty of Florence is that it can be used in any classroom, especially in classes for English Language Learners (ELL), due to this nature of storytelling.

Symbolism plays a major part, too, and I definitely saw a way to help students relate to this, especially with two of the main characters having Asian and Indian heritage. It opened up many opportunities for students to discuss what cultural symbols they have in their life and how their background shapes who they are as a person. Having students choose objects that have significance helps reinforce the importance of sentimentality and the potential deeper meaning of objects in their lives.

But the real meat of the journey of Florence really lies in the weighty and emotional themes. One of the first themes I felt was important in this story is one of self-realization and identity. While Florence is significantly older than the students who will be reading her story, all can relate to the task of trying to figure out what their place is in the world. I believe so many students feel very lost about where they are headed, but I also believe that very few admit this out loud (or even to themselves). Showing them that self-realization and awareness is a long journey and that people often make mistakes along the way is an important lesson to be gleaned from Florence.

Overall, this story hits on so many levels and so many themes: including relationships, love, self-awareness, growing up, and ultimately (and the most impactful)-dealing with grief and loss. No matter who they are, every student has experienced grief or loss: of a loved one, of a friendship, of a piece of themselves that no longer exists, of a special place, etc. Tapping into this and showing them that grief over loss of so many things in their lives is not only normal but also incredibly understandable and expected is so important for teenagers who often lack the coping skills to grapple with such ponderous emotions.

iThrive Curriculum: A Moment in Time opens up the door to these ideas and shows students that everyone struggles in one way or another and that it is all about how one learns to deal with their issues.

Game-Based Learning Reads: Three Books That Will Make You a GBL Believer

By iThrive Games

Game-based learning is part of iThrive's DNA as we support educators in bringing the power of play into the classroom. From impactful play and deep learning to personal transformation and social and emotional skill-building, the reasons to thoughtfully include games in educating young people continue to grow. Recently we have enjoyed the contributions of authors Matthew Farber, Karen Schrier, and David Seelow, who have written books adding to the body of knowledge related to game-based learning.

Kat Schrier - We The Gamers: How Games Teach Ethics and Civics

Karen Schrier, We The Gamers: How Games Teach Ethics and Civics

In this useful tome, Karen (Kat) Schrier explores the use of games in multiple contexts, from teaching ethics and civics, to creating connection and community, as well as for knowledge and action, and for critical thinking and inquiry. 

Written during the pandemic, the book begins by exploring the many ways games were of great support to humanity during the stay-at-home orders and beyond. The author then takes a balanced approach by questioning when and how best to use games alongside learning, while acknowledging the limitations of games. 

For educators who want to explore the power of games in the classroom, this one is a must-read.

Matthew Farber - Gaming SEL: Games as Transformational to Social and Emotional Learning
Matthew Farber, Gaming SEL: Games as Transformational to Social and Emotional Learning

One thing that comes through in Matthew Farber's book on games and social and emotional learning is his deep love of and expertise in both. And we know that not only from the pages of this book but also because Matthew is a long-time collaborator with the team here at iThrive, having co-created Museum of Me.

Also written during the pandemic, the book is a very readable cornucopia of topics that span first-person accounts of gameplay and thought-provoking explorations of the neuroscience of games to comparing social and emotional learning models and contending with how games do or don't teach compassion, empathy, and mindfulness. 

With practical information from links, lessons, and games, to well-woven-in peer-reviewed research, this book is useful to educators and caregivers who want to use games and understand why and how they are an asset for young people. 

David Seelow - Gaming SEL: Games as Transformational to Social and Emotional Learning

David Seelow, Teaching in the Game-Based Classroom

In this collection of strategies for game-based learning, editor David Seelow has culled the best teachers, researchers, and games to provide hands-on guidance for adults looking to introduce games into their classroom or youth encounters. 

The introduction also stresses the multiple pathways one can take to succeed with game-based learning and ultimately help transform both teacher and student learning.

With contributors such as Paul Darvasi, Lindsay Portnoy, Claudia-Santi F. Fernandes, and more, the strategies offered within span empathy-building and support for wellness to project-based learning and useful feedback loops. A useful book for educators who want to use games to transform learning. 

Interested in integrating game-based learning in your classroom this fall? Check out our iThrive Curriculum units and newest iThrive Sim role-playing simulation games, Follow the Facts and Leading Through Crisis, to get started!

World Affairs Council of Philadelphia Uses iThrive Sim to Prep Future Leaders

By iThrive Games

"My main takeaway from today was how challenging, complicated, and stressful it is to lead through crisis, and how important it is to work with your team in those situations," said one Philadelphia-area high school student after playing iThrive Sim: Leading Through Crisis in the 2021 Summer Global Leadership Seminar hosted in July. 

What better way to learn about teamwork and collaborative leadership than to be thrust into the role of a crisis management team member during an international crisis? Twenty-four students had this opportunity through the summer program at World Affairs Council of Philadelphia, a nonprofit dedicated to informing and engaging people of all ages on matters of national and international significance. Each year the organization hosts an educational seminar for high school students who are interested in global affairs, public policy, and foreign policy. 

This year, the Council opted to use iThrive Sim: Leading Through Crisis as part of its virtual programming. Staff said they thought the tech-enabled role playing simulation would be a really interesting addition to the summer program.

"One of our main topics for this leadership session was about constitutions and constitutional underpinnings of authority," said  Eric Bumbaca, Director of Student Programs. "The Leading Through Crisis simulation was a really good opportunity for our students to engage with constitutional issues and times when our constitution isn't necessarily clear or events around it cause some uncertainty." 

Students agreed. When asked what they learned, one student shared, "[I learned that] when leaders make choices, they aren't necessarily able to do what they feel is best, but rather they have to do what they think is best within the pressing circumstances of the decision."

Other students focused on the collaborative leadership and teamwork aspects, offering feedback such as, "It was fun to work through as a group," and "It was fun being able to learn about how to handle constitutional crises with other people."

Council staff shared that role-playing without tech allows for one to three decisions across the course of the event, but with tech-enhanced role-play, the negotiations have an amplified level of collaborative and individual decision-making. 

"The rapid decision-making is a very unique aspect of the iThrive program," said Eric. "With iThrive Sim you need to make decisions quickly and synthesize your rationale and reasoning for decisions very quickly. It's good practice for the students, and the roles that they are playing do need to make decisions rapidly."

Students enjoyed the tech aspect of the simulation. One student shared, "It was very immersive, and the interface was surprisingly easy to follow."

They also keyed into the social and emotional learning competency of responsible decision-making, a skill vital to 21-st century leadership.

"I really liked the entire simulation and decision-making aspects, because having to coordinate with my team members and make solo/duo/team decisions in very little time was stressful but fun."

Council staff are excited to use iThrive Sim again in their program.

"I think our students really enjoyed the opportunity to engage in a different way than they have in the past," said Eric. "Any time we ask them to get outside of their own belief systems or view of the world, it's a great opportunity for students to think about the world in different ways."

Interested in bringing iThrive Sim: Leading Through Crisis to your classroom this fall? Sign up today to get started!

iThrive Sim: Lives in Balance Wins Gold at AAM’s 2021 Muse Awards

By iThrive Games

BOSTON-iThrive Sim: Lives in Balance has been named a gold award winner in the MUSE Award 2021's 2020 Response category. Created by iThrive Games in partnership with Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum, iThrive Sim: Lives in Balance is designed to meet the need for engaged, authentic, and relevant learning experiences. This scenario thrusts the participants into a fictional, modern day pandemic where federalism comes to life as they take on the roles of government officials. The scenario has been successfully used with museum-based hybrid and virtual visitors, and in traditional educational spaces virtually, hybrid, and in person.

According to the website for the MUSE Awards, "The Media & Technology MUSE Awards recognize outstanding achievement in Galleries, Libraries, Archives or Museums (GLAM) media. Presented to institutions or independent producers who use digital media to enhance the GLAM experience and engage audiences, the MUSE awards celebrate scholarship, community, innovation, creativity, education and inclusiveness."

Susan E. Rivers, PhD, Executive Director and Chief Scientist at iThrive, sees tech-enabled role-playing as one of the most adaptable forms of interactive learning, whether it's in a classroom or at a museum, in person or online. 

"When we created Lives in Balance, we sought to meet the tremendous demand for robust interactive learning experiences, especially during this global pandemic," she said. "And we are pleased to be able to offer this scenario and others as we head into the new school year to support learning in various settings."

iThrive Games offers two additional iThrive Sim civics scenarios for learners who are high-school aged and older: Leading Through Crisis, which explores responsible decision making during a critical event, and Follow the Facts, which explores media literacy during a natural disaster.

"I am grateful for our exceptional advisory board of educators and the students who have played with us and shared their wisdom," said Mira Cohen, Director of Education at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum. "It's been a dream to empower youth learners with the decision-making tools to become thoughtful and caring leaders. 

To learn more about iThrive Sim, visit https://ithrivegames.org/ithrive-sim/. To learn more about additional programs at Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum, visit https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/.

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Media Contact
Eghosa Asemota
eghosa.asemota[at]ithrivegames.org

About iThrive Games
iThrive Games prepares teens to thrive by meeting them where they are and working in partnership towards a world where all have the voice, choice, and agency to reach their full potential. We use games and game design to equip teens with the social and emotional skills they need to be healthy and resilient.

Youth Designers Collaborating with iThrive Games Win Serious Play Award

By iThrive Games

BOSTON—iThrive Games is pleased to announce that The Run Around, created by youth designers in partnership with iThrive; Janelle Ridley, Founder of Transition HOPE; AGNCY; Black Ministerial Alliance/Ten Point Coalition; and Dr. Beverley Cush Evans with Lesley University; won a gold medal in the category of Educational Tabletop Games in the 2021 International Serious Play Awards Program. The program honors outstanding commercial and student titles used for education or training. 

Created from the lived experiences of the youth who designed it, The Run Around is focused on raising awareness about inequalities in the justice system. The designers sought to use their voice to shed understanding on the emotional, mental, and spiritual bondage the system creates, as they do not want others to fall into the same traps

Staff members were inspired by the experience of working with the youth designers.

"The process of changing and dismantling unjust systems has to center the voices of those who have been impacted by it," said Susan E. Rivers, Ph.D., Executive Director and Chief Scientist at iThrive Games. "I'm proud of the youth designers who shared their stories, challenges, and triumphs and collaborated to create this game that will educate adults on their lived experiences." 

The Run Around was developed to encourage empathy and change, with funding from the William T. Grant Foundation and the DN Batten Foundation. Game design and gameplay provide an opportunity to have important conversations around critical questions for designing systems that better support youth: how can systems help youth who are getting out of the justice system reintegrate successfully to stable living? How can we better understand young people's feelings, behaviors, and experiences to provide the structures, opportunities, and environments they need to thrive? 

To learn more about the SEED Institute, which highlights youth designers, click here.  Click here to read more information about the game design process.

###

Media Contact
Eghosa Asemota
eghosa.asemota[at]ithrivegames.org

ABOUT iTHRIVE GAMES
iThrive Games prepares teens to thrive by meeting them where they are and working in partnership towards a world where all have the voice, choice, and agency to reach their full potential. We use games and game design to equip teens with the social and emotional skills they need to be healthy and resilient.

Burgeoning Journalists Try on Their Roles in New Media Literacy Game

By iThrive Games

Media literacy incentivizes good journalism. In early June, two dozen high school students enrolled in the Summer Journalism Institute at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Arizona State University, stepped into a simulated newsroom to play iThrive Sim: Follow the Facts and discovered this. Follow the Facts is a media literacy-centered, role-playing simulation game where players, acting as journalists, sift through information and sources to find and share the truth about a mysterious illness and an impending storm in New Orleans. 

Playing the roles of Lifestyle Reporter, Metro Reporter, Government Reporter, Opinion Reporter, and News Editor, students (in teams of five) engaged with in-game social and print media, practiced effective sourcing of information, explored bias, and engaged in collaboration. In a collaborative gaming experience that combined media literacy skill-building, social-emotional learning, and civics education, the 24 students who played got the chance to:

  • Describe how the media shapes public opinion and behavior.
  • Collaborate to see the bigger picture of a situation and create accurate news.
  • Successfully rank the quality and value of varying sources of information.
  • Practice effectively sourcing information in a digital world, an integral media literacy skill in the 21st century.
  • Become aware of and describe bias and its impact on reporting, selecting, and interpreting the news.
  • Demonstrate self-management while under stress.
  • Practice clear communication.

The burgeoning journalists were highly engaged. Halfway through the game, they shared their learnings around journalism and media literacy, such as:

  • "[I learned] To pay attention to details, work in teams, [and] make important formal decisions."
  • "I learned that it's important to gain public trust by putting out specific and true information."
  • "I learned how to make beneficial decisions under pressure. It also gave me the experience of being a journalist."
  • "I learned that journalists have to handle a lot of information at once and work together to make decisions."
  • "[I learned] journalists have a limited amount of time and must prioritize what they think is the best thing to do."
  • "[I learned] That you really need to communicate with your team to have all of the information."
  • "I learned that getting the facts/right info depends on how you choose your sources."
  • "[I learned] only take information from verifiable sources."

Staff were energized by the engagement and thoughtfulness of the players.

"It was validating to see the students really deliberating over the decisions in the game and collaborating with each other to make the best choice," said Michelle Bertoli, Senior Director of Learning. "There aren't easy answers, just like in real life. It's such a great opportunity to dig deep and practice managing your own attention and emotions while you work closely with others towards a common goal."

To close out the experience, iThrive staff will lead a debriefing session based on the pre-written curriculum that accompanies the media literacy-centered simulation game. Follow the Facts is now available for summer enrichment programs and other youth-serving experiences. Sign up today to play the game with your students!

Add Play to Your Summer School Schedule: Virtual Conferences in July

By iThrive Games

After an unprecedented year, summer school programs are underway in several states across the nation, with an increased focus on students' social and emotional health. Game-based learning uniquely aligns with the times. When games are used in the classroom, they offer students a space to immerse themselves in new information, actively apply that information while problem-solving, try on new perspectives, and work in self-directed independent ways. The connective power of games also supports community-building and empathy, making play a springboard for responsible civic engagement.

As school administrators and teachers explore ways to enrich their classrooms this summer and later this fall, we're excited to continue putting game-based learning and SEL front and center at upcoming conferences where iThrive staff will be presenting. If you're interested in bringing games to your summer school program or classroom next school year, here are some interactive meetings to put on your calendar this month:

2021 Games for Change Virtual Festival (Monday, July 12th to Wednesday, July 14th, 2021)

The 2021 Games for Change Virtual Festival will feature virtual sessions hosted by an array of thought leaders on the transformative power of games and immersive media. iThrive's Executive Director and Chief Scientist, Susan E. Rivers, Ph.D., will be part of a session titled "Disinformation Games," where she'll discuss iThrive Sim: Follow the Facts, our new role-playing simulation game that supports media literacy skill-building. Join in on the session happening on Wednesday, July 14th at 5:30 ET/2:30 PT for a rousing discussion by registering here.

2021 NASSP National Principals Conference (Wednesday, July 14th to Friday, July 16th, 2021)

The theme of this year's NASSP National Principals Conference is "Together, We Will," with strands centering on equity, wellness, and innovation. We're excited to share our vision of how play supports each of these strands with all who'll be in attendance. In our interactive session, attendees will play iThrive Sim: Lives in Balance, our online role-playing simulation game that focuses on federalism and states' rights and uses a pandemic as the backdrop for practicing negotiation and decision-making. Players, acting as state governors and federal officials, will be tasked with moving the action forward themselves, aided by online gameplay and iThrive Sim's dynamic tech. They must work individually and as a group to assess the information at hand, defend their points of view, and make decisions that produce the desired outcomes in time. Register here to attend this conference, get in on the game, and learn how play can enrich your summer school program or school this fall.

More Ways to Meet

This fall, we'll be back on the road, virtually and in person, to share more on games, play, and their contribution to students' academic growth and social and emotional learning. There are many ways to engage with us. Learn about our game-based learning curricula and role-playing simulation games guaranteed to boost student engagement in your summer school classroom. Send us an email. Or sign up for our newsletter to stay in the loop with exclusive playtesting opportunities.

We look forward to connecting with you! 

History Informs Our Understanding of Our Country. Let’s Tell It Truthfully.

By iThrive Games

This June, the last surviving liberator of Auschwitz died at the age of 98. According to CNN, David Dushman was one of the soldiers who liberated the people being held at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Over time, Nazis murdered over one million Jewish people there.

As one of our staff read the article, she was reminded of meeting her college friend's grandmother, who was a Holocaust survivor and still bore the tattooed numbers on her body. Seeing the tattoo she had only read about in history textbooks was a visceral and impactful experience for her.

As survivors and liberators of atrocities pass away, it begs the question, who has the courage to tell their story? How do we keep history and the past mistakes in our collective minds enough so that we don't recreate them in the present or future? And, how do we do this in a way that supports healing and does not stymy it? What role does our educational system play in making sure students know about past societal harms so that they can learn from history and do their part to create a world where those types of atrocities no longer happen?

To us, these questions are worth exploring. Our Executive Director and Chief Scientist, Susan E. Rivers, Ph.D., has said that "Empowering teens as changemakers means engaging youth and communities in drawing on the past and present to create new knowledge." We think that teens are more than capable of contending with history to make choices that will result in a better future. 

Teens' brains are undergoing the last major restructuring of development, one nearly on par with early childhood brain growth. That means the teen years provide the perfect opportunity to build habits to support a healthy, productive, and engaged life. Teens are at a developmental moment defined by many strengths. Because of where their brains are developmentally, teens are at a place where they can examine the role of race and racism in history and our society and then use that understanding to envision how to relate to one another in ways that move us forward, toward greater equity for all. One hallmark of the teen developing brain is an aptitude for risk-taking; they can leverage this inclination to envision and offer up completely new ways of working together, being in community, and participating in democracy. 

Rather than viewing history as something to choose from selectively, teens are ready and willing to look at the whole with open eyes. And they can be supported in that when guided by skilled and compassionate educators in an educational system that promotes critical thinking and responsible participation in democracy.  

At iThrive Games, we are dedicated to thriving. And for us, thriving comes from facing and acknowledging hard truths and tough emotions and choosing to contend with those truths and emotions in service of taking action to build a more equitable and just for all humans. Whether it's with our game-based learning units that explore identity and relationships or our 21st-century skill-building simulation games, we believe in creating opportunities for teens to learn from history and flex the muscles they'll need to envision and enact an equitable future where all can thrive. 

Media Literacy and Responsible Civic Engagement Go Hand-in-Hand

By iThrive Games

We know that media literacy is essential. Misinformation and disinformation campaigns from various entities have influenced everything from our elections, public sentiment, and individual decision-making. Media literacy is part of the solution to combat misinformation. Educators who teach media literacy are helping students contend with important questions. How do we detect biases? What sources of information can we trust? How do we apply critical thinking to the information that we take in through written and visual media?

We think it's imperative that teens have the opportunity to practice media literacy in the classroom. Young people are curious, consume tons of media, and are more than equipped to think and talk through these hard questions. So we created iThrive Sim: Follow the Facts to assist educators in exploring media literacy in their classroom. In this role-playing simulation, students play reporters sifting through information and sources to find and share the truth about a mysterious illness and an impending storm in New Orleans.

iThrive Sim: Follow the Facts was created in collaboration with subject matter experts such as Elizabeth Smith, Assistant Professor in the Communications Division at Pepperdine University. We asked Ms. Smith to share her thoughts about the power of media literacy in the lives of young people. 

Q: WHY DO YOU BELIEVE MEDIA LITERACY IS SUCH AN IMPORTANT TOPIC FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS TO LEARN?

A: I believe media literacy is an important topic for people of all ages because, like it or not, we are surrounded by media all the time. The more literate we can become, the better we will be at understanding the origin, nature, and effects of our media consumption. More specifically, I think it is critical for us to invest in news literacy education with all learners, starting in kindergarten. High school students show us that they are not uninformed about news topics but find that many news outlets do not cover topics that they find relevant to their lives. Additionally, many high school students are confronted with news being shared on social media but aren't always clear what makes credible news, how news information evolves (especially in breaking news simulations), and what to think of the work of journalists. However, as high school students grow into adulthood, they will be asked to make informed decisions that will rely on credible, rigorously vetted information as news is. Knowing who and what is high-quality news information will help these emerging adults make informed decisions and understand others better. 

Q: WHAT ELEMENT DID YOU THINK WAS MOST IMPORTANT OR TRANSFORMATIVE IN ITHRIVE SIM: FOLLOW THE FACTS?

A: I think the most transformative element in iThrive Sim: Follow the Facts is making decisions about what information to share. This pushes students to make relatively quick decisions about what is correct. Sometimes the details that differentiate two different pieces of information are subtle, which means students have to pay close attention to make quick, timed decisions. They talk about these decisions with their teammates. I think two elements are important: 1) The decisions are timed, so they are making decisions about information to share in real-time, just as a journalist does but also just like they do when they are more casually using social media in their personal lives; 2) Discussing the decisions helps them to share and build knowledge. 

Q: HOW DO YOU SEE MEDIA LITERACY SUPPORTING RESPONSIBLE CIVIC ENGAGEMENT?

A: Media literacy, but more specifically, news literacy, helps individuals understand what the news is and what questions to ask about news information. News literacy does not promote that individuals or communities should blindly trust the news. Rather, news literacy should empower individuals to ask good questions and understand the process behind reporting and news production. 

Q: WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE PART OF THE GAME?

A: Honestly, I love the whole thing! My favorite part of the game is watching teams work together and hearing the way they support each other to make solid, informed decisions. 

BRING MEDIA LITERACY SKILL-BUILDING TO YOUR CLASSROOM

If you'd like to bring Follow the Facts to your high school classroom or summer program, let us know! You can sign up here to learn more information or to request a time slot for your class. The "news office" opens on Friday, June 25, 2021!

Learn about the Power of Play at these Upcoming Conferences

By iThrive Games

2021 SERIOUS PLAY CONFERENCE

The Serious Play Conference this year features different tracks and multiple sessions with the common theme of using games or simulations in training and education. Our session on Wednesday, June 23, 2021 from 2 to 3:15pm ET will be presented by Executive Director and Chief Scientist Susan E. Rivers, Ph.D., and Senior Director of Communications Nicole Taylor. Stress Storm/New Norm: How Role-Playing Simulations Can Help will explore how role-playing simulations can be used in the workplace to assist leaders in identifying opportunities for coaching people managers and staff members. 

The ability to practice social and emotional skills such as self-management, emotional awareness, social awareness, and responsible decision-making under stress is necessary for a healthy culture and optimal performance. Being able to observe how leaders perform under stress is a high-value opportunity provided by role-playing simulations. Using iThrive Sim: Lives in Balance, Susan and Nicole will share how a role-playing simulation can be used both to observe stress behaviors, assist people managers in identifying and working with their stress response, and provide opportunities for coaching to improve how staff members manage themselves and others. If this lights you up, register here

2021 ASCD CONFERENCE: EMPOWERED AND CONNECTED

The theme for this year's ASCD conference is Empowered and Connected. The annual conference is full of sessions that will accelerate your summer learning plans and help get you prepared for the school year. At our session, Susan Rivers will be joined by educators Paul Darvasi and Mira Cohen to present Play to Thrive: A Game-Based Approach to Social and Emotional Learning for High Schools. If you're heading to ASCD, this session will allow you to: 

  • Walk away with free, classroom-ready game-based social and emotional curriculum and tools to use immediately for in-person and distance high school humanities courses.
  • Understand how game-based learning approaches align with teens' specific developmental, social, and emotional needs.
  • Discover a roadmap for infusing core curriculum with playful, tech-supported interaction for high school students' social and emotional growth.

Sound useful for your classroom? Register for ASCD Empowered and Connected.

COALITION FOR JUVENILE JUSTICE (CJJ) 2021 ANNUAL CONFERENCE

The Coalition for Juvenile Justice (CJJ) is a nationwide coalition of State Advisory Groups (SAGs) and allies dedicated to preventing children and youth from becoming involved in the courts and upholding the highest standards of care when youth enter the juvenile justice system. At CJJ's 2021 virtual annual conference, iThrive's Susan Rivers, Transition HOPE's Janelle Ridley and iThrive youth designer Bernardo S. will be sharing a session on Friday, June 11th from 10 to 11:30am ET entitled "Designing Games with Youth Experts to Dismantle Unjust Systems." They'll share the story of youth game designers who created a game called The Run Around to delineate their lived experiences in the juvenile justice system and advocate for changes to it. They'll also share how decision-makers can bolster supports for the well-being of incarcerated youth. You can register for this event here

MORE WAYS TO CONNECT

Next month, we'll share the conferences iThrive is presenting at for the remainder of the summer. There are many ways to engage with us, and we look forward to connecting with you. 

Civics Ed and Social-Emotional Learning Today, A Stronger Democracy Tomorrow

By iThrive Games

A new report by the National Academy of Education, titled Educating for Civic Reasoning and Discourse, states that while content knowledge about our government's structure is important, so are the more subtle aspects that prepare us to participate responsibly in democracy.

"Also of crucial importance is the development of dispositions to value the exploration of complex issues, to consider multiple points of view, to weigh evidence and to empathize with others. So is the development of the ability to reason about moral and ethical issues rooted in basic democratic values. Such moral and ethical issues are often embedded in our democratic decision-making," writes Carol D. Lee, president-elect of the National Academy of Education, in a recent Washington Post article. 

CIVICS EDUCATION, SEL, AND RESPONSIBLE, DEMOCRATIC DECISION-MAKING

At iThrive Games, we wholeheartedly agree, and we have created iThrive Sim scenarios for the classrooms where students work to build these skills. Responsible decision making is central to participation in democracy, from choosing whom to vote for to choosing how to engage during times of community and societal change. We have seen evidence over the last year regarding the importance of these skills, as the nation has contended with addressing systemic racism and police brutality, navigating the pandemic, and managing the fallout from the January 6th insurrection.

Our civics role-playing simulations are designed to support the development of the dispositions Ms. Lee writes about in the passage above. Core to the learning objectives of all three of our role playing simulations are the social and emotional learning competencies of responsible decision-making and self-awareness. 

We create experiences, such as our Leading Through Crisis scenario, in which youth role-play civic engagement by doing the following:

  • Practicing making high-stakes decisions with far-reaching consequences under time pressure.
  • Demonstrating self-management while under stress.
  • Collaborating with others who have different immediate goals.
  • Practicing clear communication.
  • Summarizing a decision-making approach, including exploring pros and cons for a set of choices and thinking about the impact of including or omitting the perspectives of different individuals and groups.

We believe that the decisions we make impact not only ourselves, but others, and our community. Our hope is that civics role playing simulations such as ours will help prepare teens to practice civic reasoning and discourse in the way we will need to do in order to create the future we want.

Click here to learn how to bring an iThrive Sim virtual field trip to your classroom.

Use this SEL Activity to Help Your Students Process Pandemic Grief and Loss

By iThrive Games

For many teens this last year, grief and loss have been a part of life. For some it was the loss of in-person schooling and the accompanying social activities and for others it was missing or needing to adapt milestones and rites of passage, or grief that stemmed from sick family members or the over 500,000 souls in the U.S. lost to Covid. Whatever the specifics were, loss has been palpable both personally and collectively.

And now, as vaccinations are on the rise and we begin to emerge, the opportunity to see the rainbow after the rain is also here. We created iThrive Curriculum: A Moment in Time, to support teachers and teens in navigating these emotions together.

GRIEF AND GROWTH IN ITHRIVE CURRICULUM: A MOMENT IN TIME

A Moment in Time is a game-based learning unit for high school English Language Arts classes. Created in collaboration with iThrive staff, high school ELA teachers, and teachers in training, the unit uses the interactive story and video game Florence as the central text. Students follow Florence's journey through a few major life changes and see how she copes and grows as a result. It's a wonderful opportunity to support students in reflecting on their own journey with grief, loss, and change this past year, and exploring some positives that were on the other side of that storm.

According to one 10th grade teacher who piloted the iThrive Curriculum: A Moment in Time, "The students really got into it and went into a lot of depth in their reflections."

We look forward to educators' downloading the unit when it is launched at the end of May. In the meantime, we'd like to preview one exercise from the unit that can be of service as a standalone activity before the year ends, to help students process how they experienced the grief and loss of the pandemic. 

AN SEL ACTIVITY FOR GRIEF AND LOSS: "AFTER THE RAIN, THE RAINBOW"

Step 1: Invite students into present-moment awareness using a tool of your choosing. We like to set a timer for 45 seconds and invite students to take 10 belly breaths during that time. 

Step 2: Offer these journaling prompts for their self-reflection:

  1. How have you coped with a loss in your own life? Write down a strategy or two.
  2. What have you discovered about yourself in processing the loss?
  3. What is one positive thing that came out of the experience, even though there was loss?

Step 3: After sufficient journaling time, put students into pairs and allow them to discuss their answers to journaling prompt #3. 

Step 4: As a class, invite anyone to share with the whole group. 

This social and emotional learning exercise invites students to nurture their self-awareness and self-management skills while reflecting on their experiences of grief and loss. The iThrive Curriculum: A Moment in Time unit touches on the same themes across eight pre-written lessons for 9th and 10th grade ELA and humanities classes. Bring it to your classroom today!

iThrive Sim: Lives in Balance Named a 2021 GLAMi Award Winner

By iThrive Games

BOSTON--iThrive Sim won a bronze award in the GLAMi Award 2021's Interactive and Immersive category. Created by  iThrive Games in partnership with Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum, iThrive Sim is an innovative virtual augmented reality experience that provides an opportunity for meaningful and engaging experiences. The sim is currently used with museum-based, hybrid, and virtual visitors, and in traditional educational spaces.

According to the website for MuseWeb, the host of the GLAMis, "The annual GLAMi (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) Awards recognize and celebrate innovative projects in the cultural heritage sector."

Susan E. Rivers, PhD, Executive Director and Chief Scientist at iThrive, sees immersive games as a true opportunity to support visitors in social and emotional learning: "Play is important for all of us," she said. "It brings us together in community. Play helps us create new solutions to problems...solutions we wouldn't have thought of otherwise."

iThrive Games is pleased to offer three iThrive Sim civics scenarios for learners who are high school aged and older: Lives in Balance, which explores collaboration and compromise during a pandemic, Leading Through Crisis, which explores responsible decision making during a critical event, and Follow the Facts, which explores media literacy during a natural disaster.

Mira Cohen, Director of Education at Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum, says the virtual simulation was an important way to keep visitors connected during the pandemic, and beyond. "Through engaging audiences in meaningful and fun in-depth experiences, using historical records and government documents, we are able to increase our audience base, keep our current audience base engaged and further appreciation for the value of record keeping to our democracy, she said."

To learn more about iThrive Sim, visit https://ithrivegames.org/ithrive-sim/. To learn more about additional programs at Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum, visit https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/.

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Media Contact
Eghosa Asemota
eghosa.asemota[at]ithrivegames.org

About iThrive Games
iThrive Games prepares teens to thrive by meeting them where they are and working in partnership towards a world where all have the voice, choice, and agency to reach their full potential. We use games and game design to equip teens with the social and emotional skills they need to be healthy and resilient.

Exploring Juvenile Justice and Mental Health with Teen Game Designers (Part 2)

By iThrive Games

Part 1 of this series includes an overview of iThrive's Juvenile Justice System project and the framework for the Game Design Studio program. Click here to read Part 1.

It's called The Run Around. The goal of the board game is to be the first player to move all of your game pieces out of Maximum Security prison to Home. It's hard. It's frustrating. There are tons of setbacks. And it reflects the experiences of the youth designers who made it. The creative act, in the game design process, is part of how the designers cope with their experiences. 

‟We tried to shape the game the way the justice system is," said K.C., one of the designers of The Run Around. ‟And we tried to base our directions and rules on what would happen in real life. One of them was like, when we are on parole or talk to our case worker, any little thing can get us put back into the predicament that we were in before. So we made the rules and regulations in the game to show that. It was to show how hard it is for you to get out." 

While the subject matter was intense, K.C. found the design process enjoyable.

‟It was so fun," she said. ‟It was fun to see the finished product. It was fun making the rules and seeing other people get frustrated playing it [because our experience in the system is just as frustrating]. It was like when we were making the game, we were making it so people would get irritated because they wouldn't be able to win. And then seeing that they really did get mad. It was fun watching it become what it is now." 

Another game designer was lit up by the aesthetic of the game. 

‟I like the graphic designs of what we created," said R.D. "I like the clothes they have on. It looks very much like society right now."

mental health juvenile justice

K.C. agreed, saying, ‟They each have their own individuality."

Players advance their character through the game via the Choice cards. The Choice deck is stacked though. Only a few of the cards will actually allow you to leave prison. But watch out for traps! Landing on a Trap spot—and there are many—will cause you to move backward, lose a turn, or be sent back to prison. 

R.D. sees the toughness of the game as a key design choice to add realism.

‟For guys who have been in jail, I feel like they can relate to it," he said. ‟A lot of stuff said in the scenarios in the game...it's realistic."

mental health juvenile justice

The game designers put a lot of intentionality into the design of the six characters, named Naomi, Marven, Jay, James, Ty, and Ace.  

‟I created Marven," said M.A. "I relate a lot to Marven because my charge was similar. He gets caught up with friends and drugs and has to go to trial. People rat each other out." 

For M.A, it wasn't just the circumstances that he channeled into the game. It was also the emotions.

‟The same thing with depression and anxiety happened to me while I was waiting for trial," he said. 

And the final step of the game design process, which is to act, is set to happen over the next few months. The game designers will use The Run Around in workshops they are both designing and facilitating for stakeholders from the juvenile justice system in Boston beginning in May. They are also set to share their experiences at Games For Change this June. They are hoping that by sharing their experiences, decision makers can begin to create better support for youth who are system involved.

mental health juvenile justice

‟Anyone who goes through this has these feelings and the fact that it's a person of color doesn't make it any better," said M.A.

Exploring Juvenile Justice and Mental Health with Teen Game Designers (Part 1)

By iThrive Games

Since 2019, iThrive Games has been collaborating with partners to use games and game design to highlight the voices of Black youth involved with the juvenile justice system. Inequity in the provision of mental health services on the basis of race before, during, and after system involvement negatively impacts the health, well-being, employment opportunities, educational attainment, and relationships of individuals of color. Youth in our program use game design techniques to express their lived experiences with the justice system. They use the games they design to engage stakeholders in conversations about the inequities within the system and to identify how the systems could be improved to better meet the mental health needs of other young people who are subjected to the cradle-to-prison pipeline. 

The current cohort of youth hails from Boston. The participants have been system involved at some point of their lives and now have a round of game development under their belts. For the purposes of this article, we'll use initials for the names of the participants. 

These youth designers enhanced and completed a game called The Run Around, which was initially prototyped by an earlier cohort. The Run Around board game helps youth-serving adults and stakeholders understand how youth feel and explore opportunities to improve services and experiences for youth. The gameplay provides an opportunity to have important conversations around critical questions for supporting youth: how can we help youth who are getting out of the system reintegrate successfully to stable living?  How can we better understand the feelings and behaviors young people grapple with to provide the support they need before being swept into the system, and while in the system?

The youth designers created this game using iThrive's "Surfacing-Coping-Acting" co-design cycle. The goal of this approach is to invite teens to raise up (surface) and work productively (cope and act) with the experiences that make adolescence both an incredible and vulnerable developmental stage. 

"Social and emotional learning happens in community," said Susan Rivers, Executive Director and Chief Scientist of iThrive Games. "Belonging is key to our sense of wellbeing-especially so for teens as their brains continue to develop. Our co-design process not only supports well-being of the youth designers at this moment, but it also allows them to pay it forward by suggesting wellbeing supports for other youth who are involved with the system."

In the surfacing part of the design cycle, the youth designers shared some of the experiences they had when they were involved with the system. By sharing their experiences with each other, they validated one another's experiences and did the healing work listening and being listened to. Sharing difficult stories with others is one proven way to manage the discomfort and to challenge any fears that we're different or alone in our struggles.

K.C. shared what she thought was most important for people to understand about her experience.

"...It isn't easy at all. And we do go through struggles that we need help with," she said. "The world needs to know that the minority community goes through. It's sad that a lot of people in the world don't understand how messed up the justice system or school system is for minorities in the US today." 

M.A. found that using his experience to design a game reinforced something he felt he already knew.

"It wasn't a surprise but when I saw it being implemented in the game, I thought, oh, that's dope," he said. "The only white character in the game starts off in minimum security. That was an insight...because he's white he goes in minimum not maximum."

"Game design has the power to help youth understand the systems that impact their lives," said Janelle Ridley, Founder of Transition HOPE. "In community, by sharing experiences and reflecting together, they can move toward how best to use their own agency to impact those systems."

The act of sharing and creating together offered an opportunity for social and emotional learning for the game designers. 

"I knew it took a lot to make a game," said M.A.  "It takes more than a lot. It takes everybody. Everyone brings a different skill. It takes a lot of teamwork.  That's what I took away from the experience."


Part 2 of this series will explore the creation of the game and plans to share it with stakeholders.

 

iThrive Sim Named a Finalist for Two 2021 EdTech Cool Tool Awards

By iThrive Games
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 6, 2021

BOSTON—iThrive Sim is an EdTech Awards 2021 finalist in the categories of Games for Learning/Simulation Solution and New Products and Services. Created by iThrive Games and developed in partnership with the makers of the Situation Room Experience, the civics-based role-playing simulation features scenarios that make civics come alive for teens.

"iThrive Games believes that games and game design can help equip teens with the social and emotional skills they need to be healthy and resilient," said Susan E. Rivers, Ph.D., Executive Director and Chief Scientist at iThrive Games. "We are honored to be recognized for creating a tech-enabled role playing game that supports educators in creating engagement around civics—one of the most important topics in the classroom today." 

The EdTech Awards recognizes people in and around education for outstanding contributions in transforming education through technology to enrich the lives of learners everywhere. Celebrating its 11th year, the US-based program is the largest recognition program in all of education technology, recognizing the biggest names in edtech.

"The worldwide pandemic put education and training to the test, but remote learning and working—in many unexpected ways—ultimately brought us closer," said Victor Rivero, who as Editor-in-Chief of EdTech Digest, oversees the program.

As a finalist, iThrive Sim and the other finalists and winners were selected from the larger field and judged based on various criteria, including pedagogical workability, efficacy and results, support, clarity, value and potential.

"We are pleased to see iThrive being recognized for its offerings for teens and educators," said Dorothy Batten, Founder of iThrive Games. "And we are inspired to work even harder to support teachers in embedding social and emotional learning in core content."

iThrive Sim can be used in virtual, hybrid, or in-person classrooms. Visit iThrivegames.org to learn more about iThrive Sim.

###

MEDIA CONTACT
Eghosa Asemota
eghosa.asemota[at]ithrivegames.org

ABOUT ITHRIVE GAMES
iThrive Games prepares teens to thrive by meeting them where they are and working in partnership towards a world where all have the voice, choice, and agency to reach their full potential. We use games and game design to equip teens with the social and emotional skills they need to be healthy and resilient.

The Science of Political Division and How SEL Skills Respond to It

By iThrive Games

It's no secret that division and political sectarianism are on the rise. How and when do they spill over into the classroom? As teachers teach civics, their role is to highlight the work of participating in democracy. Though they are not advocating for one party over another, the end goal is to help students understand how each person can responsibly engage in democracy. 

This video from the Washington Post sparked in us a few ideas about how tools such as our role-playing simulation platform, iThrive Sim, might help teachers give students the opportunity to practice bridging  this division and come to shared understanding. 

First, experts in the video share a few of the building blocks of political division:

  • Othering: Seeing people as part of an out group, and having a favoritism for the in group
  • Aversion: Having a deep distaste or dislike for the out group
  • Moralization: Seeing people from the out group as on the other side of a moral divide and having different values than you 

These components of political division can make us feel threatened by what we perceive as the "other side," activating our fear response. An unchecked fear response can result in a range of behaviors, from not talking to or associating with those you perceive to be on the "other side" to out-and-out violence. This cycle is exacerbated by an eroded sense of shared reality (which will sound familiar if you read the RAND report on Truth Decay).

The experts offer a few suggestions for interrupting this cycle of political division:

  • De-escalate conflict by talking about values that the other person cares about
  • Take a step back and do a gut check to see if the threat you're feeling is real or perceived
  • Ensure you still see the humanity in the other person and are not seeing them as a caricature
Interrupting the Cycle of Political Division with SEL and Play

We believe that the connective power of play supports the nurturing of social-emotional skills that help interrupt cycles of political division. Our civics-centered role-playing simulations are built on this belief, helping teachers prepare students to navigate conflict as they engage in democracy today and in the future.

Our SEL-rich role-playing simulation, iThrive Sim: Lives in Balance, invites students to play the role of government officials who are navigating making the best possible decisions for their constituents during a pandemic. Students practice social-emotional skills aligned with interrupting the cycle of division, such as:

  • Describing the balance of individual rights and responsibilities in an organized society 
  • Practicing negotiating and compromising with people who don't share their point of view 
  • Advocating for their own and others' interests
  • Demonstrating self-management while under stress

Additionally, our social and emotional learning-focused curricular surrounds support students in practicing emotional awareness and doing deep reflection. To learn how to bring this free experience to your classroom, visit our website

We know this isn't the solution to the deep divide that teachers help students learn to navigate, but we see it as a step toward our desired future—a future that upholds democracy, regardless of political affiliation, while creating an equitable environment for all.  

Conflict Resolution: Using Role Play to Practice Disagreeing Respectfully

By iThrive Games

Solutions to big problems can arise from good debate. There is power in learning to disagree well, which we believe means maintaining respect for the humanity of the other person. A foundational aspect of our view that high school civics skills are skills for life is that disagreeing well is part of being an active participant in democracy. And being able to resolve conflict is part of being in relationship with others. 

The good news is that disagreeing well is a skill that can be taught, especially in the context of play. Teens today benefit from game-based educational experiences such as iThrive Sim, which teaches them how to disagree with respect so they and their peers can solve problems by collaborating across different perspectives. 

When we look to science to see how to disagree well, one theme that comes up is to find common ground. A recent study in Nature Neuroscience found that when volunteers agreed, they had more confidence in their own decisions and the decisions of others, and when they disagreed, they began to have less confidence in the view of others. This may seem anecdotally obvious (been in an argument lately?) but it does point a way toward disagreeing well-and that is to find common ground. Many disagreements, when we take the time to dig deeper, may have some hidden overlapping beliefs. 

With iThrive Sim, high school students practice finding common ground through role-playing scenarios. In our Lives in Balance scenario, students play the role of government officials trying to decide how to govern during a global pandemic. We have watched hundreds of students play the game and find ways to practice conflict resolution as they discuss different decisions. The most interesting playtests are those in which the students begin to grapple with what they have in common even as they debate their competing interests.

Lives in Balance enriches social studies and civics classes as teens try on negotiating and compromising with people who don't share their point of view and they balance advocating for their own and others' interests—all while practicing responsible decision-making. 

We are also playtesting two new scenarios: Leading Through Crisis, where students play members of a crisis response team grappling with the 25th amendment, and Follow the Facts, where students play journalists practicing information literacy as they report on a natural disaster with differing accounts of what's true. 

Bring Lives in Balance to your class or contact us to playtest our other two scenarios. 

2020 Annual Report: A Year of Play, Co-Creation, and Community

By iThrive Games

The strands of iThrive's DNA are composed of understanding the power of play. Social and emotional learning. Belonging and engagement in the spaces where teens are. Being teen and educator-centered. 

Thank you to each of the teachers, teens, and collaborators who share those same building blocks at their core. Here are our highlights from last year:

READ OUR 2020 ANNUAL REPORT

For more information on how we are working to further our mission of using games and game design to equip teens with the social and emotional skills they need to be healthy and resilient, the tools that support and protect their mental health and well-being, and the systems thinking they need to recognize inequity along with meaningful opportunities to imagine and design a better world, view our annual report

 

Designing for Equity: Five Principles for Curriculum Development

By iThrive Games

Last summer, like others in the education and game design space, we articulated a commitment to anti-racism, specifically to use "an anti-racist lens to review our offerings, making any changes that are necessary, and applying that lens as we create new ones." To actualize that commitment we were fortunate to be connected with Jessica Heard, a consultant for racial equity in education, who agreed to review our offerings and to collaborate with us on creating a set of design principles that we could use going forward. 

It was a meaningful experience for the team to have light shed on some of our blind spots, and to see where we had gone part of the way toward equity but still had room to go further. To that end, we are making changes to some of our curricular units, and have already shared a bit about changes we made to iThrive Curriculum: Sam's Journey and iThrive Curriculum: Museum of Me.  

While there's plenty more work to do, we are excited to move forward with our guiding principles for equity-centered design here at iThrive Games. Here are the high-level principles that we commit to using as we continue to create our game-based, social and emotional learning units:

1. Promote authentic representation of marginalized communities.

Examples of actions include consulting with members of underrepresented groups whose stories are portrayed in our units; making space to reflect on how those stories are represented for non-dominant groups, beyond the academic standards; paying special attention to tying in systemic considerations; and selecting media images and footage that celebrate the diversity of humankind.  

2. Promote accessibility for learners/players with various learning needs.

While Universal Design for Learning was already a core principle at iThrive, additional examples include creating space during ideation of products for other equity-centered features, such as translation into other languages and game modifications for varying reading levels.  

3. Promote critical consciousness and reframe content from a decolonizing lens.

Rather than inferring our commitment, we will name the practices and tools we recommend related to racial and social justice, Universal Design for Learning, and to trauma-informed, equity-centered, and transformative social and emotional learning. 

4. Promote design that considers the whole person and highly variable lived conditions of learners/players.

Examples include preparing teachers for the possibility that all learners / all parents of learners may not be emotionally available for or willing to engage with the content, incorporating trauma-informed practices, thinking about anticipated lived experiences and supporting teachers to hold space, and accessing partnerships and resources that can enrich and expand our areas of expertise.

5. Promote bringing in community in those places where we are still learning.

For example, at all steps of the design process, from ideation to implementation, find ways to involve critical thought partners to review and inspire us to keep reaching for equity.

We share these principles to be transparent in how we work and what we value. We would love to hear from other educational and game design companies about how you are committing to equity in your work. Sign up for our newsletter to stay informed about exciting, equity-driven changes to our products.

Diversify Your HS ELA Reading List With These Poems by Writers of Color

By iThrive Games

Teachers—are you looking for additional ways to highlight voices from all communities? We are too and recently found an opportunity to do so in our English Language Arts unit iThrive Curriculum: Museum of Me. This game-based and social and emotional learning unit invites students to explore the story of the family at the center of the video game What Remains of Edith Finch. In one lesson, as students uncover the choices that were made in Edith's family, they are invited into a reflection on their own choices, through the lens of poetry. In revising the unit to include a diversity of voices, we found that we could highlight the work of these poets of color. 

Here are five poets that can enrich your classroom:

  • Ha Jin, author of A Center. This poem is part of a larger collection of poems, A Distant Center, which includes meditations on the meaning of home. 
  • Nikki Giovanni, author of Legacies. This poem provides an opportunity to discuss unspoken meanings and the choices we make in communicating with family members. 
  • Joy Harjo, author of A Map to the Next World. This poem explores the choices that connect us with one another and with nature and those that don't. 
  • Maya Angelou, author of Caged Bird. This poem explores privilege and oppression and the choices one makes within both. 
  • Rita Dove, author of Dawn Revisited. This poem invites students to reflect on the choices that are presented with the dawning of a new day.  

When students from all cultures can see themselves in the books, poems, and games that are brought into the classroom, we are one step closer to creating equitable classrooms, enriched by the diversity of all of our vast experiences.

10 YA Novels by Authors of Color for Your HS English Classroom

By iThrive Games

As part of the commitments we made in our anti-racist statement back in June, we are reviewing our educational offerings for opportunities to make them more equitable and to see where we can uplift and center voices of color and those from underrepresented communities. One way we can do this is in our curricular units, such as iThrive Curriculum: Sam's Journeyan English Language Arts and humanities unit for high school students. The narrative at the center of Sam's Journey is the game A Normal Lost Phone, which is unpacked message by message as players unlock information in Sam's phone. 

In our equity review of the unit — and inspired by the game's mechanism of telling a story largely through text messages and emails — we found there were opportunities to extend the unit by linking it to epistolary novels we love (or that have been recommended to us) that were authored by writers of color.

We combed through our favorite YA books and asked our teacher friends for recommendations. Here are 10 awesome young adult epistolary books by authors of color that you may wish to use in your classroom:

  1. Monster, by Walter Dean Myers. In movie script format, 16-year-old Steve Harmon tells the story leading up to the most pivotal event in his life. 
  2. To All the Boys I've Loved Before, by Jenny Han. Lara Jean writes love letters to every boy she's loved and keeps them safe in a special place. Everything changes when the letters make their way out into the world. 
  3. Dear Martin, by Nic Stone. Justyce Mcalister has had a brush with police brutality. In trying to make sense of it, he begins journaling to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., inquiring about the usefulness of those teachings today.
  4. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie. Junior is growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation, and he tells his story through a mixture of writing and art.
  5. The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga. Balram Halwai shares the story of his life in India through a letter to a Chinese political figure. 
  6. Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates. In letters to his adolescent son, author Ta-Nehisi Coates shares the experiences that have evolved his understanding of his place in the world as a Black man.
  7. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker. In letters to God, Celie shares the story of her life and her journey toward self-acceptance.
  8. Tears of a Tiger, by Sharon Draper. In letters, homework assignments, and articles, the story of high school student Andy's journey of grief and guild is unveiled. 
  9.  In the Time of Butterflies, by Julia Alvarez. This novel shares the story of four sisters who fight against an authoritarian regime in the Dominican Republic.
  10. Zenzele: A Letter for My Daughter, by J. Nozipo Maraire. A mother writes letters to her daughter, sharing life lessons and her experience of Zimbabwe's struggle for independence. 

You can find many of these books on commonsensemedia.org to assess their themes and age appropriateness for your classroom. We hope this list is helpful in building out resources for high school classrooms that elevate the voices of people of color.

Self-Awareness: Nurture It in Your Students with This SEL Exercise on Values

By iThrive Games

Last summer, in iThrive's statement in response to the killing of George Floyd, we revisited our values and made commitments to ensuring that everything we put into the world upholds justice and serves humanity. Over the course of this year we'll be sharing our progress, to hold ourselves accountable for continuing to take action toward being an anti-racist organization.

One of our commitments was to "continue our education on anti-racism and our journey toward becoming an anti-racist organization." One way we have continued that journey is to refresh our organizational values to be sure they reflect our commitments. We now have a shared, documented guidepost for our interactions with each other and with our collaborators. This same guidepost also informs our English Language Arts curricular units and our civics-based role-playing simulations and curricular surrounds, ensuring that they invite students into these same themes. Here are iThrive's values:

  • Whole Self: I am welcome to bring my full humanity and my gifts to work in service of collaborating and helping iThrive meet its mission. And I honor the full humanity and gifts of my colleagues. 
  • Connection: I foster personal and professional relationships with colleagues and collaborators, which supports iThrive in creating offerings that center relationships as well.
  • Joy: I make time to weave authentic joy, appreciation, celebration, and play into my workday and into iThrive's offerings.  
  • Communication: I communicate honestly and transparently in service of fostering collaboration, maintaining good relationships, and keeping the organization running smoothly. 
  • Integrity: I embody wholeness by acting ethically and in alignment with our values in my work and my interactions. 
  • Diversity and Inclusion: I work to understand, be curious about, and center a variety of perspectives and experiences in my interactions on the team and my contributions to iThrive's offerings. I contribute to an anti-racist lens at iThrive. 
  • Commitment to Learning: I approach work and interactions with the acknowledgment that I always have more to learn about myself, my colleagues, our work, and the world. I use curiosity to support a focus on growth rather than being right. 
  • Impact-driven Innovation: I use design thinking to fully understand problems and help to create real solutions that make a difference and foster transformational impact for teens.

We hope this transparency is helpful in letting our stakeholders know what we are about and what's important to us. There's power in naming your values and holding yourself accountable to them. Here's a discussion prompt to help your high school students reflect on their values and the ways they embody them.

  1. Imagine your best day, when everything is clicking. Imagine your interactions with others, how you feel inside, how you're connecting with others, how you're contributing to the world around you. Picture this day with detail...what are you wearing? Who do you see? What are your surroundings? Stay with this image until it feels very real. 
  2. Once you have the feeling, write down the elements that were a part of the day. What went into making it your best day? How did you show up? How did you show up for your community? How were you in relationships? In what ways did you make good choices or decisions? What beliefs or principles allowed that day to be as good as it was? Write these down, whether they are a sentence or a paragraph.
  3. Set a timer for 60 seconds and take a few breaths, just being present with how you feel. When the timer goes off, take a second look at the list and ask yourself what might be missing. Take a few moments to add that.  Reflect on whether you'd be willing to show up this way even when circumstances are not ideal.
  4. Now craft a short definition for each of the themes or values. Keep it short and simple so you can use it as a touchstone.
  5. Keep this for yourself or find a partner and share a bit about your best day. 

Let us know how this tool works with your students. We are happy to create English Language Arts and Social Studies resources that help these values become a reality. Sign up for our newsletter to learn more about our offerings.

Purpose: Helping Students Explore How to Impact the World Around Them

By iThrive Games

The riot at the Capital and other events over the past two weeks have made many who wish to uphold democracy think, "I wish there was something more I could do." Meaningful changes happen in this world when people combine their unique passions and skills into collective actions. 

At iThrive, we make tools to help high school educators create civics-centered contexts for teens to practice social and emotional skills, preparing them for meaningful and transformative civic engagement in three primary areas: self, community, and the world. Last week, we shared a tool for presencing feelings in the classroom to help teachers support students in cultivating emotional awareness in times of crisis. This week, we are thinking about tools for the community and the world. We have found that exploring purpose can help high school students begin to navigate how they are best suited to contribute to their community and to the world.

Seeking to define a purpose — where things we love and are skilled at overlap with a need in the world — is an important developmental step for teens and one that contributes to greater well-being. Teens shouldn't be rushed to choose a purpose, but they do need plenty of opportunities to consider and experiment with what resonates deeply with them and motivates them to give their best.

Activity: The World 

For educators, giving students an opportunity to tap into their sense of purpose may be one antidote to the difficulties our society is facing. Try opening your next class with this brief set of prompts that students can journal about or discuss in pairs:

  1. What's an issue or challenge in the world I care a lot about? What makes me say, "I wish I could do something?" (e.g. preserving democracy, achieving racial justice, eradicating poverty, ensuring animal welfare, etc.)
  2. What's my vision for the world in 10 years, as it relates to this issue? 
  3. What unique ability, strength, talent, or skill do I have that I can start contributing to this vision? 
  4. What's one small step I can take in the next week to use my skills in the service of this vision?
Taking it Forward

At iThrive, we believe that since civics is social and emotional, we should teach it that way. We hope this tool is helpful for assisting students in exploring how they might engage in civics from a place of purpose, now and in the future.  Learn how we're using play, SEL and tech to prepare high school students for transformative civic engagement.

An Insurrection Happened. Here’s an SEL Tool to Help Students Process It.

By iThrive Games

On January 6th, a mob stormed the Capitol building to halt the work of governing the United States of America-specifically the work of certifying incoming president Joseph Biden as the winner of the 2020 election. The news was filled with images of an angry mob of people, some holding confederate flags, descending on the Capitol building, gaining access to it, vandalizing certain offices, removing property, and antagonizing police and government officials. We were shocked and dismayed at scenes of government officials cowering under desks while the mob tried to gain access to them.

That day or the next, teachers did the work of helping students to make sense of what they saw, to process their feelings about it, to put it in a historical context, and to practice media literacy. We are grateful to every teacher who shouldered this heavy lift. 

Here at iThrive, as we did our own processing of what we were seeing, many of us were struck by emotions not only associated with the event at hand, but also emotions associated with variance in how those participating in the insurrection were treated and what might be at the root of the difference in how they were treated as compared with protesters who were marching for Black lives. So there were feelings upon feelings to be present with.

At the behest of our Executive Director, Dr. Susan Rivers, we turned to a tool that we use often to get present with how we feel. It's our version of a tool created by Dr. Kathlyn Hendricks of the Hendricks Institute. We offer it below, for adults to process and then for adults to use with the youth in their lives, specifically teachers with students. 

We hope that this social and emotional learning (SEL) tool is of support in the days and weeks to come.

Activity: Befriending Feelings

This exercise can be used to get present with the emotions you are feeling and to experience them fully without feeling the need to take action immediately. Choose an issue or situation or event that you'd like to explore.

  1. For a few minutes talk about (or journal about) your thoughts and feelings about the situation.
  2. Turn your awareness to your body. Having just expressed yourself, notice what you feel in your chest and throat area. Write that down or draw how you feel. Notice how you feel in your upper back and neck area. Write that down or draw how you feel. Notice how you feel in your belly area. Write that down or draw how you feel.
  3. If you noticed sensation in your chest and throat area, complete the following sentence: "I feel sad that ______."
  4. If you noticed sensation in your jaw and shoulders/neck area, complete the following sentence: "I feel angry that _____."
  5. If you noticed sensation in your abdominal area, complete the following sentence: "I feel scared that ______."
  6. If you noticed sensation in multiple areas, try completing each of the sentences.
  7. Take a moment to appreciate that you gave yourself the time and space to be with your feelings. Noticing how you feel is an important step to take before you take any action. Think of a person or a place where you feel safe and loved. Allow yourself to feel that sense of safety and love for yourself for being okay with having big feelings.

DOWNLOAD THE BEFRIENDING FEELINGS ACTIVITY (PDF)

At iThrive, we believe that since civics is social and emotional, we should teach it that way. Learn how we're using play, SEL and tech to prepare high school students for transformative civic engagement.

2020 Wrap-Up: A Gameful Year of Connection, Creativity, and Play

By iThrive Games

2020 was not an easy one by anyone's standards. Educators scrambled to learn how to deliver distance learning and to change all of their lesson plans to an online format. Students struggled with the loss of much of their in-person social life and with the transition to learning from home. Parents managed working while trying to help their children with online learning. And nationally, as we grieved our pandemic-related losses, we also collectively faced systemic racism, with many finding ways to begin to make changes from where they stood. 

While not easy, there was still the opportunity for social and emotional learning and joy in 2020. Whether we found new ways to connect with family and friends through play online or whether we had a lot of obstacles to overcome, we made it—because we are still here.

Like everyone else, at iThrive we had our ups and downs and lots to adjust to in 2020. We were happy to officially release iThrive Curriculum: Museum of Me, to collaborate with educators on the creation and release of iThrive Curriculum: Sam's Journey, to playtest our new role-playing simulation, iThrive Sim, with over 400 students, and to collaborate with our colleagues at the Situation Room Experience to create the civics-based Lives in Balance and Leading Through Crisis scenarios for our simulation game. 

We appreciate you for the many ways you engaged with us, whether it was downloading one of our game-based learning units, attending one of our webinars, playtesting our role-playing simulation, or reading our articles. Below are the blog posts you read the most this year. 

Top Five Blog Posts of 2020:

  1. Social Distancing and Staying Connected Through Games: Read about how playing games together at home can relieve stress, bring joy, and foster connection.
  2. Urban Assembly Students Create COVID-19 Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Story: Read about our first virtual Game Design Studio, held with students from Urban Assembly. We co-designed an interactive story game reflective of the students' experiences navigating the social upheaval of the pandemic.
  3. COVID Self-Care Package: Practicing #SELatHome: Try out our 14-day challenge to practice social and emotional learning (SEL) and self-reflection at home. Social and emotional skills are even more useful in times of confusion, crisis, and abrupt change.
  4. Games to Play While Social Distancing: MMORPGs: Read about how massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) can be a safe space to wander, explore, and connect with others.
  5. Staying Connected While Social Distancing: Games for Emotional Coping: Take a look at our gameful recommendations to help you practice self-care, savor life's best moments and experiences, and turn inward to explore, accept, and express what's challenging about this moment. 

We hope that each of you has a wonderful holiday season. We'd love to stay connected with you. Click here to receive our monthly newsletter with resources and updates. Here's to more creativity, connection, and play in 2021.

Civics Is Social and Emotional. We’re Using Play to Teach It That Way.

By iThrive Games

The events of 2020 have forced into the national consciousness the foundational need for both responsible civic engagement and attending to young people's social and emotional well-being. As the pandemic and its ripple effects have endured, social and emotional connection and skill development have become a non-negotiable anchor for many school communities. At the same time, the power of individual choices to impact the well-being of whole communities has been thrown into high relief. 

It is timely that in the past few years, thinkers and practitioners at the leading social and emotional learning organization (such as CASEL) have prioritized connecting young people's social and emotional competencies to larger questions of civic responsibility and justice. CASEL defines transformative SEL as "a process whereby students and teachers build strong, respectful relationships founded on an appreciation of similarities and differences, learn to critically examine root causes of inequity, and develop collaborative solutions to community and societal problems." This definition aligns with iThrive's view that civics is social and emotional, and that social and emotional skills enable responsible civic engagement.

iThrive embeds social and emotional learning opportunities into civics role-playing simulations for high school students through iThrive Sim, a role-playing platform and accompanying SEL-rich scenarios that invite teens to experience the very human factors in all civic endeavors in a visceral way. 

We see educators creating civics-centered contexts for teens to practice social and emotional skills, preparing them for meaningful and transformative civic engagement in three primary areas: self, community, and the world.

Self

At the intrapersonal level, all students must be able to see themselves — and believe they deserve to be seen — in the story, purpose, and future of our democracy. The stories we tell in classrooms, both in words and in actions, must enhance self-awareness by reflecting the diversity of the students we teach. This can spark in all students, and particularly those traditionally excluded from mainstream education, a sense of belongingness, motivation, and efficacy to engage in the democracy we all must steward into the future.  

Community

Interpersonally, students (and all adults) must come to view individual and cultural differences as rich assets. They also must cultivate self-management, social awareness, and relationship skills, including the ability to manage discomfort and pause to investigate their habitual biases in order to fully see those with whom they disagree. Without these skills, we cannot hope to meet on common ground to tackle our society's most intractable challenges.

The World

Students must both see and understand systems of injustice and foster the beliefs and skills needed to advocate for changes that make a more just society for themselves and others. They should develop the skills to make responsible decisions that enhance not only their own best interests but the interests of the collective, global community. A genuine concern for the just and ethical treatment of all members of our society starts with seeing ourselves in each other, and believing that we all deserve to play an important role in realizing our country's highest ideals.

If we consider school communities as microcosms of democracy, wherein we norm and enact the values of our civic society writ large, the fact that civic and social and emotional values are the fabric of school environments becomes obvious. The question is whether or not we are making them tangible, speaking about them directly, and using them to elevate learning and connection. We have a responsibility and an exciting opportunity to do so.

The Power of Play: Finding Hope and Community in World of Warcraft

By iThrive Games

For many young people, games like World of Warcraft are more than play. Games provide a place to connect, a place to explore, and a place to learn. At iThrive Games Foundation, we have seen firsthand how game play can support teens in thriving, whether it's in the classroom or amongst friends playing together online.

Earlier this year, we asked teens from a high school in Philadelphia to share a bit about their experiences with games. For extra credit in their sophomore English class, a few students shared their thoughts on questions such as, "How do games help you deal with life? What games are meaningful to you and how do they help you better understand yourself or the world? How do games help you question the way things are in the world?"

As part of the Power of Play series, we'll be sharing their insights on play, from video games to card and board games. To protect their privacy, their reflections will be shared with initials rather than full names. We hope these stories illuminate the power of game play as seen through the eyes of these young people.


Finding Hope Through World of Warcraft
B.P., High School Student from Philadelphia, PA

"Video games are a waste of time for men who have nothing else to do. Real brains don't do that." These words were by Ray Bradbury, a famous writer and a pioneer of the science-fiction genre in the 20th century.  Fahrenheit 451, one of his most well-known stories, foretold a dystopian society with remarkable technological advances similar to our modern world, and people were addicted to and disconnected by it. Bradbury regretted his accurate predictions, and hoped such a world did not occur. As a consequence, he despised gaming and believed that it was a meaningless hobby. His mentality is not unique and it is still popular, among many, to shun video games for being childish and a waste of time. However, I greatly disagree. From my experience, gaming is a worthwhile pastime, tremendously connective, and offers as many insights into life as books.

I was raised in a complicated and toxic household. When my parents divorced and my childhood best friend committed suicide, I was in a grim and lamentable place. Since I was an only child, I did not have anyone to consult about my problems. Often, I would hide in the bathroom and silently cry alone. On one Thanksgiving night, my older cousin found me sobbing in the dark. After he calmed me down, he proceeded to nonchalantly play a game on his laptop. 

"World of Warcraft," I said out loud, curiously, since it was my first encounter with the world of gaming. He noticed my interest and offered me a chance to play it. Completely ecstatic, I picked one of his coolest-looking heroes—an undead warlock. After staying up all night playing the game with my cousin, I fell in love with World of Warcraft. Later, he allowed me to use his account and introduced me to his guild (in the game, players can join guilds and play the game together). From the guild, I have met amazing people who are unbelievably nice. One of the members of the guild that I interacted with was a therapist from Europe who plays the game in his free time. We would often farm monsters for drops, and talk about personal issues or life lessons while playing the game together. He helped me learn about the importance of mental health, and building healthy coping habits to deal with stress. 

Although we both no longer play the game together or keep in touch with one another, he has made a considerable impact in my life through the amazing connectivity gaming enables. Furthermore, gaming allowed me to understand the importance of companionship and strategization in a way that no other form of entertainment could teach. In essence, gaming is not just a simple time waster. It has the power to connect people like no other media can. I wish more people could understand that gaming is so much more than ten year olds playing Angry Birds or sweaty thirty year olds in their mother's basement.

Virtual Classroom Management Tips: Supporting Connection With Play

By iThrive Games

The move to remote learning highlights some of the limitations of a virtual classroom. Trying to build resonance and create connection among people over video conference requires intentionality.

At iThrive, we see interpersonal connection as a sense of warmth, belonging, feeling seen, and feeling respected. In virtual environments, cultivating this requires some different strategies than we use when we're in person. As part of the curricular surrounds for our new virtual civics game, iThrive Sim: Lives in Balance, we have created a number of ways to support teachers in building this intentional connection.

We appreciated the work of the game-loving experts behind Zoom Jam, presented by USC Games and Situation Lab in partnership with The Higher Education Video Game Alliance. We included Mute-iny, our favorite game from Zoom Jam, as part of an activity teachers can do at any point, but particularly before engaging in online play, such as our role-playing experience. This activity can help to focus attention on how each class member can contribute to an inclusive and engaging virtual space.

Step 1: Reflect and Discuss

Share with students that to stay connected from a physical distance in the virtual classroom, you might need to use some different strategies than you use when you're together in person. Ask students to reflect and share: 

  • What does feeling connected mean to you? 
  • This year as we have practiced social distancing, how have you stayed connected to friends and family?
Step 2: Tune in Through Play
  • Introduce the lip-reading game Mute-iny and orient students to it with something like, "Let's see how closely we can pay attention to one another."
  • Play Mute-iny. This simple game works with any video conferencing software with video and chat functions. 
  • Have each student who'll be playing prepare one sentence that they will say on mute while others try to guess what they are saying. 
  • Tip: You may want to have each role-play group of 6 play this game together in breakout rooms (if that is allowed in your school). If you want to play as a whole class, ask 6 students to volunteer to say sentences while the rest of the class guesses what they're saying. 

Directions (Source: https://zoomjam.org/):

  1. Everyone is muted, and the volume is turned down.
  2. Pick an order for people to go (for instance, number each person 1, 2, 3, 4...).
  3. One person starts by counting down from 3, then says a sentence really slowly.
  4. Everyone else - type and send your response to the group chat and see what everyone else said!
  5. Have the next person signal or post in the chat that they're starting, and repeat steps 3-5 until everyone has had a chance.
  6. Once everyone has finished their turn, unmute yourselves and reveal your sentences!
Step 3: Briefly Discuss
  • Ask students to reflect and share: What did you notice about how we connected and tuned into each other while we played Mute-iny?

What strategies have been working for you to enhance connection in your classroom? We love hearing from you, so if you'd like to share, email us at contact@ithrivegames.org. And be sure to visit our website to learn more about using iThrive Sim, our role-playing simulation, in your high school civics class.

Help Us Innovate Civics with Play and SEL: Vote for iThrive Games at SXSW EDU

By iThrive Games

VOTE FOR OUR PANEL IN THE #SXSWEDU PANEL PICKER!

We need your vote to help us share our role-playing simulation game, iThrive Sim: Lives in Balance, with thousands of educators at SXSW Edu 2021. Our session will demonstrate how we link civics learning with social and emotional learning in an exciting format that deeply engages high school students. Audience support helps panels get chosen, so please click here to vote for ours and play a part in activating teachers around student-led civics learning.

Our panel will feature our own Susan Rivers, PhD, iThrive's executive director and chief scientist, along with Mira Cohen, director of education at Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, and Malcolm Foley, expert educator and counselor at Academy of Scientific Exploration. The presenters have each played a key role in developing and testing the simulation with students and teachers. They will share how this unique simulation experience is enriching and reshaping civics learning.

 The secret sauce in any great civics course is personal relevance. Lives in Balance gives students the chance to access and apply data, knowledge, and skills in real-time as they collaborate, debate, compromise, and negotiate with peers to solve problems based on historical events. When students learn civics through hands-on experiences that also support social and emotional learning, like Lives in Balance, they begin to see themselves as decision-makers and critical members of a well-functioning democracy.

If you are inspired by this vision of experiential civics learning, please pick our panel. Vote here (you'll need to take a few seconds to create an account in order to vote). And if you're curious to learn more about iThrive Sim: Lives in Balance, visit here. Hope to see you online next year at SXSW Edu.

Power of Play: Finding New Friends and Perspectives in Destiny

By iThrive Games

For many young people, video games like Bungie's Destiny 2 are more than just play. Games provide a place to connect, a place to explore, and a place to learn. At iThrive Games Foundation, we have seen firsthand how game play can support teens in thriving, whether it's in the classroom or amongst friends playing together online.

Earlier this year, we asked teens from a high school in Philadelphia to share a bit about their experiences with games. For extra credit in their sophomore English class, a few students shared their thoughts on questions such as, "How do games help you deal with life? What games are meaningful to you and how do they help you better understand yourself or the world? How do games help you question the way things are in the world?"

Below, one teen shares their insights on play and the video game, Destiny in their own words. To protect their privacy, their reflections will be shared with initials rather than full names. We hope these stories illuminate the power of game play as seen through the eyes of these young people.


Finding New Friends and Perspectives in Destiny
A.C., High School Sophomore, Philadelphia, PA

Gaming has been a great tool in my life for learning lessons about people and life. They allow you to expand your perspective on a multitude of things while having fun. Gaming has brought many friendships to my life and I am happy about it. One game in particular I would like to talk about is Destiny.

To begin, Destiny is an open world game where you choose between three classes: Warlock, Hunter, and Titan. You wake up from death with the help of a ghost, a little exodroid that can restore your life force. He has been searching for you for thousands of years. You wake up earth but many years later where aliens have conquered the planet and humans have moved to a safe haven named the tower. This is where your journey begins.

Once you make it to the tower, they begin telling you all of the stuff you can do to power up your character and the lore behind what's going on. The main protectors of the tower are the vanguard that are made up of the three classes mentioned above—Zavala, Ikora, and Cayde-6. You can go through most of Destiny as a solo player but they allow you to be in a group up to six.

Destiny provides so much never-ending content you can play multiple hours a day and still have a plethora of stuff to do. This helped me a lot because I was able to talk to my cousin Jalen more often while playing, since I couldn't see him as often as I wanted to. We stayed up countless nights trying to get better than each other. 

We ran into other people who wanted to do the same and just had so much fun. You can join a clan in this game where it allows you to become a group of friends so you can do encounters together. We joined one about a year ago and we have run into so many good people in the world. They are just regular people trying to have fun. We roast each other on who is the best in the clan or if you can hold your own weight. They just try to make you better at the game. It also made me a better person.

Destiny was a gateway for me to play other games and get to know people I have not met in person. Games, in my opinion, are crucial so you can see how people work and the lessons you will learn in life. I'm glad I was able to expand my perspective on the world while having fun in a never-ending game.

Destiny 2

Check out our Game Guide for Destiny 2 for SEL-inspired themes in the game and discussion prompts crafted to invite depth to gameplay. 

iThrive Games to Join The Great Exchange: Student Engagement Summit

By iThrive Games

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR THE #GREATEXCHANGEDU: STUDENT ENGAGEMENT SUMMIT

Susan E. Rivers, PhD, Executive Director and Chief Scientist at iThrive, is looking forward to speaking at The Great Exchange: Student Engagement Summit, produced by Classcraft and Google for Education. This virtual event, on Thursday, October 29th, brings together education innovators from across the sector in service of sharing practices for engaging students more deeply.

Dr. Rivers will be part of the panel discussion "How can games promote equity?" along with David Adams of Urban Assembly, Jennie Magiera of Google, and Devin Young of Classcraft.  They'll discuss how games can engage all students by making learning more culturally relevant, reducing unconscious bias, and fostering intrinsic motivation.

"Distance learning is an opportunity for us to be even more intentional about embedding social and emotional learning and finding new ways to engage students," said Dr. Rivers. "I look forward to discussing how game-based learning invites students to try on new identities and gain new perspectives."

This virtual event is free of charge so that anyone who wants to learn and engage can do so. Click here to register for The Great Exchange: Student Engagement Summit. Stop by our booth at the virtual expo, where we will be sharing more about our civics game iThrive Sim: Lives in Balance. Hope to see you there!

iThrive’s Juvenile Justice System Project Fosters New Partnerships

By iThrive Games

Racial disparities in the juvenile justice system continue to grow even as youth arrest rates decline overall, and black youth face particularly egregious disparities. Inequity in the provision of mental health services on the basis of race before, during, and after incarceration negatively impacts the health, well-being, employment opportunities, educational attainment, and relationships of individuals of color who are or were system-involved. 

Last year, with a grant from William T. Grant Foundation, iThrive began setting the groundwork for a project to increase understanding of the lived experiences of youth of color within juvenile detention centers. The project was set to use iThrive's co-design approach, Game Design Studio, to authentically engage with youth and explore opportunities and barriers to supporting their mental health. 

The COVID-19 pandemic hit just before the project was set to launch, disrupting the planned work. We could no longer work in-person with the youth; the detention centers were closed to all visitors indefinitely and travel restrictions were in place across the country. Staff explored and tested options for working with the young people at the chosen site in Georgia remotely, but the lack of reliable remote access and the nature of the work prohibited a distance approach.

After a few months of exploring other potential partners, staff found an excellent collaborator in Janelle Ridley. Bringing over 15 years of expertise to the project, Ms. Ridley currently sits on the Governor's Juvenile Justice Advisory Board and was previously a District Coordinator for System-Involved Youth for the Boston Public Schools where she worked with youth most impacted by the school-to-prison pipeline and sought to intentionally foster educational equity while actively working to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline. Ms. Ridley is founder of Transition HOPE, a program intentionally designed for youth who are system-involved. Transition HOPE has been able to assist and bridge the needed resources for youth to continue moving forward. HOPE is an acronym for holding High Expectations for each and every young person; providing Opportunities that are realistic and within their perspective; helping the youth envision Pathways to Success by taking ownership of decisions for desired long-term outcomes; and providing Encouragement to help youth acknowledge that success is theirs to claim and define irrespective of the past.   

In this new iteration of the project, iThrive staff will work closely with Ms. Ridley and a group of youth who will serve as Peer Leaders using our game design studio workshop model. Within the game design studio, peer leaders design games that draw from their lived experiences to think about the impacts of systems on their lives, and to imagine re-designed systems that would better support their well-being and mental health. In addition to designing games, peer leaders will build their facilitation skills and will lead meetings across the year with stakeholders, including other youth, city officials, educators, among others. In those meetings, peer leaders will use the games they design to launch discussions and explorations around systemic change, with particular focus on their lived experiences and on their well-being and mental health.

The peer leaders will work with youth stakeholders across multiple sessions using the game design studio approach, where the youth stakeholders will be invited to share their experiences in the system, iterate on the game designs to better reflect their needs and experiences, and then engage in conversations and game-play sessions with stakeholders.  

"My goal is for those in positions of power and change to recognize that those with the lived experience are the experts, and they need to be at the forefront of change," said Ms. Ridley. "My hope is that these youth will see the value they are able to bring forth and although their journey has been those of trials, tribulations, and oppression, their journey is not over yet." 

iThrive staff are grateful to Ms. Ridley and the youth for their partnership and also look forward to collaborating with AGNCY, a Boston-based nonprofit design firm that engages user-centered design to work with stakeholders toward systems change; and Beverley Evans, associate professor at the Graduate School of Education at Lesley University, who focuses much of her teacher training on building empathy amongst her students for young people and families most impacted by the school-to-prison pipeline.  

"We are thrilled to have found partnerships to advance this important work," said Susan E. Rivers, PhD, Executive Director and Chief Scientist at iThrive Games. "We look forward to engaging with this group of young people in service of supporting youth-initiated systemic changes, changes that are long overdue."

Virtual Classroom Management Strategies: Norm Setting in 3 Steps

By iThrive Games

In a time that asks us to reevaluate what we think of as normal classroom management, one way educators and students can co-create a sense of stability in the virtual classroom is to collaborate on setting norms.

Whether you're a few weeks or a few months into the school year, revisiting norms can be a helpful part of your virtual classroom management plan. 

As we work to support teachers in amplifying their civics curriculum with our role-playing game iThrive Sim: Lives in Balance, we have found that a key part of inviting students into deeper engagement is to collaborate with them on a set of key norms. These are touchstones for everyone to observe and come back to during interactive and unscripted play and learning sessions.

Having agreements in place can help build connection and investment and prevent misunderstandings. Norm setting also gives students language and tools to advocate for themselves. It emphasizes that responsibility for making the learning experience a success belongs to all class members. 

Below is a three-step process you can use to facilitate norm setting in a virtual classroom. You can set aside 25 minutes for the full discussion. 

Step 1: Facilitate a discussion. Use the following prompts: 

  • What's different for you in your experience of learning when we are together in the classroom compared to when we are together virtually?
  • What do you know you need to do to stay alert and engaged? 
  • How will we signal to each other that something isn't okay and needs to change? 
  • What do we each commit to doing to support an environment where we can all participate and learn?

Step 2: As a class, vote on and rank the most important norms. 

Step 3: Make a list of the key behaviors, strategies, and signals the class has agreed are most important. Consider "pinning" this list in the chat box of the video conferencing software used in your virtual classroom or other shared online space so everyone can revisit it regularly. 

What strategies have been working for you to enhance connection and foster helpful norms in your classroom? We love hearing from you, so if you'd like to share, email us at contact@ithrivegames.org. And be sure to visit our website to learn more about using iThrive Sim, our role-playing simulation, in your high school classroom.

classroom management norms virtual classroom

Self-Care Tips for Educators: Discover New Practices at The Lounge on 10/28

By iThrive Games

RSVP TO JOIN US AT THE LOUNGE on WED, 10/28!

Thank you to those who attended our first meeting of The Lounge—A Place for Teachers to Connect and Share Ideas. For those who missed it, in our inaugural gathering iThrive's Executive Director and Chief Scientist Dr. Susan E. Rivers shared classroom management strategies for supporting emotional awareness along with self-care tips for teachers interested in incorporating social-emotional practices at home. We'd love to share it with you so we've embedded the video below for those of you who couldn't make it.

 

What's Next?

Join us in The Lounge on Wednesday October 28th from 4:30-5:30 pm ET. Therapist and Restoring Resourcefulness Coach Leslie Chertok will offer self-care tips for educators. Engaging through online learning platforms all day can leave you feeling a bit drained. Leslie will share a breathing exercise that you can do alone or with your students to support classroom management, and she'll share an attention refresher called Loop of Awareness. Please take a moment to register here. See you in The Lounge! 

RSVP TO JOIN US AT THE LOUNGE on WED, 10/28!

Welcome to The Lounge: A Place for Teachers to Connect and Share Ideas

By iThrive Games

Favoring connection. That's what we are up to as we navigate the current circumstances. We wanted to create an online space for teachers to favor connection with each other after they do such a good job connecting with students. 

So grab a snack or drink and join us at The Lounge—a virtual teachers' lounge where educators can connect, vent, and share ideas with other teachers across the nation. Topics will be in the space of social and emotional learning, game-based learning, and high school education.

This month's topic is emotional awareness in the classroom. How are you practicing it at home and with your students? Hear from our Executive Director Dr. Susan E. Rivers as she shares tips on how to set up a classroom in ways that support social and emotional learning. 

Come into The Lounge on Wednesday, Sept. 30th at 3:30pm ET. Click here to register. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Hope to see you there! 

teacherteacher lounge

Call for Abstracts: Volume 3 of Journal of Games, Self, & Society

By iThrive Games

Journal of Games, Self, & Society (JGSS), a peer-reviewed journal created and edited by iThrive Games and published by ETC Press, publishes original research and scholarship examining the benefits to humans and to society when games include humanity as a core design element. We encourage interdisciplinary research, community, and conversation focused on how games, game design, and gameplay contribute to a deeper understanding of learning, health, and humanity. We enthusiastically seek original works that push the boundaries of what we know—or what we think we know—about the qualities of games that can benefit our lives emotionally and socially. 

The theme of our next issue is games as fuel for connection and transformation for teens.

As society navigates the COVID-19 pandemic and charts a path forward, games continue to be integral to learning and connection at home, in our communities, and in educational spaces (be they virtual or physical). This is especially true for adolescents. We seek papers that highlight real-world applications of the science of gameplay's benefits for relationships, learning, and well-being during this critical developmental period. 

We are pleased to announce that Claudia-Santi F. Fernandes and Grace Collins will join us as guest editors for this issue.  

We invite educators, researchers, scholars, and game designers from across academic disciplines and industries to submit extended abstracts for consideration in the next issue of Journal of Games, Self, and Society.   

Successful abstracts will meet the following criteria: (1) examine the use of games in settings with teens with a focus on relationships, learning, or well-being; (2) demonstrate applications of or commentary on theory and/or an evidence base, (3) are found to be of good fit, adequate rigor, and theoretical or practical soundness, and (4) make a new contribution to the field.  We encourage submitted manuscripts to consider and include implications for theory, policy, and/or practice in the discussion section.  

Manuscripts published in the journal typically include empirical research using qualitative or quantitative methods (including case study approaches); literature reviews, and detailed descriptions of the game(s) or game design that is the focus of the piece.  Submissions may focus on the design approach and analysis of a specific game, use of one or more games in learning settings, applications of policy, or other innovative approaches examining the journal's area of impact.

Please explore previous issues of the journal for examples of works previously published. The journal audience is interdisciplinary and includes designers, researchers, educators, and other practitioners. 

Extended abstracts are due by November 20, 2020.  Invitations for full articles will be made in November.  Full papers are due by May 1, 2021, and will undergo blind peer review. Notifications of acceptance will follow in May 2021 and revisions will be due by July 1, 2021. Accepted works will be published in Volume 3 of the journal in the fall of 2021.

How to Submit

Extended abstracts should be anonymized and follow APA formatting. Abstract should not exceed 1,000 words, excluding references. Please include in your abstract a brief introduction to your research topic, an overview of the theoretical or empirical underpinnings and relevant literature, methodology (if relevant), findings of interest, and implications for theory, policy, and/or practice. Abstracts should also include a brief statement about how the full paper will address the topic of this issue—games as fuel for connection and transformation for teens—and how it advances the mission of the Journal of Games, Self, and Society to foster a deeper understanding of learning, health, and humanity through games.

Abstracts should be sent to jgss@ithrivegames.org no later than 11:59 PM ET on November 20, 2020. More information about the journal can be found here.

About Our Guest Editors

Claudia-Santi F. Fernandes, Ed.D. LPC, MCHES, NCC, is associate director of the play2PREVENT Lab at the Yale Center for Health & Learning Games and an associate research scientist at the Yale School of Medicine. Claudia is an adolescent (mental) health expert with experience in public schools, clinical settings, and research institutions. 

Grace Collins is founder and CEO of Liminal Esports. Grace previously taught high school computer science and led games and education policy at the U.S. Department of Education. 

Call for Nominations: iThrive Games’ Educator Advisory Council

By iThrive Games

The iThrive Educator Advisory Council is a national hub of teachers that advises and supports iThrive Games Foundation in its mission to use games to equip teens with the skills they need to be healthy and resilient, the tools that support and protect their mental health and well-being, and the systems thinking they need to recognize inequity along with meaningful opportunities to imagine and design a better world.

Councilmembers are high school social studies and English Language Arts teachers and administrators who bring the perspective of passionate educators with deep insight into who teens are as people and as learners. Councilmembers will offer feedback on and promote resources for educators and teens that encourage student engagement, deep learning, and meaningful connection. 

iThrive commits to working with teens from traditionally marginalized groups, especially people of color, women, members of the LGBTQ community, those living with disabilities, English language learners, and those from working class backgrounds. We believe educators who teach these groups must be centered in the work that we do, so teachers who bring these experiences are encouraged to apply.

Benefits:

  • Virtual meeting that requires no travel
  • Meet new peers, connect with other teachers and engage in enriching conversations in community
  • Gain insight into deep knowledge on game-based learning and social and emotional learning
  • Visible listing on the iThrive's website as an iThrive Educator Advisory Council member
  • Honorarium for quarterly meetings and playtesting encounters

Responsibilities:

  • Bring your innovative, inspired perspective that contributes to forward thinking 
  • Commit to one term (two years of membership)
  • Attend quarterly advisory committee meetings online
  • Provide feedback on iThrive programs and initiatives
  • Notify colleagues of education program offerings at iThrive

You can nominate yourself or someone you think would love collaborating with us. Please fill out this form to apply or nominate a teacher you know, and contact us here if you have any questions. Nominations are open and will be considered on a rolling basis.

APPLY OR NOMINATE A TEACHER

Game-Based Learning 101: How to Choose A Video Game for a HS English Class

By iThrive Games

iThrive Curriculum game-based learning units are a set of social and emotional learning (SEL) curricular units for high school English Language Arts (ELA) and humanities courses that use video game narratives as core texts. In a previous post we outlined our approach to selecting games to serve as the narrative foundation for these units. In this article we'll illustrate how we applied this approach to assess the hit title, Stardew Valley, and why we ultimately decided not to pursue a Stardew Valley unit.  

As we design any unit, we work closely with in-service and/or pre-service educators. In the spring semester of 2020 we worked with the students of our frequent collaborator, education and Universal Design for Learning expert, Dr. Gabrielle Rappolt-Schlichtmann of EdTogether. Her Harvard Graduate School of Education students were studying the role of emotion in learning. 

We challenged Dr. Schlichtmann's students to design game-based mini-units that would embed social and emotional learning into ELA learning objectives. (This collaboration generated the core ideas for our unit, Sam's Journey, which uses the mobile game A Normal Lost Phone.)

One group of students chose to design curricular content around Stardew Valley, a hit game that's widely hailed as an emotionally touching, engrossing experience. The game is categorized as a farm-life simulator, meaning players simulate the process of maintaining a farm and building relationships with the townsfolk nearby. The game is open-ended in the sense that players have a lot of choice and agency in how to spend their in-game time and which goals to pursue. They can choose to specialize in trapping or fishing, for instance, and decide which animals to tend to on the farm, which produce to grow, and how much time to spend mining in the nearby caves. They can choose to run errands for the townspeople, and to pour effort into rebuilding the community or play a part in its eventual takeover by a soulless corporation. 

A gameplay snapshot of Stardew Valley.

The draft unit that the students submitted for Stardew Valley was excellent. It was fully student-centered and focused on having students develop friendships with non-playable characters (NPCs), learning about their unique traits. The proposal was for students to tap into their empathy and perspective-taking to extend the characters' narratives through creative writing activities. These appeared to be solid angles from both an SEL and ELA point of view. 

These aren't the only considerations we had to keep in mind, though. In the game, players start out as a novice farmer new to Pelican Town. They work for (in-game) days, seasons, and years to really understand what success in the game looks like and to make meaningful progress towards building relationships and contributing to the community. Members of the iThrive team have played for over 20 hours and still have a lot of work to do to get close to multiple NPCs and learn meaningful tidbits about their lives. The main drawback of Stardew Valley for our curricular approach is, ironically, the very mechanic that makes it an excellent springboard for discussions about relationship building: the time it takes. 

The themes of integrating your character into the community and learning the unique traits, likes, and dislikes of your neighbors are a primary reason this game is powerful from a social and emotional learning standpoint. It just wouldn't do to rush students through the various components of the play experience just to "get to" the meaningful relationship-building moments; the drawn-out process is, in fact, the point. It takes sustained time and attention to build trust and reciprocity among community members.

A gameplay snapshot of Stardew Valley.

Another critical consideration that ultimately made us decide against pursuing a unit around Stardew Valley was a question of accessibility. The unit was designed for students to play the game alone so they could make choices that aligned with their interests and have the experience they wanted in a largely open-ended game. The game can be played on mobile phones, which is a boon to game-based learning since most teens have phones. But the game costs at least $5/license. That likely wouldn't be a barrier for a "hot seat" model of play — where students rotate playing in front of the class while peers observe — but for solo play the cost might be prohibitive for the many classrooms on tight budgets. 

Here's a summary of our ultimate decision points around releasing a Stardew Valley unit:

A critical point in our decision-making process was to ask for feedback from one of our trusted teacher partners and game-based learning advocates. Our frequent collaborator, Brian Harmon, a high school ELA teacher in Georgia who uses multimedia teaching approaches, reviewed the unit proposal and noted that its biggest drawback was that "playing the game for 'hours' means we would need some formative assess[ment] component for every 15-30 minutes of gameplay. How many hours into the video game before characters are developed and how are the actual mechanics of the core gameplay addressed in the pedagogy? If the lessons are tied to the interactions only and not the gameplay then that could be a problem....The administration won't like the play, play, play, without a lot of doing (at least they won't at my school)."

All of this said, a teacher devoted to project-based, community-building efforts certainly could make Stardew Valley gameplay and discussion a recurring experiential component and discussion point of an entire semester or year-long course. But generally we have found that the more time-limited and contained gameplay experiences like those found in emotional hard-hitters including What Remains of Edith Finch and A Normal Lost Phone better deliver a feasible game-based SEL option for high school classrooms.

Are your teen students or kids already playing Stardew Valley? If so, use our game guide to connect with them about the social and emotional learning themes the video game touches upon.

Some additional questions to pose to Stardew Valley players to support critical SEL reflections:

  • Among the NPCs, which ones are you drawn to and why?
  • What are you noticing about your own biases and first impressions towards NPCs in the game?
  • How is the culture of this community similar to or different from yours?
  • How do you see your community members supporting one another in real life?
  • What unique talents and points of view do/can you contribute to your community?
  • How do you build relationships?

Reflecting on the Power of Play: The Game of Life is Not a Game at All

By iThrive Games

This is the third in our 'Power of Play' series of reflections by students from a Philadelphia-area high school. For extra credit in their sophomore English class, a few students shared their thoughts on questions such as, "How do games help you deal with life? What games are meaningful to you and how do they help you better understand yourself or the world? How do games help you question the way things are in the world?" To protect their privacy, their reflections are shared with initials rather than full names.

The Game of Life is Not a Game at All
E.S., High School Student, Philadelphia, PA

My name is E.S. I am a 16-year-old male from Philadelphia. Games changed my life. Growing up, all I did was play games with my friends and family, whether it was video games, board games, or even a card game.  There was one game that I played that really did change my life. It was called The Game of Life.

This was always my favorite game to play because I always thought that life would be as easy as it was in that game. Spin a wheel, move forward, get a car, get cash, and have a family. But I learned it is not that easy. I learned I cannot just spin a wheel and move forward in life. I cannot just keep on moving forward space after space because that is not reality. I cannot land on a space and earn cash or choose the career path or the college path because life is not that simple. 

I learned that if I want a career I have to work hard to get it. If I want to go to college I have to go through all of the stages that come before it in order to get there. If I want to make money I have to work hard for it. This game taught me that nothing in life is ever just handed down to you. It has to be earned through hard work and dedication. 

Another thing is family. In this game, there are spaces you can land on that allow you to get married and have children. What this game doesn't show us are the struggles many people face. What this game doesn't show us is how hard it can be to find real love in the world. It doesn't show us how hard raising a kid can be. Another space on the board is to buy a house, but again, this game doesn't show us the struggles many people face when it comes to moving out or finding your own home. 

In reality, you cannot just spin the wheel and hope to get the highest number. "The Game of Life" is a representation of a false reality, a utopia, and all the good things in life, but it doesn't show us all the struggles you have to go through to get to those coveted spaces. It doesn't show us how the more we try to move forward, the more we get held back. It doesn't show us all the pain and suffering that comes with life. It does not show us how life is not a game. 

Happiness is hard to find in the real world and I learned that the hard way. "The Game of Life" was the life I grew up always wanting, but I realized that what I want in life is to succeed the right way. No loopholes, no handouts. I want to make it through life knowing I earned it. This game changed my life but it changed it for the better.

Engaged Students, Engaged Citizens: iThrive Content Now on Composer

By iThrive Games

We are thrilled to announce that iThrive Curriculum: Sam's Journey is now available on Composer—a place for educators to access the top citizenship education resources from around the world and to integrate learning science into curriculum planning. 

Sam's Journey is a humanities unit that invites students into a uniquely told story using digital artifacts, examining how different modes of communication are used to express identity, thoughts, and feelings. Based on the digital game A Normal Lost Phone, students explore the question of identity and gain insight into the experience of a youth in the LGBTQ community, all while adhering to the core standards educators need to meet for high school English Language Arts classes. 

We are happy to share this content on Composer, as the organization's focus on citizenship education aligns with our values at iThrive. Citizenship education empowers and supports students in becoming better citizens through the teaching of civic learning, social justice, social and emotional learning, and global competence.  

Our content joins 1,000 learning experiences available on this new digital platform, free for educators to access the top citizenship education resources from around the world and design high-impact curriculum for middle and high school students. Our other English Language Arts unit, iThrive Curriculum: Museum of Me, will be available on Composer later this month.

To pair Sam's Journey with LGBTQ-oriented lesson plans from other organizations, sign up for Composer today.

Urban Assembly Students Create COVID-19 Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Story

By iThrive Games

This spring, a cohort of high school students from Urban Assembly joined iThrive staff online for a design thinking and social and emotional learning co-design experience. The virtual Game Design Studio engaged teens in self-reflection, creativity, and systems thinking using the framework of game design. Over the course of six sessions, the students brainstormed ideas for a game that would share the perspective of teens living through the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The end result was an interactive story game called Blood Moon. Choose your own adventure and play the game here. The main character is Brooklyn teen Artemis, who wakes up from a long nap during the COVID-19 shelter-in-place orders. Her parents, hospital workers across town in Manhattan, should have returned from their shift by now. Where are they? Artemis must strike out of quarantine and into the streets of New York in search of her parents. Along the way she encounters helpers on her journey, runs into trouble both with the law and the locals, and even meets a super-sleuth delivery dog named Issac who won't leave her side until she is safely reunited with her family.

In order to track down her missing parents she will have to use all the tools in her social and emotional toolbox—she'll need self-management and self-awareness to keep herself strong, while her social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making will help her make connections and collaborate to solve the mystery.

Art Imitates Life

Early on in the development of this interactive story, the students wanted to create characters that reflected their world. There's Artemis, Ari for short, brave, and bold like the hunter for which she is named. This young Latinx powerhouse has a huge heart and the power of empathy, turning connections into relationships when she can, and setting healthy boundaries when she needs to. 

Ari meets Issac, a dog just as scrappy as she is. As a delivery dog for DoggoPrime, Issac knows how to get around the city, and he has a few tricks—and treats—tucked away in his knapsack to keep himself and Artemis on the trail of finding a family. He might just find a new family, too.

There's also Apollo, Ari's brother, who is the leader of the pack in their neighborhood and is just as bold as his sister. But while Ari looks for Mom and Dad, Apollo has a different journey to keep the city safe. He'll just have to keep everyone from thinking he is on the wrong side, including his sister Ari and that little mutt following her everywhere.

Other characters featured in the interactive story include Frank, the owner of a hot dog kiosk near the train station, who has seen it all, and knows Ari and Apollo are in more trouble than they know; Laura, Frank's sister, who is a master procurer who may or may not be able to help Ari find her parents but doesn't intend to stop trying; Captain Max, an officer who is here to make sure everyone shelters in place, but is starting to wonder if he is on the right side, or if he is quarantined from the truth; and Timmy, who lost his mind to COVID, is looking for family, and believes that helping Ari find her parents can help him back to himself.

Game Mechanics

Blood Moon is a branching narrative Twine game that can be played alone or with a group. The Urban Assembly students, who met via Zoom, wanted to create a game that teens could play by reading the interactive story together in Twine and then talking through the best ways for Artemis to make her way across the city by drawing on her social and emotional skills.

Students can debate Artemis' choices, and think about the ways that they use social and emotional skills in their own lives with friends and family. Blood Moon is text based and includes prompts for discussion, asking young people to talk about each of the social and emotional skills and learning. 

Social and Emotional Learning 

The interactive story applies social and emotional skills to the troubles teens face maintaining relationships during COVID, navigating family ties in stressful times, and managing the social upheaval of this year. Talking together provides teens with space to learn together and to practice the tools that will help save Artemis. In practicing those tools, the social and emotional skills are there for them when the game is over.

Visit the For Teens, By Teens page of our website to check out this interactive story game and other games created during iThrive's game design sessions with teens.

This work was supported through generous funding from the William T. Grant Foundation and the D.N. Batten Foundation.

Civics and Gameplay: What Teens Say About iThrive Sim: Lives in Balance

By iThrive Games

This Spring, over 60 students from the Los Angeles area playtested iThrive Sim — a robust web-based digital platform, created in partnership with the makers of the Situation Room Experience, that supports role-playing simulations as a powerful learning approach for civics. The students played the Lives in Balance scenario, which was created in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The scenario focuses on the constitutional issue of federalism using a pandemic as a backdrop.

In both pilot rounds, students said that they found Lives in Balance to not only be fun and engaging, but also educational and thought-provoking. They shared that gameplay allowed them to think from different perspectives, participate in governmental decision-making processes, learn more about civics and engage in critical thinking-specifically about the impact of their decisions.

When asked what they'd tell their parents about participating in civics-based scenario, students offered the following perspectives:

  • "I got the chance to stand as someone who is important in the decision-making process for a national crisis. It was fun and I would definitely do it again."
  • "It's an educational game that showed me different perspectives on the topic and expands one's ability to reason and debate an idea."
  • "It was really beneficial and a great way to learn more about the government and how it functions/makes decisions."
  • "It was a fun experience working as a team."
  • "...it prepares students for real-life situations/issues."

The main highlight of the experience for students was how interpersonal it was—many commented how much they enjoyed the discussions and debates with their peers in different roles. In this era of distance learning, interpersonal is key, as that's the component of education that was drastically reduced when school moved from the classroom into an online context.

With regard to learning outcomes, students in the first pilot focused on two: gaining new knowledge and critical thinking skills. Knowledge-based outcomes included how government and politics work, the nuances of civics-based concepts and the complexity of a pandemic. Critical thinking skills included being able to clearly state and advocate for one's opinion, understanding the process of decision-making, and learning how to prioritize different goals and work together towards a common goal.

Students in the second pilot homed in on what they learned about decision-making processes and how to navigate different perspectives. They described the difficulty of contending with making decisions because of their impact on the constituents and struggled with not knowing what kind of outcomes they would lead to. Additionally, students described how taking on the role of those in government helped them view civics-related issues from a different perspective, and to wrestle with the power of their positions.

At iThrive, we see playtesting as an element of co-design with teens. We invited the students to also describe any challenges they felt during gameplay so we could use that information to iterate improvements to the game. Some students described a desire for more time to read the materials and information in order to come to a more informed decision. Others enjoyed the time limit of the game, as this required them to come to a decision faster, rather than continuing to debate. Many students found the continuous pop-ups and files to be useful, as they provided them with new information, but some suggested the information should flow at a slower pace. This feedback guided modifications to the content and the gameplay experience. 

At the completion of gameplay, almost every student said they would recommend or highly recommend the game, as a tool for connection, fun and civics education. Teachers offered feedback such as, "It's exactly what we need in classrooms, structured debate."

Lives in Balance is undergoing a large scale pilot this fall. Sign up here to pilot this scenario with your students.

#EdChat: The Importance of Universal Design for Learning (UDL)

By iThrive Games

At iThrive, Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a key design element in all of our curricular units. Whether we're creating content for high school English Learning Arts or civics courses, we collaborate with UDL experts at EdTogether and use the principles of UDL to design the delivery methods, activities, and assessments that comprise each learning experience. In designing our units, we consider the diversity and variability inherent to the teens involved and work to prepare the learning environment to be rich with options for how teens take in the experience and how they express their new knowledge and skills.

Each teen develops differently and engages with concepts from different access points. The best learning happens when students engage authentically from the entry point of their own curiosity, interests, strengths, and ideas. That's a key reason we use game-based approaches. Games provide immersive experiences that offer visuals, sound, and movement to ensure students can engage in learning in multiple, embodied ways. 

Using a game is a great initial step toward universally designed learning experiences. As you make choices about which game-based learning units to use with high school students, consider these three reasons to ensure that UDL principles were used during the design of all the curricular elements. 

  1. UDL is a student-centered approach. A UDL orientation prioritizes students' authentic engagement and places a high value on their agency and use of unique strengths. This is an approach that resonates with people of all ages, of course, but is especially critical for teens. We know teen students learn best when their experiences and identities are validated and respected in the classroom. 
  2. UDL promotes flexibility and innovation. Approaching learning with a UDL frame makes us ask, "What's the real goal here?" If the end goal of a particular task is not reading comprehension, per se, but instead understanding a specific concept, why would we offer reading as the only method of engagement? UDL sparks us to think more creatively about presenting multiple ways to present and engage with content so that students can use a range of faculties and strengths to grow skills and knowledge.
  3. Designing for the margins uplifts everyone. A key benefit of UDL approaches is that making learning more inclusive isn't only good for learners who need extra support. Research shows that designing for learners with the highest level of need improves learning processes for all students. 

Whether you use our iThrive Curriculum game-based curricular units, iThrive Sim game, resources from another educational organization or design your own, make sure UDL is part of the design to ensure that the unit takes into consideration the rich diversity of strengths and learning needs of your students.

Play and Possibility: Highlights from Games for Change (#G4C2020)

By iThrive Games

It was a pleasure to be one of the over 200 speakers and 6800 attendees at the 2020 Games for Change Festival. From interacting with fellow game lovers at the marketplace to tuning into the amazing conference speakers, our staff left the conference feeling inspired.

Thank you to all who attended the talk by our Executive Director, Dr. Susan Rivers. She spoke about addressing the needs of distance learning and attending to the opportunities and challenges of designing educational games for new learning environments. Since COVID-19 has and will continue to present barriers to traditional learning, organizations, and people who work with youth need new kinds of resources that can address the challenges of distance learning and create new possibilities. iThrive Sim, our proprietary educational tool which hosts embodied learning experiences for teens emerged from the design restraints and unique student needs the pandemic presented. Staying agile in meeting these need is now more important than ever, as the education landscape changes and the pandemic continues. And so is listening deeply to the needs of young people today, as their needs and requests change. 

 If you missed it, Susan shared how iThrive addressed these challenges. You can watch her presentation below.

 

Our staff loved the presentation by the folks from Gigantic Mechanic, fellow civics-based role-playing creators. It was refreshing to see other role-playing simulations designed to support students in their understanding of civics.

Some of our staff's favorites were Maria Burns Ortiz's session on game design with youth, our friend Matt Farber's session on the curriculum he collaborated on for the game Bury Me, My Love, and Colleen Macklin's session "Play for Change: Ten Games to Play Right Now" was chock full of impactful game recommendations. 

It was wonderful to be in community virtually, sharing and being enlivened by the power of games.  

"I appreciate the community's intent to support youth positive development with games and to meet the moment," said Jane Lee, Senior Director of Operations & Mental Health.

Power of Play: Tackling First-Day Jitters With a Game of CNUNO

By iThrive Games

For many young people, games are more than play. Games provide a place to connect, a place to explore, and a place to learn. At iThrive Games Foundation, we have seen firsthand how gameplay can support teens in thriving, whether it's in the classroom or amongst friends playing together online.

We asked teens from a high school in Philadelphia to share a bit about their experiences with games. For extra credit in their sophomore English class, a few students shared their thoughts on questions such as, "How do games help you deal with life? What games are meaningful to you and how do they help you better understand yourself or the world? How do games help you question the way things are in the world?"

Over the next few weeks, we'll share their insights on play, from video games to card and board games. To protect their privacy, their reflections will be shared with initials rather than full names. We hope these stories illuminate the power of gameplay as seen through the eyes of these young people.

The following blog post is a submission we received from a teen sharing a story of what gameplay can do in their own words:

Gaming for Anxiety

E.M., High School Student, Philadelphia, PA

I started my first job at the beginning of sophomore year. I started working with my best friend and a girl I had never met. Our boss got us a card game called CNUNO. It is a knockoff version of UNO. We played it almost every day if there were no kids who needed homework help. 

We laughed constantly and it made it easier to get to know my co-worker. It is hard to get to know people, especially for me. I deal with social anxiety and it can get really bad in new places with new people. CNUNO was our icebreaker. Since I was at work, I did not have a choice on whether I really felt comfortable or even wanted to get to know my co-worker. Luckily, she did not turn out half bad! We are good friends now. 

I do not know why I get anxious about meeting new people, but it always helps if there is something to help with the awkward first few minutes. It is hard for me most times in any situation where I have to introduce myself. Icebreakers at school are a cause of panic for me. School presentations as well. When there is not a support system to lean on, it is so hard. Some people do not understand what it is like for me. When people force me to put myself in an uncomfortable position, they do not see the panic it causes.

CNUNO helped make an uncomfortable situation easy. I should never underestimate the strength that something so small has. It can help beyond belief and I am glad the game was there for me.

Have a story to share about games and what they mean to you? Share it with us here!

How to Choose a Video Game for Learning in HS English Classrooms

By iThrive Games

iThrive Curriculum is a set of units for high school English Language Arts (ELA) and humanities courses that use video game narratives as core texts. It's one way that we support teachers in connecting meaningfully with their students where they are—playing games—to build social, emotional, and academic knowledge and skills. 

Video games are a defining narrative form of this era. Their complex characters, compelling settings, and unique storytelling strategies are more sophisticated than ever and deserve the level of analysis teachers regularly apply to literature.

Of course, there are many types of video games and some are generally better suited for this curricular approach than others. When we partner with educators and teens to design transformational game-based learning units for ELA and related courses, here's what we look for in a game: 

  • Emotionally impactful and appealing to teens. We keep an eye on what teens are playing. Games that are already popular with teens can be a fantastic opportunity to meet them where they are and take learning deeper. On the other hand, some games are epic and award-winning but don't yet have a huge following. So we also look for opportunities to design around powerful indie games that are relevant to teens, like Accidental Queens' A Normal Lost Phone, featured in our unit Sam's Journey.
  • A strong tie-in with social and emotional learning (SEL) competencies. We look for games with narratives and themes that naturally prompt discussion and reflection around social and emotional skills including self-awareness, identity, empathy, relationships, perspective-taking, purpose, decision-making, and more, because we know social and emotional skills are critical for teens' learning, well-being, and achievement now and throughout adulthood.
  • A strong academic tie-in. To be a candidate for iThrive Curriculum, a video game narrative has to be relevant to specific learning objectives that teachers already need and want to teach. Our units highlight aspects of games, like narrative structure and literary devices, that support students' core literacy skills and also provide ample opportunities for them to listen, read, discuss, write, and create to express themselves and their learning. 
  • Attention to diversity of learners. We look for games that can engage all students in narrative analysis, even those who haven't always experienced success with reading. Games generally do this well because they offer visual context and immersion, making the narrative easier to engage with and understand. Some games do this exceptionally well; in What Remains of Edith Finch, used in our Museum of Me unit, the text of the narrative appears on screen in response to players' movements via the controller, and every word is narrated through a voiceover so students are interacting with the story through sight, sound, and movement. 
  • Mindfulness about diversity of experiences. We seek games that convey a wide range of experiences to ensure that diverse and often marginalized backgrounds, experiences, and characteristics aren't ignored and absent from the classroom. We strive for our units to support empathy around stories that depict diversity of race, language, culture, gender and sexual identity, ability, and more. 
  • A low-stress addition to the existing curriculum. Using a game instead of a text is much more likely to happen if implementation is made easy. We like to ask ourselves: 
    • What equipment will be required to play the game in or outside of class? Games that work on mobile, PC, or in web browsers usually are a lighter lift for implementation than those that require a gaming console. But students' and schools' varying access to the internet also needs to be taken into account.
    • How long does the game take to play? Games that are relatively short (1-3 hours) tend to keep the scope of the unit manageable, although longer games used in part or in whole can certainly work.
    • Does the game's narrative branch a lot? In narrative games with little or no branching (fewer choices for students to make while they play), it will arguably be easier for the class to have a shared experience even if they don't or can't play together at the same time. It will also be simpler for a teacher to figure out where students are in the experience and what's coming next.
    • How many copies of the game are needed and how much does the game cost? Sometimes only one game license is necessary, like in the "hot seat" model, where one student at a time plays and the rest of the class observes. This works really well for games without much player choice. For games where individual player choice is a key feature, multiple licenses might be best but could get costly. 

Ninety percent of teens play video games, and they're a culturally relevant way to engage students in their holistic learning. We hope the criteria here can guide you in considering how game-based approaches might work to support literacy and engagement in your ELA or humanities classroom. Ready to try game-based learning? Museum of Me and Sam's Journey are classroom-ready units with opportunities for social and emotional learning baked in, so be sure to check them out. 

Do you have a great idea for a game-based social and emotional learning unit for high school humanities courses? Tell us about it at contact@ithrivegames.org.

Role-Playing Simulations Offer Unique Opportunities for Teen Engagement

By iThrive Games

Educators have long used role-playing simulations to give students direct experience of academic subjects, whether it's as decision-makers during the Great Depression in a U.S. history class or as bankers or business owners in an economics class. Our approach to role-playing simulations is unique-we embed social and emotional learning and integrate technology. Role-playing simulations are of great benefit to educators and teens because of the varied opportunities they present for student engagement. 

Here are six benefits of using role-playing simulations:

1. They engage students in a new way of learning. Students, especially at the high school level, get too few opportunities for experiential and embodied learning. Role-playing simulations invite them to interact with each other and with content in a hands-on way that leaves a big impression. Over 50 years of research on role-playing methodologies shows that role-playing is excellent for getting students interested in a topic (for a summary of these studies, see Druckman and Ebner, 2013).

2. They challenge students to strategize, research, and compromise. Students engaged in a role-playing simulation are responsible for moving the action forward. They must work individually and as a group to assess the information at hand, negotiate, defend their points of view, and make decisions that produce the outcomes they want.

3. They create high-energy, collaborative experiences that make lasting memories. When emotions are fully recruited for learning — like in an action-filled role-playing scenario — the learning that happens goes deeper and lasts longer. Research shows that role-playing helps students to retain information better than more traditional ways of learning.

4. They spark a deep love of learning about the world. Role-playing simulations illuminate systems in the world — like the inner workings of governmental entities — that can be largely invisible until a person is invited to work and improvise within them. Experiences like these can propel students' curiosity and motivation to explore possibilities for new ways of interacting and making decisions that can improve dysfunctional systems and produce a better world for all.

5. They inspire civic participation. Students who have engaged in a role-playing simulation have a leg up on those who've only read about a topic related to civic life in America; the players know what it feels like to take action and can better recall the strategies that work, supporting feelings of efficacy for taking action in the real world. 

6. They embed social and emotional learning. Above all, role-playing simulations recruit and require emotional engagement and social interaction. Since teens are highly attuned to their emotions and their social status, the experiential approach of role-playing meets them right where they are developmentally. Our role-playing simulations are specifically designed to offer students opportunities to think about and practice self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making.

Ready to try it in your class? Contact us to learn more about our iThrive Sim: Lives in Balance and other our role-playing simulation scenarios

Connect with iThrive Games at the 2020 Games For Change Festival!

By iThrive Games

Join us at the 2020 Games For Change Festival, where iThrive Games Foundation staff will unveil iThrive Sim—our new educational offering that reimagines distance learning. The event, which will be held online July 14-16, will feature experts in games for learning from across the country. We are thrilled to have two chances to connect with you regarding our new resource for virtual classrooms.

Executive Director and Chief Scientist Susan Rivers, Ph.D., will present Listening and Staying Agile During COVID-19. She'll explore how iThrive Games pivoted to address distance learning and the opportunities/challenges of designing game-based experiences for new learning environments. 

Since COVID-19 has and will continue to present barriers to traditional learning, organizations and people who work with youth need new kinds of resources that can address the challenges of distance learning and create new possibilities. Staying agile in meeting the needs of youth and those who work with them is now more important than ever, as the education landscape changes and the pandemic continues. And so is listening deeply to the needs of young people today, as their needs and requests change. 

Susan's presentation will focus on addressing the needs of students, teachers, and parents in distance learning, reimagining learning, and rapid development cycles. Utilizing iThrive's experience in re-designing classroom products for the virtual space, Susan will discuss the opportunities and challenges of designing from the ground up for new and non-traditional learning environments. 

Additionally, at the Games 4 Change Marketplace, staff will be on hand to offer participants early access to iThrive Sim, which was co-developed, field-tested, and approved by educators and teen users alike. iThrive Sim offers tech-supported role-playing scenarios—including a specific Covid-19 scenario—that lets teens practice difficult decision making and collaboration in real-time. Attendees will also be able to speak with staff about iThrive Curriculum-our game-based, social and emotional learning units for English Language Arts classes. Sam's Journey is a short, easy to implement unit that debuted in June. Museum of Me is a unit with rave reviews from pilot teachers across the U.S. All of our offerings have a core focus on students' self- and social awareness and responsible decision-making that manifests through teens' playful engagement.

The festival is free to all who want to participate. Sign up here. We hope to see you at the session and at the virtual marketplace! 

iThrive Games Receives NEH CARES Grant for Distance Learning Program

By iThrive Games

grant

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: June 22, 2020

iThrive Games Foundation Receives NEH CARES Grant for Distance Learning Program 

Funds will support the creation of scenarios for iThrive's civics role-playing simulation 

BOSTON—iThrive Games Foundation announced that it was awarded a $250,022 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) CARES grant. The award will support the expansion of the iThrive Sim program—a library of role-playing simulations that make U.S. government and history come alive for teens. The funds will support the creation of additional scenarios that can be used in distance learning for high school students.

The three scenarios that are funded by the grant embed game-based learning, support social and emotional skill-building in humanities-focused academic content, and are delivered through web-based technology. Created in partnership with the team behind the Situation Room Experience role-playing simulation, the scenarios will engage students in using and interpreting humanities content as they interact in real-time with each other. 

"iThrive is honored to receive this prestigious grant from the NEH," said Susan E. Rivers, Ph.D., Executive Director and Chief Scientist at iThrive Games Foundation. "We believe this acknowledgment reflects our mission to provide tools and resources that help teens to thrive and develop perspectives on the big questions of life that only the humanities can deliver, learning to make decisions and take actions for the betterment of the world."

Board Chair and Founder Dorothy Batten believes the grant is an important step in helping teens to thrive while navigating COVID-19.

"Addressing the educational needs of youth and those who work with them is now more important than ever, as the education landscape changes and the pandemic continues," she said.

Visit ithrivegames.org to learn more about iThrive Sim and to learn about project milestones.

###

Media Contact:
Eghosa Asemota
eghosa.asemota[at]ithrivegames.org

ABOUT iTHRIVE GAMES FOUNDATION
iThrive Games Foundation prepares teens to thrive by meeting them where they are and working in partnership towards a world where all have the voice, choice, and agency to reach their full potential. We use games and game design to equip teens with the social and emotional skills they need to be healthy and resilient. 

ABOUT THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES
Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation. Additional information about the National Endowment for the Humanities and its grant programs is available at: www.neh.gov.

Three Reasons Embedded Social and Emotional Learning Works

By iThrive Games

Social and emotional learning (SEL) works exceptionally well when embedded in an academic context. This has informed our approach at iThrive and has been reinforced by feedback from the educators and students that we have served. 

Teens benefit from classroom settings that embed the five competencies of social and emotional learning: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making.

A snapshot of an in-class assignment included in iThrive Curriculum: Museum of Me, a game-based, social and emotional learning curriculum for high school English classrooms.

Our tools—game-based curricular units, role-playing simulations, and game design studio—embed opportunities for SEL not only because there is ample science to support SEL's critical role in present and future well-being and success, but because it helps teens experience how social and emotional skills and perspectives are relevant to all subjects and aspects of life.

Why should you consider bringing tools that embed social and emotional learning into your classroom? Here are our top three reasons:

1. The SEL frame provides a solid scaffold for academic content. Whether educators are discussing self-awareness, self-management, and relationship skills in the context of characters and their decisions in an English Language Arts class, or social awareness and responsible decision-making in a civics course, social and emotional competencies have a natural alignment with core academic content.

2. Students find SEL more relevant when embedded in the context of what they are learning. Students who have experienced our game-based learning units in their humanities classes have said that the types of discussions they've had in class are like no other in terms of making them think about identity, relationships, and communication. The meaningful conversations in class have stood out for them as highlights of their classroom experience. 

3. Educators are more likely to employ SEL when they don't see it as an "add-on." Educators find that SEL can be even more relevant and meaningful when it's woven into how they teach core content. The inclusion of social and emotional learning within content that meets academic standards raises the profile from that of a "soft skill" to an educational priority.

Ready to try it in your class? Consider bringing embedded SEL into your virtual or in-person classroom today. Contact us to learn more about our curricular units and role-playing simulations. 

Power of Play: Teens Explore Connection and Meaning Through Gameplay

By iThrive Games

For many young people, games are more than play. Games provide a place to connect, a place to explore, and a place to learn. At iThrive Games Foundation, we have seen firsthand how gameplay can support teens in thriving, whether it's in the classroom or amongst friends playing together online.

Earlier this year, we asked teens from a high school in Philadelphia to share a bit about their experiences with games. For extra credit in their sophomore English class, a few students wrote thought pieces in response to questions such as, "How do games help you deal with life? What games are meaningful to you and how do they help you better understand yourself or the world? How do games help you question the way things are in the world?"

Over the next few months, we'll share their insights on play, from video games to card and board games. The pieces are in their own words. To protect their privacy, their reflections will be shared with initials rather than full names. We hope these stories illuminate the power of gameplay as seen through the eyes of these young people.

Minecraft: A Life of Blocks

F.T. High School Student, Philadelphia

My name is F.T. and currently, I am 16 years old. I was born in New York but raised in Puerto Rico, which means I have the privilege of being bilingual. Normally I have a difficult time communicating with my family and that leads me to play video games all of the time. Recently, I returned to playing Minecraft, which is a game that I always have in mind. It is peaceful and relaxing to play, and I don't even notice when I lose track of time. Minecraft has been with me since childhood even though back then I could not understand the concepts behind the game. 

Minecraft has taught me the basic things in life. It has taught me how to survive. Who would have thought that I would be passionate about having a farm-taking care of my pigs, llamas, horses, chickens, wolves, cows, cats, donkeys, parrots, and even sheep?! This game takes me out of my reality and allows me to build my own reality where there is no cruelty. It teaches me to think about the environment and how it depends on me and how I depend on the environment. Minecraft is not just about building-it has more than that. At least for me, it forces me to take into consideration the resources, environment, and build of the house itself. 

The game itself is composed of blocks that the user can mine and reuse to create new material. If certain materials are combined, the user can get a new thing to build with. My favorite part is the views of the world players can get. Since I do not travel, I do enjoy the views. It shows a little window of the massive world that is called the Universe. Another thing Minecraft helps me do is to think outside of the box and create materials with resources I never thought of using.

Minecraft helps me to cope with the bad events that occur in my days and takes my stress out. 

iThrive Games Foundation: Statement on Racism and Police Brutality

By iThrive Games

We condemn racism and police brutality. The police killed George Floyd, and we bear witness that four men in uniform did this calmly, without alarm, with hands in pockets. Instead of choosing to protect and serve, they chose to take a Black man's life. Police officers also chose to take the life of Breonna Taylor. We bear witness to the shooting and killing of Ahmaud Arbery by two white men. The horrifying events of the last few weeks, decades, and centuries are painful to bear witness to, but bearing witness is required.

We stand in solidarity with Black people who have experienced the impact of systemic racism.

The decisions we make as individuals have ripple effects in our families, our communities, our democracy. The decisions of those who came before us have had those ripple effects, continuing to create harm and promote violence, respecting the humanity of only some but not all.

The killing and brutalization of Black people is the history of this country. It is a history I cannot make sense of, and still, I try to explain to my seven-year-old the meaning and importance and urgency of the Black Lives Matter signs we see. A history she needs to learn and see. It is a history of lives traumatized by brutality and injustice that, as she grows up, she needs to have empathy for. Our nation's history of slavery and inequity is one so many of us haven't learned and haven't seen, and therefore we haven't empathized with the Black people who experienced it and who continue to experience it. It is a history Black people know and see and experience every day. The brutality and inequity unleashed on Black lives didn't end; it continues today. My daughter needs to learn and see so that she understands what needs to be dismantled for our society to be one where the actions and rules and opportunities and protections are, at their core, about equity, about humanity, about justice. This has not ever been true.

At iThrive Games Foundation, what is ours to do is to devote ourselves to justice and to humanity. We envision a world where all people who have been traditionally marginalized, including teenagers, are seen and valued by society. Justice and humanity are central to that. We envision a world where adults have the tools they need to support all teens' holistic development. Justice and humanity are central to that.

Of ourselves and our collaborators, we require genuine respect, compassion, and empathy for others. We are facing into how we have allowed unjust systems—education, economic, health care, legal, and more—to continue to exist even though they are unequal and unfair by design.

What is ours to do is to weave the pursuit of justice and humanity into how we work and what we work for. What is ours to do is to understand and dismantle the destructive beliefs, values, and world views of this country and the systems that comprise it. What is ours to do is to choose justice and to choose humanity.

We commit to:

  • Continuing our education on anti-racism and our journey toward becoming an anti-racist organization;
  • Using an anti-racist lens to review our offerings, making any changes that are necessary, and applying that lens as we create new ones; and
  • Amplifying, listening to, and learning from Black voices leading the charge on anti-racist work.

 

In solidarity,

Susan E. Rivers
Chief Scientist and Executive Director

Announcing New Game-Based Unit Created for Distance Learning

By iThrive Games

We know that now, more than ever, teachers need tools that support distance learning and encourage engagement and connection. iThrive Curriculum: Sam's Journey, a game-based social and emotional learning unit for high school humanities classes, responds to this need and is now available.

We are so happy to announce the release of iThrive Curriculum: Sam's Journey. Teachers who want to have engaging online sessions with students will enjoy this rich, concise unit. The game-based unit is designed for distance learning and can be used with 11th and 12th-grade students to explore self-expression and communication in relationships through the lens of digital and non-linear narratives.

Using the game A Normal Lost Phone, developed by Accidental Queens, as a text, students will undertake a narrative investigation, piecing together what happened to the game's main character, Sam. At the same time, they will encounter rich opportunities to reflect on and discuss how they express their identity in their own relationships using contemporary communication tools.

 

The three-lesson unit meets English Language Arts standards and social and emotional learning goals and is ideal for distance learning. It includes activities, discussion prompts, homework assignments that encourage self-reflection, and grading rubrics. The unit was created in collaboration with Jennifer Guerin, Kathleen Moore, Sophie Rich, Julia Wareham, and Jordana Weiner, students from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Dr. Gabrielle Rappolt-Schlichtmann, Kristin Robinson, Dr. Paul Darvasi, Dr. Shawn Clybor, and high school students from Dwight-Englewood School also made important contributions.

We look forward to sharing Sam's Journey with educators who are looking to close out this school year or enrich next year with a short game-based unit that will capture their students' imaginations. Contact us at contact@ithrivegames.org to receive a copy of the unit.

 

 

To stay updated with our latest game-based learning tools for high school classrooms and resources for distance learning, subscribe to our monthly newsletter here.

How Game-Based Learning Can Take Your Class to New Heights

By iThrive Games

Our game-based learning units were designed to boost engagement and invite creativity in the classroom, virtually and in-person. Here's how integrating games in your classroom can take student learning to new heights.

This moment poses the opportunity to reimagine education. At iThrive Games Foundation, we partner with educators to create new possibilities for learning, whether that's in a physical classroom or a virtual space as we navigate COVID-19. We are inspired by educators who are finding ways to work games into their curriculum, affording students the opportunity to find relevance, engagement, and meaningful connection in their learning.

To help educators offer the best possible learning experiences, we create game-based curricular units that weave together the three things we care about the most: teen thriving, the power of play to support that thriving, and rich opportunities for social and emotional learning.

Deepen engagement in your learning environment through these five elements of our approach to game-based learning:

1. Impactful play: By designing school lessons around video games-a medium that teens are already interested in-we drive innovative thinking and meaningful connection by inviting teens to explore who they are and the world around them in a low-stakes but thought-provoking environment.

2. Deep learning: Many games present opportunities for students to interact with narrative in a completely new way, opening their minds to the storytelling techniques and opportunities all around them in today's digital communication landscape. We design our units around games with rich and creative narratives to invite teens to access texts in new and inspiring ways and to stoke a love of learning.

3. Personal transformation and growth: Games can transport teens to new worlds, enabling their exploration of new places and possibly, new versions of themselves. Curricular units that use games as a text can support students in writing about and reflecting on these explorations.

4. Social and emotional skills: Games stand apart from other media because players of games have agency — and even complicity — in the stories games tell. Since games can provoke feelings of frustration, pride, guilt, elation, forgiveness, and more, they're an incredible tool for supporting teens' social and emotional development.

5. Universal design for learning: Games are an excellent tool for engaging students who are left behind in the classroom due to issues of engagement or accessibility in more traditional learning approaches. Principles of universal design for learning also inform the activities and assessments that comprise our game-based lessons, acknowledging that each teen develops differently and engages with concepts from different access points.

Interested in integrating games in your virtual classroom? Check out our library of game-based learning units and download them at no cost here.

Three Ways to Prepare a Supportive Online or Remote Environment

By iThrive Games

As in-person classrooms shift to virtual spaces like Zoom, we're experimenting with how to support closeness and authentic teen engagement in a remote learning environment. Here's a glimpse at what we've learned so far.

Whether you're in virtual spaces with teens or in person, creating and holding a supportive space is key to generating a sense of safety and promoting engagement and authenticity.

If you're an educator, by now, you've probably forayed into the world of remote learning, and perhaps you're feeling a little shaken by slow progress, chaos, reluctant participation, Zoombombing, or (hopefully not!) all of those things.

At iThrive, holding space for authentic teen engagement is integral to each of our initiatives, whether it's playtesting a new educational simulation, piloting a game-based learning curriculum, or hosting Game Design Studio. As so many educational outreach efforts move online, we're experimenting with how to support closeness and authenticity in this new format.

There are a few things we know to be true about creating a warm, supportive environment in person, and we are translating these into the virtual spaces we're in. We believe these elements are going to be key to successfully holding space in these formats. As we go through our own process of trial and error, we'll be reflecting on how these informed hunches play out. To connect authentically with teens, we are finding that it takes tending to your inner world, tending to your relationships, and tending to the space itself.

1. Show up for yourself before showing up on screen.

We can't stress enough the critical importance of educators' self-care. We have found that you can't show up in authentic connection without attending to your own emotions first. Your emotional state sets the tone for your students. So, how are you doing? Do you feel ready to hold space for your students? If not, what do you need to do in the 20 minutes before the call to be ready? Take time to attend to yourself before initiating a remote learning environment so you can show up from a place of calm and presence. And, if you are grappling with your own difficult emotions, let that center you in a place of empathy and vulnerability so you can make space for students who may be confronting their own.

Here are some ideas that can support you in doing this:

  • Try this five-minute writing exercise called Clearing the Pipes — one of many ways to attend to emotions in a way that helps free up your attention for the present moment.
  • Set a timer for one minute, close your eyes, and just breathe, making time to notice how you're feeling.
  • Take out a piece of paper and free-write for a minute, letting yourself write or draw whatever thoughts or emotions cross your mind.
2. Interrupt and remake virtual norms.

How do you create more closeness in a remote learning environment? Zoom and similar video conferencing services were used primarily (until now) for professional interactions, so they can transmit a "buttoned-up" ethos. We need to think outside the Zoom box to help increase connection. Consider inviting teens to break out of the headshot format by introducing opportunities to stand or move. Allow people to share their environment as they see fit, deciding how much to reveal and share of themselves and their home life. Or, get rid of talking head video chats by using Zoom to share a homemade video where participants show learning in fun, accessible ways. For example, you could try incorporating media ideas from popular social media challenges, such as the #DontRush Challenge used to help students transform into literary characters or historical figures.

Also, keep in mind that Zoom can feel exhausting. The pressure to show up polished on video when we may be feeling less than camera-ready is affecting both youth and adults. Issues of identity around race, class, and gender also affect students' willingness to participate in video classes. Consider video calls without the video, where people can use memes, baby photos, or even a photo of the day as their avatar, creating a visual representation without the pressure to look okay on Zoom when we may be feeling anything but okay. Whatever new norms you decide on, make sure that teens are co-creators of the shared space.

Here are some ideas that can support you in doing this:

  • Consider a camera-off option for your call to ward off Zoom fatigue.
  • In your check-in, invite students to move; it can help create a more informal and relaxed space for connection.
  • Invite students to contribute to group norms by sharing their ideas.
3. Prioritize the space before the content.

Research into computer-mediated communication shows that more time is needed to reach the same level of connection attained in an in-person setting. Time is key to growing student engagement in remote learning. It can be uncomfortable to feel you're slowing the pace of learning by remaking norms and attending to feelings, but the truth is that intentionally leaving spaciousness for emotional connection supercharges learning. By slowing down and authentically connecting before pushing forward on content, you're sending the signal that the space you're co-creating is a safe one in which to share, question, be vulnerable, and make mistakes — all vital components of the learning process. Trust that by seemingly slowing down now to reset the space, you're guaranteeing better engagement. Since video interactions can fatigue our brains in ways in-person ones do not, a general rule of thumb is to take what you had planned for in-person engagement and to cut it by half; that will get you closer to what's realistic to accomplish in a remote learning environment.

Here are some ideas that can support you in doing this:

  • Leave space for silence.
  • Think 'less is more' for your online lessons.
  • Allow the time together to be spacious.

We're here alongside educators, trying to not just survive this time but to create new and fresh ways of connecting that can enrich our interactions with teens now and for the future. We commit to sharing what we learn as we experiment, so please, stay tuned and stay connected.

Virtual iThrive Game Design Studio Melds Design Thinking and SEL

By iThrive Games

iThrive Games Foundation and Urban Assembly Partner to Create Online Teen Makerspace 

FOR RELEASE — May 7, 2020

A cohort of students from Urban Assembly is joining iThrive Games Foundation staff online for a design-thinking and social and emotional learning co-design experience. The virtual Game Design Studio engages teens in self-reflection, creativity, and systems thinking using the framework of game design.

Beginning on May 8th, the students will collaborate with iThrive staff on six sessions over the course of two weeks to round out the school year. Discussion and gameplay will create a space for iThrive to share, connect with, and learn from teens. Using iThrive's co-design model for engaging with youth, the group will work together to find ways to help teens think and talk about life during the COVID-19 pandemic. Teens from schools focused on design, math, and media will use the varied skills and design-thinking processes that they have learned in their academic coursework to build a game for their peers that addresses heightened social and emotional issues teens are facing.

Susan Rivers, Ph.D., executive director and chief scientist of iThrive Games Foundation said the idea began with the question of how to engage with teens in support of navigating these Covid-19 times.

"We know that designing with teens is the best way to design for teens," she said. "Collaborating with students at the Urban Assembly creates opportunities for us to learn with and from them informing the development of tools that support the social and emotional needs of teens across the country. No one knows teens' needs better than teens themselves."

David Adams, Director of Social and Emotional Learning for Urban Assembly, saw the mixture of SEL and game design as a fit for students at his schools.

"Across the country, it has become evident that experiences that build problem-solving, collaboration, and communication skills are essential preparation for our youth to tackle society's most pressing issues," he said. "I am grateful that our students will contribute to the wellbeing of others through this collaboration with the iThrive Games Foundation."

iThrive's Senior Director of Organizational Strategy, Susan X. Jane, and Teen Engagement Manager, Tabia Batts, are ready to meet the moment by taking the Game Design Studio online.

"We know these times are challenging, but that doesn't mean that we must abandon play," said Jane. "Games create spaces for thinking, reflecting, and becoming—something teens need now more than ever."

Additional updates about the collaboration will be shared on TwitterFacebook, and LinkedIn.

About iThrive Games Foundation

iThrive Games Foundation prepares teens to thrive by meeting them where they are and working in partnership towards a world where all have the voice, choice, and agency to reach their full potential. We use games and game design to equip teens with the social and emotional skills they need to be healthy and resilient, tools to support and protect their mental health and well-being, systems thinking they need to recognize inequity, and meaningful opportunities to imagine and design a better world.

Media Contact:

Nicole Taylor
Senior Director of Communications
nicole.taylor[at]ithrivegames.org

This work was supported through generous funding from the William T. Grant Foundation and the D.N. Batten Foundation.

New Issue of Journal of Games, Self, & Society Suggests New Paths in Game Design, Accessibility

By iThrive Games

Experts Offer Insight Into Games' Contribution to Learning, Health, and Society

BOSTON-May 4, 2020. Exploring existential ideas as part of the game design process may yield new perspectives that result in games that offer lasting transformation to players, according to research featured in the latest issue of the Journal of Games, Self, & Society, published by iThrive Games Foundation and ETC Press.

Professor Doris Rusch, a game designer and researcher at Uppsala University in Sweden and the author of Making Deep Games - Designing Games with Meaning and Purpose draws on literature from existential psychotherapy and mythmaking, urging game designers to create new myths in their games to explore existential ideas—such as freedom, isolation, or death—in pursuit of finding meaning.

The issue also features an article by Professors Matthew Farber and Mia Williams and colleagues, who examine how facilitated game design can be used to support teens in exploring and expressing their lived experiences, as well as how systems are structured.

New research by graduate student Sasha Soriane and Professor Jacque Carette aims to fill a gap in the literature around the accessibility of mechanical challenges in games.

Two papers in this issue provide case studies of two games, one by Professor Gareth Schott exploring how digital games can serve as a memorial following the death of a loved one, and one by Professor Andrew Phelps and colleagues examining how game mechanics can be used in novel ways to represent the human experience.

The journal's editor-in-chief, Susan Rivers, Ph.D., who is also the Executive Director and Chief Scientist at iThrive Games Foundation, says that she hopes the interdisciplinary research will support continued deep learning about the power of game design and gameplay.

"I anticipate the creativity, innovation, and design choices put forth by the scholars and designers included in this issue will impact the field," she says.

About the Journal

The Journal of Games, Self, & Society (JGSS) is a peer-reviewed journal created and edited by iThrive Games Foundation and published by ETC Press. The journal highlights work focused on how games, game design, and gameplay contribute to a deeper understanding of learning, health, and humanity. It was created to foster interdisciplinary research, conversation, and community around game studies and games-related scholarship. Scholars from all disciplines are encouraged to participate.

About iThrive Games

iThrive Games Foundation prepares teens to thrive by meeting them where they are and working in partnership towards a world where all have the voice, choice, and agency to reach their full potential. We use games and game design to equip teens with the social and emotional skills they need to be healthy and resilient, tools to support and protect their mental health and well-being, systems thinking they need to recognize inequity, and meaningful opportunities to imagine and design a better world.

 

Media Contact:

Eghosa Asemota
eghosa.asemota[at]ithrivegames.org

Staying Connected While Social Distancing: Working from Home Edition

By iThrive Games

iThrive Games Foundation is a remote office nonprofit, so working from home is not new for us. But working from home during a pandemic is new for everyone across the globe. Whether you're new to this or are a seasoned remote worker, the circumstances have changed. Most organizations are exploring how to be of service in our new reality. Many of our staff have children and other family members at home, which adds another dimension to work. And the psychological impact of finding a new normal during a pandemic in which we are asked to stay at home can't be denied.

We thought we would share some of the ways we are supporting one another at iThrive as we continue our work from home amongst these challenges.

  • Make time to play games together. We use games while working from home to have a shared experience, enjoy a laugh, and spur our creativity. Our marketing manager taught us the Song Association Game and we laughed so much during our team meeting while we played it over Zoom. Your turn: Call your friends on Zoom. Make a list of words together. Access an online counter. Share your screen so everyone can see the timer, which you'll set at ten seconds. Assign the first person you can see on your screen a word you randomly choose from the list. Once you say the word, they have 10 seconds to sing either the title or lyric of a song that uses that word. Go around until everyone has a turn.
  • Have check-in calls that are not status calls. Check-in calls while working from home allow us to connect as people. We begin with some guided meditation or movement to get present with one another. We share our work and non-work challenges and triumphs. We hold space for those on the team that need it. We share resources from our own personal toolkits for coping, such as gratitude journals and yoga classes over Zoom. Having that space frees up mental energy and allows us to proceed with clearer minds.
  • Trust one another and be generous. Everyone is going through something, whether it's related to this coronavirus pandemic or life just happening. The work will get done. We trust one another to meet our deliverables or to ask for help if we need it. Generosity of heart is how we'll get through this.

How are you working from home and faring during these times? We have resources for support, such as our media literacy tips, conversation starters to help you connect with the video game players in your life while social distancing, and bite-sized activities that help with social and emotional skill-building. We hope you are finding ways to stay healthy and support one another as we all do our part to flatten the curve.

COVID Self-Care Package: Practicing #SELatHome

By iThrive Games

As we talk to the teens, teachers, and parents in our lives about how they are faring during COVID-19, we hear a consistent call for resources for coping. However, they don't talk to us about getting assignments completed or meeting deadlines, they talk to us about dealing with anxiety or restlessness, feeling easily frustrated, and managing conflict as everyone navigates this time together at home. Social and emotional skills, which are like our inner superpowers, can be supportive of these concerns. Below are the five core social and emotional skills, as defined by Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL):

SEL

At iThrive, social and emotional learning (SEL), teen thriving, and gameplay are important to us. We thought we would support teens, teachers, and parents by creating the #SELathome challenge. Let's take the next 14 days to add some social and emotional skill-building to our lives. We thought we would make it easy to do, fun, and bite-sized, since our goal is to help rather than to add yet another thing to do.

So like us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter and Instagram at @iThriveGames to join in on the 14-Day #SELatHome Challenge and play. Starting Tuesday, April 21st, we'll be posting a challenge a day on our social media channels. We'll also DM whoever plays the most to find out where to send some iThrive Games' swag. We can't wait to get a glimpse of your comments and the tips that you'll share!

Subscribe to our monthly newsletter here for free, downloadable SEL resources and updates on our game-based products!

Staying Connected While Social Distancing: Games for Emotional Coping

By iThrive Games

With social distancing in practice and peak coronavirus impacts underway, self-care, in its many forms, is essential to our collective well-being. 

At this time of uncertainty and drastic change, it is natural for teens, parents, educators - everyone - to feel anxious and even grief-stricken. Many of us are either alone with these difficult emotions or deeply impacted by the emotional experiences of the people close to us.

At the iThrive Games Foundation, we know all emotions are valid and useful, and there are proven strategies for coping with the more unpleasant ones. We strive to offer gameful recommendations that help you practice self-care, savor life's best moments and experiences, and turn inward to explore, accept, and express what's challenging about this moment. 

Managing Tough Emotions

Games are one avenue for attending to the tough emotions we might be feeling right now. That's because games can offer ways to practice self-care and strategies for managing emotions, including sharing how we're feeling, looking at our situation from a different perspective and, when necessary, distracting ourselves* by envisioning a different reality for a while.

Games and Self-Care: What We're Playing Now

Here are three games we are playing right now that are helping us process the angst around this extraordinary moment and make self-care a daily practice. We hope you'll take the invitation to join in.

  • #SelfCare is the perfect meditative experience to help you look a little differently at self-isolation and lean into the restorative possibilities of staying in. This free app invites you into the cozy bedroom of a person who's decided to take a mental health day. You won't find any scores or time limits here. You're free to disconnect from the outside world and stay as long as you like. Through interactions with the items — and the sweet cat companion — in the room, you take meditative actions like rhythmic breathing that gradually lift the bedroom shades and let in some light, both literally and emotionally.
  • Kind Words is a gentle interactive experience that supports you in disclosing what's weighing on you by writing brief, anonymous letters to kind strangers against a backdrop of calming lo-fi music. By both requesting and offering support on any issue across this network through short, uplifting letters and tokens of appreciation, you engage in the mindful self-care practice of naming your feelings, remember that you're not alone, and benefit from others' attention and thoughtfulness. Add some extra juice to this experience by challenging yourself to use precise language for your feelings, which is an emotion management tool all on its own. For a more in-depth look at Kind Words, check out this article by frequent iThrive collaborator Dr. Matt Farber.
  • The Sims is the classic life simulator game where you're free to create the alternate reality you might be craving right now. With a wide range of versions including console and mobile experiences, and special editions like "Tiny Living," there's sure to be an experience that captures your imagination. Build your one-of-a-kind character using The Sims' impressive customization options, then design your space from the ground up and have any kind of adventure you can imagine. High fives and parties are still totally welcome here. 

As people of all ages do the difficult work of adjusting to this new reality, these and other special games can be helpful self-care tools that help us destress, reduce anxiety and regulate our emotions. How are games helping you to process tough emotions during this difficult time? Share your stories with us on Twitter, and stay safe and healthy out there! 

*Distraction can be a helpful or unhelpful strategy for managing emotions. Research suggests that it depends upon whether you are accepting the way things are or merely avoiding reality. 

Atlanta Teens Use Game Design Studio to Explore Injustice in Schools

By iThrive Games

In February, iThrive Games partnered with Stronger Together, a Georgia-based coalition of youth and adults committed to racial justice in Atlanta schools, to offer Game Design Studio with the support of the Marietta Museum of History.

Black students still report facing shocking levels of discrimination at school, and games provide a unique framework for teens to break down why it happens, express what it means to them, and invite adults to interact in a new way with reflections about how teens need to be supported.

Eight Black middle and high school students who attend Atlanta schools came together at the museum for three days over their winter break to design games that would offer a window into their perspectives on the injustice that impacts them on a daily basis.

Tracing Experiences in Atlanta Schools: Surfacing, Coping, Acting

Each instance of Game Design Studio uses a "Surfacing-Coping-Acting" co-design cycle. The goal of this approach is to invite teens to raise up (surface) and work productively (cope and act) with the experiences that make adolescence both an incredible and vulnerable developmental stage. In this particular Game Design Studio, here's how these components played out.

Surfacing

Teens were joined on the first day of the workshop by elders in the community for an intergenerational conversation to explore and observe how race and racism have manifested in the local region across eras, from segregated Atlanta schools to hate speech on Twitter.

Teens further explored the history of race and racism in their region through a gallery walk featuring a special museum exhibit highlighting photographs of important moments in Marietta's Black residents' history.

As teens surfaced the ways that race and racism manifested in their community over time and in Atlanta schools, iThrive facilitators led a brainstorming session around the prompt, "What do your teachers need to know about race and racism?" From there, teens collectively settled on three themes to inspire the design of their games, each relating to what they'd like to see in Atlanta schools:

  • Race should be taught in-depth
  • The voices of Black teens need to be heard
  • Power: who has it, and who gets hurt?

Coping

Game Design Studio offers a way for teens to connect through play as a vehicle for reaching deeper social connection, understanding, and self-awareness. Telling our difficult stories to others is one proven way to manage the discomfort and to challenge any fears that we're weird, different, or alone in our struggles.

As teens described their experiences with racism, listened to one another, and played games together like Jenga and The Mind, they bonded over common threads in their stories, learned about and drew parallels between game mechanics and real-life interactions, formed working teams with friends old and new, and got ready to create their own designs.

Acting

The power of Game Design Studio is that it's not just about discussing issues teens face, it's about working through those challenges creatively with other people; something that is never wholly without tension.

As the teens played together and collaborated on games in teams, they inevitably encountered and worked through conflict in ways that helped them to identify their own and others' strengths and capacity for resilience.

In this Studio session, teens had, and seized, opportunities to advocate for themselves, to disagree, to compromise, and to make amends; all social and emotional skills that underpin success and well-being in the long-term.

Here's what teens made:

The Society Game

This delightfully complex game about power in our society has players vying for a coveted spot at the top of the pyramid, reserved for "the elite." But getting there is nearly impossible, and losing status is easy to do.

Black Trivia

Two teams made games that honor teens' insight that Black history and culture need to be integrated meaningfully into the fabric of the schools that serve them. In Black Trivia, answer a question about an illustrious figure in the Black community correctly to move ahead and claim your reward: more trivia tidbits! In The Matching Game, test your knowledge of famous Black figures and challenge your memory as you strive to match over 50 notable people with their achievements.

Even & Odd

This game has two paths to the finish, but they're far from equal. Roll an even number and you start out on the track where resources come easily and penalties are light; roll an odd number and your "luck" looks very different. Prepare to get passed over for a job interview for which you were qualified or evicted from your apartment. But just as you're getting used to your privilege, or lack thereof, you might draw the card that forces you to switch tracks. What does life look like from this new point of view?

Learning Together

Designing with teens in Game Design Studio enriches all who participate, teens and facilitators alike. We as adults show up prepared to listen and to offer what we know about why things are the way they are, and we work alongside teens as their reflections and interactions spark new ways of thinking about and coping with the challenges they face. Making games together is a powerful and creative way for teens to exercise and refine social and emotional skills while concretizing their unique experiences, and we are lucky to be in partnership with teens in this generative space.

Stronger Together will highlight the games created during this Game Design Studio at an upcoming community celebration, also to be held at the Marietta Museum of History.

To stay updated with future Game Design Studio and our work with teens, subscribe to our monthly newsletter here and follow us on FacebookTwitterLinkedIn, and Instagram.

This work was supported through generous funding from the William T. Grant Foundation and the D.N. Batten Foundation.

Games To Play While Social Distancing: MMORPGs

By iThrive Games

As we all do our part to stay safe by social distancing, games have emerged as an avenue for connection, fun, and exploring new worlds. Numbers published by Verizon show that video game usage in the United States has increased by 75 percent during peak hours since the coronavirus quarantine began. Needless to say, if you don't play video games, now is a great time to start.

At iThrive Games, we understand what video games do for those who play them. They provide meaningful opportunities for players to connect with others, better understand themselves and, for teens especially, develop social and emotional skills that support their thriving. 

For anyone looking for a safe space to wander, explore, and connect with others, massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) are the way to go.

What are MMORPGs?  

Massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) are games set in a virtual universe where a vast number of gamers from all over the world play at the same time. Role-playing as their customized character, MMORPG players earn experience points and level up by completing quests, combatting monsters, and collecting money, equipment, and rare items that help their character advance. With character growth as the primary goal of gameplay set in a world that continues to exist and evolve while players are offline, MMORPGs offer an evolving gaming experience perfect for those who are practicing social distancing. 

Together Apart: How MMORPGs Foster Connection

MMORPGs are a great way to nurture your real-life relationships and foster new ones online. Teamwork and cooperation are common themes present in almost all MMORPGs as players are encouraged to participate in team quests and slay monsters with others to earn experience points together. Sometimes, players even take on roles to protect their friends against damage from monsters. Guilds and clans, which are in-game social groups that players can join, also offer another avenue for connection. With pronounced elements of collaboration, relationship-building, and trust, MMORPGs are a great way to stay connected while social distancing. 

MMORPGs To Play

Convinced? Here are four massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) to try and play:

  • World of Warcraft (13+ years): World of Warcraft is set in the fictional world of Azeroth. Players use their customized character to explore a visually engaging landscape, defeat monsters, complete quests prompted by non-player characters (NPCs), and interact with millions of players.
  • RuneScape (13+ years): RuneScape pulls millions of players all over the world into Gielinor. In this medieval fantasy realm, they can travel via foot, spell or ship to combat monsters, collect resources, challenge other players, and develop their character's skills.
  • MapleStory (13+ years): MapleStory offers a world of wonder for millions of people. Acting as a character and citizen of Maple World, players venture into numerous towns and earn experience, items, and Mesos through the completion of quests and slaying of monsters. Gameplay orients around leveling up in the player's in-game profession.
  • Elder Scrolls Online (17+ years): Elder Scrolls Online features a non-linear storyline that connects with other Elder Scrolls games. Set in Tamriel, a fictional continent, players enjoy a mixture of quests and random events with opportunities to earn event-specific rewards.

Tweet us @iThriveGames to let us know what MMORPGs you're playing while at home, and subscribe to our newsletter for access to free, game-based social-emotional learning resources and more recommendations for games to play while social distancing! 

Four Ways to Fight the Virus of Misinformation with Media Literacy

By iThrive Games

These days are likely to find you glued to the news, searching for important information about the spread of coronavirus and the interventions your community is taking in response. Unfortunately, our viral information environment is as difficult as the virus itself. Each day is crowded with coronavirus news stories, opinion pieces, and a flood of data, charts, numbers, and statistics. How can you make sense of it all?  Who can you trust? How can you stay informed without being overwhelmed? If you're asking yourself these questions, the teens you care about may be asking them too. 

Media literacy—the skill of learning to read and think critically about the media that we consume—can help you manage your consumption of information related to the virus. We have championed this skill through our work on iThrive Sim: Constitutional Crisis, a tech-enabled simulation game that teaches high-school students civics and skills such as media literacy, decision-making, and social and emotional awareness. We hope you'll use these tips and share them in discussion with the young people in your life to turn the news cycle into a learning opportunity. 

1. Manage Your Consumption

Stories that stoke fear or elicit a powerful emotional response keep us glued to the news, so news outlets are serving up plenty of content that will heighten our emotions. While there are certainly important news developments throughout the day, limiting your intake of news can help to keep you from riding a rollercoaster of emotions. News outlets aggregate the most important information for major morning and night updates. Stay informed by choosing one to two times a day to get new information—perhaps a morning update, or dip in for the 6 pm news—without missing out on important updates. 

2. Use Trusted Sources

There is an avalanche of media related to coronavirus.  How do you know where to turn? Recent years' talk of fake news has undermined the public's trust in media outlets. Additionally, major cuts in newsrooms across the country mean there are fewer reporters out on the beat chasing down information. Despite these challenges, there are still a number of news outlets doing an excellent job reporting and writing about coronavirus. Most notably, The New York Times and the Washington Post have been working hard to cover the coronavirus story in-depth, accurately with lots of facts and data to support their reporting. Both outlets have also removed their paywall, giving all people equal access to important information. The BBC continues to be one of the best news sources for world coverage. Using these news outlets well-staffed with top journalists will help ensure the news you do consume is trustworthy.

3. Separate New Stories from Opinion Pieces

Beyond gold standard reporting, there is a ton of unsourced information and opinion.  Make sure you distinguish between reported pieces, which use sources and facts to support ideas, from opinion pieces, where people substitute their own judgment for truth. Opinion pieces can help us engage with a story by learning what others think or believe, but we should be sure to evaluate what we hear or read carefully before believing it ourselves, or passing a piece on.  Beware, also, of confirmation bias: we tend to take opinions that align with our own preconceptions to be more truthful. Consuming information from a variety of sources that don't always agree with each other or with you can ensure you have access to other perspectives worth considering. 

4. When In Doubt, Fact Check

The internet age has provided us access to millions of media outlets but has also facilitated the spread of falsehoods, misinformation, and conspiracy theories. Yes, there is such a thing as fake news—often propagated by outlets seeking to cash in on clicks, or spreading falsehoods for their own ideological ends.  If a story sounds outlandish, exaggerated, or flat out wrong it's worth checking it out. Mainstream news stories, Presidential press conferences, and public statements by officials related to coronavirus can be checked at the Annenburg Center's Factcheck.org, an excellent source for evaluating news.  Chain emails, conspiracy theories, and alarmist social media posts can be checked at snopes.com, long a trusted source for evaluating viral content for accuracy.  Fact-checking the news you consume can ensure you are getting the story straight and can help keep you from passing on the virus of misinformation.

Talk About It

Media literacy is a key skill for both teens and adults that is more important now than ever.  Families at home can use these simple tips to engage teens in a conversation about managing news consumption on the coronavirus crisis and to help build media literacy skills that will produce learning that will last long after quarantine.

This media literacy piece was written by Susan X. Jane, Senior Director of Organizational Strategy at the iThrive Games Foundation. Check out her latest article on how iThrive Games' Game Design Studios create rich spaces for connection, learning, systems thinking, and activating social change.

Social Distancing and Staying Connected Through Games

By iThrive Games

At iThrive Games Foundation, we are passionate about games and we know that games can help us feel more connected to each other. As we all seek to do our part to #flattenthecurve of Covid-19, game play may increasingly become a part of daily life. Whether you're a teen whose school has closed or an adult who is working from home, many are practicing social distancing. Playing games together at home can relieve stress, bring joy, and foster connection.

Relieving Stress and Bringing Joy

Numerous studies suggest that playing video games relieves stress. A 2016 study shows that whether a video game was collaborative or competitive, players' stress levels declined over time during gameplay.  Another study found that video game players reported turning toward games after stress, and that they were able to recover from stress as a result of play. 

In addition to research, we love listening to youth voices. Our teen blogger, Eleanor Mather, has written about her experience of using video games to help relieve stress. She has shared the useful life lessons she has experienced while playing games, whether she's enjoying Super Mario Maker 2 and remembering that it's not about winning, it's about creativity or learning lessons about the value of working toward a goal through playing Animal Crossing.

Our Curated Games Catalog can help you find new games to try out. The catalog links our game recommendations to some of the skills that are important for all of us to practice. Check out which games you can play to strengthen your skills for kindness, curiosity, and empathy.  

There are so many video games now, too, that can be played together (online) but apart. Playing these can help you stay connected and have fun with friends even when you're practicing social distancing. Check out our recent blog on engaging with your teen in game play.  

Fostering Connection During Social Distancing

In addition to video games, iThrive staff loves playing tabletop games. We all work remotely, so when we are together physically, we use games to reconnect. We have had so many shared moments of true connection (and many deep belly laughs) from sitting down at a table and playing a game together. And all of us play games with our families and friends when we are at home. Some of our favorites are:

  • The Mind is a collaborative game where the only way to win is as a team. Players are not allowed to communicate verbally. Cards are dealt and players must each card in numeric order without making a peep or using hand gestures. We have had a blast trying to interpret and respond accurately to each other's nonverbal cues. (And the post-game analysis is sometimes the best part.)   
  • Happy Salmon is a game that gets you up and out of your seat as you try to be the first one to get rid of all of your cards. This one will have your whole family laughing as you yell out card categories and run around the table switching places. The only change during this Covid-19 issue might be bumping elbows instead of slapping arms when you get the happy salmon card. (This one's competitive, so be warned!) 
  • Team 3 is a cooperative game where three players work together to build a structure. The only catch is only one person can touch and move the pieces to build the structure (and they can't open their eyes), only one person can shout orders, and those orders are dependent upon the plans the one person who can't speak is looking at. Oh, and it's timed. This game calls on your nonverbal communication skills, your spatial awareness, and your patience. It is such fun to discover how to work together and communicate as you play. 

Whether its parents and teens, or siblings and friends, grabbing a controller and playing together can help you share a moment of joy, stress relief, and connection despite social distancing.

Expanding the Power of Play with Game Design Studio

By iThrive Games

This article is the last in a series of posts that explore iThrive's Game Design Studio approach, which staff will be sharing in a presentation called Teens as Changemakers at SXSW EDU on March 9th. You can read the first article here and the second one here.

Play is a serious business: we know that games are a rich space for learning about the world and developing skills. From counting and puzzle games to strategy and dexterity, games provide lots of opportunities for player transformation. But what if we could use games to transform whole communities? That's what we've been working on at iThrive Games Foundation, with our Game Design Studios. Our two-week game design camps, hosted in local communities with youth in classrooms, camps, and youth programs, seeks to expand the power of play by applying game design to social issues.

Of course, playing games can help us learn about systems—think Monopoly or the Game of Life. Game Design Studios challenge youth to go beyond making models of systems they know to transform the player through the experience of the game. Game design can open up space for dialogue, exploration, and empathetic listening, connecting teens to each other, and to adults that care about them, playing together to find understanding and brainstorm solutions.

We know games create experiential space to explore, test, try, fail, and learn together. We also know teens care deeply about the issues they face in their communities. Game Design Studios combine a supportive space where teens examine the issues they face with play and design—tools to help them bring their experiences to others. During Game Design Studios, teens share personal experiences through facilitated dialogue, learn about game mechanics, and of course play lots of different kinds of games. Groups produce game prototypes and share what they have created with their peers and community stakeholders, shaping a shared space for dialogue, spurring important conversations about the lives of youth, and generating solutions to issues youth face.

Youth feel the effects of the unequal system on their life—the education system, justice system, and the economy all have a profound effect on shaping the lives of teens, particularly those in marginalized communities. Power can feel like an abstract concept to teens, but games make power visible and playable. Teens can use game mechanics to see how rules, win states, and world-building shapes the world of the game, as well as the world they live in. 

At a recent Game Design Studio hosted in Marietta, GA, teens created a board game based on class structure, playing for the power of upward mobility. Players were eager to move to the top, but challenge cards kept players back with health care costs, student loan debt, and job losses. Designing the game, getting the information on the privilege and perils of class in America, and playing together make exploring the abstract easier, bringing power to life with a spin of the wheel.

Games create experiences to engage community in empathetic immersion. Youth game designers learn to balance player agency and uncontrollable constraints to shape the emotions of the player and help others tap into their experiences. At a Game Design Studio in Boston, teens shared their experiences with entry after contact with juvenile justice social service systems. They created a re-skinned version of Sorry called The Runaround, complete with parole violations, family setbacks, and missed fines. The game is frustrating to play: as soon as you get some pieces out you find yourself sliding back to the start. Players feel the stress, sadness, and frustration teens feel trying to get home and stay home. Though the game rarely has a winner, players have a chance to talk about how the systems designed to serve youth can better meet their needs. Adults take the experience of playing The Runaround with them when they return to institutions and agencies positioned to make a difference in services to support teens.

Game Design Studio creates important spaces for learning and growth, lessons that should be shared with teen communities. The encounters end with game showcases, inviting administrators and teachers, social workers and principals to play the games the teens have designed, and talk with teens about how to make the community one where teens have a seat at the table on issues that affect them. Teens have a chance to also learn from each other, exploring their peers' prototypes and sharing feedback and learning with each other. Long after the Game Design Studio is over, teens and adults can continue to dialogue about the issues that matter to them, playing and working together to help teens thrive.

This work was supported through generous funding from the William T. Grant Foundation and the D.N. Batten Foundation.

Talking to Your Teen About Healthy Gaming

By iThrive Games

Many parents struggle with how to manage the amount of time their teens spend playing video games and ensuring healthy gaming habits. While the C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health found that 71% of parents believe video games can be good for teens, nearly half of the parents polled also reported that gaming can get in the way in teens' lives, including family activities. 

At iThrive, we know video games can offer teens meaningful opportunities to feel masterful, connect with others, and explore who they are and what they care about. In fact, parent and friendship researcher Lydia Denworth believes video games offer "a critical form of socializing." How can parents embrace this perspective in their interactions with their teens and encourage healthy gaming?

We've compiled some strategies for approaching and having interactions with teens around video games. To start, you'll need to get curious about why teens are playing. These tips allow parents to have conversations about video games in ways that respect teens and encourage healthy gaming.

    • Pay Attention To Your Posture: When you notice your teen is heading full-speed into hour 3 of video games for the day, what happens in your body? You might get tense, cross your arms, raise your voice, or go silent and steely without even being aware that you're doing it. It is a parent's job to set limits in your household, including for screen time. But getting mad or leading with disapproval is a surefire way to alienate your teen, stoke conflict and dissuade any fruitful conversation about developing healthy gaming habits. Set a small challenge for yourself to notice your body when approaching your teen about gaming. Practice an open posture: arms loose and relaxed at your sides, chest expansive and forward-facing, face and jaw relaxed, voice calm. Your body language signals to your teen either that it's time to get defensive and wall off, or that it's safe to venture some authentic sharing.

    • Listen Generously: Experts warn against dismissing or minimizing your teens' genuine interest in video games, no matter how mystifying it may be to you. Neuroscientist and mom of two former teenagers Frances Jensen shares, "The teen years are a great time to test where a kid's strengths are, and to even out weaknesses that need attention. What you don't want to do is ridicule, or be judgmental or disapproving or dismissive." Make time to engage with your teen around healthy gaming without rushing. Ask questions with genuine curiosity, "How do you decide which game to play? How do you learn how to play? What's interesting to you about this?" Think about a hobby you enjoy that might, on the surface, seem silly or trivial. Why do you like it? Chances are it's meeting a real and important need that makes you human. Video games are meeting some real and important need for your teen. Be curious about what it is. You might learn a lot about what makes your teen tick by asking open-ended questions from a place of genuine curiosity.

    • Make It A Shared Experience: Your teen is an expert in gaming, and you can learn a lot by grabbing a seat on the couch and requesting a tutorial on your teen's favorite title. (But prepare to be swiftly defeated!) Try exploring a new game together, with shared newbie status. "Couch co-op" games (meaning you're playing together in the same shared physical space) like Jackbox Party Packs, Overcooked, FIFA Soccer, Super Smash Bros., and many other titles offer a chance to associate a new emotional experience with your teen's gaming. Playing together is a chance to bond and have fun. It also will cement the message for your teen that you want to "get" and be involved in their passion and that you see its inherent value.

Game designer Jane McGonigal proposes that droves of people care so deeply about video games because they crave opportunities to solve tough problems and to test their limits in ways that real life often does not reliably provide. In your teen's case, there may be opportunities to find outlets for these needs and emotions outside of and in addition to video games. But you can't get a clear picture of those needs by standing on the sidelines, wishing things were different or waiting for this "phase" to end. When discussing healthy gaming with your teen, challenge yourself to step beyond your comfort zone with real curiosity, to meet your teen inside the magic circle and see what's so appealing there. You just might be pleasantly surprised by the richness you discover.

Expanding Our Vision for Civics Education: iThrive Sim Intersects Play, Civics, & Social and Emotional Learning

By iThrive Games

Research has shown that engagement with civics has benefits for individuals and communities as a whole. Yet countless column inches have been used to decry the current state of civics education. Concurrently, high school students across the country are asking "Why should I care?" 

Teachers know that the secret sauce in any great civics course is to create the conditions to help young people answer for themselves the question of why they should care and provide them with the tools to effectively and constructively engage. 

But how do we inspire teens to engage? What would that look like? Do we have a practice ground? And even when students have information available to them, what tools have we given them to discern whether that information is fact or fake news?

iThrive Games Foundation and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum have partnered to create iThrive Sim: Constitutional Crisis, a live-action role-playing game that can be used in place of traditional civics teaching methods. The game, which is based on the Situation Room Experience, allows participants to play unique roles, which creates an experience of immersion in the scenario from a specific perspective. As players move through the scenario, they draw on social and emotional skills while they make decisions, demonstrate critical thinking, absorb information, navigate complex ethical landscapes, and communicate with peers. 

This mixture of gameplay, civics, and social and emotional learning is highly engaging to students. Here's how:

  • Gameplay: A critical component of iThrive Sim: Constitutional Crisis is embodied, experiential learning. By engaging in a simulation, teens don't just imagine or talk about making decisions under pressure, they experience it. Look at the face of any teen playing an intense video game: the tension is real, even though the stakes are fictional. In iThrive Sim: Constitutional Crisis, teachers see their students practice regulating their emotions, collaborating with others, exercising curiosity, and weighing competing priorities as they make difficult decisions. Students put into practice the social and emotional skills essential for civic engagement: self-awareness, empathy, collaboration, curiosity, and courage. 
  • Civics: Through iThrive Sim: Constitutional Crisis, students begin to perceive themselves as decision-makers here and now, with the power to impact those around them. They don't have to wait to "be a decision-maker;" they already are. Their actions and decisions, even before they can vote, help to create the communities of which we're all a part. NOT acting is still taking action. What's more, iThrive Sim: Constitutional Crisis provides a memorable shared experience for students to revisit as a frame of reference to scaffold future knowledge. 
  • Social and emotional learning: At its heart, democracy is about decision-making. The role of a member of the public in our democracy requires choosing to combat bias to build empathy for the experience of fellow human beings, building self-efficacy to combat apathy, and daring to make complex decisions with consequences for individual liberty and the larger social good.  By acknowledging and highlighting the social and emotional skills inherent to responsible citizenship, we seek to engage students not just by supporting their understanding of the mechanics of government, but of themselves, their identities, values, and communities. We seek to provide students tools to engage with constructive decision-making techniques and to reflect deeply on how their decision-making affects others. Rather than telling them what is important to them, we engage students in considering these questions for themselves so that they are capable of translating their values into action.

 

At the heart of this unit is the acknowledgment that the decisions we make as individuals have ripple effects in our families, our communities, our democracy. Students who engage in iThrive Sim: Constitutional Crisis see the impact of those decisions and have the opportunity to learn from them as they consider how to fully engage as young citizens in a democracy they are shaping and will continue to reshape throughout their lives as decision-makers. 

To learn more or to pilot iThrive Sim: Constitutional Crisis, email us at contact@ithrivegames.org.

Coming Soon: New Issue of Journal of Games, Self, and Society

By iThrive Games

Games hit us where we are human. Gameplay is social. It is emotional. It is intellectual. We created the Journal of Games, Self, & Society (JGSS) to encourage interdisciplinary research, conversation, and community around games. Peer reviewed by experts in the field, the journal highlights qualitative, quantitative, theoretical, and experimental game studies focused on how games, game design, and gameplay contribute to a deeper understanding of learning, health, and humanity.

Our second issue of the Journal of Games, Self, & Society (JGSS) drops in April. From accessibility to how gameplay can teach systems thinking, each peer-reviewed article amplifies projects that are exploring how games help us thrive.

The first issue of the Journal shared a collection of papers that span fields of study from political science to interpersonal violence to STEM, and shared learning and insights in the realms of education, game development, physical health, relationship safety, and mental well-being. If you missed the first issue and its insightful game studies, click here to read it.

Sign up for our newsletter to receive an email when the second issue becomes available. 

Game Design with the Next Generation of Changemakers

By iThrive Games

This article is the second in a series of posts that explore iThrive's Game Design Studio and our youth positive development approach, which staff will be sharing more about in a presentation called Teens as Changemakers at SXSW EDU on March 9th. You can read the first article here.

Teens' brains are undergoing the last major restructuring of development, one nearly on par with the brain growth of early childhood. That means the environments and interactions teens experience—good and bad alike—leave a deeper mark on the brain than they will in later years. At SXSW Edu next month, we'll be sharing our method of creating transformative environments.

Empowering teens as changemakers means engaging youth and communities in drawing on the past and present to create new knowledge. This positions teens not merely as end-users or consumers of programs, but as creators both of knowledge and action steps to begin the work of building healthy, equitable, and sustainable communities.

Game Design Studio is a co-design experience that furthers youth as creators of knowledge, individuals who have a real ability to contribute to meaning-making and surfacing of solutions. Teens who work in codesign on curricula, projects, games, and other products will help to shape the understanding of teens for their peers, teachers, educators, parents, and policymakers.

Positive Youth Development Approach

Game Design Studio is a positive youth development approach. Rather than focusing on what teens lack in their lives or community, positive youth development sees all teens as having the potential to make a meaningful contribution to society. In Game Design Studios, we create experiences and environments where:

  • Youth contribute to knowledge creation and practice skills in substantive activities.
  • Youth voice and youth agency are respected and encouraged, and
  • Youth are authentically valued as creators and end-users, their contributions are critical in program development and execution.

Game Design Studio is one way that we integrate youth voice in our organization and beyond.  Across activities, gameplay, and being present and in relationship with young people, we develop knowledge in partnership with them. 

Structure and Experience

Designing games—like making a painting, composing a song, or writing a poem—is an act of self-expression. Unique to game design is designing a system with rules, roles, ways of progressing, and win and loss states. We use game design as a way to engage youth in thinking about their lived experience, how they think about and understand the world, and what they might like to be different in their world and how they would go about making that change.  Synthesizing their imagined change into a structured game that others can experience supports youth designers in thinking concretely about the specifics of the change. 

Through various structured and open-ended activities, we explore questions such as: How do you feel in the current state (your lived experience) and how would you like to feel instead?  What would need to change about the rules, roles, ways of progressing, and win and loss states in your own life to feel that way you want to feel, as opposed to the way you do feel?

Changes that youth designers have imagined and designed games around have included: 

  • Being in a mutually respectful relationship with another adult (instead of one where they are expected to respect adults but adults are not respectful in return), 
  • Getting more sleep at night by having a room that is quiet and a mind that is not racing with the worries of the day (instead of suffering intrusions of sound and thoughts throughout the night), and
  • Having conversations about someone dying and what grief feels like (instead of adults ignoring or being largely silent when someone close dies).

We believe this process lays a foundation to support social change, and it includes guiding teens in critical reflection to build hope and self-efficacy related to the possibility of system change. Teens think about and explore through gameplay and game design techniques the design of systems that impact their lives, the interpersonal and sociopolitical processes that perpetuate those systems, and the leverage points that have the potential to change interactions and processes for the better. This serves to prime youth to see their potential as change agents in the communities to which they belong. It can also support their integration of individual-level and community-level empowerment by informing those in power about helpful actions they could take to improve interactions with and experiences for disenfranchised teens. 

At SXSW Edu 2020, we can't wait to highlight how making and sharing self-expressive creations can lead to positive change, first internally (within the teens' own minds by supporting identity formation, positive self-regard, and advocacy skills) and, ultimately and ideally, externally (longer-term, by informing those already in power in the systems that affect teens about how teens are experiencing those systems). We hope to see you there!

About iThrive’s Journal of Games, Self, and Society (JGSS)

By iThrive Games

The Journal of Games, Self, and Society (JGSS) is a peer-reviewed journal created and edited by the iThrive Games Foundation and published by ETC Press. The goal of the Journal of Games, Self, and Society (JGSS) is to encourage interdisciplinary research, conversation, and community around game studies and games-related scholarship. The journal highlights work focused on how games, game design, and gameplay contribute to a deeper understanding of learning, health, and humanity. Scholars from all disciplines are encouraged to participate.

iThrive Games really listened to the game developers and scholars in the HEVGA workshop, quickly brainstorming ideas with people in attendance, and stepping up to try and help the field grow with a new forum for scholarship focused around human-centered game design.

— Drew Davidson,  Director of the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon

I am delighted that the editorial board is a set of very accomplished scholars in the field from a wide range of member institutions, and firmly believe that iThrive, given their philanthropic mission to understand these issues and status as a non-profit committed to furthering human knowledge, is the right group to help establish this important effort.  It is the first in what I hope are a series of new academic venues for work in various sub-disciplines and knowledge domains as our understanding of games and immersive media continues to expand.

— Andrew Phelps, President of HEVGA and founder and Director of the RIT Center for Media, Arts, Games, Interaction, and Creativity

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

How often do you publish the Journal of Games, Self, and Society (JGSS)?
Once per year.

When does the next issue of the Journal of Games, Self, and Society (JGSS) come out?
New issues of the journal are published in early Spring.

How much does it cost to submit to or publish in the Journal of Games, Self, and Society (JGSS)?
There is no cost to submit a paper or to have one published. All manuscripts are published digitally through ETC Press and therefore free to all. If you want a physical copy of the journal, ETC does charge a small fee for printing and shipping, simply to cover the costs of printing. There are no institutional or subscription fees.

How and where are calls for the Journal of Games, Self, and Society (JGSS) papers distributed?
The best places to hear about future calls for papers are our website www.ithrivegames.org, the iThrive monthly newsletter, and on our Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts. We also publish our call for papers on the Games Network and HEVGA listservs.

How do I know if my paper is a good fit for the Journal of Games, Self, and Society (JGSS)?
The goal of the JGSS is to encourage interdisciplinary research, conversation, and community. As such, we do not have requirements for research to be in a specific field of study. If your game studies or research - either theoretical or empirical - is focused on how games, game design, or gameplay contribute to a deeper understanding of learning, health, or humanity, you're in a good place. Works focused on teens are especially encouraged. If you're not sure about your paper's fit, you can contact us at contact@ithrivegames.org.

Do you publish null results in the Journal of Games, Self, and Society (JGSS)?
Yes! Null results are still results and an important part of game studies, healthy science, and scholarship.

Will the Journal of Games, Self, and Society (JGSS) also consider publishing results-blind Registered Reports?
Yes. JGSS is committed to the advancement of publication methodology and observing best practices — embracing results-blind and pre-registered reports is an important step toward more transparent and ethical game studies and research.

What is JGSS's stance on republishing translated work?
We welcome texts that have been previously published in a different language provided that, in addition to translating the paper into English, they have made noticeable changes to the text to differentiate it from the previously published text. It's the responsibility of the authors to secure all permissions from the initial publication to republish an article. Demonstrated proof must be provided upon submission.

How does the Journal of Games, Self, and Society (JGSS) review process work?
Journal of Games, Self, and Society (JGSS) uses a double-blind review process which means that reviewers do not know the identity of the authors and vice versa. Each paper is reviewed by two members of the editorial board and is assigned a mark of Strong Accept, Accept, Weak Accept, Weak Reject, and Reject.

  • Strong Accept - The work meets or exceeds the standards of a top paper in any reputable journal.
  • Accept - The work is of value and the paper is worth publication; some minor revisions may be required.
  • Borderline - The work may have value, but it is unclear if there is adequate time to make revisions necessary to clarify that value in the paper; OR unclear if it is appropriate for this venue.
  • Reject - The work may have value, but significant re-writes are necessary before it should be considered for publication, OR it is reasonably sure this venue is inappropriate.
  • Strong Reject - Neither the work nor its articulation appears to be ready for publication, OR this venue is inappropriate.

Reviewers' comments will be provided when authors are notified of their paper's status. Papers receiving an evaluation of Borderline (i.e. those requiring major revisions) will be required to submit a revised paper addressing the comments and concerns of reviewers in order to be considered for publication. Should a situation occur where a paper receives conflicting reviewer scores (e.g. one accept and one reject) a third reviewer will evaluate the paper.

My JGSS submission received an overall mark of Borderline. What does that mean in terms of acceptance to the journal?
Papers marked as requiring major revisions will be provided feedback from the reviewers and required to resubmit their paper for review. The paper will be reevaluated upon re-submission. If the work fails to comprehensively address the requested edits or does not meet publication standards during reevaluation, JGSS retains the right to decline the paper.

Super Mario Maker 2: No Limits

By iThrive Games

Late last June, the sequel to the beloved Super Mario Maker for the Wii U was released, bringing players back into a vast playground to fulfill their game design dreams. Taking inspiration from the story mode and other player's creations, players set their minds to crafting levels that suit their wildest dreams and astound those who would wish to participate. 

While I was unable to play the first game, I was relatively familiar with the system because I spent quite some time watching playthroughs when it first came out. I was in awe of the innovating level design so when the second version came out, I wanted to play and maybe even create something myself someday. Surrounded by brilliant creations, my personal journey into this realm was preceded by a vague hope of creating levels that were just as perfect and fun as those done by the best. Soon enough, I clicked in the Super Mario Maker 2 cartridge and booted up the maker.

I was not the best.

I assumed my first levels wouldn't be the greatest, but I didn't realize just how difficult it was to grasp concepts that seemed intuitive to my peers. I was convinced that I could immediately jump in with mega cohesive levels that taught the player as they went and left them challenged but not cheated. However, all I was left with was a blank canvas, the saccharine blue sky taunting me from the other side of the screen.

After two days, all I did was erase and replace; erase and replace. How could I put anything out there if it's not the best I can do? Every choice was followed by me questioning if it was cheatable or too hard or too easy, and I couldn't bring myself to test it on others for fear of showing my work. 

I was not the best at looking at the situation clearly.

After wallowing in my own perceived insufficiencies, I caught wind that one of the many Super Mario Maker 2 level creators crafted a stage based off of Touhou, a bullet hell game which while complex and hard to design, is structurally very different from a Mario game. It didn't fit the mold that I was forcing myself to conform to, but it was an incredible feat of effort. It was then that I realized I may have been missing the point.

Super Mario Maker isn't about making the best level, it's about making your best level and improving your own game design skills over time. I had lost sight of what the freedom of Super Mario Maker meant, which was to design as you pleased. No one's first level will turn out perfect, and if it's not from your own imagination, then what's the point? 

Eventually, I booted up the game again, discovered you could take Lakitus off of their clouds and burnt an hour making something I enjoyed making. Messing around by flying across the screen just felt right at the time, so I tried to make something that would let me do that many times. Was it perfect? No. Was it good? Probably. But now I think I'm ready to give it to someone for comment so I can learn from my mistakes and use them to make the next level that much better.

 

Eleanor Mather is a 17-year-old high school senior at Horace Mann High School in Bronx, New York. She has enjoyed playing games since playing Pokémon Platinum with her brother and friends and has grown to love discussing and developing them in the past years. She is very excited to contribute her thoughts to the conversation on games as a medium and hopes to encourage others to join in.  

 

This year at SXSW Edu in Austin, Texas, we'll be presenting a panel discussion entitled, Teens as Changemakers: SEL Through Game Designwhere we'll share insights on the social and emotional learning opportunities that games and game design offer for teens. To learn more about the power of constructionist games like Super Mario Maker 2, check out this blog post written by our SXSW Edu co-presenter Matthew Farber.

Teen Perspectives on Sleep and Social Media: What Research (and Game Design) Reveals

By iThrive Games

A recent study in Sleep Health: Journal of the National Sleep Foundation found that teens use social media despite sleep costs for two main reasons: Fear of missing out, and norms and expectations.

Researchers invited 24 teens ages 11 to 17 to participate in focus groups, answering questions related to their social media habits around bedtime, their motivations for engaging with social media, and their perspective on how it impacted their sleep. 

When it comes to fear of missing out, the participants share that not being involved in interactions online has social costs in the real world. They worry about being left out of conversations, and seeking to assuage that worry motivates them to engage with social media at bedtime.

Norms and expectations are also key drivers. Participants share that being active on social media is part of being a normal teenager, and that quick responses are expected. For them, this leads to continued engagement, even when fatigued.

At iThrive Games Foundation, we have also explored teen behaviors around sleep. Last fall, staff held a Game Design Studio at Madison Park Technical Vocational High School in Boston, engaging with a class of teens there to create games related to their pressing concerns. Sleep was one of the issues that the teens surfaced during the design session.

Materials from Insomnia, a fast-paced card game related to teen sleep patterns created by teens at Madison Park Technical Vocational High School in Boston, MA. 

Youth shared factors that thwart their ability to get to sleep on time, including too much homework, stress, and anxiety. And they shared factors that support them in getting enough sleep, such as healthy social media boundaries, opportunities to discuss their problems (at times other than bedtime), and healthy eating and movement.

Students worked through their design process to co-create ideas around solutions to the issues they surfaced, which led them to create Insomnia, a fast-paced card game. Each card in the game represents hours of sleep gained or lost, with some cards helping players earn additional sleep (e.g. blanket card) and others, like the dreaded insomnia card, leading to the player losing sleep. The player with the most sleep hours at the end of the game wins. The students were energized by being able to share their perspectives and create a game from their experiences.

They shared their games with teachers, administrators, and school staff, sparking discussion about how to best meet students' needs.  School counselors were interested in the way the game could help counselors open up discussions with students to identify outside issues that might affect their participation in the classroom.

Our Game Design Studio approach facilitates an environment where teens surface what's meaningful to them, co-create solutions to the issues that they surface, and create games that explore the actions they can take to feel empowered. 

Whether it's iThrive's approach or a research study such as this one that centers teen voice, teens are telling us how they feel. Adults taking the time to authentically and meaningfully engage with teens—and truly listening to them—is how we can best support their development.

This work was supported through generous funding from the William T. Grant Foundation and the D.N. Batten Foundation.

Exploring Youth Experiences of the Juvenile Justice System in Boston

By iThrive Games

Youth arrests are at record lows, according to a report from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. While this is good news, over 2 million young people remain involved with the juvenile justice system in the United States. The school-to-prison pipeline has serious consequences, particularly for youth of color. Black youth are more likely than youth of other races to be suspended from school and have early contact with the justice system, leading to consequences that affect their choices well beyond their teen years.

In the fall of 2019, iThrive Games Foundation embarked on a two-year journey to use games and game design to give voice to Black youth involved with the juvenile justice system. Funded by the WT Grant Foundation, iThrive will co-design games with youth in detention in Atlanta to give expression to young people's experiences with the justice system. As an initial foray into this work, the team began testing materials and activities in Boston, where team members were located, learning from staff and stakeholders in the area.

Working with Janelle Ridley from the Boston Mayor's Office, we offered gameplay and game design sessions to a group of young men on the Peace Unit in Suffolk County House of Corrections. We also convened an advisory group of youth with experiences in the justice or foster care system. Each of these groups played together, explored their experiences with youth-serving systems, and designed their own original games to express their experiences to stakeholders.

Young men on the Peace Unit shared stories of the pathways that they had taken through adolescence. The 18- to 24-year-olds explored inflection points in their lives that moved them along a trajectory away from friends, families, or goals. They also discussed the emotional drivers that impacted their decision making. These discussions were gamified in a variety of ways-from a life map drawing activity to the creation of a half-dozen game ideas.  During our time together, we finished three-game prototypes that captured the nuanced, thoughtful discussions, and important insights about how it feels to travel a path in the school to prison pipeline.

The youth created games such as Myths and Facts of the Juvenile Justice System, a memory-type matching game where players pair misconceptions the young men had heard along with the difficult realities of life in the system. They created an unnamed game that focused on different definitions of success and the nonlinear pathway to meeting life goals, littered with obstacles ranging from bad choices to systemic inequality.

Finally, they created Klout, a board game where players move along colorful pathways collecting stars and trees to get to the end, hoping to avoid stuff-stealing crabs along the way. A second game board reveals that the colorful pathways mirror the young men's experiences and the tangled pathways open to them, all with prizes and pitfalls. The game asks players to explore their emotional drivers—risk-taking, self-sabotage, power, need, respect, security, and frustration all affect choices and the response to environments without choice.

Klout, a board game where players move along colorful pathways collecting stars and trees to get to the end, hoping to avoid stuff-stealing crabs along the way.

In the youth advisory group we worked with young people who were living and working in the community, but previously had contact with the justice and foster care system. Now living in the community, these youth focused on the challenges of going home, moving homes, and finding the stability to work towards their goals. Getting out of detention is the first step to rebuilding, but not the last—there's still finding a home, a job, and accessing education while navigating challenging rules and difficult family dynamics.

Through gameplay and game design, the group was able to translate those difficulties into a game called The Runaround. Similar in play to the classic game Sorry, players navigate a series of pieces through the levels of security to get out of detention.  But they're not free until they move around the board, passing potential pitfalls and unexpected challenges like paying probation fees without a job or needing an address to stay out of the system when housing isn't stable.  Spoiler alert: you are likely to feel pretty frustrated during this game and generally no one wins.

The Runaround, a board game where players navigate a series of pieces through the levels of security to get out of detention. 

Like the Klout game from the Peace Unit, The Runaround helps youth-serving adults and stakeholders understand how youth feel and explore opportunities to improve services and experiences for youth.  The gameplay also provides an opportunity to have important conversations around critical questions for supporting youth: how can we help youth who are getting out of the system reintegrate successfully to stable living?  How can we better understand the feelings and behaviors young people grapple with to provide the support they need before being swept into the school-to-prison pipeline?

The games young people created with us were creative, engaging, and playable. Most importantly, the games provided a space for us to hear the voice of youth that too often is unheard in conversations about juvenile justice reform.  Throughout 2020, iThrive will continue this important work in Georgia where recent work in juvenile justice reform can give us a lens into new approaches. iThrive will generate research about best practices around the mental health of Black youth involved in the system. Be on the lookout for our reports from the field, and stay engaged in your own communities' efforts at justice reform.

Constructing Worlds: Where Games, Making, and Meaning Meet

By iThrive Games

Matthew Farber, our co-presenter at SXSW EDU this year, shares on the power and potential of game design and constructionist gaming in the classroom.

As I reflected on the upcoming session on game design that iThrive staff and I are presenting at SXSW Edu in March, I was reminded of my son. This holiday season, Santa brought my 9-year-old son (and me!) Mario Maker 2 for Nintendo Switch. A twist on the famous side-scrolling platform game that dates back decades, in this version, players can design and play their own Super Mario Bros. levels. The game includes playable game courses as well as a toolkit with blocks, enemies, power-ups, and other game elements that can be added to a grid, played, and also shared online. 

Interestingly, my son was already familiar with the game, including some hidden Easter eggs (one including playing as Link from the classic Legend of Zelda series!). I discovered that my son was already in an ecosystem of youth game design, one of his interests. He has designed game levels in the iPad game Geometry Dash, as well as in Minecraft's Creative Mode, and with Scratch. Regarding Mario Maker 2, he came to the game already viewing levels designed, shared, and played by YouTube Kids' star Stampy Cat. Stampy Cat's YouTube channel, stampylonghead, is kid-friendly and has 9.26 million subscribers. Super Mario Maker 2 - Showing My Courses has been viewed (as of this writing) 882,169 times, so there are many other young people engaging in similar play habits.

Watching my son construct worlds in this way reinforced my thinking about the social and emotional learning opportunities that game design presents, which we'll discuss during our SXSW Edu session.

Constructionist Gaming

This cycle of playing, making, reflecting, and sharing games is known as constructionist gaming. Described in a paper of the same name, and later in the book Connected Gaming: What Making Video Games Can Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, Yasmin Kafai and Quinn Burke build upon and extend James Paul Gee's learning principles about playing good games (i.e., games are a series of well-ordered problems) to constructionist notions posited by educator Seymour Papert. 

Papert's ideas undergird the maker movement as well as project-based learning as a pedagogical approach to deeper learning in, and outside, of classrooms. Papert believed that children learn by teaching (or programming computers). This flipped the traditional paradigm of computers-as-teachers, what B.F. Skinner called Teaching Machines. Papert wrote that children learn through cycles of making personally meaningful artifacts.  

This led me to wonder, what about games that are not like the aforementioned games, with level editors and creative modes? 

Constructionism + Gaming

In my research, some teachers who use games in their instruction, use them as models for experiential learning. Then they have students draw on those experiences to build their own games. They may also have students design projects that are not games. 

This is important because this approach exemplifies good pedagogy: do not assume games are all-in-one silver bullet solutions. Whereas good educational games balance learning goals with player actions, they may tend to be teaching machines. Good educational games may also be task-centered; when the player performs well on one task, they are rewarded with a more complex challenge. 

Good commercial games are different, in that they are designed to evoke emotions from players. When I play a cooperative board game like Pandemic, the game's rules and components create a system that makes us want to collaborate with others. The popular game Untitled Goose Game (my son and I also play on Switch!) evokes humor from players by role-playing as a subversive (and awful goose).

Why Does This Matter?

So, why is any of this important for students, educators, and those who interact with youth? 

As mentioned, good games can evoke players to be creative thinkers and critical thinkers. However, good learning should also involve students making and sharing something personally meaningful to them, whether that is a game or otherwise. In my classroom, I have students play one round of the charades game Heads Up, and then give them project-based learning time to build their own decks of cards. In other words, add Creative Mode to all games — and all experiences for that matter. If a child hears a podcast in class, they can then use digital tools to author and share their own.

In summer 2019, with iThrive Games, we ran Game Design Studio to do just that. Youth played many different genres and subgenres of games, both digital and analog. They used these games as mentor texts, not unlike reading poetry and then referring to poems when writing your own. To learn more about this approach, check out our session at SXSW EDU on March 9th: Teens as Changemakers: SEL [social emotional learning] Through Game Design.

Evolving Our Mission and Vision

By iThrive Games

As 2020 launches, I feel inspired, invigorated, and ready for the year to come. Upon reflecting deeply this last year with our team, collaborators, and thought partners who are all committed to advocating and supporting the adoption of game-based learning products, we have evolved our mission and vision.

This evolution came out of a set of experiences that left me asking the question, "What is ours to do?" Designing meaningful game-based learning experiences with and for teens is the heart of iThrive. Our strengths are in understanding and being genuinely curious about the teen brain, knowing the deep importance of social and emotional skills, and valuing play for connecting and learning. 

About nine months ago, we launched the development of our CIassroom Experience, an immersive game-based curriculum where students play critical roles during a constitutional crisis, from government officials to reporters, residents to law enforcement personnel. In the Classroom Experience, students apply and extend their learning of civics through the lens of decision-making, building their social and emotional skills and grappling with information and how to apply and interpret the US Constitution. I saw high school students lose their sense of time as they grappled with uncertainty, negotiated difficult decisions, and expanded their understanding of the constitution, media literacy, and civic engagement. Seeing teens deeply engaged in game-based learning-when it's relevant to their lives and designed to meet them where they are-is impactful. I realized that our method of using games and games design to meet teens where they are and support them as they move forward was unique and valuable.  

Over the course of the year, I also engaged in deep explorations around racism and social injustice with peers from other nonprofits, as well as visits to memorials and historic sites, including the National Memorial for Peace and Justice and the Mere Distinction of Colour at James Madison's Montpelier. 

Across these experiences, it became clear what is ours to do. Meaningfully engaging teens in social and emotional game-based learning and systems thinking will be our journey, and games and game design will be how we get there.  iThrive will continue co-designing meaningful game-based learning experiences with and for teens to support their ability to thrive, and, we will place an increased focus on teens from traditionally underserved communities. 

 

iThrive Games prepares teens to thrive by meeting them where they are and working in partnership towards a world where all have the voice, choice, and agency to reach their full potential. We use games and game design to equip teens with the social and emotional skills they need to be healthy and resilient, tools to support and protect their mental health and well-being, systems thinking they need to recognize inequity, and meaningful opportunities to imagine and design a better world.

We have recommitted to creating scalable, meaningful game-based learning experiences that support teens in building their social and emotional skills and their understanding of the current and historic systems that impact their lives. All of our work is co-designed with teens, from our game-based curriculum Museum of Me, to the Classroom Experience, and other innovations in the works. 

We have also received a Reducing Inequalities grant from the William T. Grant Foundation. This funding supports our work in using our co-design approach to  increase the understanding of the lived experiences of youth of color within juvenile detention centers. Our co-design approach authentically engages with youth and explores opportunities and barriers to supporting their mental health within "the system." You can read more about the project here.

Ultimately, all of our initiatives, in partnership with teens and the adults who engage with them, pave the way for our evolved vision: a world where teens are seen and valued by society; where adults have tools they need to support teens' development; where there is equal opportunity open to all, including those traditionally marginalized; and where all live healthy and purposeful lives. 

Whether you're a teen who has playtested a game with us, an educator who has piloted our game-based curriculum, or a collaborator who has supported our work, we thank you for collaborating with us and look forward to more games, growth, and thriving in 2020.

A Window into Playtesting with Teens

By iThrive Games

This week at iThrive, we had the opportunity to meet teens where they are and engage them in civics education by visiting US history and government classes at North Hollywood High School, Canoga Park High School, and Santa Paula High School in the Los Angeles area. The classroom experience is being developed in partnership with the Reagan Presidential Library. The students offered bright and bold feedback during their playtest of the iThrive Sim: Constitutional Crisis, our immersive game-based scenario in which teens engage in civics education and play critical roles during a constitutional crisis—from government officials to reporters, residents to law enforcement personnel.

Playtesting—the process of gaining insight into whether the game design meets the player experience you are attempting to create—is central to our approach at iThrive.

"It's how we make sure teens are at the center of our work," said Jane Lee, Senior Director of Operations and Mental Health. 

For this week's playtest, the students played a paper version of the usually tech-enabled civics education scenario to explore the mechanics of the game. Their feedback provided useful insights on topics such as participant interactions, game narrative and content, reading comprehension, and the physical environment's impact on the game.

"Paper prototyping allows you to playtest early in the production cycle so you can iterate and make significant changes based on the teens' feedback," said Lee. "By that principle, we are engaging in a form of co-design with teens. It's important that they are part of the design at every stage, so we aren't making assumptions about what they know and what they want to learn."

The civics education, role-playing game, which is in software development, will be available for classrooms in the fall of 2020. If you'd like to playtest with iThrive, please contact us.  

 

iThrive’s Juvenile Justice System Project Aims to Support Black Youth

By iThrive Games

This year, we'll be collaboratively working with young people who've been impacted by the juvenile justice system to amplify and understand their stories in order to create systems that better serve them and their communities. 

At the core of our work at iThrive Games is our belief that solutions to social challenges lie with the people who experience them firsthand. That is why we are fiercely committed to co-designing with teens.

We recognize the brilliance of the teenage mind and the power of each teen's voice. Whether we are co-creating a game design experience, playtesting a new game, or trying out a new game-based curriculum, teens have a seat at our table and are always ready and willing to tap into their experiences and co-design with us.

Earlier this year, we began thinking about how we can apply iThrive's co-design model to the juvenile justice system.

The juvenile justice system, as we know it, is riddled with deep racial inequity. Black youth, who account for 16 percent of America's adolescent population, make up 40 percent of the youth committed to juvenile detention facilities, and from 2003 to 2013, although overall arrests fell, Black and white disparities in juvenile detention grew by 15 percent.

The inequity is also seen in who within the juvenile justice system gets access to mental health care services. Nationwide, Black youth involved in the juvenile justice system are half as likely to be screened for mental health issues and Black males are 32 percent less likely to receive psychiatric care than white males. Research shows that inequity in the provision of mental health services based on race before, during, and after incarceration, negatively impacts the health, well-being, employment opportunities, educational attainment, and relationships of individuals of color who are or were system-involved. In other words, insufficient mental healthcare has lasting implications.

Despite how impacted Black youth are by the juvenile justice system, there is little to no research on their perspectives and ideas about how it can be improved. We want to help change that; specifically in the area of mental health.

Thanks to a grant from the William T. Grant Foundation, we are undertaking a project to increase our collective understanding of the lived experiences of Black youth within juvenile detention centers. The project uses iThrive's co-design approach to authentically engage with youth who have been impacted by the juvenile justice system, identify barriers, and explore opportunities to support their mental health within "the system."

We will invite approximately 40 Black youth (ages 13-25 years) who are detained in Georgia to participate in a series of design sessions with us. Working with each other and with workshop facilitators, youth will draw on their experiences with mental health in the juvenile justice system in service of contributing their voices to game prototypes designed to raise awareness among adult stakeholders and motivate action in the community to better meet their mental health needs.

As part of our evolved vision, we see a world where there is equal opportunity open to all and where teens from traditionally marginalized communities have the space to share their ideas and their stories. We are committed to doing all that we can to amplify the voices and experiences of youth most impacted by the juvenile justice system so that they have what they need to thrive. Over the next year, we'll provide updates about the insights the young people share. Sign up for our newsletter to learn more.

From Our Founder: iThrive’s Origin Story

By iThrive Games

The following piece was authored by Dorothy Batten, founder of iThrive Games and the DN Batten Foundation.

In my life, I've endured bullying, natural disasters, divorce, cancer in the family, accidents, surgeries, physical disability, and two near-death experiences. Still, I consider myself lucky. My life has never come to a standstill, and I have always picked myself up and moved forward. I've sometimes wondered, what is it that makes me resilient?

For one, I've had positive mentors. They have modeled for me the importance of having integrity, being respectful and fair, and making meaningful contributions to my community. Having come from a long line of hardworking and successful business people in my family, I also learned that if I followed my passion, worked hard, treated others well, and sought meaningful experiences, I would thrive.

Second, I've learned from positive psychology that I have a secret weapon to wield in all the roles I play, including businesswoman, philanthropist, counselor, mom, and human: my strengths. According to the VIA Character Strengths survey (which you can take here for free) one of my five signature strengths is perspective, which www.viacharacter.org says includes the ability to see situations from multiple sides, think in meaningful ways about life and how to live it, and to share helpful advice.

Perspective is one strength that's given me the ability to bounce back from hardships. In a way, it also catalyzed the initiative called iThrive. Let me explain. I credit my strength of perspective for the fact that I have always played the role of therapist among my friends. I've also had close relationships with people struggling with depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive and bipolar disorders, and substance abuse. I became interested in studying counseling, thinking that if I was going to be the person my loved ones came to for guidance, then I wanted to be well informed. But life and work always gave me some reason not to do it, just yet.

Then, a few years ago, I was in a fluke accident that shattered my leg, requiring three surgeries that left me unable to walk without assistance for a year and a half. Not able to work, I finally decided to take this (quite literal) downtime to get that second master's degree in counseling.

While I was enrolled in the counseling program, I stayed at home a lot with my two teenage sons, nursing my leg back to health while I studied. It was then that I began to notice how much time my boys were spending on the computer playing video games.

At first, like many parents, I nearly made myself hoarse pleading with them to "Pleeeeeease turn that computer OFF!!". I was worried they weren't doing more productive things. I wondered whether they'd be prepared to handle the "real world." Would they have the resilience they needed when hard times inevitably came?

But my angst over their gaming soon transformed into new insight. While working on an independent study, I learned about computer programs designed to deliver mental health interventions. It turned out that they showed promise for improving well-being. It struck me—computer games can be therapeutic! I was excited by this idea, but when I tried a couple of the programs, I was underwhelmed. They were well-intentioned, but I found them so unappealing that they were difficult to stick with. A lightbulb went off for me: "These programs would be so much more engaging if they were more like those games my kids are glued to. And, couldn't video games teens love also offer meaningful experiences that boost their well-being and resilience?"

As I reflected on this, it made more and more sense to me why my sons, and teens in general, were increasingly drawn to video games. Teens are stressed, these days even more than adults. Sure, adolescence was tough and awkward for me too, but I saw my sons and their friends distressed over things my generation didn't face to the same degree. Among them: the increasingly competitive race to get into college, the constant barrage of photoshopped celebrities, and the potential for envy and public embarrassment made possible by a life lived on social media. Video games are worlds where teens can go on their own terms to experiment, be creative, assume different roles and identities, practice expressing themselves, get into the 'flow-zone', and forget about their problems for a while. What a cathartic way to take some of the pressure off! But, I wondered, could these games be doing double duty, teaching kids how to cope better?

Of course, I wasn't the first person to make the connection that video games could teach meaningful skills-research on games-based learning started to really take off around the mid-2000s. But I did see an opportunity to bring another of my passions—positive psychology—into the conversation. Instead of just addressing illness, stress, and disorder, positive psychology says we can foster well-being by looking through the lens of our strengths. I became motivated to make that insight actionable for teens in the virtual worlds where they already are and want to be.

I founded iThrive to ensure that teens are finding in video games the positive, meaningful experiences they need to not only cope with stress but to find their strengths and thrive. Existing games have this potential, but we also could be designing for it more deliberately. And although research on the positive impact of video games is still in its early stages, I believe that under the right circumstances, gameplay can provide opportunities for teens to practice new skills, discover new perspectives (and new things about themselves), learn about others, exchange ideas, and collaborate.

I also witnessed how video games can provide a safe space for teens to practice coping strategies to deal with social challenges and failure. In online social worlds, just like in schools or any other place teens gather, bullying can and does happen. But, as my oldest son told me, he learned by being on the receiving end of aggressive behaviors in video games that reacting to bullies and taking their attacks personally never helped. Instead, he learned to disengage from them, mute them out, and remain focused on his own path.

With each day, video games augmented reality, and virtual reality is becoming more realistic and engaging, making them even more enticing for teens (and adults too!). It makes sense to meet teens where they are already spending so much of their time and to take advantage of the appeal of these technologies to promote teens' positive growth. Because gaming technology is advancing so rapidly, there is almost unlimited potential to create simulated, safe environments, using compelling stories, creative challenges, and evocative dialogue, to help teens gain self-awareness and learn skills that empower them to take the driver's seat on their own path to thriving.

My new perspective: video games can empower teens to thrive. I founded iThrive Games to discover how.

Animal Crossing: An Example In and Out of Game

By iThrive Games

Last Tuesday, fans of the popular Animal Crossing series had their thirst for news of a new game quenched with the announcement of Animal Crossing: New Horizons at E3. While many were disappointed with the fact that the game would be delayed to March 2020, reactions made a shift to the positive once it was announced that this decision was made for the sake of the game developers and the lives they had outside of work.

It was extremely heartening to see fans reacting positively to the announcement, but looking back it makes perfect sense given how Animal Crossing portrays work in its gameplay. For those who are unfamiliar with the game, the Animal Crossing series is a real-time town simulator in which you take part in a small community. The more the player participates, the more your town grows. More recent installments have put the development of the town farther in the hands of the player, going as far as making them the mayor (and allowing them to directly choose where and when their town develops certain amenities through Public Works Projects) but the message has remained fundamentally the same: taking things your own way. 

While this message may come across as letting the player slack off, Animal Crossing's freedom comes with constructive goals that demonstrate how you can be both productive and content with yourself. Whether it's through collecting fruit, catching bugs or fish, or interacting with fellow villagers, the player can make progress to become better at their preferred activity in the game which in turn can help the quality of life in the town. Players can contribute at their own pace towards what they want to accomplish without fear of being punished for not meeting arbitrary deadlines or completing certain tasks 'out of order'. 

Speaking from personal experience, this approach to work in a game, fortunately, came to me during critical periods of my life. I briefly played Wild World, the second game in the series when I was 7, but I began to appreciate the series' structure when New Leaf came out the summer before 8th grade. My friends and I started our games around the same time, so we were able to recount our experiences opening new shops and placing new Public Works Projects - we even set up weekly Saturday visits to each other's towns to see the fruits of each other's efforts. We all had different approaches, some of us tried to pay off our home loans quickly while others carefully planned out their next landmark so their village could come closer to their personal aesthetic. We worked hard, but it was for our own progress and fun as opposed to the expectations of those around us.

When school began that year my friends and I stopped playing consistently - work and school activities (and applying to a new school in my case) taking up much of our time. Revisiting the game in high school felt completely out of the question, as adjusting to a new community and maintaining my grades became a top priority. However, this September I had the chance to settle back into the Animal Crossing routine when a group of friends who had also long abandoned the game wanted to recapture the feeling of freedom in their work. On a late evening, we all began new lives in new towns, and I don't think I ever appreciated the game more than during the following school year. 

While I took great pride in all of my schoolwork during this period, Junior year meant that everyone felt the pressure of college riding on every activity. Things that were once done for personal improvement were often talked about in the hallways in terms of how they could be leveraged for applications, and I saw how those around me spoke less and less about how they enjoyed the material and more and more about how stressed they were about their next test grade. Animal Crossing was such a wonderful reminder of just how fun working towards something can be if the core motivation comes from within. Being the mayor for even 20-minute periods during times I would designate myself a break would show me what I almost missed amidst school routine. This mindset eventually leaked into my attitude about my homework and extracurriculars, and I found myself enjoying my activities more authentically than before. 

Seeing the lessons I was taught by Animal Crossing being practiced by those in charge renews my faith that I can continue to find work that I take personal fulfillment from after my high school career. Progress doesn't stop at me, however, and I hope to use Animal Crossing's example and become a positive influence on my peers as well.

Check out our Curated Games Catalog for other games that feature mechanics, narratives, and other elements identified by players, professional game developers, game scholars, educators, and scientists that are supportive of teen thriving and development.

Eleanor Mather is a 17-year-old rising senior currently attending Horace Mann High School in the Bronx. She has enjoyed playing games since playing Pokémon Platinum with her brother and friends and has grown to love discussing and developing them in the past years. She is very excited to contribute her thoughts to the conversation on games as a medium and hopes to encourage others to join in.  

 

Persona and The Unintended Influence of Game Design

By iThrive Games

Recently, I was introduced to the idea of ancient games and their purpose of training in society. In Egypt, many people played Senet in hopes that they could successfully move through the underworld, and in Greece, many soldiers played war games to ensure that their generals could practice delegating before heading into battle. While these games were also played for fun (particularly Senet, which apparently began as a more recreational game before religious themes came into it), there is a distinct societal purpose behind their creation and play. At first, the idea of games created for an explicit purpose in modern society was relatively novel to me. Then I remembered Persona.  

In the spring of 6th grade, I had ventured into the world of the Persona franchise when I learned of Persona 4 Golden. At the time, it was an incredibly well-received game known for its balance between social gameplay and dungeon crawling. On some days the player could work on improving the protagonist's technical and social skills, while on others they could fight through the "Midnight Channel," saving kidnapped victims from their own repressed emotions. When I was first introduced to this game, its theme was very new to me. I was excited to look at myself differently, much like the game encouraged its own characters to and in this way, I was introduced to a more overt way that games instill behavior through example and storytelling.

After uncovering the first story arc in Persona 4 Golden, I began to look at my actions more carefully — did I do something nice for someone else's benefit or my own? Did I really need to say something hurtful to get my point across? These questions almost felt like training to become a better person - while they had often come into play during my normal life before Persona 4 Golden, seeing the characters dealing with the intentions behind their actions forced me to look at mine. I eventually realized that Persona isn't the only franchise that does this either. When I was younger I took extra care to be conscientious of pets after playing Pokémon, and much more recently the discussions old friends of mine had about Undertale brought up topics like pacifism and not going about a situation aggressively by default.

Players are affected by games in a way that is unique from other art forms given the fact that they step into the shoes of the (very often silent) protagonist and experience the world crafted by the developer. However, I hadn't often considered just how deliberate the messages could be when playing games. Of course, since developers are human, their messages are certainly not perfect. Despite still being well-received, Persona 4 has faced some criticism for its handling of certain topics that have raised questions about whether they mishandled their themes in some character interactions. Even a game that executes its themes very well can have blips in its portrayal — meaning, taking everything at face value could cause a player to adopt some of the biases the developers had when creating the game.

While creating for the sake of instilling specific behaviors can be channeled for good, even the most well-intentioned person can share their biases instead of goodwill through their art. By considering games as one of the many tools for catalyzing change, we need to take extra care to not get completely caught up in the views of the not-so-silent protagonist.

Eleanor Mather is a 17-year-old rising senior currently attending Horace Mann High School in the Bronx. She has enjoyed playing games since playing Pokémon Platinum with her brother and friends and has grown to love discussing and developing them in the past years. She is very excited to contribute her thoughts to the conversation on games as a medium and hopes to encourage others to join in.  

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Octopath Traveler and Helping Others

By iThrive Games

In my experience playing Octopath Traveler, there is little that is more motivating than the camaraderie of a group. Games provide many examples of different team dynamics, with many RPGs telling a story in which the protagonist gathers party members to achieve a common goal. While different characters may have varied motivations to join the party, the said goal is usually (ultimately) what keeps the group together. Unfortunately, this can lead to the assumption that the common wish is the main reason the team supports each other, as opposed to having a bond.

I have been playing Octopath Traveler and noticed it subverts this trope through a format that at first I thought was only set up by necessity. The game has eight protagonists with their own story that the player can play through in any order, switching through their party of four depending on which character best suits the situation. Each character has their own individual goals with different levels of seriousness, from Tressa's desire to explore the world to Primrose's wish to avenge her father's murder. Despite their varied wishes and destinations, whenever you encounter another potential party member and hear their story, there's no other obstacle to joining them - in fact, the characters hardly acknowledge it.

To be completely honest, I was initially wary of this decision. I was very used to seeing characters become united by a common goal and was concerned that the absence of a specific reason for the characters to join each other would make the story feel flat and less worth putting time into. While at first, this came across to me like the Octopath Traveler designers not being able to fit in cohesive dialogue for every possible combination of collecting party members, it slowly began to take another form as I continued the journey. 

Characters in Octopath Traveler go through major story beats that have to do with their individual journey alone (only they are present in cutscenes), but once you have more than one character in your party there's a chance that they will interact with each other through "party banter," in which they'll learn something new about the other, give advice, or simply talk about what had just occurred. These are almost always a fun read, and I found myself switching out party members during each chapter to try and "collect them all." However, this collection slowly became a legitimate investment as I began to take note of team dynamics and look forward to specific combinations - Tressa's sincerity contrasted with Therion's jaded attitude is a particular favorite of mine. The focus is fully on the relationship between the two characters and the topic at hand. At this point, I began to realize that there was an explanation for why the characters were interacting within the story. It was simple: they helped because they wanted to despite their individual goals.

This concept is also incorporated into how some of the game's side quests have characters that appear in different locations on the map as you help them, giving an idea that they are on their own journeys as well. A weave of interconnected journeys in which people who lead them lend a helping hand is made clear to the player as they find new towns and revisit old ones.

While this isn't a revolutionary concept, it was very refreshing to see it pan out. In real life, most people have very different goals in mind for their futures, even if they work together. The idealized bond between party members that Octopath Traveler fosters is a wonderful ideal that could be applied to many situations, but seeing this ideal applied to more everyday societal structures have shown me that helping someone else doesn't need to be extraordinary.

 

Eleanor Mather is a 17-year-old rising senior currently attending Horace Mann High School in the Bronx. She has enjoyed playing games since playing Pokémon Platinum with her brother and friends and has grown to love discussing and developing them in the past years. She is very excited to contribute her thoughts to the conversation on games as a medium and hopes to encourage others to join in.  

 

Designing with Teens, For Teens

By iThrive Games

On a cool fall morning, iThrive's Boston-based team walked into the Design and Visual Arts classroom at Madison Park Technical Vocational High School in Roxbury, MA. After being stuck in traffic and frantically searching for parking, we carried crates of games and design supplies as we breathlessly climbed the long, spiral staircase to reach the third-floor studio space that housed the Design and Visual Arts Program. A few of the 18 juniors in the class looked up from the self-portraits they were drawing or charcoaling or painting to study us, while others did not acknowledge our arrival.

We were about to embark on two weeks of full-day sessions of Game Design Studio with these students.  Every other week, the junior class spends all day on their vocational training, with the off weeks spent in academic courses.  For two weeks of their vocational training, they would co-design games with iThrive. 

In Game Design Studio, we use games and game design to invite teens to give voice to their experiences and create games that reflect their point of view, ideas, feelings, and understandings of the world. The youth designers determine which games will be created. Their ideas form from many brainstorm and gameplay sessions while iThrive staff and Design and Visual Arts instructors roll up their sleeves to take on whatever work needs to be done to produce the games within a tight timeline. 

Creating Shared Space for Codesign

We spent our first day with the youth designers at Madison Park playing and modding games together and getting to know each other. At the end of the day they were tired and so were we. We didn't know exactly what we would make together but we knew through relationship building, play, game design activities, and exploration these teens would give voice to their experiences.

By the middle of our second day, we were composing and performing a song together. The lyrics came courtesy of the teens' brainstorm about the challenges they face in daily life. The melody was devised by iThrive's Tabia Batts, beats were made by a tag-team of two youth designers, and iThrive's Jamal Hamilton provided the rap. 

Through building this song together, we connected a creative process familiar to the teens with the unfamiliar process of creating a game. By using this natural entry point, we also laid the foundation for critical relationship building. Songwriting helped create a shared, trusting space where it was clear to the youth designers that we listened closely to their ideas and that their voices were valuable and critical to our game design process. And, singing together created shared vulnerability; each of us being vulnerable together reflected that we were present with them and that what they shared would be taken seriously and used to co-design games.

Tabia describes the moment she performed the song inspired by the teens' discussions on that first day: 

"I would have to say that it was a very vulnerable moment for me but also very relatable.  Every issue that was on the table was something that I had dealt with myself as a teen and an adult. Working with teens takes a level of authenticity and transparency. I wanted them to understand how they can take something so simple like a word and add meaning to tell their story."

Playing + Designing = Growth

Each morning when we arrived, the youth designers were engrossed in either playing games or working on their game prototypes. Throughout the day, students were deeply engaged with the iThrive team, and many worked and played through lunch, stayed after school to design game elements, and demonstrated leadership, creativity, and persistence throughout. Geo Ortega, one of the course's instructors, commented, "I can tell they really like this because they're here late to finish their projects [for playtesting]." 

One group of designers had an early inspiration to create a game where players would have to grapple with relevant social and personal decisions. If players successfully navigated the decisions they would win the game, staying in school and making it to high school graduation. If they didn't, graduation was off the table and other fates awaited. 

The team designed early prototypes using google slides and began to shift toward a board game structure as we played more and more board games together. Eventually, we suggested to the team that the digital platform Twine may be a great fit for their core game mechanics. Intrigued by the possibility of creating a digital game, they took on the challenge.  

Armed with a book on how to use the software, links to YouTube videos, and the iThrive team to jump in as needed, these designers took to Twine like experts and produced the game Decisions Decisions. At one point, they encountered a problem in the coding where their story was not linking up to another story element so the player could go to the next step of the game. The team became frustrated but they pushed their way through. They had to learn new coding techniques to allow that storyboard to work-and they did! They chose to stay late at school to work through this and other challenges, proudly showcasing their game to peers and teachers who enthusiastically played and debated which decisions to make and why. Tabia reflected, "I was able to see their struggle and frustration, as well as their pure excitement and joy when they solved their problems."

Producing Games from Personal Experience 

In just two weeks, the youth designers at Madison Park designed and built four games that touched on topics including lack of sleep, mental health, challenging decision making, and the difficulties of getting to school on time and safely. They ideated concepts; storyboarded; selected, devised, playtested, and revised core mechanics; and, with some help from their peers and teachers in fabrication, 3D printed, laser-cut, illustrated, and programmed all components of each game. Ortego shared with us, "This is a really strong group of students and they need projects like this that challenge them to create." And create they did!

A palpable enthusiastic energy filled the room each day as the youth designers built and playtested their games across the two weeks. There was a growing buzz around the school; each day more and more teachers, administrators, and other students stopped by to check out what the youth designers were making. And by the day of the showcase, word had spread so much that there was a constant flow of visitors and playtesters for the full three hours. 

Here's what they made:

Insomnia, a fast-paced card game inspired by teens' experiences of trying and often being unable to get enough sleep each night. Each card in the game represents hours of sleep gained or lost (e.g., +2 hours, -3 hours). Some cards help players earn additional sleep (i.e., a pillow card or blanket card). The dreaded insomnia card forces the player to lose 10 hours of sleep. The player with the most sleep hours at the end of the game wins.

In the board game School Trouble, players try to overcome obstacles in their path on the way to school-late buses, traffic jams, delayed trains, and missed connections. This fast-paced, fun game reflects the real-life challenges the youth designers encounter as they try to arrive at school for the opening bell at 7:30 am. 

Decisions Decisions is a Twine game where players try to make it to high school graduation by making good decisions in the face of challenging real-life scenarios, like whether to sneak out to a party or do homework, whether to skip school when you're sick or stick it out, whether to lie to protect a friend, and more. The youth designers of this game wanted to create a fun and relevant game that would help their peers make better decisions by seeing the connections between the daily decisions they make and real-life outcomes.

The board game Train of Thought addresses mental health issues teens face. The youth designers compiled issues raised in the brainstorming sessions and explored which strategies would work best for coping with the different issues. "Talking to a friend" is a good strategic match for "feeling sad about a broken heart," while "meeting with a counselor" is a strategy match for "feeling depressed." During playtesting, one of the counselors from Madison Park had a chance to play the game and she said that she would love to have a game like this in her office to help teens talk openly and constructively about their mental health.

Authentically Engaging is the Magic 

iThrive's Game Design Studio is designed to authentically engage teens in reflecting on their social and emotional challenges and opportunities while drawing on their lived experience to dream up and author their own games. Magic happens when adults and teens work together in this way to elevate and amplify what teens care about. In the process of co-designing games, we—teens and adults in partnership — build meaningful relationships with each other, lift each other up while sharing memorable experiences and encouraging personal growth, establish inside jokes, and sometimes, even, create an original song. 

This work was supported through generous funding from the William T. Grant Foundation and the D.N. Batten Foundation.

Tabletop RPGs and Learning to Live with Failure

By iThrive Games

If I can be completely honest, I used to be and I still am not the best at boss fights.  In platformers, I squirm at difficult timing or a misplaced jump that resets the entire fight, and in RPGs, I repeatedly forget to stock up on healing items before a difficult battle.  Fortunately for me, I can avoid these pitfalls and start again rather easily by resetting my game. I can tell when a jump will land me a game over and reset to avoid the depressing trumpet and sad animations, and thanks to multiple save files I can easily go back to a shop and return to the battle thoroughly prepared.  This was all through existing aspects of the game's console, so it never felt like cheating. When I was introduced to tabletop RPGs, I was looking forward to taking on an indestructible persona that I was used to in many games that I had played at the time. My first roll was a 1.

 

Flicker - D20, Anaglyph

The D20 has become a ubiquitous symbol of many tabletop games (namely D&D), deciding the fates of many players when making character checks to see if they can succeed to the extent that the player imagines.  Unlike in many video games that I have played, the dice role is irreversible under most circumstances. In hindsight, of course, it is. The GM's goal is to create a believable world for their players to interact with, and if one's character was able to avoid challenge or failure at every turn, then there would be little to no stakes.  In time, I found just how much more gratifying this format is compared to my old habits.

With the 'failure' of one plan comes the opportunity for another plan to flourish.  My character may have failed to talk up an opponent and convince them to drop their weapons, but the rest of the party can take advantage of the situation and make the opponent get one of them stuck in a wall and prepare a counterattack.  When you're in an environment where you can fail, you're given a chance to see that there are more solutions to be found. And in some cases, the recovery can lead to a more promising conclusion.

Practicing 'failure' through my tabletop RPG adventures has helped me in my real-life adventures as well.  Seeing a mishap as an opportunity to see a different path makes life events much less daunting; there is not necessarily a 'point of no return' to run from, and even a terrible situation can be turned into something neutral, or maybe even positive.  

I used to recoil more often at the thought of rainy days in the summer; much of the joy I get from the season is from being outdoors, and a few droplets felt like time wasted.  Strangely enough, the pitter-patter of the droplets is not only perfect for reading, but for setting the tone during a tabletop RPG as well. What a perfect unexpected mishap, a catalyst to learn more through the fictional dungeons, villains, and perhaps even airship crashes created by a GM's hand.

 

Eleanor Mather is a 17-year-old rising senior currently attending Horace Mann High School in the Bronx. She has enjoyed playing games since playing Pokémon Platinum with her brother and friends and has grown to love discussing and developing them in the past years. She is very excited to contribute her thoughts to the conversation on games as a medium and hopes to encourage others to join in.  

 

Meet Our New Teen Blogger!

By iThrive Games

The iThrive Games Foundation prepares teens to thrive by meeting them where they are and working in partnership towards a world where all have the voice, choice, and agency to reach their full potential. 

We are thrilled to introduce you to our latest teen blogger, Eleanor Mather, a senior from New York. She has enjoyed playing games since playing Pokémon Platinum with her brother and friends and has grown to love discussing and developing them in the past years. She is very excited to contribute her thoughts to the conversation on games as a medium and hopes to encourage others to join in. Before we share her first blog about tabletop role-playing games and learning to live with failure, we asked her to answer a few questions.

 

What is the first game you played? 

It's hard to remember the exact game I played for the first time, but if those old Leapster games for learning count those would technically be the first.  However, the first game I played for purely recreational purposes on my own would probably be Nintendogs which came with my DS when I was around 5 or 6.

Why do you enjoy playing games?

Games are a wonderful way to immerse yourself into a context separate from your own, and I tend to find myself learning much about both myself and gain new perspectives on how other people live through playing them.  The fact that the structure of many game genres lends to more personalized experiences means that discussions on them can go into many places depending on who is part of the conversation, so there is always something new to discover.  It doesn't hurt that they are almost always fun as well.

How do games fit into your everyday life? 

Despite the fact that I've lost some free time as I have become older, I try to find time to play games for brief periods at home to relax and enjoy some time to myself before returning to the chaos of daily life. 

Do any teachers at your school (past or present) use games in the classroom?  If so, what did you enjoy about that class? If not, why do you think classrooms can benefit from curricular units that surround gameplay?

While none of my teachers have implemented games into the classroom, I think many classes-particularly those involving analysis-would benefit.  Since how someone plays a game is dependent on how they approach things as an individual, students could more easily incorporate self-reflection into the curriculum when they describe the message the game was trying to portray.

What are some of your favorite games to play right now?

Animal Crossing New Leaf has become a staple of my daily routine, and Splatoon 2 is a great team-based game.  I'm steadily trying my best to catch up on Octopath Traveler and Persona 5 as well.

How do games help you?

A lot of the ways games help me are tied to why I enjoy them.  Not only have games let me explore various personas and think about new perspectives, but they've also let me find friends who are interested in sharing what they've found through the same or other games.  Games are also often an environment in which I can work on something for myself without being influenced by the expectations of others.

If you know a teen who would be interested in writing about how games are a part of their life, have them email sierra.martinez@ithrivegames.org.

Journal of Games, Self, & Society: Issue 1

By iThrive Games

Research, Conversation, and Community 

Kelli N. Dunlap & Susan E. Rivers, Editors-in-Chief 

This blog is an adaptation of the Introduction to Issue 1 of the Journal of Games, Self, & Society.

Our peer-reviewed journal, the Journal of Games, Self, & Society, is officially available! This journal highlights work that is focused on the way games, game design, and gameplay contribute to a deeper understanding of personal growth, learning, relationships, health, and humanity. Each piece was reviewed by two or experts from the fields of game design, game studies, education, or psychology. With the Journal of Games, Self, & Society, we intend to encourage multidisciplinary research, conversation, and community that centers around games-related scholarship.

The first issue is a wonderful collection of papers that span fields of study from political science to health and safety to STEM. Each piece shares learning and insights in the realms of education, game development, physical health, relationship safety, and mental well-being. And you can download your copy at no cost here

Here's an overview of what you'll find in Issue 1.

Edward Castranova, Ph.D., a professor of media at Indiana University, is the author of the first paper, American Abyss: Simulating a Modern American Civil War. This deep-dive into the design and dynamics of the game American Abyss provides details of the process of creating this game and insights for deploying it in educational settings. Castranova discusses the game as a tool in the classroom and beyond to help make accessible some of the complex systems and forces underpinning modern geopolitical conflict in the United States. In his article, Castranova writes,

"The goal of the simulation, and the paper, is to allow players to experience what such a war would be like and provide enough insight, one might hope, that players and readers alike might dedicate themselves to preventing this unhappy thing altogether." (p. 3)

Next up is When the Mind Moves Freely, the Body Follows - Exergame Design, Evaluation, and the Curious Case of Pokémon GO co-authored by Matthew Lee, R.N., M.S., co-founder, and creative director at AFK studios as well as a Hillman Scholar for Nursing Innovation, and Kathleen Yin, BPharm, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Australian Institute of Health Innovation at Macquarie University, Australia. This article is an overview of the health benefits of exergames as well as design principles for maximizing self-motivation. In it, they analyze Pokémon GO as a case study and examine the potential health impact of games that get us moving.

When asked what her hope and vision are for the future of the gaming industry, Yin said,

"Games [are] very unique as a medium that allows direct participant involvement, provides feedback, and allows for the player to reflect upon their actions as well as the game itself. It is an ideal tool for learning and I hope games can be increasingly seen as a valid method to further personal growth and scientific development, other than simple entertainment."

In JGSS' third article, Using Games to Support STEM Curiosity, Identity, and Self-Efficacy, Lindsay Portnoy, Ph.D., and Karen Schrier, Ph.D., analyze game design practices for creating games that encourage and support students' STEM learning. Portnoy and Schrier explore how supporting and developing social and emotional skills is critical to future performance in STEM fields. They write, "The game's design should help the player feel a sense of purpose—such that they need to solve a STEM-related problem, but also that their actions and contributions personally matter" (p. 85). Portnoy is co-founder of the games studio Killer Snails, an author, and a lecturer at Northeastern University; Schrier is an associate professor of games and interactive media, director of the Play Innovation Lab and the Games and Emerging Media program at Marist College, and a Belfer Fellow with the Anti- Defamation League's Center for Technology and Society. 

Finally, you will find an article by Ruud Jacobs, Ph.D., assistant professor in communication and technology at the Department of Communication Science at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, and Jeroen Jansz, Ph.D., and Julia Kneer, Ph.D., both faculty members in the Department of Media and Communication at Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands. In Playing Against Abuse: Effects of Procedural and Narrative Persuasive Games, Jacobs, Jansz, and Kneer compare the effectiveness of narrative versus procedural mechanics at shaping player attitudes toward teen domestic violence and suggest methods of examining similar effects in other games and contexts.

After the publication of JGSS, Jacobs reflected on his vision for the field, 

"Primarily, we would like to see the field mature to the point of mass acceptance. A day will come where pointing out that someone who did a horrible thing was playing video games will be equally abnormal as it would be to blame spicy foods for their behaviors. Only from that time on can we truly study the interplay of games with people (mostly) free from effects of novelty, resistance, and tribalism. JGSS can be a great factor in normalizing that games are just a medium, albeit with certain unique properties that warrant revisiting media psychological theories of their uses and influences."

The Journal of Games, Self, & Society is intended to be an outlet for the exploration of how games and gameplay reflect and foster the intersection of self and society. We do not know where this road will take us, but we know that our companions on this journey necessarily include scholars, designers, educators, scientists, and players learning, playing, thinking, and innovating together, across disciplines and spaces. This work requires that we engage in the very concepts we hope to explore in this space, concepts like collaboration, empathy, civil discourse, compassion, forgiveness, courage, and creativity. We brought this journal into being to encourage and inspire multidisciplinary research, conversation, and community, and to foster greater connection amongst us in the development and use of compelling games that put humanity at their core. 

The scope of the journal is still evolving. We invite people in a wide range of disciplines and research areas to submit for future issues and to suggest topics for special issues where the general scope of the journal may be focused on specific, or timely, concerns in the various communities we commit to support. If you would like to submit an abstract for our second issue, you can find all the information you need to do so here.  

We look forward to the journey ahead as we continue along the quest of advancing the way games advance us. 

 

Mental Health Awareness Month

By iThrive Games

Mental Health Awareness Month takes place each year during the month of May. Established in 1949, Mental Health Awareness Month was created to increase awareness around mental health and mental wellness. The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) reports that 60 million Americans - approximately one in five - experience mental illness in a given year and 50% of all mental illness starts by age 14.  

The rate of teens who are experiencing mental health difficulties is rising. We at iThrive Games take these rising numbers very seriously and that is why iThrive offers mental health initiatives that are designed to build social and emotional skills, as well as reduce the barriers to treatment for teens.

Throughout the month of May, we have been highlighting our resources that support strengths-based mental health outcomes through gameplay and more.

Photo from the National Alliance on Mental Illness

What We Do

iThrive's mental health initiatives reveal the power of games for use in therapeutic settings and create supportive experiences for teens to explore identity, wellness, and meaning. 

We offer Clinician Guides which are resources for mental health providers who use or want to use games therapeutically. iThrive understands that it is impossible to be knowledgeable about every game a teen client is playing but we also believe that savvy clinicians understand the importance of using clients' passion to pursue treatment goals.

That is why we created these one-page information sheets about popular commercial games that can inform therapeutic discussion and, more importantly, demonstrate genuine interest and support for teen clients.

Our Clinician Guides were created by Kelli Dunlap, PsyD, in partnership with mental health professionals who are familiar with the games and have used them in therapeutic settings. Each guide is reviewed by a licensed mental health professional.

iThrive's resources for educators and parents alike showcase how to use games to engage the whole teen. From curricular resources to an article series and our curated games catalog, our website houses a wealth of information that highlights compelling games that feature mechanics, narratives, and other elements identified by players, professional game developers, game scholars, educators, and scientists that are supportive of habits for thriving such as empathy, curiosity, growth mindset, and kindness. We also offer a Mental Health Design Kit which serves as an informational resource to thoughtful design around mental illness.

The goal of iThrive is to be an ally to teens, including those who are struggling with mental health conditions. We work to create a space and support system to prepare them with the social and emotional skills they need in order to cope with challenging and unfair environments.

Why This is Important 

Everyone should have the opportunity to thrive and live their best life. Stigmas surrounding mental health conditions have no room for existence because help is available and there is nothing wrong with seeking it.

HealthyChildren.org says that "9 in 10 teens who take their own lives met criteria for a diagnosis of psychiatric or mental health condition or disorder—more than half of them with a mood disorder such as depression or anxiety." You can find additional information on the prevalence and impact of mental health conditions here.

Change is Needed

Communication is key to making any real change. All people need to feel safe and accepted so that they can open up and let their voice be heard. We want to create space for teens to have the voice, choice, and agency they need for mental wellness. By doing so, not only will they be better able to cope with the many stresses life can bring, but they will also be able to create positive impacts on their communities.

If you'd like to stay up to date with the ways iThrive is working in your community, signup for our newsletter here.

You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter as we continue to strive to bring awareness to the importance of mental health.

Introduction to iThrive’s Clinicians Guides

By iThrive Games

Games are a 21st-century cultural competency. Over half the U.S. population and up to 97% of U.S. teens play video games on a regular basis. Games play an important role in how teens socialize. Games foster connections between friends, offering a space for hanging out together, having fun, devising a strategy, and bonding over shared interests.  

For professionals who provide mental health services, the likelihood of seeing clients for whom games matter is substantial. Because of the volume of games released each year and the speed at which players move from one game to another, awareness and understanding of contemporary and relevant games is challenging in general. This is especially true for professionals who provide therapeutic services to teens.

The iThrive Games Clinicians Guides are an educational resource for mental health professionals who understand that embracing a teen's passion for games is an opportunity to enhance the therapeutic process.

"I have found iThrive's Clinicians Guides to be useful in therapeutic practice for helping clinicians understand more about virtual worlds, the powerful and positive impact they have on us, and how to provide appropriate and culturally advantageous endeavors with their clients." - Anthony Bean, Ph.D., psychologist and author of Working with Games and Gamers in Therapy: A Clinician's Guide

Created by mental health professionals for mental health professionals, these one-page "cheat sheets" identify key components of specific video games including their themes, characters, and play styles that can be integrated into therapeutic settings. The goal of the guides is to give mental health providers basic information about a specific, popular video game and different ways to leverage a client's passion for the game in the interest of therapeutic or treatment goals.

We worked with mental health professionals to create and review each of the Clinicians Guides. They have all been field tested and refined to be helpful and practical even for those unfamiliar with the games. The games selected represent some of the most popular games available today.

"Not all games are created equal! Understanding the distinguishing features of different video games is key to understanding what role it might be playing in someone's life. iThrive's Clinicians Guides provide the keys to unlock those answers." - Rachel Kowert, Ph.D., psychologist and author of A Parent's Guide to Video Games

The guides are fundamentally grounded in Human-Centered ideology, the belief that a person grows and thrives when they feel valued, validated, connected to others, and understood. In today's media landscape, competency around games is key to providing this experience.

Each guide was designed to provide a foundation for therapeutically-minded conversations with teens about games. All guides contain a brief summary of the game, highlight events or themes in the game that align with therapeutic framing, a list of questions to spark discussion and reflect genuine interest in the person and their game of choice, and a case example of how the game or game content was used in an actual therapeutic setting. Although not every provider has the resources — time, financial, tech-savviness — to have games and game consoles in their office, there is immense clinical and therapeutic value in being able to just talk with someone about the games that are meaningful to them.

"While video games are ubiquitous, not everyone is a gamer. These guides provide succinct, useful summaries for teachers, clinicians, and caregivers to better understand the completeness of what goes on in various games. And, of course, better understanding helps with better communication with those we care about!" - Raffael Boccamazzo, PsyD, psychologist and Clinical Director of Take This

What do you think? We invite you to:

  1. Use our Clinicians Guides.
  2. Let us how they worked for you and/or if they can be improved.
  3. Share with us your game recommendations for our next set of guides.

Collaborate with us! Email us to find out how.

Extra Credits and Mental Health Month

By iThrive Games

Video games frequently portray characters as having a mental illness but there's little research around those portrayals. This month, we are honored to report that Kelli Dunlap, PsyD, our director of mental health research and design, partnered with Extra Credits to deliver a quick and succinct summary of some of the problems with mental illness depictions in games. Much like Kelli's formal analysis of this topic, Representation of Mental Illness in Video Games, this episode of Extra Credits hopes to offer guidance for future game researchers and developers on how to think critically about the representation of mental illness in games.

Extra Credits is an informative, educational video series about various topics within the intersection of gaming, history, and education. According to Time Magazine,

"Over the course of ten years and hundreds of episodes, Extra Credits has explored a dizzying array of topics, from unraveling gaming's technical mysteries and exploring cultural flashpoints to making history and mythology as much fun to watch as fiction." 

While Extra Credits generally covers game-centric topics, they also delve into history, education, and other subject matter. Some of the topics covered by Extra Credits in the past are:

Making Your First Game: Basics - How To Start Your Game Development

The Three Pillars of Game Writing - Plot, Character, Lore

Technical Debt - Improving the Production Pipeline

Extra Credits has turned into a viral YouTube presence with over 2 million subscribers and offering many different channels, including Extra Sci Fi, Extra History, Extra Mythology, Extra Politics, and more. Because of the great wealth of insight Extra Credits has provided to the game development community, we thought a partnership around mental health makes sense.

The episode Kelli co-authored for Extra Credits speaks specifically to the way in which mental illness is portrayed in games. Often times villains or negatively-identified characters are explicitly said to be "insane," "psycho," or "crazy." Using words like this in regards to persons with mental illness, real or fictional, perpetuates and normalizes harmful stereotypes and this kind of irresponsible representation should be addressed by more game developers. The episode lays out a summary of why this topic is important, what can be done about it, and how game developers can move forward to create more responsible depictions of mental illness in their work.

This episode was written as a part of iThrive's initiative to promote Mental Health Month. Some more projects we're highlighting this month are:

Beyond Gameplay

Beyond Gameplay is a podcast where humanity as the core mechanic is the centerpiece. Each episode is a quest to answer a core curiosity — what lives on when the game is turned off? The podcast features Kelli Dunlap, PsyD, interviewing game developers, mental health professionals, educators, and scientists about a wide array of topics. The first episode of Beyond Gameplay, Empathy in Games, will be launching later this month.

Mental Health Design Kit

Twenty-five percent of video games display mentally ill characters. However, there are no guidelines or best practices around portraying mental illness in games. iThrive's Mental Health Design Kit serves as an informational resource to thoughtful design around mental illness. Later this month we release this guide to help game developers take stronger considerations into their depictions of mental health.

Clinician Guides

Another part of our Mental Health Month initiative is our clinician guides. These serve as an educational resource for mental health professionals who use or want to use games as a vehicle for engaging teens therapeutically and on their terms.

Video Games and Suicide Prevention Blog

In this blog, Michelle Colder Carras, Ph.D., discusses how gameplay provides many ways to foster mental health and what role the gaming community can play in suicide prevention. It provides an important and necessary point of view for a growing public health problem.

Sign up for our newsletter to receive early access to these resources and more!  

 

Video Games and Suicide Prevention

By iThrive Games

If you are experiencing a crisis or having thoughts of suicide, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, or visit the nearest emergency room.

Suicide is a growing public health problem and the second leading cause of death among young people in the US and worldwide (Hedegaard & Curtin, 2018; World Health Organization, 2018). People may attempt suicide when they feel overwhelmed by problems, pain, and hopelessness but feel they lack the resources or support to cope (Verrocchio et al., 2016). Connecting people to others who can provide mental health support and assistance with coping skills helps prevent suicide (Stone et al., 2017), and video games can play an important role by fostering connections and support. Whether through in-game interactions, membership on teams or guilds of players, or interactions on communication/media platforms such as Discord and Twitch, games offer many opportunities for players to communicate and connect (Colder Carras, Rooij, et al., 2018; Kowert & Quandt, 2016). Recently, video game communities have been tackling the need for mental health support and suicide prevention for their members through a variety of innovative programs. iThrive Games is happy to be talking about our efforts in an upcoming panel called Suicide Prevention in Video Game Communities to be held April 27 at the American Association of Suicidology annual conference in Denver, Colorado.

 

Famous screenshot from Legend of Zelda (Nintendo, 1986), often used as a meme to encourage others to seek and utilize help.

Many different factors have been linked to suicide. According to one theory, individuals who die by suicide are driven by three factors: feeling that they are a burden to others, feeling frustrated in their efforts to make meaningful connections, and becoming numb to the pain and fear associated with the idea of dying (T. Joiner, 2005; T. E. Joiner et al., 2009). These, along with hopelessness and difficulty with solving problems, making decisions, or seeking help can drive suicide ideation and attempts (Gvion & Levi-Belz, 2018; Joiner et al., 2009). Addressing social isolation/loneliness and problems coping with life stresses can be important targets for suicide prevention programs (Stone et al., 2017). Although about half who die by suicide do not have a mental health diagnosis ("More than a mental health problem," 2018), those who have a diagnosis are more likely to feel like they don't belong (Ma, Batterham, Calear, & Han, 2019). Suicide is a particular risk for some groups such as adolescents, older adults, military veterans, the unemployed, or those with low socioeconomic status (Bryan, Jennings, Jobes, & Bradley, 2012; Nock et al., 2008; World Health Organization, 2018). Members of marginalized groups such as LGBTQI individuals, refugees and immigrants, and indigenous peoples also have higher suicide rates (Forte et al., 2018; Harlow, Bohanna, & Clough, 2014; Hottes, Bogaert, Rhodes, Brennan, & Gesink, 2016).

Preventing suicide is a challenge. Even though we know factors that are associated with more or fewer suicidal thoughts and behaviors, existing prevention programs have yet to make reduced rates of suicide worldwide. One of the most common measures in prevention is gatekeeper training-teaching individuals who are not mental health specialists how to recognize the signs of suicide risk, ask questions about suicidal thoughts and plans and manage suicidal behavior (Stone et al., 2017). Crisis intervention services such as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and local call or text centers provide anonymous assessment and counseling by trained individuals who often volunteer from the local community.

Twitter response to the prompt "Tell me about the happiest experience you've had either in a game or because of games? What do they add to your life?"

New approaches to suicide prevention are needed, and recent research has focused on the potential role of video games in suicide prevention. We know that video games help people connect and feel that they belong to a community (Kowert, 2016). Joining teams or guilds, or even just hanging out with people in-game helps players bond through shared activities (Steinkuehler & Williams, 2006; Williams et al., 2006). In a recent study of veterans in treatment for mental health conditions, playing games with others was found to be an important source of social interaction that helped some veterans overcome isolation or assume leadership roles (Colder Carras, Kalbarczyk, et al., 2018). Although taking a break from daily life through games or other entertainment media is a common method of recreation that can help people recharge (Oliver et al., 2015), this study found that some veterans used games to help ward off suicidal thoughts or substance cravings when other coping strategies didn't work (Colder Carras, Kalbarczyk, et al., 2018). Of course, excessive use of games can lead to other problems, so therapists should work with clients to understand the role and uses of gameplay in dealing with life challenges.

Video game groups, researchers, clinicians, and nonprofits are now seeking ways to leverage these potential benefits of video games. iThrive and academic groups such as the Games for Emotional and Mental Health Lab at Radboud University work to develop and promote games that enhance social and emotional learning, reduce anxiety, and teach problem-solving through gameplay experiences. The organization Stack Up provides a host of grassroots, game-related programs that support positive well-being through games, but is best known for its unique online suicide prevention program. STOP (the Stack Up Overwatch Program), which provides anonymous online crisis intervention services and referrals 24/7 for adult members of its Discord server.

Twitter response to the prompt "Tell me about the happiest experience you've had either in a game or because of games? What do they add to your life?"

Other organizations focus on education and messaging to reduce stigma—getting the word out about mental health problems and fostering healthy discussions about coping. The weekly Twitch broadcast PsiStream, led by a licensed mental health counselor, educates viewers about mental health problems and encourages them to ask questions about uncomfortable or challenging topics. The nonprofit organization Take This supports mental health in the game industry through initiatives such as the Ambassador program, which recognizes Twitch streamers who promote positive mental health through their streams. These emerging efforts provide exciting new opportunities to make a difference in suicide prevention and mental health support in the games industry.

Gameplay provides many ways to foster mental health, and the game community is leading the way with innovative programs. Join iThrive on April 27 as we discuss our efforts along with Stack Up and Take This at the American Association of Suicidology meeting. Stay tuned for a link to our live stream on Twitch. And remember that help is available-if you or anyone you know is affected by suicidal thoughts or behavior, contact the National Suicide Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741.

References

Bryan, C. J., Jennings, K. W., Jobes, D. A., & Bradley, J. C. (2012). Understanding and preventing military suicide. Archives of Suicide Research, 16(2), 95-110.

Colder Carras, M., Kalbarczyk, A., Wells, K., Banks, J., Kowert, R., Gillespie, C., & Latkin, C. (2018). Connection, meaning, and distraction: A qualitative study of video game play and mental health recovery in veterans treated for mental and/or behavioral health problems. Social Science & Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2018.08.044

Forte, A., Trobia, F., Gualtieri, F., Lamis, D. A., Cardamone, G., Giallonardo, V., ... Pompili, M. (2018). Suicide Risk among Immigrants and Ethnic Minorities: A Literature Overview. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 15(7). https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15071438

Gvion, Y., & Levi-Belz, Y. (2018). Serious Suicide Attempts: Systematic Review of Psychological Risk Factors. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 9. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2018.00056

Harlow, A. F., Bohanna, I., & Clough, A. (2014). A systematic review of evaluated suicide prevention programs targeting indigenous youth. Crisis, 35(5), 310-321. https://doi.org/10.1027/0227-5910/a000265

Hottes, T. S., Bogaert, L., Rhodes, A. E., Brennan, D. J., & Gesink, D. (2016). Lifetime Prevalence of Suicide Attempts Among Sexual Minority Adults by Study Sampling Strategies: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. American Journal of Public Health, 106(5), e1-12. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2016.303088

Joiner, T. E., Van Orden, K. A., Witte, T. K., Selby, E. A., Ribeiro, J. D., Lewis, R., & Rudd, M. D. (2009). Main Predictions of the Interpersonal-Psychological Theory of Suicidal Behavior: Empirical Tests in Two Samples of Young Adults. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 118(3), 634-646. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0016500

Kowert, R. (2016). Social outcomes: Online game play, social currency, and social ability. In R. (Ed) Kowert & T. (Ed) Quandt (Eds.), The video game debate: Unravelling the physical, social, and psychological effects of digital games. (pp. 94-115). New York, NY, US: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group. (2015-20483-006).

Ma, J. S., Batterham, P. J., Calear, A. L., & Han, J. (2019). Suicide Risk across Latent Class Subgroups: A Test of the Generalizability of the Interpersonal Psychological Theory of Suicide. Suicide & Life-Threatening Behavior, 49(1), 137-154. https://doi.org/10.1111/sltb.12426

More than a mental health problem. (2018, November 27). Retrieved April 15, 2019, from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website: https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/suicide/index.html

Niederkrotenthaler, T., Voracek, M., Herberth, A., Till, B., Strauss, M., Etzersdorfer, E., ... Sonneck, G. (2010). Role of media reports in completed and prevented suicide: Werther v. Papageno effects. The British Journal of Psychiatry: The Journal of Mental Science, 197(3), 234-243. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.bp.109.074633

Nock, M. K., Borges, G., Bromet, E. J., Alonso, J., Angermeyer, M., Beautrais, A., ... Williams, D. (2008). Cross-national prevalence and risk factors for suicidal ideation, plans and attempts. The British Journal of Psychiatry: The Journal of Mental Science, 192(2), 98-105. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.bp.107.040113

Oliver, M. B., Bowman, N. D., Woolley, J. K., Rogers, R., Sherrick, B. I., & Chung, M.-Y. (2015). Video Games as Meaningful Entertainment Experiences. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 5(4), 390-405. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000066

Steinkuehler, C. A., & Williams, D. (2006). Where Everybody Knows Your (Screen) Name: Online Games as "Third Places." Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11(4), 885-909. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2006.00300.x

Stone, D., Holland, K., Bartholow, B., Crosby, A., Davis, S., & Wilkins, N. (2017). Preventing Suicide: A Technical Package of Policies, Programs, and Practices. Atlanta, GA: National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Williams, D., Ducheneaut, N., Xiong, L., Zhang, Y., Yee, N., & Nickell, E. (2006). From Tree House to Barracks: The Social Life of Guilds in World of Warcraft. Games and Culture: A Journal of Interactive Media, 1(4), 338-361. https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412006292616

World Health Organization. (2014). Preventing suicide: a global imperative. Retrieved from https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/131056/9789241564878_eng.pdf?sequence=8

World Health Organization. (2018). National suicide prevention strategies: progress, examples and indicators. Retrieved from https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/279765/9789241515016-eng.pdf?ua=1

 

Game-Based Social and Emotional Learning for High School English Class – Part Two

By iThrive Games

A couple of weeks ago I introduced in an article, Museum of Me, our game-based social and emotional learning curricular unit for English language arts using What Remains of Edith Finch. In case you missed it, you can read all about the details of how we used this game for identity exploration here.

Paul Darvasi, lead creator of Museum of Me, and his high school English class at Royal St. George's College in Toronto were the first ones to complete this unit. The students, all in their final year at the all-boys high school, graciously shared with us their thoughts on the unit as a whole, the game, and their identity explorations. Here are some of their overall impressions of the unit and the activities they completed both in- and out-of-class:

  • "This unit was a new and interesting experience I had never done in any classes. I was always very excited for this class due to its nature of new topics and activities."
  • "I would describe my experience with this unit as overwhelmingly positive. It allowed for more creative work both in and out of class than almost any other unit I had ever been in. It had strong academic value while also being fun and interesting."
  • "It was cool to think about my own identity formation and what objects/moments have attributed to who I am.
GAME-BASED LEARNING: WORTHWHILE TO TEEN LEARNERS?

Gameplay offers an innovative and currently underutilized way to deeply engage students and support them in learning and practicing fundamental social and emotional skills. By using a medium that teens are already excited about, we are able to drive innovative thinking by allowing teens to explore themselves and the world around them in a safe, thought-provoking environment.

Since games are a medium seldom used in the classroom, we wondered if students found the game-based unit relevant and meaningful to their learning. Many of the students felt excited to be able to use a medium that they are interested in already and they also enjoyed the attention-grabbing plot and quality of What Remains of Edith Finch. They told us how games enable them to engage and encounter new experiences that they wouldn't otherwise be exposed to.

  • "I think that using games in learning is pretty cool because it is something that everyone our age is familiar with and can use pretty well. It also allows for each person to have their own experience and can learn the way that they feel is best for them."
  • "I think most teenagers enjoy playing video games, so when implementing it into school they actually become eager to do their work and will perhaps learn more."
  • "They [games] promote a stronger feeling of connection to the educational content that is being shared. Personally, I felt more engaged during class as I was constantly interested in the game material."
  • "I think that games are important in learning as they allow someone to explore knowledge in a way that isn't just reading from a textbook or watching a video. I find it very interesting to be able to learn interactively, in-fact I find that I absorb more knowledge in a game than in a textbook."
INDIVIDUAL VERSUS GROUP GAMEPLAY

Throughout the unit, students played What Remains of Edith Finch as a group, which in this case meant one student had the controller while the others watched the gameplay unfold. Students alternated who had the controller during and across each class period, and observing students made requests of the student in control throughout gameplay.

We weren't sure how the students would feel about this experience, as we know that impressions can be very different when watching someone play a game versus actually playing it yourself. We were curious about how students responded to the group play structure, and whether this hindered their learning or expanded it. Overall, students were supportive of the group gameplay, for a variety of reasons, although some definitely wanted to be in control.

  • "I think that it doesn't make much of a difference for a game like Edith Finch because it is more like watching a movie, unlike something like Call of Duty where it's more skill-based and is boring to watch if you're not playing. It is sometimes nice because you can just sit back and enjoy the game."
  • "It was like watching a movie when others were playing, but more engaging because you could tell the player what to do. I think that it is enjoyable watching, but obviously more enjoyable playing, but also shouldn't really be changed because we were still engaged."
  • "It is interesting to see where other people chose to search as well as how others who are not playing interact with the person using the controller."
  • "For me it was fine. Obviously I would like to have full control (I actually didn't even play once!) over the game but watching worked as well. It was interesting to see what decisions my classmates made and compare that to the ones that I would have made."
  • "It was slightly irritating, as it is not as an enjoyable experience watching someone else set the pace for exploring the game."
  • "Edith Finch is a very visually appealing game so there was no problem with me stepping back and observing due to the beautiful graphics. This, in turn, engaged me more as a backseat observer."
OPENING UP ABOUT ONESELF IN CLASS

Students shared with us what was most compelling to them about the thinking, learning, and creating they did during the Museum of Me unit. They really appreciated the class discussions and having the chance to share personal stories with their peers. Some admitted to taking a little more time to warm up to the idea of being personal, but once they did, they expressed how much they learned not only about themselves but about their classmates as well.

  • "I really liked the final Museum of Me project at the end of the unit. It took me a while to be comfortable, but in the end I enjoyed working on it."
  • "Okay, it was a little uncomfortable being that personal, but by the end of the unit it was fine."
  • "I think I did learn a lot from the meme one not only about myself but about other people based on how they view themselves and how they think others view them."
  • "I found it allowed us to express ourselves in ways we usually can't."
  • "I think this unit builds over time in a very unique way. It starts slowly with a series of simple worksheets and whatnot and it slowly evolves until you reach the Museum of Me assignment. In this latter half is where I think the majority of the learning occurs and is also where 100% of the creativity comes into play. So overall it was very strong on both counts."
  • "The promotion of a more personal connection to the unit. No teacher has ever attempted to combine personal with curriculum and it was a pleasant surprise. It allowed me to develop a more emotional connection to the course material."
UNDERSTANDING IDENTITY

One of the key areas of focus in our Museum of Me unit is exploring identity and how our identities are shaped by those around us. We wanted students to think about the roles that they play in school and at home, and the ways that the labels and masks they put on (so to speak) reflect those identities differently. We asked the students, "How did your understanding of identity — both your own and others' — change over the course of the unit?" And here is what they had to say,"I think my understanding of myself definitely changed a great deal, through the Museum of Me project I was able to deal with some aspects of myself that I never really had before. Also through talking about the projects I learned about my friends too."

  • "I really noticed how much other people have an effect on one's identity."
  • "In terms of understanding my own identity, it changed in the sense that I became more aware of what things have helped to form my identity. I was not aware of just how many items/people/moments have had an effect on my identity formation."
  • "This unit really pushed me outside of my comfort zone and took a look at myself. I normally don't talk about myself this much, and this gave me some new retrospect on how I view myself."
  • "During my identity of me assignment, I realized how much of my identity was created by my parents when I was young but as I began to grow up, more of my identity is shaped by my friends and my personal choices."
  • "I learned a great deal about myself in the construction of it and definitely felt that I knew myself better on the other side." 
THE FINAL PROJECT: DESIGN YOUR MUSEUM

The Museum of Me unit ends with a culminating project where students design an autobiographical exhibit to explore their own identity formation. Each student curates a collection of artifacts which may include pictures, letters, journal entries, quotes from role models, and more. Students create narrative labels for each artifact describing its relevance to their own identity journey and they are given free reign for the format of their museum. Some students with Darvasi's class created interactive narratives using Twine while others created journals or interactive, physical objects. Here's what they had to say afterward:

  • "The most compelling part of this unit for me was the Museum of Me project. I had to think about myself as a person and what things attributed to my identity formation."
  • "Museum of Me was particularly appealing, I found that I was willing to fully invest myself into the project and received greater satisfaction from the final product than I usually do with other projects."
  • "I liked Museum of Me because it allowed me to look back into my past and speak about how it formed my identity."
  • "Museum of Me project because it allowed us to take our own path and create a fun final product that was enjoyable to make."
  • "Museum of Me was absolutely the most enjoyable simply for the fact that it allowed for so much creativity and exploration which is both fun and very intellectually stimulating."
  • "I learned most from the Museum of Me project in terms of social/emotional intelligence and learning. I learned how games can be used to tell stories and used to connect with students as well as how they can be used to reflect upon your own life."
  • "The most recent assignment, Museum of Me, was the most enjoyable assignment because I got to use things that are part of my identity and showcase them in a portfolio type style of online pictures to show the class."
FINAL THOUGHTS

We designed the Museum of Me unit as a demonstration project to showcase how games can be integrated into meaningful classroom learning in a way that provides engaging and collaborative discussions with teens. The pilot run of the unit showed us that students found it to be both enjoyable and interesting. Even more important, they said it gave them the ability to learn not only a lot about themselves but their peers as well. And, they even said it was cool! (whew!)

  • "That it's creatively stimulating and promotes insight on personal identity; as well as, innovation within the classroom. It's important for boys, in particular, to reflect and understand their emotions and learn more about how identities don't reflect everything about you."
  • The majority rated it as the best unit they've ever had!  And with this sign of support from our most important audience, onward we go to create more game-based units for high school students!"
JOIN US!

If you would like to use the Museum of Me unit in your classroom, download and learn more about the unit here.

Sign up for our newsletter so you can stay up to date on the release of this unit and all the other incredible happenings here at iThrive Games! You can also check out our previous blog on all of the resources we have available for educators and using games to engage the whole teen.

Call for Abstracts: Issue 2 of the Journal of Games, Self, & Society

By iThrive Games

Journal of Games, Self, & Society (JGSS), a peer-reviewed journal created and edited by iThrive Games and published by ETC Press, publishes original research and scholarship examining the benefits to humans and to society when games include humanity as a core design element. JGSS encourages interdisciplinary research, conversation, and community focused on how games, game design, and gameplay contribute to a deeper understanding of learning, health, and humanity. We enthusiastically seek original works that push the boundaries of what we know - or what we think we know - about how games impact our lives emotionally and socially. The theme of our next issue is, humanity is the core mechanic.

We invite researchers, scholars, and developers from across academic disciplines and industries to submit extended abstracts for consideration in the second issue of JGSS. Abstracts are due by May 10, 2019, and authors will be notified of their status by late May. Abstracts will undergo anonymous peer review and authors whose abstracts are found to be of good fit, adequate rigor, and theoretical soundness will be invited to submit a full paper for consideration. Full papers are due by September 10, 2019, and will undergo blind peer review. Notifications of acceptance will follow in November. Accepted works will be published in Issue 2 of JGSS, in early 2020.

How to Submit:

Extended abstracts should be anonymized and follow APA formatting. The abstract should not exceed 1,000 words, excluding references. Please include in your abstract a brief introduction to your research topic, an overview of the theoretical or empirical underpinnings and relevant literature, methodology (if relevant), and findings of interest. Abstracts should also include a brief statement as to how this research advances the mission of the JGSS to a deeper understanding of learning, health, and humanity through games.

Abstracts should be sent to jgss@ithrivegames.org no later than 11:59 PM local time on May 10, 2019. More information about the journal can be found here.

 

 

Exploring the Intersection of Video Games and Mental Health

By iThrive Games

MAGFest 2019 - A Compilation of Panels, Playtesting, and so much more!

Kelli Dunlap, PsyD, director of Mental Health Research and Design at iThrive Games, playing our Critical Strengths Engine (CSE) as she helps a new playtester facilitate the game for the rest of the group.

With over 20,000 people in attendance, iThrive Games was beyond excited and thankful for the opportunity to be a part of MAGFest for the third year in a row. This annual event celebrates music and games while attracting attendees, speakers, musicians, and cosplayers from all over the world. MAGFest enables us to be surrounded by like-minded individuals who believe in promoting prosocial outcomes.   

Showcasing iThrive's Critical Strengths Engine

MAGFest Indie Tabletop Showcase featured iThrive's Critical Strengths Engine (CSE), a pen and paper role-playing game ruleset for exploring and supporting social and emotional skill development.

In 2017, Ian McDonald posed this question to us at one of our game jams,

"What if there were a system for tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) based around social and emotional attributes like emotional integrity, instead of strength and dexterity?"

To say this piqued our curiosity is an understatement. It launched the idea for the CSE and we've been working on it ever since!  

We designed the CSE to be accessible and enjoyable for all players, and were especially mindful in our development that it meet the needs of mental health professionals working with teens.

At the MAGFest panel, The Making of a Therapeutic RPG, iThrive's Kelli Dunlap, PsyD, director of mental health research and design, and Sean Weiland, producer, talked about the collaborative design process for the CSE and shared lessons learned in development and during playtesting. Also on the panel were our CSE collaborators, mental health provider and executive director of the Bodhana Group, Jack Berkenstock, and game designer, Max Raabe. We shared with the audience the unique rewards and challenges of designing with a truly interdisciplinary group, and how we strove to balance fun, a strengths-based focus, engaging stories, and therapeutic relevance.

Jack Berkenstock, mental health provider and executive director of the Bodhana Group, playtesting with a group of eager participants.

During development, our design team at iThrive went through 10 versions of the CSE character sheet. This game structurally lets players bring characters to life by engaging with their strengths and deficits via the "Whys" or circle of character motivation. Therapy often necessitates interacting with difficult issues. We consciously observed and allowed for the CSE to be an analogue where players can use characters to engage with issues that are difficult for them.

Following the panel discussion, 20 people joined us to playtest the CSE. Not only did this playtest extend past midnight, but it was also the largest concurrent playtest of the CSE to date! Playtesters thoroughly enjoyed taking part in the CSE playtest and it was delightful to watch both teams work together within the system of the CSE to solve problems and overcome obstacles that were thrown in their way. Some of the feedback we received from participants included the following,

"Positive! Refreshing! Great to think of solving solutions with emotional strengths rather than physical ones."

"I had a lot of fun! It was neat to focus on motivation."

"Very positive, lots of fun. Far more [than] we would have in another system with no combat. I liked how this focuses on other aspects of traveling/adventuring."

The CSE officially launches this Fall and includes four unique adventures: an official Pugmire story by Eddy Webb; Alteris, a contemporary science fantasy story by Toiya Finley; Dust, a post-apocalyptic survival game by James Portnow; and a fourth untitled story by Bodhanna Group founder, Jack Berkenstock.

Max Raabe, game designer, leading a playtest just after the panel on creating a therapeutic RPG.

Toward A New Vision of Mental Health Representation in Games

Kelli Dunlap spoke on a panel with Tanya DePass, and its organizer Meg Eden on the Mental Health Representation in Games. With standing room only attendance, this panel discussed important issues surrounding the representation, diversity, and accessibility of mental health in games. In addition to sharing their favorite examples of the representation of mental health in games, and tropes and ideas to be avoided, panelists expressed their hopes for what mental health representation could look like in future games.  

Tanya said,

"I'd like to see people and characters have mental health as just a matter of course for their character and not have it be the be-all end-all. If a character needs meds or something like that just like everyday life for those that take medication it's not big deal, it's not like 'oh woe is me I have to take meds everyday to regulate my brain, therefore, I'm a garbage human' that a lot of us fall into.... This is something that is part of me and move on with it."

Kelli responded with,

"I would love for there to never be another horror game that uses an asylum ever... We see asylums or mental health institutions or psychiatric hospitals as a shorthand we use in media for 'Be afraid. Be very afraid. Bad things are going to  happen.' Has anybody ever played a video game where you woke up in an insane asylum and something good happened to you immediately after? No. The trope is dead. Kill it."

The panelists also answered questions about respectful and ethical ways of dealing with difficult mental health topics within the game design process,

"Give players the chance to opt out of something. You don't know anyone's experience when you're programming a game or what's happening... Things like warnings or give me the chance to opt out or fade to black or something like that because I was not ready to deal with that scene at all." - Tanya DePass

"Games are such a creative medium that you can [do that] in creative ways that can actually benefit the design of the game. Allowing for those options can actually branch into a unique gameplay experience. It doesn't have to limit you." - Meg Eden

After the panel, one of the attendees shared his appreciation and excitement with Kelli saying, "I didn't think a game about ADHD is possible, but after your panel, I think it is and I'm excited to get started."

Keep The Conversation Flowing

At MAGFest, the fun never ceases and the conversations are always flowing. We are so grateful for the opportunity to meet with more people who aim to work to benefit teens at the intersection of game development, education, and mental health. We especially appreciated being part of the Music and Games Education Symposium (MAGES), of MAGFest, where we presented on topics related to the personal and social impact of mental health representation in games, strategies around self-care and confronting impostor syndrome, and designing for cooperation. If these topics interest you and you want to keep up-to-date with all of the happenings and projects here at iThrive, please sign up for our newsletter.

Game designer Max Raabe and Sean Weiland producer at iThrive Games (top left), the tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) panel (top center), Kelli Dunlap, PsyD, director of Mental Health Research and Design at iThrive (top right), Jack Berkenstock executive director of the Bodhana Group, Max Raabe game designer, Sean, and Kelli (Bottom)

Grief and Job Loss: Tips for Coping with the Social and Emotional Impact of Layoffs

By iThrive Games

Kelli Dunlap is the director of mental health research and design at iThrive Games. She holds a doctorate in clinical psychology and directs iThrive's mental health and game development initiatives.

On Tuesday, February 12, games publisher Activision stated it would be laying off 8% of its workforce - about 800 people - despite record profits in 2018. Mass layoffs in the games industry are not uncommon, nor are exploitative working conditions (i.e., crunch) and job insecurity. In response to recent events similar to the Activision layoffs, there's been a call to unionize the games industry and confront current common practices in the games industry such as crunch and "feeding game developers to the machine." Addressing the current work culture is critical to the future health of the industry and its workforce, but large systemic changes take time. So what's a person to do in the meantime?

After the layoffs were announced, there was ー and continues to be ー an outpouring of support over social media offering condolences, commiseration, and job openings. Some of those directly impacted by the layoff took to social media to share their grief:

Job Loss and Mental Health

Grief is the body's reaction to loss. Any loss that disrupts a person's sense of self-worth or the stability of their livelihood can be grieved. Job loss is no exception. Decades of research has shown that loss of employment, especially when it is unexpected, can have a psychological impact similar to when a loved one dies.

Losing a job can set off a cascade of additional losses, some obvious like loss of income, health insurance, and financial security, and some less obvious like loss of social status, role of provider for a family, daily contact with supportive co-workers, or sense of personal worth or value. Each of these losses can further disrupt a person's sense of security, sense of purpose, and sense of self-worth. Unsurprisingly, job loss can lead to significant decreases in several areas of psychological well-being.

For Those in Grief

For those grieving the loss of their jobs, their security, their livelihood, it's critical to remember that grief is not about passing through set stages from denial to acceptance - everyone's path through grief is unique and often complicated. It is absolutely okay to not feel okay, to feel your feelings, and to not instantly spring back as though nothing happened. Searching for a job can be just as distress-inducing as losing a job, so take the time to take care of yourself. Small things like listening to your favorite song, eating a comforting meal, connecting with friends, snuggling a pet, can buoy you while you're riding waves of emotions.

Grief extends beyond emotions and can impact physical, social, and cognitive abilities. People in grief may experience physical symptoms such as difficulty sleeping, fatigue, digestive problems, social symptoms like feeling isolated or withdrawing from others, and cognitive symptoms like difficulty concentrating and self-blame.

If you're feeling overwhelmed, reach out to someone you feel close to that will listen and not jump to "fixing" the situation. Setting up boundaries for the conversation can help you get your needs met and make the best use of your support. For example, "Hey, I'm having a tough time. Can we talk?" invites a back-and-forth conversation whereas "Hey, I'm having a tough time and need to vent. Not looking for answers, just a supportive ear" clearly conveys a desire to be heard and validated without judgment or troubleshooting.

If you feel you need more support than you currently have, please reach out to a mental health professional. Many providers offer sliding scale services, meaning they can adjust their rates to fit your budget, and most are willing to work out accommodations for those with financial constraints. Additional resources can be found via Take This' mental health resources page.

Do

  • Feel your feelings, even the unpleasant ones.
  • Seek support from those who will listen without judgment or trying to fix things.
  • Seek support and connection with others who have been laid off as they can most closely understand what you're going through and make you feel less alone.
  • Take care of your whole self, both mind, and body.
  • As best you can, ask for what you need as specifically as you can.

Don't

  • Let anyone tell you how to feel.
  • Listen to anyone who tells you-you shouldn't be grieving or how to feel.
  • Bottle up or suppress your emotions.
  • Expect the grief to go away overnight or follow an orderly or linear pattern toward recovery.

For Friends of Those in Grief

Feeling

Like experiencing the death of a loved one, job loss often evokes a variety of unpleasant thoughts and intense emotions such as anger, sadness, hopelessness, helplessness, and bitterness. Each person experiences and processes their own thoughts and emotions in their own time. If someone is "in their feelings," the best thing you can do is be supportive, listen, validate their feelings, and be present with them.

When people we care about are in distress, we experience an empathetic echo of that distress. It's normal to want to push uncomfortable feelings away. We may try to distance ourselves from those emotions by saying things like "don't worry, everything will work out," "everything happens for a reason," or "that job sucked anyway." These kinds of platitudes, however, minimize and invalidate a person's experience even though their reaction is appropriate and understandable given the circumstances.

Do

  • Acknowledge the pain, sadness, and other unpleasant thoughts and feelings.
  • Be present.
  • Listen.
  • Validate their thoughts and feelings.
  • Provide support that they find comforting (i.e., hugging those who are comforted by touch, making dinner for those who are comforted by familiar friends and foods, sharing words of affirmation for those who are comforted by verbal support).

Don't

  • Point out a silver lining.
  • Minimize or invalidate the emotions.
  • Convey a need for the person to "move on", "buck up" or "get over it."
  • Make it about you (i.e., I know what it feels like...).

Fixing

Research suggests that the pain you feel from a social loss, like the loss of job and the daily relationships you have with valued co-workers, activates the same pain pathways as having a physical injury. In other words, your brain processes the pain of job loss the same way it processes the pain of a broken limb. This is why grief can feel like being punched in the gut or like your heart literally aches. When we see a friend in distress, we often jump to problem-solving or "fixing" the issue. This is a natural response - when someone we care about is in distress, we want to make them not be distressed because we care about them. However, offering solutions before working through the salient emotions is like trying to put a cast on a broken limb before setting it. It's the equivalent of applying the right kind of help at the wrong time.

When a person is ready to start working through their grief it means they are taking steps toward managing and addressing the emotional and psychological symptoms rather than solely feeling them. This is where linking to job openings, leveraging connections, and rallying resources become a helpful and actionable kind of support. Keep in mind that each person will arrive at this point at a different time. For some, it's a logical next step. For others, getting to this point can take time.

Do

  • Recognize that the pain and unpleasant emotions are still there, albeit less intense, and will be for some time.
  • Check in about what kinds of support would be helpful and provide specific tasks you can take on (i.e., setting up a meeting over coffee, sharing job postings, reviewing their resume etc.). This allows the griever to simply say "yes" or "no" rather than think up a task and then ask for help.
  • Continue to check up and check in over time. People need support immediately after the incident as well as later on during equally stressful phases of unemployment like job searching, interviews, and starting a new position.

Don't

  • View your friend as a thing to be fixed.
  • Be put off if your friend declines your help or doesn't act on your suggestions. (It's not about you!)
  • Ask "how's the job search going?" every time you see your friend; if something has come up, they'll let you know.

If you are worried that you or someone you care about is in distress or in need of crisis resources, you can call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-8255 or message the Crisis Text Line by texting 741741. In case of emergency, call 911.

Losing a job sucks and everyone will process, cope, and move forward in their own way, in their own time. If you're the type to see job loss not as a setback but a set-up for a new adventure, that's great. Taking time to work through your emotions, to feel sad/angry/bereft/or any other feeling you may have is also a legitimate strategy. Unpleasant emotions like grief are a way our minds alert us to danger or injustice and a flag for others that we need support. For those in the position to provide support, understand that for some moving from one job to the next is a minor inconvenience while for others it can literally be the difference between food on the table or going hungry; of affording life-preserving medication or going without. Adjust the support you give accordingly. For additional mental health resources, check out Take This' mental health resources page.

As always, take care of and be kind to yourself.

Please note: This post was written prior to the layoffs at Electronic Arts and ArenaNet. If you need assistance, please reach out to the resources shared in this article or comment below with any additional resources you know of. 

Game-Based Social and Emotional Learning for High School English Class

By iThrive Games

(Yes, it is possible!)

iThrive Games works to benefit teens at the intersection of game development, education, and mental health. That is why I was so excited at the opportunity to partner with Paul Darvasi, a teacher at Royal St. George's College in Toronto and Matthew Farber, an assistant professor at the University of Northern Colorado's School of Teacher Education, in creating Museum of Me, a game-based learning unit involving Giant Sparrow's, What Remains of Edith Finch.

Developer:  Giant Sparrow

Social and emotional learning (SEL) encompasses educational strategies that support students in developing and practicing their social and emotional skills. This includes everything from self-awareness to responsible decision making to relationship skills. Games offer a unique opportunity to support SEL in high school classrooms, where teens need more challenging and realistic content and engagement than the practices used in elementary classrooms. Games help transport teens to new worlds, enabling their exploration of new places and possibly, new versions of themselves. As the Guardian wrote in its 2017 review, "What Remains of Edith Finch is a game that succeeds in recreating the childhood joy of reading a book and being utterly transported into its pages, only to reach the end and realise it's not real."

In talking with EdSurge recently about Museum of Me, Paul Darvasi commented, "Schools are very emotional places that don't invite emotion, and that is a big problem." Many games present challenges that require players to adapt and grow in ways that promote deep learning and self-awareness, allowing players to experience a broad range of emotions. Feelings of betrayal, guilt, forgiveness, frustration, pride, and so much more, can be felt while playing games making them an incredible asset for teen's social and emotional development.

How We Created Museum of Me

I was looking for a game-based learning project for iThrive and knew we needed a special game that would authentically invite teens to explore their own emotions alongside a compelling character study. Paul and Matt knew they wanted to create a classroom unit for What Remains of Edith Finch almost immediately.

What Remains of Edith Finch is a game that follows a girl who is exploring the history of her family through the home that she grew up in. The game invites players to a safe place to explore and learn, while also leaving them feeling humbled and mesmerized by the vast world around them. There's so much in this game for students to immerse themselves in, (thank you, creative director, Ian Dallas, and the team at Giant Sparrow!) and that inspired us to design a teaching unit that would measure up. Matt believes that video games are the "storytelling mediums of the 21st century," and in that spirit, Museum of Me gives students and teachers a way to discuss identity and build on social and emotional skills that are of grave importance beyond the classroom.

GBL + SEL + ELA + UDL

We embraced the rich interactive narrative of What Remains of Edith Finch and knew it would be an ideal catalyst for a game-based learning (GBL) unit on identity exploration, one of the pillars of the resilience framework for SEL, cited and used by iThrive advisor Dr. Rachel Poliner. To design the learning objectives underlying the study we gave equal weight to the game, and standards for both English Language Arts (ELA) and SEL. We landed on a set of learning objects that include exploring identity and character, comparing and contrasting public and personal narratives, examining how possessions represent and maybe even misrepresent aspects of identity and reflection on self.

We used the principles of universal design for learning (UDL) to design the activities and assessments that comprise the lessons. We worked hard to make sure our design choices took into consideration our understanding that each teen develops differently and engages with concepts from different access points. It was very important for us to create opportunities to engage all students deeply in a compelling learning experience, driven by their own interests and ideas. Learning scientist and universal design for learning expert (and an advisor on the unit), Dr. Gabrielle Schlichtmann of EdTogether remarked, "The curriculum authors have worked to build a flexible experience so that teachers can meet the needs of all students - there are many ways for students to access the content, show what they know, and engage in deeper learning."

The Museum of Me's multi-method assessments happens when students create artifacts both in and outside of class. In one assignment students read "Chameleon" and reflect on their own relationship with an item of clothing or some other status-oriented possession that projects identity. They then create two 30-second vlogs introducing two items that express their identity or that are attached to a meaningful personal story. One vlog is to be public-facing and the other is to be private. As students analyze the process of creating publicly- versus privately-facing vlogs, they consider what identity is and how might its expression change depending on the audience.

Students also create memes, based on the one below. They select photos to represent how they see themselves, and how they think their friends, family, teacher, and others see them. Dr. Schlichtmann said of the meme project, "I love this assignment - it is authentic and relevant. I also think that this humorous format can dampen discomfort students might feel."

Not Sure Where to Start with GBL in Your Classroom?

If you are interested in using games in your high school classrooms, check out this video about why educators are using games in their classrooms and our game-based learning guide for some tips to get you started. Also, be sure to check out this great article from our archives by Barbara Chamberlin and Jesse Schell for other terrific pointers.   

Join Us in Piloting Museum of Me

If you are interested in trying out the Museum of Me unit in your classroom or after school program, contact us for an early release version.

Let Us Know How You're Using Games with Teens

I love to see games integrated into engaging and collaborative discussions with teens. Gameplay offers an innovative and currently underutilized way to deeply engage students and support them in learning and practicing fundamental social and emotional skills. By designing school lessons around a medium that teens are already interested in, we are able to drive innovative thinking by allowing teens to explore themselves and the world around them in a safe, thought-provoking environment. What will you create? Be sure to let us know — we'd love to feature you on our site!

Sign up for our newsletter so you can stay up to date on the release of this unit and all the other incredible happenings at iThrive Games!

If you want to learn more about game-based learning, check out Matt's recent books, Game-Based Learning In Action, and Gamify Your Classroom, both published by Peter Lang Inc.

iThrive's Senior Director of Learning, Michelle Bertoli, has been invaluable in forging our collaboration with Paul and Matt and supporting their efforts. She's blissfully enjoying her maternity leave and will return in the Spring.

 

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Susan Rivers, PhD, is the executive director and chief scientist of iThrive Games. A social psychologist, she uses her expertise in emotional intelligence and designing social and emotional learning interventions to inform the development of game-based interventions and establish a collaborative and innovative network of teens, game developers, psychologists, affective scientists, funders, and investors. She has published extensively in scholarly journals and books, is the co-author of several curricula on social and emotional learning, and speaks at national and international conferences and events. Susan earned her B.A. from Skidmore College and her Ph.D. from Yale University.

 

New Year. New Website.

By iThrive Games

We have kicked off 2019 with a website redesign! Our shiny, user-friendly website features a new look and new content. Our mission remains the same.

iThrive Games Foundation works to benefit teens at the intersection of game development, education, and mental health.

Our website — with dedicated information hubs — makes it easier to navigate our tools, articles, and resources. Are you a game developer? Maybe you want to learn about mental health and games? How about using games in education? Explore all of these resources in a new, easy-to-navigate layout.

We also have grown our design guide section from five to TEN! We culled the research and interviewed game designers to pull together intel on how to design for a set of skills critical for resilience. In addition to empathy, kindness, cooperation, growth mindset, and curiosity, we've added gratitude, purpose, forgiveness, optimism, and zest.

Our new website has tons of tools for educators. Check out the "resources" section for our educator's guide to What Remains of Edith Finch (the game itself is currently free through Epic), Ten Things To Know When Designing for Teens, and a host of other expert-written long-form articles. Here, you can also find our curated games catalog which highlights compelling games that support teen habits for thriving.

Finally, check out our game prototypes catalog, full of games that were created at iThrive Game Jams, inspired by our strengths-based approach.

This website launch includes even more on mental health and games. Featured articles include this one on our Critical Strengths Engine and 3 Mental Health Tropes That Need to Die. We also have extended reads on topics like how games foster teens' social and emotional skills, and so much more.

So poke around the website and let us know what you think!

Live Action Role Playing To Support Healthy Teen Development

By iThrive Games

The summer I was 14, I saved the world for the first time. I also attempted to destroy it, spied on the Illuminati, and journeyed into the underworld, all in the span of two weeks. That's what happens when you go off to a summer camp for live action role playing or "larping." I went back every summer throughout my teen years, playing dozens of characters in different worlds. It wasn't long before I was writing games of my own, both for my friends at home and for the camp, the Wayfinder Experience. Over a decade later, I'm a professional larp writer and serve on Wayfinder's Story Board, helping mentor up-and-coming teen game writers as they create new worlds in which to tell stories and explore who they are.

I've run many games of my own, both at Wayfinder and elsewhere, and have learned a great deal about how to create a meaningful experience for teens before, during, and after gameplay. One of the joys of larp design for teens is that their feedback is immediate and obvious — their reactions to design choices are rarely subtle. So here are some takeaways that are relevant not just to larp design but all kinds of game creation for teens.

Design to Support Identity Exploration

One of the most powerful elements of larping is the act of embodying a character that you as a player help create. Sometimes you start from an existing character outline and sometimes you create one from scratch. Regardless, you are an active participant in the creative process, adding details and backstory and identity elements. Players of all ages use this as an opportunity to explore, but teens especially experiment with different possible versions of themselves. They might try larping as a more confident person, or a person with a different gender presentation. Often, these experiments help them test the waters, seeing what it feels like to be who they want to be — or who they could become.

This kind of experimental identity play shows up as soon as players are offered the slightest opportunity to impact a character. When I was in middle school, I loved the video game Chrono Trigger. The only choice I had as a player was to set the characters' names, but you bet I chose my own for the main character, and set the other party members' names to match those of my friends. I wanted to pretend that I could be that adventurous hero, even before larping gave me the opportunity to embody that hero physically.

When you are designing games, consider how your design allows for or encourages the character creation process. What elements of personal identity can players bring into the game? Will those choices have an impact on the game? Will their choices be reflected and respected, or ignored and contradicted by the game as designed? Giving players the freedom to experiment with their self-representation can be a profound tool for exploration.

Design to Support Storytelling

A larp isn't just one story — it's as many stories as there are players. Player each experience their own storyline, all in parallel with one another. This gives players the freedom to seek out different kinds of narratives, and teens will always gravitate on their own to the stories they find compelling and rewarding.

When I was a camper, my best friend always made sure his storylines revolved around epic romances, often ending tragically. He'd find another player or two, create a love triangle, and dig in deep, seeking out a kind of play that I had little interest in. I was more drawn to the political machinations, the schemes and betrayals. But I couldn't help wondering what my friend found in those romances, so I started trying to play with similar narratives. That exploratory process started helping me figure out my own identities.

Over the years, I've seen teen after teen find themselves drawn to particular kinds of play. The types they choose are often very revealing, whether or not the players are consciously aware of it. Allowing that kind of freedom as the designer can be hugely rewarding. If your game design gives players the freedom to seek or create narratives within the larger structure, they will naturally gravitate to the places they feel comfortable and find ways to explore and play.

Provide Scaffolding

While many larps are designed as escapist fun (a worthy end goal in its own right!), some designers build larps with education as the cornerstone. These "edu-larps" can take many forms, from short scenarios to be played in a history classroom up through full weekend-long, immersive adventures. There's a boarding school in Denmark built around edu-larping! Even larps that don't have education as their primary focus can bring in useful tools from edu-larping, though, and help teens grasp important lessons.

A key concept from educational larp design is creating structures that players can use to build their own lessons — what educators call scaffolds. These scaffolds help guide play, both in and out of character, and come in many forms. They could take the form of backstory provided before the game starts, structured decisions with clear options, or just about anything else. Some scaffolds are straightforward, such as providing a moral choice about how to treat a captive prisoner, while others might be subtler, like including characters who are struggling with complex emotional challenges that might mirror the lives of the players.

Years ago, I ran a game set in the mind of a teen girl, with the characters embodying her memories, personality aspects, hopes, and fears. The fears manifested as demons, but as part of the character design, each could be redeemed into a positive version. Isolation could become independence, stagnation could become stability, and so on. One young player confronted the fear of change, and in a tearful scene helped it become growth and moving on from pain. She sent me an email a week later thanking me for the game. She told me that her mother had died recently, and the things she'd been shouting in that scene were very real. The scaffold of the demon's redemption gave her a path she could use to transform her real grief and build an emotional outlet that she could carry forward into her life after the game.

Healthy scaffolding gives guidance that encourages productive avenues of exploration without feeling restrictive or overly didactic. A well-built scaffold can lay down a framework which teens will use to ground their own exploration. The truth is that most games are full of scaffolds, but many are unintentional. An often overlooked part of the game design process is to take a step back and consider what lessons and narratives your design is actually scaffolding. Are there particular choices your characters are making? Are there options that your design closes off or encourages? Are there ways your mechanics and themes are at odds?

You can never (and probably shouldn't try to) completely control the lessons that your players will take away from your games, but good scaffolding can encourage the ideas you want to support.

Provide Recaps and Debriefs

Whether or not game designers realize it, the gameplay experiences doesn't always end when the game itself does. Most larps have some kind of post-game wrap-up, whether it's a party or a diner run or a more formal debriefing process. Wayfinder uses what we call a de-rolling workshop to help ease our players out of the fantasy world and back into their default realities and lives. The next day, we have a story circle where everyone shares their favorite moments from the game and the writer provides an epilogue or closure.

These kinds of recaps serve a number of useful purposes. On a psychological level, they provide a sense of closure, which is helpful both for players whose stories ended cleanly and those who wish they had a more satisfying ending. The storytelling process also helps create emotional distance, separating the player and the character, which can be necessary after emotionally intense games. Game theorists often talk about the concept (coined by Johan Huizinga) of a magic circle, a space for play set aside from the real world. Recaps and formalized debriefs help players transition back out of the magic circle.

On a more practical level, recaps also help players spell out important lessons they learned from the game. This is especially useful with younger players, who may not have realized the game's relevance to their real lives during gameplay. Prompting them to consider the parallels with their real lives once the game is over can help them carry that awareness forward. It also gives them nice clear stories they can take home to their parents.

Here are the biggest lessons I've learned for designing meaningful experiences for teens:

  • Allow players to participate in the character process, or at least provide space for them to apply their own concepts to the existing characters.
  • Give players options to seek out narratives that they find compelling, and pay attention to what they gravitate towards.
  • Provide your players with scaffolds for them to build lessons from. Give them clear choices, and consider the ways your design supports or undermines the lessons you want to be imparting.
  • When the game is over, take time to recap the game with your players, both to help transition them back to reality and to help cement the ideas you want them to carry forward.

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About the Author

Ben "Books" Schwartz is a writer and freelance larp designer. They work at larp summer camps for teens including the Wayfinder Experience and Magischola Prep, as well as running weekend-long adventures for adults like Event Horizon. When they're not facilitating elaborate games of make-believe, they can be found working on Young Adult novels and having too many feelings about comics on twitter at @SunshineDuk.

UNESCO MGIEP TECH

By iThrive Games

The pre-conference festivities for this year's UNESCO MGIEP Transforming Education Conference for Humanity (TECH 2018) kicked off with an outdoor, beach-side presentation on neuroscience and social and emotional learning and ended with an hour-long performance by a Dehli-based rock band The Local Train. It was an unusual and unexpected opening night, and just one of many unique and memorable moments from my trip to Visakhapatnam, India.

The Local Train - attribution to UNESCO MGIEP Twitter

I'd been invited to the conference as a Catalytic Speaker for keynote panels on games and social emotional learning as well as games and mental health. The topic of the first catalytic session focused on the potential for social and emotional learning be taught by digital games. I had the honor of sharing the stage with MGIEP neuroscientist Nandini Chatterjee Singh, co-founder and CEO of Classcraft Shawn Young, assistant professor of technology, innovation and pedagogy Matt Farber, and president of Games for Change Susanna Pollack.

Pre-talk prep.

Selfie after Catalytic Session 1. From left to right: Matthew Farber, Nandini Chatterjee Singh, Susanna Pollack, Shawn Young, and Kelli Dunlap.
From left to right: Nandini Chatterjee Singh, Matthew Farber, Susanna Pollack, Shawn Young, and Kelli Dunlap.

The second keynote panel addressed questions and concerns surrounding the World Health Organization's proposal to include Gaming Disorder as a diagnosis in the upcoming edition of the ICD-11. I again had the pleasure of sharing the stage with Shawn Young as well as game designer François Boucher-Genesse, CEO and co-founder of TeacherGaming Santeri Koivisto, and the panel was moderated by Affordance Studio co-founder Avery Rueb. [Video of the panel here].

From left to right: Avery Rueb, Kelli Dunlap, François Boucher-Genesse, Santeri Koivisto, and Shawn Young.
From left to right: Avery Rueb, Kelli Dunlap, François Boucher-Genesse, Santeri Koivisto, and Shawn Young.

And last but not least, I was delighted to co-present with Matthew Farber on boosting teen resilience through commercial video games in the classroom. We highlighted work that Matt, fellow teacher Paul Darvasi, and iThrive have been developing around using What Remains of Edith Finch to teach and explore social and emotional skills. Fostering understanding that games not designed for educational purposes can still hold educational value was a key aspect of this presentation.

Matthew Farber talking about developing SEL curriculum for What Remains of Edith Finch. (Image by UNESCO MGIEP)

The conference ended with the Vizag Declaration on Guidelines for Digital Learning, a call to establish standards for digital learning resources that best suit the educational needs of 21st century learners. The Declaration was informed by senior policy makers and ministers from 9 countries, experts in AI, data science, neuroscience, education, psychology, researchers, curriculum experts, curriculum development and digital instruction design, game design, and education technology. The Declaration will be presented to the General Conference of UNESCO in 2019 for consideration.

Kelli Dunlap, PsyD, with students at the event

The Power of Teens

By iThrive Games

iThrive co-designs games with teens, educators, mental health experts, and professional game developers to discover how play and design can empower teens to thrive. But why do we care about teens?

First of all, we know teens face tremendous pressures. Just a few of them are:

    • Anxiety and depression are on the rise
    • Inequities in learning opportunities continue to grow
    • Our education system fails to provide engaged and effective learning
    • Teens are bored, overtested, and afraid in schools
  • Society's judgment that teens are not capable of making decisions or contributing meaningfully to the world

Researchers at MIT who study teens have even said, "The bottom-line message that emerges from research on adolescent development and parenting is that teenagers are vulnerable. Their boldness and bravado mask an inexperience in solving problems and coping with stress that is often no match for the unsupervised, risk-laden environments in which they live." - The MIT Raising Teens Project

But this deficit perspective-focusing only on the risks and vulnerabilities of adolescence-is incomplete; it overlooks the incredible potential of the teen years.

Teens' brains are undergoing the last major restructuring of development, one nearly on par with the brain growth of early childhood. That means that the environments and interactions teens experience-good and bad alike-leave a deeper mark on the brain than they will in later years. That also means that the teen years provide the perfect opportunity to build habits to support a healthy, productive, and engaged life.

Teens are at a developmental moment defined by strength, not only vulnerability. After all, evolution has chosen this path of reorganization and susceptibility to environmental influences for the teen brain because it works!

At iThrive, we see teens' very unique developmental characteristics as a clear call to action. It is our mission to offer teens opportunities to build skills and flesh out their understanding of the world within supportive environments. What's more, we have to make sure those opportunities are compelling and playful. Learning happens best during play, even in the teen years.

That's why iThrive's approach to teen thriving is two-pronged: Offer skill-building opportunities directly to teens AND enhance the environments where teens are spending their time, all with their input at the center.

[Related article: We Can't Design Games for Teens Without This]

We use games and game design to connect with teens in meaningful ways that take their realities and interests to heart and invite them to gain confidence in themselves and their abilities.


[Related video: Game Design Studio]

But why games?

1. Games are where teens are.

Teens live, learn, and connect with others in virtual spaces as much as in physical ones. It's rare to find a teen without a smartphone nearby. That's why we work with teens to determine what they want their games to offer, and then draw on those insights-and the science of healthy adolescent development-to influence the games developers are creating.

[Related resources and events: iThrive Design Kits, iThrive Game Jams, and strengths-based game prototypes]

Since games are here to stay, let's unleash their power to engage and immerse teens while keeping teens' needs as whole people at the forefront of design.

2. Games reflect-and let us reflect on-truths about real life.

Games and game design are tools for building strengths and creating and sharing new models of how the world could be. That's because, at their core (and no matter how fantastical), games are systems that reflect and expand on truths about the lives we lead: they have rules, win/lose states, rewards, consequences, and many roles for players and other characters to fill. As friend of iThrive and expert game dev, Jason Vandenberghe, says:
"As we know, teens are in a part of their lives where they are absorbing information about how the world works at an extraordinary rate. If we want to make a large, positive change in our world, I believe the best route is to focus on providing teens with better models for the world."

At iThrive we are pushing on the limits of game design because we believe the games that teens play can and should reflect their truths and offer positive, compelling, meaningful, and strength-building content.

3. Games can help level the playing field.

Not all teens have equal access to high-quality learning environments, supportive and caring adults, opportunities deliberately designed to acknowledge and build on their unique strengths, or communities passionately committed to their well being and success in life.

iThrive is dedicated to identifying how carefully designed games can dismantle some of the inequities teens experience by cutting across settings to reach teens with strength-building, engaging experiences everywhere they are.

Teens face many vulnerabilities, it's true. But let's focus on addressing that not by trying to change, control, or overly shelter teens, but by meeting their needs and unleashing their incredible strengths through empowering, playful experiences.

Follow and join iThrive as we strive to raise up the voices of teens and meet them where they are to support their growth and well-being with compelling games and game design. Join us as we play to teens' strengths.

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About the Author

Susan Rivers, PhD, is the executive director and chief scientist of iThrive Games. A social psychologist, she uses her expertise in emotional intelligence and designing social and emotional learning interventions to inform the development of game-based interventions and establish a collaborative and innovative network of teens, game developers, psychologists, affective scientists, funders, and investors. She has published extensively in scholarly journals and books, is the co-author of several curricula on social and emotional learning, and speaks at national and international conferences and events. Susan earned her B.A. from Skidmore College and her PhD from Yale University.

A Canadian Game Jam On Mental Health and Teens? Mais Oui!

By iThrive Games

The first weekend of October, iThrive staff made their way to Montréal, Canada to co-host the JamNATION game jam. The jam was the perfect opportunity to test two shiny new Design Kits we developed with expert devs and scholars at this fall's iThrive Design Hive: "Designing for Teens" and "Games and Mental Health." We were eager to debut our design guidelines related to teens and mental health at this unique jam, and our jammers responded with equal enthusiasm!

iThrive Design Kits are best-practices guides that support developers of all experience levels in designing games that promote positive habits to help players-and especially teens-thrive. The ultimate goal of the Kits is to spur the production of compelling and meaningful games: those that perfectly combine fun and innovation with opportunities for players to build critical social and emotional skills. Game jams are where we rigorously field test these Kits to determine if they "work": are they useful and engaging? Are they accessible to devs of many backgrounds and experience levels? Do they produce relevant, innovative prototypes?

JamNATION is a game jam league, kind of like a corporate softball league. Different teams pay membership dues to compete, and teams are often sponsored by large studios such as Ubisoft. They have custom numbered jerseys and everything! There are 6-8 jams during a regular season, and the teams compete for the right to earn a spot at the Season Finale, which is a large, more luxurious jam in the spring with high-end catered food, lots of swag and prizes, comfy sofas, and a masseuse. The jam we co-hosted was the first of JamNATION's regular competitive season, and 85 jammers participated to produce 14 games!

A group of jam participants

Devs designed for themes of mental health and teens, and to make it more challenging, we introduced an additional design constraint: make games with no text or language in them. The jammers were a multilingual audience so we wanted to inspire games that would be accessible to all participants, regardless of their language abilities, and it's also in line with our focus on supporting games that are accessible to the widest range of players possible. We work to build this "Universal Design" into everything we do.

We found much more in Canada to compliment than the poutine. Our thoughtful and dedicated jammers included a couple of teens, which is not typical for a JamNATION jam and certainly enriched our conversations about designing for teens! The winning game was "Breathe," which is fully playable in 3-5 minutes. In it, you play as a teen who needs to balance an ever-increasing number of tasks — pushing buttons and pulling levers and filling meters — and who may eventually be overwhelmed and need to be reminded to "just breathe." This was a great representation of the developmental changes going on for teens, who suddenly have much more adult-like responsibilities and roles to fulfill even as their brains are still learning to cope with stress and other potentially overwhelming emotions.

A developer works on background art for a game.

Other games included a dancing gecko who would change colors to fit in with other groups of geckos (a nod to teens' competing desires to both fit in and stand out, and to their search for a cohesive identity); a glowing squid who descends to the depths of a dark hole to save a friend (friends become much more important to teens than they were in childhood, and teens often turn to each other before family members when they're struggling with something like depression); a character who has to dodge trolls and "earn spectators" while also doing self-care (a nod to social media stress!); and a co-op game where only one player knows where the enemies are hiding and has to describe their location to the other player (practicing taking another's perspective is something teens are still learning how to do, and games like this might strengthen those skills). We were prepared for the possibility that this jam might unearth a lot of heavy themes with its dual focus on mental health and teens, but jammers surprised us by making games full of color and joy, all the while addressing these important topics!

Our new Canadian friends not only introduced us to a variety of potato chips not available in the United States, they also brought their "A" game with some cool mechanics we'd never seen at iThrive Game Jams before: procedural generation and mobile play. We also had more games at a single jam with original music in them than we'd ever seen before. C'est bon!

The Monday that we flew back home happened to be Thanksgiving Day in Canada, and we were and are certainly thankful for the good folks at JamNATION and all the participants who spent their weekend jamming with us. Watch for more about those games and footage from the jam in the new year!

About iThrive's Critical Strengths Engine

By iThrive Games

At GenCon earlier this month, we were delighted to announce our Critical Strengths Engine. Critical Strengths is a tabletop role-playing game (RPG) engine — or ruleset with which to play tabletop RPGs — that applies the science of empathy and kindness to exploring interpersonal relationships through adventures. We are developing this engine in partnership with renowned RPG publisher, Onyx Path Publishing (known for such popular RPG titles as Wraith and World of Darkness); Pugsteady, the beloved RPG developer of Pugmire (an RPG starring dogs); and mental health providers from the Bodhana Group.

If you're familiar with the world of tabletop RPGs, Critical Strengths is a rules-lite, story-heavy engine designed to stretch your social skills and emotional acuity. Classic attributes such as constitution (CON), dexterity (DEX), and intelligence (INT) have been replaced with social and emotional abilities like perspective (Mind), self-control (Will), and self-advocacy (Voice).

If you're unfamiliar with tabletop RPGs, that's okay! We specifically designed the game to be accessible to newcomers. In general, "RPG" refers to a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. A tabletop RPG is one played in a physical — rather than digital — space and often requires the use of pen and paper or a game board.

Critical Strengths is the ruleset or framework within which players take on their roles in order to accomplish a specific goal. In traditional tabletop RPGs, players are given skill sets such as dexterity or wisdom and use these attributes to inform how their character would solve a problem, interact with other characters, and react in a specific situation. Instead of attributes that determine how agile or wise a character is, Critical Strengths uses attributes tied to social and emotional skills. The goal is to encourage players to playfully explore how different strengths or deficits in social and emotional skills can help or hinder the player's progress in a variety of different situations.

We developed Critical Strengths for all players who enjoy a tabletop RPG experience of interpersonal intrigue. But because we developed Critical Strengths in cooperation with mental health professionals who regularly use tabletop games as part of the therapeutic process, Critical Strengths can also be used specifically in clinical and therapeutic settings as a way to engage teens actively in their own treatment. The attributes, narratives, and mechanics core to Critical Strengths enable facilitators to create an environment that actively elicits the kinds of social, emotional, and cognitive skills often targeted in therapy, such as empathy, social connectivity, and perspective-taking, all while teens explore, try new things, fail, and succeed in a playful, supportive space.

Over the next several months, iThrive and our amazing partners will continue to develop the Critical Strengths Engine. In the next few months, we'll be collaborating with authors to craft narratives for the engine, one of which will be an official Pugmire adventure! We'll also be writing essential content such as a facilitator's guide and a list of special suggested house rules  that take a player's physical, emotional, cognitive, and social abilities into consideration. And last but not least, we'll be refining our rules and mechanics through playtesting. Lots and lots of playtesting. In fact, we may even be playtesting in a city near you! Stay tuned to our newsletter for more information about our next public playtest and other iThrive updates.  

Game Culture is As Important As the Game

By iThrive Games

Do you floss? I'm talking about the dance, not dental hygiene, and I think everyone should at least know one reason flossing is so popular.

I recently learned to floss because my 7-year-old niece and I disagreed on how it's done. Who was right doesn't matter. What does matter is that my 7-year-old niece knows the dance because it is popular in Fortnite, a game rated Teen (suitable for ages 13 and up) by the ESRB. My niece has never played Fortnite and it's possible that many of her friends have not played it either. But Fortnite isn't just a game. Elements of it, flossing included, have colored the surrounding youth culture. Fortnite has inspired prom invitations and helped shy kids gain popularity. And I've found that the culture surrounding games like Fortnite can provide mental health clinicians with meaningful opportunities to connect with clients.

(Image from https://www.tes.com/news/fortnite-classroom-floss-dance-craze-sweeping-schools)

Gaming As a Language

As a mental health counselor, I once worked with a teenage client who loved to play Destiny, a popular - although not as popular as Fortnite - sci-fi-themed, multiplayer, online first-person shooter. Being an online game, it was impossible for us to play the game in my office. Well, unless I set up two televisions, two consoles, and connected both to the internet. That was not the setup I had, but what we could easily do was talk about the game and share stories. When he found out I also loved to play Destiny, it helped us build our therapeutic relationship and I could immediately tell that he felt more comfortable in therapy. Just knowing that I enjoyed the game helped my client feel like I could understand him better. And since we both knew the game so well, Destiny references became a second language we used in our sessions.

He talked to me about his favorite moments from a match and we discussed how he socialized online with his friends and people he didn't know. We were able to talk about value in terms of the colors used for engrams (in-game prizes) and used the "loot cave" (a location in the game from which it was very easy to gain prizes and which was later removed by developers) as a metaphor for something that changed despite people wanting it to stay the same.

My client started bringing videos of his in-game accomplishments to our sessions. He wanted to share some of his greatest and funniest gaming moments with me, and I welcomed this sharing. However, we saved these moments for the end of our sessions because we agreed our focus should be on learning to deal with his anxiety. But hearing him talk about the in-game moments that mattered to him in his own voice and seeing his actions on the screen helped me appreciate what he was like in a more natural, comfortable setting and how much the game meant to him.

(Destiny 2 by Bungie. Photo from https://www.destinythegame.com/size-requirements)

Like in Fortnite, dancing is a big part of Destiny. It's what you do to celebrate or kill time, and sometimes you start a dance party where lots of people just, well, dance. Other than playing the game yourself, watching a livestream on Twitch is the best way to begin to appreciate the culture around dancing in a game like Destiny.

I suggest that clinicians explore the games their clients seem to care about, from watching Twitch streams to playing the game themselves if possible.

Understanding the culture around a game can build a bridge to discussing lived experiences outside of the game. My client once showed me a video of him "cheesing" a boss battle and it opened the door to a serious conversation about cheating on a test in school. Is "cheesing" the same as cheating? Is it acceptable to cheat if you never get caught? Is it the teacher's fault that it was so easy to cheat? Our understanding of the game and its culture made talking about aspects of his life a lot easier.

If my client had not brought footage of himself playing, I would have had only an idea of what playing Destiny was like for him, based on my own experiences. I can look up information on a game and watch news coverage or trailers, but those videos will not always help me understand the culture surrounding the game.

Boundary Setting

In terms of setting appropriate boundaries with my client, I did face a conundrum around our shared interest in Destiny. One day, he asked if we could become friends on the PlayStation Network so we could play Destiny together online. I explained that there were particular boundaries we needed to set. I realized he found it difficult to understand this particular boundary. He understood that I was his therapist and that we couldn't be friends or hang out between sessions. But being an online friend seemed different. And if we both played Destiny, why couldn't we play Destiny and fight the enemies together?

After that session, I made changes to my intake and consent forms to address this boundary. I wanted to make sure that all my clients understood that even just being in the same game clan was a dual relationship and we should avoid these whenever possible.

Even if we couldn't play together, I know my client understood that we were both Guardians, rekindled by the light of the Traveler, and that when you finish a Nightfall you celebrate with a dance party. That kind of understanding only comes from deeply sharing an interest with your client. But every clinician can show at least some interest — that can go a long way and can be a very important part of the therapeutic relationship. Start by asking your clients what they like and take it from there.

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About the Author

Josué Cardona is a mental health and technology expert. He runs www.geektherapy.com, a website that celebrates the intersection of Geek culture and mental health. Josué has a background in biomedical engineering and a master's degree in mental health counseling. He operated his own psychotherapy and coaching practice for two years.

The 2018 Design Hive: Plenty of Buzz, and a Real Bee

By iThrive Games

iThrive Design Hives are annual retreats with veteran game developers and scholars in the field. The iThrive team, along with these folks, works to identify best practices in game design, on various topics, after we review the scientific literature around components of social and emotional well-being. We seek to produce resources that support the design of compelling and engaging games around habits like empathy, stress management, curiosity, kindness, and many other strengthening practices.


Design Hive discussions inform iThrive Design Kits — our design tools for game developers — and other projects and products, like our in-development RPG engine, the Critical Strengths Engine. The iThrive Design Kits that result from discussions at these Hives are field-tested at iThrive Game Jams as part of the iteration process. Among other Hive topics, we nearly always source from experts a good portion of the design guidance that eventually becomes a Design Kit (that is, when we're not playing games, swimming in the pool, eating creme brulee, and flying drones in people's hotel rooms).

This year, we held our Design Hive at the Tapatio Cliffs Hilton in Phoenix, Arizona, where it was a mild 106 degrees! We were lucky enough to host these attendees, each of whom added something unique to the experience:

      • Ellen Beeman, a fascinating conversational partner who shared thoughtful insights to support the continued development of the Critical Strengths Engine and our work with universities.
      • Osama Dorias, who was able to frame our conversations from the perspective of a professional developer and ground us in realistic game production processes and schedules.
      • Rami Ismail, who reminded us to think globally since teenagers in different parts of the world don't always care about the same things.
      • Jennell Jaquays, who provided valuable historical context around games and shared particularly good advice on our Critical Strengths Engine.
      • Molly Proffitt, our secret weapon as far as keeping conversations focused and helping to (literally) arrange the insights into something that made sense; she categorized over a hundred post-its in a matter of minutes!
      • Mike Sellers, who enriched our discussions with his masterful way of analyzing and designing games as systems, and also shared his good humor and intimate knowledge of the industry.
      • Ian Schreiber, who always asked exactly the right questions to get the group talking thoughtfully. We especially benefited from his encyclopedic knowledge of games and game mechanics.
      • Eddy Webb, whose analytical mind left no doubt as to why he's such a big Sherlock Holmes fan! He helped the group arrive at important insights and is a fantastic gamerunner.

We playtested our Critical Strengths Engine using an adventure, created by Eddy Webb, which takes place in the Pugmire universe. We all got the chance to "be a good dog"! Ian Schreiber was particularly pleased to play alongside Eddy because, as he said, it's always extra special to get to play a game run by its creator. Personally, I was happy to have defeated a group of undead cats by throwing catnip at them.

We also dove deep on several topics near and dear to the mission and heart of iThrive, and our discussions resulted in these in-development projects (look out for them on our website soon!):

    • Design Kits on the topics of:
        • Designing for teens
        • Designing for mental health games
      • Designing for self-reflection and self-awareness
  • A new iteration of our Critical Strengths Engine

There was one thing that particularly warmed my heart. Osama Dorias, who founded the IGDA's Muslims in Games SIG, had met Rami Ismail before but had never really gotten to hang out with him. The sense of brotherhood that developed between these two at our Design Hive was palpable. They taught each other card tricks at the dinner table, flew drones, and laughed and had the greatest time. It was so rewarding to see this happen because we'd invited them both to our event.


We also, ironically, had an actual bee show up at the Hive this year. It flew in right after lunch. I am personally allergic to bee stings and didn't have an EpiPen on me in the conference room. Mike Sellers and Jennell Jaquays cooperated to temporarily trap it under a drinking glass, saving me from harm. We then wondered whether we should ask the bee about its thoughts and feelings on designing games for teens, as Jennell noted, it was now a captive audience.

The Design Hives are the highlight of my professional year and are so valuable to furthering iThrive's work in the game developer community. I'm grateful to iThrive team members who participated in planning and facilitating, and to our attendees, who brought their brains, their hearts, their humor, and in some cases, their drones and their games, to share with us. This event left me the very best kind of exhausted, but, I need to rest up and hop to it, because there is such important work to do as a result of this!

Virtual Reality and the Search For Happiness

By iThrive Games

Happiness is a habit and a skill. According to Richard J. Davidson, professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the brain can learn to maintain happier, more compassionate states through consistent training. I believe that one way this kind of training can be done is through the responsible and intentional design of virtual reality (VR) and video games to support the experience of flow.

Flow can be defined as a "state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it." Flow is the zone in which the challenge we face is well balanced with the skills we have — the task is appropriately difficult to keep us from getting bored, but not so difficult that we become frustrated or anxious.

Flow is the state you enter when, among other conditions, your skills are a good match for the challenge before you. Image source

Game designers are no strangers to flow. Raph Koster popularized the relationship between flow and video games in his book, "A Theory of Fun," and flow has been a part of game design discussions ever since. But flow existed long before video games. In his book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes how everyone from farmers in remote lands, to master meditators, to entire civilizations have thrived by tapping into flow. And it makes sense why people spend so much time searching for flow: Steven Kotler, co-founder of the Flow Genome Project, describes how flow helps us perform better, makes us less self-conscious, and releases some of the most potent feel-good chemicals in the brain.

Action sports, meditation, creative activities, and religious experiences are some of many potential sources of flow. Video games are, too, because their very design aligns with some of the conditions for flow: namely, having concrete goals, demanding action just on the cusp of a person's capabilities, clear and timely feedback, and reduction of distractions. (In contrast, watching television is too passive an activity to meet these flow criteria). Video games are good at putting players in flow, but more progress can be made. Kotler describes flow as an emotion that we can experience in a shallow or deep manner. VR may be the key to reaching deeper levels of flow than non-VR video games support.

In Kotler's recent book (co-authored with Jamie Wheal), "Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work," the authors share that "Palo Alto Neuroscience, a Silicon Valley startup, has developed a system that can tag the biomarkers of a non-ordinary state [essentially, flow]-that is, brainwaves, heart rate variability, and galvanic skin response—and then use neurofeedback to guide you back there later. Trained meditators like Tibetan monks can put themselves into a transcendental state, and the machine will record their profile. Soon, as the technology matures, a novice will be able to put on the device and use these biomarkers to steer toward the same experience." There are also efforts to recreate different styles of meditation and make them accessible through VR headsets. VR is beginning to offer consciousness-altering experiences at an exciting scale and rate. That means that what once required years of practice may soon be able to be achieved much faster in VR.

[Related article: VR and Empathy: Tread Carefully]

However, a caveat: Csikszentmihalyi points out that flow is neither inherently good nor bad. Flow can be achieved in productive or destructive tasks and is simply a tool to be used wisely. If VR has the potential to induce flow using "passive" experiences where the player is not necessarily putting forth effort, does it still meet all the necessary conditions of flow as it's currently defined? When it comes to VR and flow, developers may need support and resources to ensure that this exciting medium fosters authentic self-development rather than simply an escape or a shortcut.

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About the Author

Eric Vignola is a game developer, thinker, and obsessive. He uses artificial intelligence and interactive experiences to help players explore some of life's toughest questions. In the past, Eric has helped create tools that allow video game authors to create more expressive worlds that allow for deeper player interaction through artificial intelligence. Presently, he is creating a game about the experience of being biracial in the United States and feelings of social isolation. Eric is planning to create an online media company that uses micro games and blog posts to help people develop greater levels of emotional intelligence through play.

Friendly Competition: Starting an eSports League at My High School

By iThrive Games

It's do or die. I'm in the loser's bracket quarter finals. After a defeat to THUNDER, Ontario's third best Super Smash Bros 4 player, I move to the losers bracket to face s0rry. I've never heard of s0rry but I never underestimate a new opponent. After several nail-biting moments, the score is knotted at two wins apiece. The dying seconds of game five approach and I know I'm at a disadvantage. I struggle to distance myself from my opponent and with one flick of the thumbstick, I'm out of the tournament. While I feel a bitter defeat, this loss only ignites my desire to win the next game. At home that night, I turn on my Wii U and start to grind.

My interest in eSports began at a very rudimentary level, before I knew it existed. Little did I suspect that one day I would start my own league. My brothers and I would gather around our TV, the old-school one that had the slot for VHS tapes, and fight to the death on a variety of Nintendo consoles. Mario Kart (rated 6+ years), Goldeneye (rated 13+ years), and Mario Party (rated 8+ years) all brought out my competitive spirit. I always wanted to finish in first place. I'm not sure where this fire came from, but the thrill had me hooked.

I'd owned a few Call of Duty (rated 18+ years) games in the past, a first person shooter series in which teams compete to eliminate an enemy team and, in some cases, control an "objective" like capturing flags or securing building locations. I had always been below mediocre. Somewhere between laughable and horrible. In 2016, Call of Duty Black Ops III (rated 18+ years) was released and I actually became really good. My stats tripled, and I was boasting some impressive numbers. Initially, I didn't quite realize that I was excellent at the game, but when it finally sunk in I felt this moment of excitement and desire to play more. This development led me to establish my own eSports team, Onyx eSports, after connecting with people who matched my skill level.

Author (middle) and the two friends who helped him start the eSports league dressed as Luigi, Mario, and Wario for Halloween. Image: Author

After many tournament wins and climbing North American ranks, I developed a passion. Every gun fight I won, every clutch situation that went my way, made me feel unstoppable. I would daydream about eSports, replaying scenarios in my head of flanking enemy lines and memorizing capture point rotations. I would nerd out thinking about the game, and when competition crossed my mind I got excited. I loved it.

In my junior year I was offered a spot to run the Gamers Union club at my school, which was fun, but I felt like we could do more. Lightbulb. Let's feature eSports in the club! Around the same time I transitioned between playing Call of Duty at a professional level to playing Super Smash Bros 4. Super Smash Bros (rated 11+ years) is a Nintendo fighting game series where characters from a variety of different games duke it out in whacky combat. When Smash Bros was featured in the club it was always a big hit and, with my newfound love for the game, I knew that I would have no trouble using my passion to turn my idea of eSports in schools into a reality.

When I first announced it in assembly, this idea was met with laughter, primarily from staff. Frankly, I didn't blame them. My school had never been exposed to eSports and the idea might seem outlandish to the staff members who did not grow up playing video games or watching Twitch streams. That said, students were excited and the club's attendance tripled as a result. Several months went by. The Super Smash Bros Tournament had ended and it appeared that people were now on board with the idea. We packed a lunch hall with almost every student to witness the final match. It was breathtaking, and this tournament was just the beginning.

The thrill of a good challenge is written on students' faces at a league competition at Royal St. George's College for boys, Toronto, Canada. Image: Author

After the success of the league, I joined forces with two friends who participated in our first eSports tournament to create something big: the Coalition of Independent Schools eSports League. Our goal was not just to bring people together for friendly competition, but to compete against other schools. We marketed the idea to other schools and within a few months, the league was born.

From my experience operating these leagues over the past two years I now understand the profound impact that eSports has had on me and those who participated. I have always been a competitive person. But eSports is unlike any competitive energy I have ever experienced. There's something about the thrill of winning and the enraging feeling of losing that makes me push myself. This mindset of resilience has improved not only my gameplay, but my academic life, as I have seen a noticeable change in my work ethic over the past three years. My average has climbed up 10 points since I started competing, and I have no doubt that the mindset I carry with me to my everyday life is a contributing factor.

The beauty of eSports is that it is all you need to get started are a set of hands and a brain. I've seen a range of people compete, from those who have never touched a controller to those who have played games for years. eSports is a space where anyone can participate and succeed. You do not need to be an athlete or mathematician and that is a core strength of eSports.

In addition, I have seen some tremendous friendships grow from these friendly competitions. In my athletic career, I never made friends with my opponents unless I knew them from some other part of my life. Our eSports competitions are different. During downtime between matches the room is full of smiling, camaraderie, and laughter. I have known many quiet players who don't normally assert themselves in social situations flourish into charismatic people. The social connection that I have seen come out of eSports is something special and rare in other arenas of competition.

I believe this league is the start of something big. It was a relatively challenging task to get the league off its feet but I'm certain that it will continue to grow in popularity over time. The mindset that I have gained from my experience competing has a positive impact on my work ethic and who I am as a person. The number of people I have seen flourish, from the quiet types to the social butterflies, is vast. You give a gamer a game and they'll play it. You give a gamer an opponent and now they have something to play for.

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About the Author

Michael Vassos is a student from Toronto, Ontario, currently enrolled to study Media, Information and Technoculture at the University of Western Ontario this fall, with early admission into the Richard Ivey School of Business. Michael's interest in video games has led him to a passion for eSports. He has participated in over 20 professional level tournaments under the name "KnucklesUp" for the game Super Smash Bros for Wii U. His best result is a fourth-place finish at No Chill Gaming Tournaments on July 15th, 2018. Aside from gaming, Michael enjoys creating artwork through photoshop, camping, politics, and cooking on the barbeque.

Put a Badge On It! Using Digital Badges to Support Social and Emotional Learning

By iThrive Games

Digital badges have been at the center of discussions around alternative credentialing systems for years. Digital badges—web-enabled tokens of accomplishment that circulate in social networks—rose to prominence as a potential alternative credentialing system in the early 2010s. The idea was that students could earn credit that would be recognized by universities, peer networks, employers, and others for skills built outside of formal schooling. Digital badges are unique in that they contain links to the evidence (projects, products, media) for which the badge was awarded.

Digital badges have the potential to motivate learners and promote important social and emotional learning (SEL) skills. Skeptics of badges "worry that students will focus on accumulating badges rather than making connections with the ideas and material associated with the badges-the same way that students too often focus on grades in a class rather than the material in the class, or the points in an educational game rather than the ideas in the game" (Resnick, 2012). But badge proponents find promise in having a new way to assess learners apart from the "current multiple-choice form of testing" that "doesn't measure all that is being learned and de-motivates true curiosity" (Davidson, 2012).

Digital badges can provide direct links to "evidence" of how and when they were earned. Image source

What if badges were not designed to replace grades? What if badges could be designed to promote SEL in ways traditional classroom grades couldn't? I describe some ways digital badges can (and have been) designed to promote SEL. Specifically, badges can and should be designed: (1) for collaboration; (2) to map learning pathways; and, (3) to leverage self- and peer-assessment practices.

[NOTE: These insights come from analyses of 29 projects in the Design Principles Documentation Project funded by the MacArthur Foundation. For more information go to: http://dpdproject.info/. Special thanks to Dan Hickey who was the lead on this project.]

Badges can be designed for collaboration
One core competency of SEL is relationship skills: "the ability to establish and maintain healthy and rewarding relationships with diverse individuals and groups" (CASEL). At the core of building relationship skills is an emphasis on creating environments and opportunities for collaboration where these relationships can be developed and maintained. Digital badges can be designed and implemented to promote these skills in collaborative environments. For example, digital badges can be awarded for group accomplishments, or for an individual's role in a group collaboration.

Examples of digital badges awarded for demonstrating social and emotional skills. Image source

Earning a badge for a group accomplishment could entail asking students to provide evidence of working together to reach a common goal. For example, creating a movie requires multiple individuals to fill the roles of director, cinematographer, screenwriter, and actor. An individual's role in a group collaboration could be rewarded by awarding badges to individuals, for example, for connecting with peers and teachers in the pursuit of further developing specific skills.

Many of the negative effects of competition around badges, as mentioned earlier, can be avoided by honoring group accomplishments. When competition is paired with collaboration, we would expect to see beneficial outcomes for learners in those environments allowing all learners to participate in competition (see Hickey, 2003).

Badges can be designed to map learning pathways by helping earners set goals.
Setting goals is an important self-regulated learning process (Zimmerman, 1990) and a core component of SEL related to self-management (CASEL). For teens to be successful at accomplishing large tasks, they must develop the ability to set and keep track of specific smaller goals that build up to the larger one. Digital badges can encourage teens to set goals through: user-created badges, using badges to display goal trajectory, and allowing for users to determine their own goal trajectory.

Badges could be awarded in a sequence for skills that build on themselves (for example by completing different missions related to an overall goal), thereby displaying a goal trajectory. By allowing students the ability to plan out and monitor their learning through user-created badges, the learner has to establish a set of standards on which to award the badge and can more thoughtfully plan and reflect on the experience. With user-determined goal trajectories, learners are able to reference a learning pathway and can decide what badges to pursue and see the steps to earning them. Users can track their progress by seeing what badges they have earned on the way to the larger goal.

Badges can be designed to leverage self- and peer-assessment practices.
Self-assessment is a practice that encourages learners to carefully cultivate accurate self-perceptions and recognize their strengths, which directly maps onto the self-awareness competency proposed by CASEL. A defining feature of a self-assessment badge is the ability for learners to have a role in defining the criteria for the badges they set out to earn.

Assessment has clear links with motivation and SEL. Certain characteristics of assessment, such as who does the assessing, may matter for the amount of effort a learner puts into a task. Learners who are asked to assess themselves on a task may reflect more deeply on their own learning. Learners who are assessed by their peers may put more effort into the task based on their need to appear competent in front of their peers. The incentive of allowing learners to be peer mentors and assess their peers may be motivating for learners because students feel in charge and are eager to help their tutees improve. As a byproduct, they often put forth more effort and learn more themselves (Chase, Chin, Oppezzo, & Schwartz, 2009).

Final thoughts
It is difficult to make assumptions about the outcomes of earning badges on SEL without understanding the context in which these badges are designed. Digital badges could be seen as more effective in promoting SEL skills if the teens earning the badges value them. While establishing the value of badges for this age group might be difficult at first, it is no doubt a prerequisite to seeing digital badges used successfully. The badge may also mean more for the earner if it circulates in social networks. For example, when an earner shares a  badge with friends over Facebook or Twitter, friends can click on that badge, learn more about the accomplishment and the learning opportunity, add their own comments, and bring it to the attention of others. Incentives in themselves do not necessarily have positive or negative motivational influences. Rather, it is studying them in the contexts in which they operate that provide valuable insight about their impact.

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About the Author

Katerina Schenke, PhD is a Senior Researcher at CRESST|UCLA. Her research is on understanding how and under what circumstances students are motivated towards learning, how we can measure motivation and engagement through digital games, and how we can develop models of assessment that are informative to students and teachers. Katerina received her Ph.D. in 2015 from the University of California, Irvine, and B.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2009 in psychology and German. She completed a postdoctoral position in psychometrics at UCLA in 2015-2016. In her spare time she is developing a game to help kids learn about causality and the digestive system, incorporating all of the lessons about motivation "goodness" from her work into her passion project.

Student Game Developers Win for Compassion in Accessibility

By iThrive Games

In early June, I was fortunate enough to be a guest speaker at the Gotland Games Conference (GGC) in Visby, Sweden. The GGC is an annual festival at Uppsala University, where the students present and demo their game projects and compete for awards, and where speakers deliver lectures on a yearly theme. I was invited this year because the theme was empathy, something that Uppsala folks saw me speak about at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) earlier in the year.

Gotland is an island in the middle of the Baltic Sea, equidistant from mainland Sweden, Denmark, and Russia. It's a location that might have been suggested by the History Channel television show, "Vikings," with a wall that's over a thousand years old, rocky cliffs, and steep hillsides. In the village of Visby, where the university is, narrow cobbled streets twist around old world buildings, modern buildings, and centuries-old ruins alike in a labyrinthine manner. It's a popular vacation spot for Swedes, where everyone walks everywhere or rides bicycles.

Visby, Sweden

This kind of atmosphere is delightful, quaint, very active, and sustainable, but can make life challenging for people like myself who have rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune condition where my body declares war on itself in response to weather changes, too much stress, or too much physical activity. Imagine yourself with the flu...the fever, body aches, and exhaustion. Now, imagine that you feel this way every time it rains, or you travel from one temperature into another, or you're stressed out, or you've walked half a mile. It's a constant trade-off about your energy and pain levels, wondering things like, "If I walk uphill ten blocks to that restaurant tonight, will my mobility be affected tomorrow morning when I need to get to the university for my talk?" Gotland is lovely, but there aren't really any meaningful accommodations there for people with mobility issues, so I had to think extra hard about the tradeoffs while I was there.

My first trip to Gotland was in 2013, when I gave a talk about narrative as a tool for inclusiveness in games. Back then, I was particularly impressed by the creativity and game development abilities of Uppsala's students, which are as fine as the best I've seen around the world. They often make games with particularly creative kinds of controllers, and games with very physical components, like one displayed at GDC where you had to lie in a coffin with a cell phone and text with someone on the outside who would help you escape. This year was no exception. There was a game where your controller was on the underside of a couch cushion, so you had to play by scooting your body one way or another. There was a game where you had to physically shovel "coal" into a "coal chute" in order to make the train onscreen go. There was a game where you had to balance your weight, seesaw style, on a shifting platform in order to engage in an onscreen battle between two elevators, suspended on cords. (Yeah. Fighting elevators. It was rad.)

As a speaker, I was also a juror for the awards, so was responsible for playing each of the games. With the games that had more physically driven controllers, I had to ask for someone to play the game for me so I could observe. (Too much physical activity would mean I couldn't walk back uphill to my hotel later, or would have significantly less energy and maybe have to miss an evening activity.) On my rounds, I found a game called ReLeap. It's a platformer in which an Asian girl with a prosthetic leg runs and jumps, and the activity is controlled by a floor bar for sliding and a handlebar that you pull back and then push forward to get her to jump.

The main character in ReLeap prepares to soar through the air.

I started to give this team my usual spiel about having a disability and asking if someone could play for me, and they surprised me by explaining that they had thought of this and had brought a regular controller so that people with a unique physical need could play. I can't explain how it felt — after having to disclose my disability to different teams all day, and having to judge only by observation — to have this team say, "We expected folks like you and considered a way to let you play, too." I got kind of teary about it, actually. They were the only team with a more physical kind of controller who offered me a way to play for myself rather than having to just watch.

As I spoke to this team about their game, I realized that their sensitivity and compassion went even further than I thought. Most times when you see an amputee in a video game, the prosthetic is used as a weapon (Bayonetta), or the disability becomes "compensated for" by a superpower (X-Men), or the amputation is used as backstory for why the character is tough (several Overwatch characters). This team, on the other hand, didn't even mention the main character's prosthetic leg until they were asked about it directly. Watching the animations closely, you'll see that the girl only ever jumps from her human leg, not her prosthetic one. We aren't given any backstory or any reason for the prosthetic, we are simply invited to accept that this is the character's reality.

It was for these reasons that, when the jury met to discuss who should win the awards, I nominated ReLeap for "The Woke Award," the award for games that were compelling examples of social justice, or meaningful representations of race and gender issues. The jury thought initially that maybe it wouldn't give the award this year, as no games fit this exact definition. I disagreed, which was difficult for me because it meant sharing my disability with the rest of the jury during my explanation, when I have kept that information pretty close to the vest after my diagnosis last year. I made my points explaining that I was aware that my reasons are highly personal, and I would not think anything less of those who didn't support my opinion, and wouldn't take it personally.

I explained that not only did the ReLeap team go out of their way to represent a character with a disability, but they went about it in an incredibly sensitive and respectful way. Representation is important, but doing it correctly and well is equally so. In the more meta sense, they were the only team to have considered, "What happens when a player with a disability wants to play my game that showcases a character with a disability?" The controller wasn't the only option that took this into consideration, explained that team's faculty advisor — the special apparatus they'd built was also wheelchair accessible.

A conversation ensued among the judges about what "woke" really means, and whether that term is exclusive to race, gender and socioeconomics, or whether it could also apply to any type of situation where a minority (in this case, people with disabilities) are represented truly and well. The various points I made were supported by the jury, and someone made the additional point that this game was special because it caused the jury to reexamine our own definition of what "woke" means, which in itself is what a game described as "woke" should do: start conversations and expand our understanding. I was pleased to present the ReLeap team with The Woke Award at GGC, and while doing so, told my story and shared about my disability publicly for the first time.

Since the conference, I alerted my contacts at AbleGamers and the Microsoft Accessibility Lab about ReLeap, and also brought it to the attention of Ottobock, a manufacturer of prosthetics (some worn by athletes at the Special Olympics). I hope this group of first-year Swedish students can enjoy additional success and attention with this incredibly beautiful and respectfully developed game. For me, it was an excellent example of something I'm noticing more and more as I interact with game developers around the world through my work with iThrive: we are seeing a new generation of developers who want to make compelling, meaningful experiences that are inclusive and which build in empathy and awareness at every level...developers who think about how they can reach a larger number of players simply by remembering to ask the question, "How can they play, too?"

Seeking Contributors to iThrive's New, Peer-Reviewed Journal of Games, Self, and Society

By iThrive Games

UPDATE: We have extended the deadline for the new Games, Self, and Society, (edited by iThrive Games, in cooperation with ETC Press) to September 30th, 2018. We look forward to the additional submissions that examine the many social, emotional, and societal impacts games have on players and beyond!
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iThrive Games, in cooperation with Carnegie Mellon's ETC Press, has released a call for submissions to the inaugural issue of iThrive's peer-reviewed Journal of Games, Self, and Society. Our team of highly respected game scholars, education experts, and mental health specialists recruited from around the United States will review papers submitted to kelli.dunlap@ithrivegames.org by Aug. 31, 2018.

Journal of Games, Self, and Society aims to encourage and advance interdisciplinary scholarship on games, players, and how their interactions impact society. Of particular interest is research into the ways in which games, game design, and gameplay can have a helpful or positive impact on players, their communities, and the world. The journal will serve as a platform for game scholars and designers, educators, and mental health professionals to disseminate their work and propel knowledge, research, and innovation around games as a medium for change, growth, and exploration of self and the wider world. We place special emphasis on works that value interdisciplinary collaboration and embrace diverse perspectives. iThrive Games believes in building supportive and inclusive communities. Accordingly, we encourage submissions from — and which include a focus on — people of all genders, gender expressions, sexual orientations, races, ethnicities, nationalities, religions or beliefs, socioeconomic standings, body sizes, ages, backgrounds, and abilities.

Papers submitted to Journal of Games, Self, and Society can be data-driven or theoretical. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • Identifying and building personal strengths and abilities through gameplay
  • Designing games for positive social and emotional outcomes including empathy, compassion, inclusion, personal growth, and resilience
  • Cooperative gameplay and prosocial outcomes
  • Designing and using games as a space for self-exploration and identity experimentation
  • The therapeutic impact of role-playing games
  • Game design for promoting health and well-being
  • Game design and gameplay as tools for mental health interventions
  • Game-based experiential learning in formal and informal education settings; especially as a path toward acquiring and practicing social and emotional skills such as self- and social awareness, self-management, relationship skills, and responsible decision making
  • Games as tools for teaching and learning social and emotional skills in classrooms, afterschool programs, and therapeutic settings
  • Game design and gameplay as platforms for transforming learning and society

Manuscripts should be no longer than 40 double-spaced pages including references. References and in-text citations should be in APA (American Psychological Association) format. For all other formatting guidelines, please follow the ETC Press Style Guide for Authors, available at: [http://press.etc.cmu.edu/index.php/for-authors/etc-press-style-guide-for-authors/].

Blinded submissions should be sent to Kelli Dunlap at kelli.dunlap@ithrivegames.org by Friday, Aug. 31, 2018. Peer reviewers will review the papers through a blind process. We will notify all authors of manuscript status by November 1, 2018. We intend to publish Journal of Games, Self, and Society twice a year. The next call for papers will be released in early 2019.

We welcome reports of original research, theoretical and review articles that present a new and original contribution to the field, theoretical design articles, and case studies of games in development, user experience testing, and other relevant topics that aim to advance knowledge or raise a new question.

More specifically, we encourage the submission of:

  • Articles that present or discuss theoretical formulations of games and gameplay that provide innovative commentary, design techniques, or analysis on timely topics of inquiry.
  • Comprehensive reviews of a relevant area of inquiry which may contain a meta-analysis, thorough and up-to-date literature review, and/or a novel theoretical, methodological, or design perspective.
  • Case studies that raise relevant and important questions or new areas of inquiry for the field.

ETC Press is an academic and open-source publishing imprint that distributes its work in print, electronic, and digital form. It represents an experiment and an evolution in publishing, bridging virtual and physical media to redefine the future of publication.

Please contact kelli.dunlap@ithrivegames.org with any questions. We look forward to reading your submissions!

Gaming Disorder and the World Health Organization

By iThrive Games

[Note: This article originally appeared on www.takethis.org and is reposted here with permission.]

In June 2018 the World Health Organization (WHO) finalized its draft of the 11th revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-11). Included in the latest version of the medical classification manual is the controversial diagnosis of "Gaming Disorder."

Gaming Disorder Debate: Overview
In general, the scholars who support the inclusion of Gaming Disorder in the ICD-11 and those who don't are not divided over whether a player's gaming can become problematic; gaming, like any activity, can be done to excess. Instead, the debate centers around whether or not problematic gaming as it is currently understood, measured, and researched, meets the scientific litmus test needed to create a new diagnosis. It is important to note that scholars on both sides of the debate want to do what is best both for those who struggle with problematic gaming and those who engage in normal gaming behaviors. Although estimates vary, the most rigorous studies of problematic gaming have found that a very small percentage of players — between 0.6% - 3% — display behavior that "looks anything like this disorder."

The Arguments: For
Supporters of the inclusion of Gaming Disorder in the ICD-11 argue that the goal of the diagnosis is not to pathologize healthy players, or even video games themselves, but to provide support and access to treatment and life-improving care for those struggling with debilitating effects of extreme video game engagement (e.g. loss of a job or relationships due to inability to stop playing). Having a recognized diagnosis, they argue, will enable those who rely on insurance for access to mental health care to seek treatment that will help them rectify functional impairments in their lives caused by their extreme engagement. Furthermore, some scholars emphasize that medicalizing gaming addiction will decrease stigma and increase access to treatment in areas of the world, such as China, that use harsh, punitive "addiction boot camps" as a method of gaming "detox." Pro-diagnosis scholars, Behrang Shadloo and colleagues, argue, "...that in the absence of proper diagnostic guidelines and preponderance of diagnostic-orphan cases, there is the possibility of overuse of restrictive and discriminative approaches, such as involvement of judiciary systems and law enforcement agencies in some countries."

Lastly, supporters of the Gaming Disorder diagnosis argue that the lack of an "officially recognized and unifying diagnostic framework" may be responsible for the confusion and contradictions in the research and that by having an "officially recognized diagnostic framework," future research will be improved because scholars will have a clear goal to work toward. In other words, officially defining what it is would help us find better answers and solutions because we would all be speaking about the same ideas. With the same language and constructs, we could also build more effective intervention strategies.

The Arguments: Against
Concern about including Gaming Disorder in the ICD-11 was first expressed in September of 2016, the same month the diagnosis was proposed, via an open letter to the WHO. This letter was signed by more than two dozen scholars whose areas of research specifically pertain to technology use and its impact on health. In the letter, the authors outlined three main areas of concern and three potential negative consequences of including even a proposal of Gaming Disorder. The first concern focused on the existing quality of research on gaming addiction. "The quality of the research base is low. The field is fraught with multiple controversies and confusions and there is, in fact, no consensus position among scholars."

In fact, there is no consensus on what gaming disorder is even amongst its supporters. Scholars who penned the 2016 open letter of concern highlighted the variety of different conceptualizations of Gaming Disorder they received through commentaries in their follow-up piece:

Would a gaming disorder relate only to gambling oriented games or to video games more generally (James & Tunney, 2017)? Is the problem behavior caused by other underlying mental disorders (Billieux, King, et al., 2017), or is it a consequence of alluring game mechanics (James & Tunney, 2017)? Are we diagnosing people who play online games or offline games, or both (Király & Demetrovics, 2017)? And is gaming disorder just a subcategory of a broader Internet addiction disorder or perhaps just one of many behavioral addictions (Higuchi et al., 2017)?

The second major area of concern voiced in the open letter focused on the diagnostic criteria. According to the ICD-11, Gaming Disorder has only 3 symptoms - impaired control over gaming activities, increased priority given to gaming activities, and increase in gaming activities despite negative consequences. These three symptoms must be present for 12 months, either continuously or in recurrent episodes, and must cause impairment in important areas of functioning (like grades, relationships, work, etc). However, there's no guidance on what "impaired control" looks like or how it may manifest in different contexts (i.e. age of player, type of game, social vs solo gaming). The criteria of giving games priority over other "life interests and daily activities" is equally problematic. Is preferring to play a video game over doing homework (or in my case, doing the dishes) pathological? Probably not. The last symptom, increasing gaming activity despite negative consequences, is also problematic as there is a tendency by those who may not personally engage in or enjoy gaming to misread gamers' immersion and interactivity as addiction. Griffiths himself stated, "Any high level commitment (e.g. sports, music, school) will have some detrimental consequences as other important activities are not given as much priority, but it would be a mistake to always confuse this with addictive behavior."

The vagueness of these criteria becomes even more obvious when you consider that they can occur in recurring episodes, but there's no guidance on what that means. How long do these symptoms have to be present before they're considered "an episode?" A month? A week? A day? How often do these episodes need to repeat? Could a week of intense play in January and again in July (when a highly anticipated game is released, for instance), where the three symptoms could (arguably) be met, satisfy the criteria for Gaming Disorder? It's unclear. And, just to make things even more obtuse, the duration requirement can be shortened "if all diagnostic requirements are met and the symptoms are severe." This kind of ambiguity is frustrating, unsettling, and most of all a recipe for improper diagnosis, especially given the lack of experience with games and negative perception of games amongst many clinicians.

Even scholars who support having a diagnosis for gaming addiction warn that:

(T)he criteria should be set in a way that healthy gamers are not pathologized and the diagnosis should benefit from adequate specificity.... (W)e also insist that WHO and the affiliated work groups should adopt a conservative approach in developing diagnostic guidelines to prevent overdiagnosis and arbitrary inferences... it should be ensured that the boundary with normality is clearly defined and only a minority of cases with significant impairment are diagnosed with gaming disorder.

The criteria, as currently defined in the ICD-11, do not measure up to the standards of its supporters.

Another problem with the criteria for Gaming Disorder is the construct itself. The construct has been based on the existing diagnostic frameworks around substance addiction and gambling disorder and is categorized as "a disorder due to addictive behavior" in the ICD-11. But using criteria based in the addiction frameworks "too often pathologizes thoughts, feelings and behavior that may be normal and unproblematic in people who regularly play video games." Also, these criteria "do not predict problematic outcomes from gaming particularly well because they are not aligned with the gaming context and culture."

Some research into gaming addiction has found that problematic gaming is more akin to impulse-control disorders, like ADHD or Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, than to addiction. Because treatment strategies are largely shaped by disorder frameworks (i.e. strategies for treating mood disorders differ from strategies for treating psychotic disorders), it's critical that the lens through which Gaming Disorder is viewed reflects the actual underpinnings of problematic gaming.

The third issue scholars have raised is that instances of problematic gaming often occur alongside established mental health issues, such as depression and anxiety, and it is doubtful that the criteria for diagnosing Gaming Disorder are nuanced enough to separate the two. In addition, neither anxiety nor depression is listed among the disorders to consider for differential diagnosis, the process of differentiating between diagnoses with similar symptoms and presentations.

If someone is depressed and spends all day in bed, you do not diagnose them with Bed Syndrome, you look at why they spend all day in bed. There is a fear that if a person's gaming is focused on and not the person themselves, this will lead to inadequate mental health treatment. - PlatinumParagon

The last concern voiced by the scholars in the 2016 open letter concerned the consequences of including Gaming Disorder in the ICD-11. There is a long history of media panic over digital gaming that extends back to the early 1900s and the societal anxiety around the moral dangers of pinball. There are news clips from the 1980s and 1990s about the potential negative impact of children and teens playing video games like PacMan and the original Mortal Kombat, concerns that seem quaint and laughable now.

By including a specific gaming disorder, scholars warn that the media panic around video games could lead to a significant number of misdiagnoses and false-positives. Not only would this render the diagnosis practically useless, but it also threatens to label normal play as pathological and healthy players as "addicts."

According to games and mental health expert, Dr. Christopher Ferguson, "The evidence we have doesn't suggest there's anything particularly addictive about games. Most often when parents talk about their kids being addicted, they're actually talking about kids doing something they don't want." Division 46, the American Psychological Association's specialized research group on media psychology, commented on the potential harm of recognizing gaming disorder:

We can discern no clear reason why video games are being singled out for a disorder rather than a general "behavioral addiction" category if the concern were truly regarding clinical access for those with problem behaviors. Thus, an obsessive focus of the WHO on VGA would appear to us to be a response to moral panic (e.g., Cohen, 1972;Ben-Yahuda, 2009), one which in turn is likely to fuel more moral panic, including miscommunications that game playing can be compared to substance abuse.

And last, but not least, is the concern that formalizing a diagnosis of gaming disorder will have a significant, increasingly negative impact on society's attitudes towards games and on people who play games (which is a more varied population than people might think) by pathologizing an incredibly popular pastime. The stigma around games is as old as games themselves. In the past 30 years, games have been blamed for many of society's ills, especially mass shootings, despite repeated studies debunking such claims. The diagnosis of Gaming Disorder could set us back instead of advancing attitudes in a more evidence-aligned direction.

What's Next?
There are a few more steps before the ICD-11 goes into effect. First, the ICD-11 has to be presented to the World Health Assembly in the spring of 2019. If it is approved, it will go into effect January of 2022. However, concerns that this diagnosis will re-stoke the moral panic around video games have already begun to be justified. An article titled, "WHO's Ruling on Video Game Addicts Could Help Prevent Mass Shootings," published the same day the ICD-11 draft was finalized, is one fear-mongering and completely inaccurate headline that managed to conjure the damaging, stigmatizing imagery of those slapped with the addict label, and the harmful, wildly inaccurate stereotype of the mentally ill as exceedingly violent.

Despite this, there is reason for optimism. New, rigorous research in the area of problematic gaming is emerging (Weinstein et al., 2017; Snodgrass et al., 2017, 2018) and more is on the way. The recent push in psychological research for pre-registered studies and an increase in transparency around research methods, procedures, and analysis will hopefully address and clarify the controversy and confusion in the games addiction research space. The ultimate goal for all researchers, whether they support the inclusion of Gaming Disorder in its current form or not, is to continue to investigate the underpinnings, expression, and treatment of problematic gaming.

Overwatch Endorsements and Promoting Player Kindness

By iThrive Games

Blizzard Entertainment has added a feature to their co-op shooter, Overwatch (rated 13+ years), which promotes kindness in their player base. The system took effect in update 1.25 of the game. The idea is that after someone completes a team match, each player has the chance to award up to three "endorsements" to other players, in one of three categories: Shot Caller  (leader/strategist); Good Teammate (effective communicator); and Sportsmanship (someone who behaved in a positive and respectful way). Specific players can be rewarded by a particular person only once per round, and only once every twelve hours.


Screencap of the new endorsements system in Blizzard's Overwatch v1.25.

iThrive Games has created game design resources around concepts like Empathy and Kindness, which are available on our website. In my recent conference talks at GDC, the East Coast Games Conference, the Gotland Games Conference, and a Lunch and Learn event held in Montreal last week, I explained the mental processes that humans go through in order to get from apathy to empathy, and that empathy facilitates kindness. Empathy can exist without kindness (I understand how you feel but I'm not going to actually help you), but it's harder for true kindness to happen without empathy. To be kind requires that a person 1) recognizes that someone else has a need (awareness), 2) understands how that need makes the other person feel (a key part of empathy), 3) has the ability to help in some way (capacity), 4) feels that helping is the right thing to do (morality), and 5) gives something of oneself without expecting anything in return (sacrifice).


Slide from Heidi McDonald's conference talks at ECGC, Gotland Games Conference, and Montreal Lunch and Learn, on the components of kindness.

In our studies of how kindness and empathy manifest in games, we've noticed that, with rare exception, narrative-based and RPG games tend to have baked-in features that promote kindness and empathy, whereas with co-op shooters like Overwatch, PUBG, Fortnite, or League of Legends, the kindness and empathy can be found (or, not found, in cases of toxic behavior) outside the game, in the interactions among the players. (It may be interesting in the future to examine cases where these qualities might exist both inside and outside the game, and the E3 trailer for BioWare's Anthem suggests that this might be such a case. We'll be paying attention!)

iThrive applauds the new Overwatch endorsement system because it encourages kindness. The system asks a player to think more about the experience that they've just had, in the context of their teammates' behavior. For example: Kid32 could have run ahead with everyone else, but she stayed behind to heal and cover me, when she could have gotten wiped out herself. It asks players to momentarily consider how their teammates acted in the interests of others and of the team as a unit, and then to reward others for their helpful play. Not every player will reflect deeply on the match before choosing which teammate to endorse, but those who take this (optional) step will nonetheless be spending some additional time recognizing others, a task for which they receive nothing other than someone else's appreciation and the warm feeling of doing something kind. Endorsements may encourage more positive behavior as well as help players to identify and cooperate with other kind players, increasing the odds that they'll avoid a toxic encounter.

What happens, though, when someone gets reported for bad behavior? Will that affect the person's endorsement score? Couldn't this system mean that jerks just endorse other jerks and then you can't tell jerks from the respectful players? Blizzard thought of that, because of course they did: "Those who consistently maintain a high endorsement level will receive periodic rewards, while those who display negative behavior or accrue suspensions will lose their endorsements."

This new mechanic has been criticized for "forcing players to be 'fake nice,'" and IGN reports that the player community appears to be divided in its opinions. Perhaps those folks complaining about an optional opportunity to be kind to other players are the folks who don't like being kind in the first place. And, honestly, even if players only pretend to be nice, they're practicing a kind behavior, and they're doing that instead of being jerks to each other, and that counts as an improvement in my book.

Mike Sellers, Professor of Practice at Indiana University, authored a paper about a hypothetical player behavior system and cautioned designers against using a reputation system with a single good/bad behavior axis. "Yes, this is a great step," says Sellers of the new Overwatch feature. "But there's a good way to make negative behavior self-defeating, without ever having to decide centrally what negative behavior is. You can be loved by the Capulets and hated by the Montagues, as we all know."

Despite any imperfections in the system, our organization considers it to be a good step toward encouraging positive player behavior, and applauds our friends at Blizzard for approaching this thoughtfully. When successful AAA studios recognize a need for games that encourage more positive behaviors like empathy and kindness, iThrive stands ready to support their efforts with our subject matter expertise, developer education, and design resources because the end result is that those who are playing the games — particularly teens — will reap the emotional benefits as they play video games. It's why we're here.

iThrive’s Resources for Educators: Using Games to Engage the Whole Teen

By iThrive Games

iThrive Games, founded in 2014, is a nonprofit committed to providing meaningful growth experiences for teens, both in and outside of the classroom. Through our education initiatives, launched in 2017, we strive to empower educators to integrate game-based learning in the classroom to support the development of the "whole teen," meaning attending to teens' cognitive, social, and emotional selves.

As iThrive collaborator and veteran social and emotional learning expert, Rachel Poliner, likes to say: "The whole teen is never NOT in front of you." Hoping to isolate the "cognitive self" of a teen — to get them to just pay attention and learn — is impossible and, in fact, counterproductive. Positive emotions and relationships facilitate learning. Only when teens feel safe, connected, and respected is full academic engagement possible. Teens' social and emotional selves are essential to learning.

Video games, both educational and commercial, have been used successfully in education for years, but have been used much less often with teens of middle and high school age than with younger children. They also have been used far too rarely to support social and emotional growth through practices like collaboration, self-reflection, good digital citizenship, and media literacy. Games are often excluded from secondary education in favor of more traditionally "acceptable" media like books and films. This is a huge missed opportunity. We believe that integrating video games into the secondary school classroom can facilitate teaching the whole teen, and we are partnering with innovative educators who are doing just this.

In line with our focus on developing the whole teen, iThrive provides resources and professional development opportunities to teachers to support integrating meaningful video gameplay into education. We invite you to explore our website for materials and updates on our offerings for educators, including our:

Curated Games Catalog
Our Curated Games Catalog is a library of meaningful video games from many genres, along with their age ratings, descriptions, and links to developers' websites. The catalog, curated by iThrive's team of psychologists and game designers with input from our network of experts, can assist you in choosing games that may support skills and habits that teens need to thrive, including Empathy, Curiosity, Growth Mindset, and Kindness. More games and practices are continually being added. Let us know if there's a game you don't see here that you think should be featured!

Article Series
In our games and education article series, we invite teachers and experts in game-based learning — as well as teens who have learned something valuable from their gameplay! — to share tips and resources for integrating video games successfully in the classroom to support rich learning experiences. Read insights from experts like Paul Darvasi, Barbara Chamberlin, and Jesse Schell, and look out for more engaging content that we're adding all the time:

Curricular Resources
iThrive has partnered with a large network of experienced secondary educators to develop rich curricular units around meaningful video games. Our initial efforts are focusing on the visually rich, deeply emotional What Remains of Edith Finch (rated 13+ years) and the heartbreaking social simulation and survival game, This War of Mine (rated 14+ years). These and other in-development units are designed to teach core subject matter in the humanities as well as key social and emotional skills for resilience, including social competence, autonomy, a sense of purpose and future, and problem-solving skills. Over the coming year, iThrive will develop, test, and share these curricular resources for teachers to use and adapt to the specific needs and interests of their teen students.

In the meantime, our Educator's Guides provide a quick overview of games like these that have been used successfully by our educator partners to teach meaningful social and emotional skills in the middle or high school classroom. Check out the guides here and consider how this type of gameplay might enrich your classroom:

We look forward to connecting with an ever-wider network of teachers who believe that meeting teens where they are, in both their virtual and physical worlds, to facilitate meaningful learning is key to their social and emotional growth and resilience. Contact us to get involved!

How Difficult Video Games Inspire Me in My Career at Microsoft

By iThrive Games

As a Software Engineer and former Technical Evangelist at Microsoft, I often have people — sometimes parents — ask me how I got my start in technology. The truth of the matter is, though I've been inspired by a lot of different sources over the years, my biggest source of inspiration to start in technology has always been video games. It was video games that made me curious to learn how to use the internet at a young age, so I could look up cheats and tips or just talk about my favorite games with friends all around the world. And it was also those early games that inspired me to learn exactly how they worked, so that I could modify them, with the dream of someday making my own.

Now that I'm an adult, I haven't stopped playing games. My game library ranges all the way from the most popular games in the world, like the team shooter Overwatch (rated 13+ years), to a long list of lesser-known indie titles. Throughout my career I've been an artist, designer, community manager, and developer. I think being willing to try a variety of games also inspires me to try a variety of challenges in the real world. I'd like to discuss some games I've found inspirational in my career, and maybe it will encourage people to seek out such games, or think of their own examples.

The game that first taught me how to "hack" was actually a very famous one - the first person shooter Doom (rated 18+ years). Though the game's content looks primitive now, it was actually pretty scary at the time, and there was some controversy about whether teenagers should play the title. I'm very glad my parents let me, though, because after I got bored with the levels in the game, I discovered that there was a level editor for the game available online. Soon I was able to create my own levels and skins, and share them around the internet. It's an act that combines design, art, and programming, and can be self-taught at a fairly young age. I heard just the other day that a local high schooler also impressed a tech company by game modding, and had a sudden nostalgia.

Facing off with a Cacodemon in Doom. Source: Author

Other modern games that people might choose to mod:

  • Half-Life series (rated 18+ years; I turned modding this game into a short-term job once when I was in school!)

Another type of game that's inspired me later in life is difficult action platformers. Games in the masocore genre are very hard action games, but that's part of their appeal. With difficult levels combined with unlimited lives, the games reward perseverance and courage under fire. The lesson learned from masocore is that it can be safe to fail, as long as you learn something new that helps you try again. That lesson has stuck with me when trying to learn something new gets tough, or just doesn't work out.

One of many punishing levels from Super Meat Boy. Source

The indie game Super Meat Boy (rated 13+ years) is an example of such a game. Its simple and almost crude presentation hides slick level design. Although I found the game too hard at first, I realized that the trick to the game was typically not to hesitate, but to try to perform levels as quickly as possible. The go fast, fail fast attitude that it promotes helped me to understand game development itself with its design language. Super Meat Boy teaches that it's better to keep trying, even if you fail, than hesitate and never start the level at all. And in development, a project never started is one also never completed. At the end of each successful level in Super Meat Boy, the game celebrates failure in a small way by replaying, all at once, all the mistakes the player made before finally completing the level. It's a cute, if messy way to see just how far you've come.

Other difficult games that reward fast failure and perseverance:

There is another certain type of game that I've found inspirational in the workplace, and that is the puzzle adventure game. As a sharp contrast to action games, these games don't rely much on reflexes, instead training your mind to find connections among clues in an environment. As a child, I was most fond of the King's Quest (rated 10+ years) and Myst (rated E for Everyone) series. Now that I'm an adult, these games have grown up a lot, but they are still out there in different forms.

A puzzle from Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward. Source

A team-building exercise within my group at Microsoft involved a "Room Escape" game - the type of live entertainment that has become popular around the world, which challenges players to solve puzzles within a locked room. I had never done a live room escape before that exercise. But I had trained my logic muscles on the video games Zero Escape, an adventure puzzle series involving the same kind of locked rooms and logic problems. Because of the Zero Escape series (rated 18+ years) — my favorite game in the series is Virtue's Last Reward (rated 17+ years), where the story is full of strange twists and interesting characters — I felt confident solving difficult puzzles. And solving these sorts of puzzles can also help train the brain to think through logical problems when writing code. Many puzzle games also test spatial reasoning useful in design, and the skill set to code-switch between these two modes of thought.

Other challenging puzzle and exploration games I've found inspirational recently:

This just scratches the surface of games I've found inspirational throughout my career, but I hope it gives you a start to checking out some games for yourself. Whether you like to play with fast fingers, or using primarily your brain, there's always a way to use video games as part of lifelong learning.

__________

About the Author

Amanda Lange is a Software Engineer at Microsoft in the Philadelphia area. She has worked on projects with Michigan State University, West Virginia University, and Schell Games studios in Pittsburgh. She is a gamer and well-rounded developer who is also interested in health, app development, design, Mixed Reality and Virtual Reality, AI and conversational frameworks, and the Internet of Things. Her website is http://secondtruth.com. She tweets at @second_truth, Twitch streams at twitch.tv/litagemini, and blogs at http://www.tap-repeatedly.com.

"Link"ing Games and Therapy: A Triforce Intervention

By iThrive Games

[Content Note: Description of trauma, sexual assault]
Jane (not her real name) was a 13-year-old girl referred to me after being groped multiple times by random peers in the hall at school while visiting her locker between classes. As a result of Jane's traumatic experiences, she was afraid to go to school, walk in the halls, visit her locker, or be home alone, and she was becoming increasingly dependent on her parent.

Although Jane's school staff was supportive of her, they felt there was not much they could do to protect her from future instances.

Jane came to our first several sessions wearing pajamas, often with a hat on and the brim over her eyes. She shared with me that she wore her hat to avoid potential social contact.

Like with nearly all clients I encounter, I asked Jane about what she liked to do her free time. I like to capitalize on clients' skills and interests to help them meet treatment goals. This often initiates a conversation about video games when they're of interest, and it turned out Jane loved to play Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (rated 10+ years) on her Nintendo Switch. Even though she was bashful in our first session, she positively lit up when we talked about gaming. I could see her physically relax. I met the real Jane in that moment.

Link, the protagonist of the game, was a great character to apply in Jane's situation. Link is granted special abilities via the Triforce - a magical artifact that allows him to be powerful, wise, and courageous. In the Legend of Zelda games, Link battles to preserve the country of Hyrule. In Breath of the Wild, he wakes from a deep sleep to re-discover himself and his story, returning to his role as the warrior who battles with the queen of the land to preserve the balance of the Triforce.

Link and the Triforce in Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Source

In Jane's situation, it was clear that her courage and power were taken from her. Her healing journey mirrored that of Link's, re-discovering herself and her autonomy. Our main work focused on how she could embrace her inner Link, arming herself with her mental Triforce and entering school emboldened by a new persona she carried on the inside. I encouraged her to find a physical reminder of Link, whether it be a bracelet, a small token she could carry in her backpack, or a symbol to draw at times when she felt weak or anxious. I encouraged her to find her own protective measures since school left her wanting. She advocated with her teachers to visit her locker at less-frequented times until she was more comfortable and kept with friends whenever possible. We discussed her ability to play the game as homework, finding inspiration in Link's adventurousness and exploration. Link often faced challenges at night, trying to find safety in warm places where he could rest protected. We used this analogy for her to create her own safe space at home when she was alone, so she understood the barriers between herself and the frightening world outside.

In the end, Jane's transformation is one I will never forget; it was both physical and internal. One day, several sessions in, she came to see me dressed in bright, colorful clothes that were a stark contrast to the subdued, baggy pajamas she had worn before. Instead of her typical hat, she wore her hair styled - and with a brave new haircut. In the side-shave of her new 'do, she had the Triforce cut into her buzzcut. It was a statement few could miss. She smiled, showing off her new purple lipstick. She walked with purpose and her head held high as she entered my office. We celebrated her ownership of herself, her courage, and the wisdom she gained in her process. Her parent reflected how she was back to her old self: bubbly, happy, unabashed. She walked her school's halls feeling more in control of herself, able to have a say in her journey.

Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild game trailer.

I think much like how we approach clinical interventions in general, it is inconsiderate to the client to only use one method to help them achieve their goals. Therapists have been trained in many ways to consider mental illness and to help facilitate change - it is incredibly important to personalize what we do with clients, so we can meet them where they are and help them find their own growth. Games can be another tool in the theoretical tool box, a useful antidote against suffering that can improve lives. Proper use and intentional application of games are the key to doing this properly.

Games unlock the door to exploring new selves, connecting with stories, and practicing skills like social connection, patience, and ingenuity. The way people mentally approach games is unlike how people typically approach therapy; it is an invaluable way to allow for a curious, open headspace that builds rapport and takes down internal walls. Of course, proper psychoeducation about regulation of play time is key to helping clients lead balanced, healthy lives.

Takeaways / Pro Tips for Therapists

  • Be open and curious about games, regardless of how much you know. Your clients can be your guides, and will be expressing their passion at the same time.
  • If you are new to game content a client brings into therapy, do a quick online search to find a thorough explanation.
  • Don't assume it's mostly your male or teen clients who enjoy gaming. In fact, adult females make up a bigger proportion of the gaming community than teen boys!
  • Try to elicit clients' own ideas when setting goals: they have creative ways to integrate game content if you don't have suggestions!
  • Don't assume you need a console to engage in gaming therapy. There are tons of ways to apply games without any devices in the therapy room. You could:
    • Have clients draw their avatars and discuss their choices
    • Discuss game narrative and clients' interpretations of the story, including how they apply it to themselves
    • Assign homework for clients to play games with targeted objectives
    • Have clients record their play on Twitch or by camera for in-session review, or watch videos of others playing the game online
  • Nearly all games have an underlying message of overcoming adversity, always a great discussion topic
  • Using Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild:
    • Capitalize on the mobility of the Switch and have clients bring their game to the session to show you how they play!
    • Discussion concepts:
      • Adventure, exploration, and new experiences
      • Power, courage, wisdom, and the balance between them
      • Teamwork
      • Self-understanding (Link wakes from a coma and has to re-discover his story)
      • It takes a village: Link cannot defeat the enemy on his own. How do clients relate? What are their supports? How do they find more?

__________

About the Author

Sarah Hays is a mental health provider and passionate geek therapist — she integrates the anthologies and play of comics, video games, board games, and movies into her therapeutic interventions. She works in private practice in the Seattle area, recently graduating from the University of St. Thomas' Counseling Psychology doctoral program. She also directs psychological operations for Recovree, a MN-based startup creating a telehealth app to help peer recovery specialists connect with their clients about maintaining sobriety. Sarah specializes in LGBTQ+ care, dual diagnosis, geek therapy, and technology and its advancement of the psychological field. Learn more about Sarah at https://sarahhayspsyd.com/.

Mental Health in Games: 3 Design Tropes that Need to Die

By iThrive Games

In honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, let's talk about how mental illness is represented in video games and why that should change.

About a quarter of commercially released video games include characters with symptoms of a mental illness. Too often, these portrayals follow the trends we've seen in over 40 years of research into film and television: they tend to be negative, exaggerated, and inaccurate. Since stigma is a major obstacle to seeking treatment and is a known risk factor for poorer mental health outcomes, stereotypical and exaggerated depictions in media can be especially harmful.

[Related: Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice - Why the World Needs a Hero with a Mental Illness]

Video games can do better. Games are not just a reflection of cultural values, they have the power to shape those values in return. So, for you game designers out there, here's a brief list of 3 common mental health tropes that you have the power to — and should — kill with fire.

The Homicidal Maniac
The Homicidal Maniac is a character trope that inseparably ties mental illness to violence. This character is often portrayed as an evil, ruthless, unfeeling, untreatable, and blood-thirsty killing machine whose traits and behaviors are explained only by some ill-defined mental illness.

According to a 2012 article on IGN, "...there are eleven well-known video game characters that display a special kind of crazy. Why eleven? Because we're crazy, too." Source

  • Why the trope needs to die: Depicting people with a mental illness as inherently violent is the most common way television, film, novels, and even the news "address" mental illness. Characters with a mental illness in movies are far more likely to commit violence than characters without a mental illness, and the rate at which these fictional characters commit violence is grossly overrepresented compared to real-life statistics. In reality, people coping with a mental illness are 10 times more likely than the general population to be victims of violent crime, and 14 times more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators of it. Not only does this trope perpetuate the stereotype that people managing mental illness are violent, but it's also —in this author's opinion- an uninspired and cliched way to approach writing and character development. Do better!

Completely Incomplete: The Symptoms as Character
These depictions take the most visible, non-violent symptoms of mental illness — such as disorganized speech and movement, delusions, hallucinations, and paranoia — and flatten them into a one-dimensional, straight jacket-wearing, babbling, rocking-back-and-forth-in-a-corner caricature. These characters are not whole people, only symptoms personified. The symptoms become the character.

A marine NPC in the Halo 3 level Floodgate talks to himself while pointing a pistol at his head after a traumatic encounter with The Flood, the intergalactic space zombie antagonists of the Halo series. Image source

  • Why the trope needs to die: Not every character with a mental illness needs to be as rich and complex as Hellblade's Senua, but if there's time to create a background NPC who exhibits symptoms of mental illness, there's time to make sure that that portrayal is not stereotypical, cliche, or harmful. People who are coping with a mental illness are already often reduced to single words — depressed, schizophrenic, bipolar — and the concept that "you are your disorder" does not need to be perpetuated in spaces that are intended for relaxation and recreation. Normalizing caricatures or extremes of mental illness perpetuates people's misconceptions about what mental illness is and looks like.

Hellish Psychiatric Settings (and Psychiatrists)
There is nothing inherently wrong with using a psychiatric facility as a setting for a game. Unfortunately, however, these kinds of institutions, as represented in games, are almost always places of tragedy and trauma. They are often depicted as ominous and creepy with ephemera strewn about, including straight jackets, scary-looking medical tools, padded walls, and medieval-like restraints. They are frequently used to convey to the player, in shorthand, that the player should be afraid. Have you, as a player, ever spawned in a psychiatric facility and had something good happen? Chances are, probably not. Media portrayals of mental health professionals, either practicing in psychiatric hospitals or seeing clients in a downtown office, tend to evoke similar negative stereotypes of therapists as frauds, quacks, or wildly unethical people.

The Evil Within opens with detective Sebastian Castellanos investigating a mass murder at a local psychiatric facility. Image source

  • Why the trope needs to die: This trope preys upon culturally established stereotypes about what a psychiatric hospital represents and the kinds of people that provide and utilize that service. There's no denying that mental health care in psychiatric facilities has a long, troubled, and sometimes horrific history. The Town of Light is a beautifully disturbing example of a game that explores that history well. For many, the thought of seeking treatment — especially in a psychiatric hospital — can be a scary prospect, and many who have spent time in these kinds of hospitals may find the experience frightening. Ultimately, however, the goal of these institutions is to help people by providing intensive and specialized care. Unsurprisingly, portrayals of psychiatric hospitals are most frequently found in horror games because they so easily serve as an affective schema — an emotional shortcut — for conveying a sense of fear to players. I would strongly encourage any game developer who is considering using a psychiatric hospital as a setting, especially in a horror game, to carefully evaluate the necessity of such a setting and whether or not it perpetuates the misguided and harmful perception of treatment centers as Hell-on-Earth.

Why Kill these Tropes with Fire?
If harmful portrayals of mental health can influence how players perceive mental illness, doesn't that imply that exposure to extreme violence in games influences how players perceive violent acts? Not necessarily.

It is well-established and widely accepted that violence is not socially acceptable. We teach children from a very young age to use their words rather than their fists. Engaging in aggressive acts in school is frequently met by ostracization from peers and punishment from adults. Workplaces have defined rules and guidelines about behaving aggressively in the office and often back them up with severe consequences. In short, the concept of thou shall not kill, steal, or harm others  is deeply ingrained in our personal values and social reality - the social norms are very clear. We know hurting people is wrong no matter what a video game depicts.

This same reasoning does not apply to mental illness. Other than having a friend or family member with a mental illness, the number one place a person will come in contact with mental health content is through mass media (film, tv, games). Because mental health continues to be stigmatized, we as a society find it taboo to talk about. A lack of open, respectful conversation leads to facts being obscured and misinformation and stereotypes being propagated.

But games can help to change this. By being more mindful of the types of mental health representations they use, game designers have an opportunity to challenge the damaging, persisting beliefs and stereotypes many hold about mental illness.

Game-Based Learning in the Classroom: 3 Essential Questions

By iThrive Games

Because games teach in ways that are unique, they bring many interesting affordances to the classroom. Games give learners a chance to immerse themselves in new information, apply that information in problem solving, and take new perspectives. They offer exposure to new content, and ways to practice tasks. Students can fail safely in games, and they can experiment with different types of solutions. Games allow students to work in self-directed, independent ways, and also on collaborative teams. There are some great strategies for finding games, involving your learners in selecting games, and helping students reflect on their gameplay, in a previous post on the iThrive Games blog by Barbara Chamberlin: Meaningfully and Realistically Using Games in Your Classroom.

We've seen games used in different ways in classrooms. The simplest way to use them is as a time filler on the computer in the back of the room for students who finish work early. If you just need a way for students to fill their spare time, using games is easy. Point your learner to the computer, give them some suggested sites (such as BrainPOP's GameUp or Games for Change), and game on!

[Related: iThrive's Curated Games Catalog features titles that may support teens' social and emotional skills including kindness, curiosity, empathy, and growth mindset.]

While the time-filling game model is fine as a starting point, we love seeing games integrated as more engaging, collaborative, and long-term immersive experiences. Ideally, gameplay is used to help students learn, not just to help them practice. Game-based learning offers the most to students when it is consistent with the other educational practices of the classroom. As instructional designers, teachers use several different tools to teach, but the tools should align with how learning happens. As with all educational technology, the most important decisions have little to do with the medium and everything to do with the what is being learned. More specifically, we need to think from the learner's perspective.

The 3 essential questions for incorporating game-based learning in the classroom. Image source: Authors.

Game-based learning can be guided in the classroom with three key questions (Note: These questions are based on the three-part framework we have created for the development of educational games. This process also adapts beautifully for developing a game-based learning model for using games in classrooms):

  • What change do I need to see in my student?
  • What kinds of activities will help create that change?
  • How can games facilitate those activities?

What Change do I Need to See in My Student?

It's easy to think about what we need to teach someone, rather than focusing on what they need to learn. Of course, learning is only one kind of transformation. Our students may just need to learn content, but it is more likely we also want them to change their behavior, increase their skills, or connect emotionally to something they are learning. It's likely we need them to change in more than one way. There are five key types of change we might want to promote in students:

  • Knowledge: What they know
  • Skill: What they can do
  • Behavior: How they act
  • Emotion: How they feel
  • Physiology: How they are

As educational designers, it helps us to think about what happens in the classroom as multiple types of change, rather than just knowledge gain. For example, for a unit on civics, we might want students to...

  • learn facts about the way our government works (knowledge change)
  • identify ways in which they can make changes in local, state, or national government (skill change)
  • try to influence government for the kind of change they want to create in the world (behavior change)

For a health unit, we might want them to...

  • understand caloric balance and different types of nutrients (knowledge change)
  • prioritize daily physical exercise (emotion change)
  • increase their cardiovascular capability (physiology change)

These types of change are based on where are students are now, and how we want them to be after our lesson. What knowledge and attitudes do they already have? What misconceptions do they have? How will they be transformed? If we can answer those things, the next step is to think about what they need to do to make that change.

Kids learn content from games, but they also learn by the way they play games. When they play collaboratively, they benefit from social learning strategies. Image source: Authors.

What Kinds of Activities Create that Change?

We each like to learn differently. We watch, listen, read, and absorb information. We practice, memorize, and rehearse different facts or phrases or activities. Change can come from a range of different activities, but the important thing to remember is that all change ultimately comes from doing. For this reason, thinking about which types of doing will most help your learner is very important. For example, in a project-based lesson about different states of matter, students might...

  • absorb information
  • discuss what they learn
  • form hypotheses
  • test those hypotheses
  • reflect
  • re-hypothesize

Each of those activities brings about some amount of change in a student, but all of them work together to create more significant and lasting change.
Students engaged in learning technical writing may...

  • familiarize themselves with different rules for grammar and punctuation
  • practice applying those rules in different types of writing

Learners on a field trip may...

  • experience wonder and surprise while learning about animals
  • be challenged to rethink something they feel should be true but isn't

Creating lists of all the different types of activities that learners go through can be challenging, but it helps to just think of the verbs. Given the content, process, or change you want for your learners, how do you believe they are most likely to achieve that change? What kinds of things do they have to do to go through that change? Again, it is likely to be not just one, but several different kinds of activities.

How Can Games Help with Those Activities?

The third logical step is to use games to facilitate those activities that bring about change. We look forward to one day finding a clearinghouse with thousands of games that address all of the different kinds of learning our students do...but we just aren't there yet. The good news is that wonderful games are already available and new ones are being released every year. The kinds of games that engage students in deeper learning experiences can take a considerable amount of time to build. Quick, quiz-like games are fairly easy to make — and accordingly, to find — but may not offer richer learning beyond helping students memorize facts.

The challenge for teachers is to find the games that best encourage the activities that will impact learners the most in a way that matches their educational approach. Quiz and reward games teach students how to memorize facts, but they don't help students do, explore, question and apply the content. In implementing games in your classroom, there must be a match between your content and the way in which you want your students to learn.

In Night of the Living Debt, players succeed (and fail) at raising their credit score. Image source

For example, several different types of games offer content regarding financial literacy. Night of the Living Debt, an iPad game we developed at NMSU's Learning Games Lab, is designed to help students understand how a credit score works. The content behind the game is fairly basic: it includes what types of activities impact your credit score (paying off a credit card, being late with payments, taking out certain kinds of loans), as well as what types of things are impacted by your credit score (loan rates, housing opportunities). What is unique about learning this content through gameplay is the way in which the learning occurs. In the game, students are allowed to experiment with different activities, getting immediate feedback regarding their credit score. They are allowed to fail and try again. The developers believe that this kind of learning is more likely to impact players' future behavior, than if they were simply exposed to the content by reading a list of credit score influences, or if they were quizzed on what types of activities affect credit score. How the students learn in the game is as important as what they learn.

If you can articulate these ideal ways to learn, your next step is to find a game that teaches with similar approaches, and supplement the game with additional activities. You might find a game that introduces content, but then you might add lab activities that allow students to apply that content in new ways. On the other hand, you might have students learn content on their own through their books, then use open-ended gameplay to help them apply it in ways that are difficult to do in a classroom.

Good educational games address content and introduce players to different ways to learn. When a good educational game matches your educational approach, you have a seamless and effective way to use game-based learning to its greatest advantage.

* * *

About the Authors

Barbara Chamberlin, PhD, oversees research and development at the Learning Games Lab at New Mexico State University, a non-profit educational production studio. She has a passion for user testing, math and science education, and hands-on learning. Her current projects include apps for pre-school students on physical education and healthy eating, chemistry learning tools for college students, and pre-Algebra games for middle school students. Learn more about her work at learninggameslab.org.

Jesse Schell is the CEO of Schell Games, a team of one hundred people who strive to make the world's greatest educational and entertainment games, including Yale Medical's PlayForward: Elm City Stories, Water Bears VR, SuperChem VR, the Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood games, and Happy Atoms. Schell Games also creates pure entertainment content, such as the award-winning VR game, I Expect You To Die, and the comedy space game Orion Trail. Jesse also serves as Distinguished Professor of the Practice of Entertainment Technology at Carnegie Mellon University. Jesse has worked on a wide variety of innovative game and simulation projects for both entertainment and education, but he is best known for his award-winning book, "The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses," and his predictions about the future of gaming technology. He is a previous chair of the International Game Developers Association, and former Creative Director of the Disney Virtual Reality Studio.

Co-op Therapy: Using Video Games to Connect with Teen Clients

By iThrive Games

In my therapy practice, I've found that the best way to reach a client is by speaking his or her "language." When it comes to talking to teens, I don't just mean speaking English or Spanish. I mean speaking fluently about the latest trends, songs, and games.

I once worked with a client who did not want to participate in therapy at all. He just sat there. This is not uncommon, especially for teens brought to therapy against their wishes, but I had some ideas on how to help him open up. I was an in-home therapist at the time, so I was able to observe this client's home environment and easily find things in it to ask him about. In this case, what I chose was the client's GameCube. I asked him about his favorite games and whether he'd be up for playing one of them together. He ran and grabbed two controllers.

Nintendo GameCube, 2001. Image source

We played Dragon Ball Z: Budokai, a fighting game. I was excited to play because we both loved "Dragon Ball," an anime (Japanese cartoon) about martial artists saving the world. The first time we played, I won and he reacted with some playful trash-talk — "Oh, I'll get you next time!" — and we both laughed about it. He seemed to be having fun until I won again.

I noticed he seemed to be getting angrier every time I won, so after a few games I let him win. He became obnoxiously excited, taunting and teasing me for losing. I realized he could benefit from working on social skills and emotion regulation, things that were not on his treatment plan. Stepping into his world by playing a game he loved revealed to me several issues that needed to be worked on to help him thrive, things that previous observation had not brought to light. Finding these things out was a net positive, but continuing to play a game in a way that triggered angry or obnoxious responses was not going to help. So I decided that we would play together, not against each other.

My client didn't have any cooperative games — ones where we could play on the same team together — so I stopped by a Gamestop and picked up some used games for him to choose from. The one he wanted to play was Star Wars Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike, which also happened to be one of my favorite games.

Players work together to take down a Star Destroyer. Image source

Rebel Strike is a space-combat simulator set in the Star Wars universe that includes a cooperative 一 or "co-op" 一 mode that would let us play together rather than against one another. This was a great game for us to play because it has no versus mode (a gameplay mode where players compete with each other), only a "story mode" where the roles are equal and the play cooperative. Everything we did would help each other progress toward the goals of each mission. When we started playing, my client didn't seem to understand what was going on or what we were supposed to do. This was a great opportunity for me to fly ahead of him and ask him to follow me. It allowed me to teach him how to play, what the buttons did, and what the objectives were. I was able to be supportive and provide guidance in a way that he was open to.

Once he got the hang of things, we played the game as intended: Take out enemy TIE fighter ships and turrets and explode the Death Star. The important thing is that we did it together. We weren't competing anymore. It didn't matter who shot down more TIE fighters or destroyed the most turrets because ultimately we both won. This was very different from playing against each other in a fighting game.

These experiences helped build our therapeutic relationship; my client understood I was on his team and he began to open up to me while playing.

A few years later in my private practice, I had another client who did not want to open up at first. I asked him about his favorite things to do and playing video games, especially Minecraft, was at the top of his list.

Minecraft is available on many devices, so I was able to explore different ways to integrate it into our sessions. We started with the mobile version. My client had Minecraft on his phone and he asked if he could play during a session. It wasn't ideal because he was playing on his own and it seemed like his way of getting out of being there. So we tried a few different things. We agreed that he could earn game time at the end of the session if he participated. This often works with younger children but it turned out it wasn't a good fit for this teenager. He figured out quickly that he could sit silently for the entire session, or at least until it was time to play.

I tried the opposite approach and let him play at the beginning of the session for a set amount of time, during which we could talk about what he was building. Having something in common to talk about and something else for him to focus on while we talked helped establish a relationship, to lower some of his defenses, and to move toward more open sharing. A tentative peace treaty had been reached.

"Playing together - and not against each other - built trust, and I was able to show my teen clients that I was there to support them using their language."

It wasn't until we started playing together that we began to really make progress in building rapport and working toward our goals. I had an Xbox 360 in my office, so we were able to jump into a Minecraft world together. This is something my client was used to doing at home with friends and family and I immediately noticed that he was more relaxed and he seemed more comfortable with this setup. It was great to see that he was in his element. Exploring a world together, walking through the same space, we were finally able to communicate clearly. Maybe it was the setting, the fact that he trusted me now, or both, but we were finally able to get to work on our treatment goals.

In both of these examples, games were the client's preferred "language." Playing together — and not against each other — built trust, and I was able to show my teen clients that I was there to support them using their language. Using play and games in therapy to facilitate skill building and rapport is well documented, and video games are one digital extension of that approach.

For any mental health providers interested in using games, here are three quick tips for using games in therapy with teen clients:

  • Use games as an icebreaker and relationship builder: Asking about games teen clients like can be a great way to kickstart a therapeutic relationship with them. Demonstrating a genuine interest in something a teen is passionate about is always a good way to build rapport, whether it's games, books, or something else that you both like. For me, both talking about and playing games in therapy has been a great way to help my teen clients feel relaxed and trusting enough to talk to me and become open to addressing challenges.
  • Use gameplay as a window into habits and behaviors: Games can bring out behaviors or difficulties you may not otherwise see in action and can serve as a jumping-off point to work on developing adaptive skills. Games let players face defeat and frustration in a pretty low-stakes way. Those difficult emotional experiences are great opportunities to connect and work on building awareness and skills.
  • Mine games for their personal meaning to your clients: Not everyone has the resources or the know-how to have a dedicated gaming console in the office, and that's okay! Asking questions about what games teen clients like to play, giving them space to relive fond gaming memories, and analyzing the themes or narratives in a game can provide great insight into a teen's internal world.

__________

About the Author

Josué Cardona is a mental health and technology expert. He runs www.geektherapy.com, a website that celebrates the intersection of Geek culture and mental health. Josué has a background in biomedical engineering and a master's degree in mental health counseling. He operated his own psychotherapy and coaching practice for two years.

Sea of Thieves: Anchored in Positive Design

By iThrive Games

Sea of Thieves (SoT; rated 13+ years), a pirate-themed, open-world game, launched in March of 2018 with over 1,000,000 players ready to set sail on day one. What initially sparked my interest in SoT was an article in US Gamer about how Rare, the development studio, had specifically designed the game to preemptively combat the toxic and trolling behaviors commonly seen in games that feature player versus player (pvp) combat.

It was refreshing to see a developer be proactive rather than reactive to well-known problems. They chose the strategy of encouraging good behavior rather than solely punishing unwanted behavior. For example, each ship has a brig where the crew can detain disruptive teammates by voting. Managing problematic players in other titles usually entails "kicking" or "booting" the player from the game. This is both ineffective at dissuading future negative behavior — as getting removed from the game is frequently the goal of the griefer — but also tends to put the team who just lost a player at a disadvantage.

According to Rare's Design Director, Mike Chapman, the brig system empowers players and disempowers trolls as the only way disruptive players can leave the brig is by having teammates vote to release them or by quitting the game. In other words, Chapman suggests the brig provides an "interesting psychological shift" wherein the focus is on encouraging players to play the "right way" rather than using punishment tactics.

Of course, it's not all fair seas and jaunty jigs. Players can get pretty salty and trolling and griefing do happen — including on sloops, where only two players are allowed at a time, so there's no way to get a majority vote to lock a disruptive player in the brig:

Another avenue of griefing even takes advantage of the brig detainment system. One strategy is to get thrown into the brig and then go AFK (Away From Keyboard). While the troll's character is detained, the player can go off and make a sandwich IRL while their teammates complete quests and earn coin, spoils that the troll still gets even though they did not help earn the rewards.

There have also been issues reported of teams of three setting sail on a four-person galleon in order to be matched with a random fourth player whom they instantly vote to put into the brig. The system has its loopholes, but Rare is actively collecting information about player interactions via in-game telemetry and through the "community hot topics" section of the SoT online forum to inform iteration and improvement efforts.

Even though this positive design isn't perfect at curtailing disruptive behaviors, players' many positive social experiences in the game speak volumes about the culture that's built up around it. Arguably, the game's biggest value lies in its potential for joyful social interactions.

SoT is really meant to be played in multiplayer mode. There's a general consensus online that single-player mode is frustrating, and I certainly found that to be true during my first attempt at playing SoT solo. The learning curve is fairly steep and there isn't a great deal of in-game support to get started. As I was fumbling around trying to figure out how to set my quest, a random player jumped aboard my ship and shot me. R.I.P. me.

The second time, though, I joined a group of friends and really got a taste of the SoT experience. Cooperating with experienced players significantly lessened the learning curve and allowed me to really enjoy just being in the game. Before setting sail, we drank a tankard of grog and watched the world go blurry and our crewmates start swaying. We all pulled out our concertinas and hurdy-gurdies for a quick disembarking shanty. Then we plotted our course, raised anchor, lowered and trimmed the sails, and steered in a northwesterly direction. (Pro tip: turn off your lanterns so you're harder to spot!)

In SoT, players sail together and complete quests to win gold and fame. Image source

When it was time to call it a night, I didn't want to stop. I had pirate-related dreams and was excited to play the next day. Ever the psychologist, I wondered what it was about this game that excited me. What I landed on was that the game felt immensely satisfying. My friend Joe was at the helm while Brian manned the back sails and Allison tended the front sails. I sat in the crow's nest with my spyglass watching for enemy ships. We solved rhyming clues to find the location of a buried treasure, fought skeleton pirates, evaded hostile ships, repaired damage to the hull, and traded treasure chests for coin. It was like an epic adventure with my friends, a digital road trip in a boat.

The components of SoT align with what iThrive Games has found to be meaningful game design — opportunities to: explore a system, exercise agency and autonomy, face incremental challenges, find support even in failure, and connect with other people in a meaningful way.

System exploration: Sailing your sloop or galleon requires an understanding of how the parts of the ship interact, and experimenting with those components changes how the system functions. For example, adjusting the main sail ever so slightly is the difference between cutting through chop at a quick clip or merely chugging along across the waves.

Agency and autonomy: Being an open world, there is ample opportunity for player choice and self-expression. As the player, you choose what you want to do, where you want to go, and how you want to get there, and almost every choice you make feels meaningful and of consequence.

Incremental challenge and good feedback: The game scaffolds quest challenges from easy to more difficult and provides tons of feedback in terms of your status as a player and a pirate.

Support even in failure: Failure in this game happens a lot, and although there is some disappointment at losing a treasure chest or special item, the game doesn't punish you. One of the first times I played, I (accidentally) sunk four different ships. It was frustrating to lose my cargo, but another ship was always provided and I was never left stranded. Even if your character dies, the penalty is not particularly punitive. You spend a few seconds on the Ferry of the Damned and then can rejoin your crew. Also, the world is absolutely gorgeous.

The beautiful world of SoT. Image source

Meaningful social interactions: One of the coolest things about this game is its strong pull towards social and cooperative play. Yes, you can voyage alone, but it's both easier and more fun to sail with a crew. And because it's an open world, social interactions are not limited to those in your party.

"Bringing players together in a multiplayer game, creating new bonds, making new friends, that's this game in a nutshell, that's what we want to do." - Joe Neate, Executive Producer

Here's an anecdote from an SoT player (shared with me by @Lvl25Magikarp via DM on Twitter) about his encounter with some friendly strangers:

[My friends] and I were going to an outpost to sell our loot. Instead of pulling anchor, we slammed straight into dock where another ship was unloading. Both teams were screaming into our mics that we were all friendly. Sold our stuff then joined them on their ship for a while! We sank a few ships together and ended up facing a skull fortress. We agreed to split the loot 50/50. We expected them to be true pirates and steal our half but we all kept true to our promise and sold the loot without issues. We had hours of random shenanigans and laughs with people we had never met before. It felt like we had known each other for years. After the initial suspicion went away, we all got along extremely well and the crews integrated pretty flawlessly.

And another example:

As a solo sloop, I wasn't looking to pvp or get caught in any prolonged combat, so when a galleon pulled up close to me, I did the only logical thing. I waved. Next thing I knew I was surrounded by three well dressed sailors, playing instruments and dancing. So i did the logical thing. I started playing along with them All of a sudden, a well dressed captain walks up to me, blue gold garb, with a very large hat. He turns on push to talk and asks, "Hello there ltroyal! Have you heard the word?" "what word" I respond?
"Why?! The word of ARRRRR. KELLEY!"
And with the end of that proclamation, the group of 4 burst out dancing while the captain blasted Ignition - Remix into push to talk.
After dancing for a couple minutes, a little singing, and some grog. The song was over, and the captain told his crew to go back to the ship. "Arrrrrrr I think I'll stay with you ltroyal." "You sure you don't want to go back to your ship?" I responded, kind of confused. After the galleon with the 3 crew sailed away, it was me and that captain.
Of course he started playing the titanic theme, ran to the front of the boat, "hold me ltroyal."
About 15 minutes later, we ran into another sloop, which opened fire on us. But without missing a beat, the captain starting blasting the Pirates of the Caribbean theme song. After hard combat, a unlucky cannon ball blew the captain off the boat, where he boarded the other boat, and was slain so that I could get away. As he I was sailing away, I could hear him yell "GO ON LTROYAL, I'VE GOT THEM NOW!"
I will never forget you captain, preacher of the word of ARRRR. Kelley, and truly unique, kind player. You proved that this game can be an amazing sandbox for those who put their minds to creating unique, fun encounters. And I bought SOT instantly after logging off for the day.

These kinds of social interactions foster a sense of togetherness, connection, and community which, even in brief encounters, can have positive effects including increased happiness, confidence in our ability to connect with others, and feelings of social engagement, and decreased feelings of loneliness and isolation.

Sharing spaces with friendly, kind strangers has been shown to increase optimism and self-esteem, make us feel safer, and help people generally enjoy their lives more.

Player leaves a treasure chest for a random player to find and trade in for coin. Image source

SoT's focus on deep and consistent social interaction requires of players the kinds of robust social and emotional skills we hope teens will develop: communication, collaboration, and cooperation. Other skills such as planning, organization, good decision making, and foresight are crucial to navigating the seas. The game creates the opportunity space for players to form, disband, and reform communities and foster a sense of camaraderie and connection. Flaws aside, that's gaming at its best.

How Games Change the World by Modeling the Truth

By iThrive Games

"How can a game change young people's minds in a positive way?"

There's a hopeful idea underneath this question. It's hidden beneath the words, and it's one any parent would recognize: "I believe that my message to my children will be heard."

Certainly, parents' messages to their children are often heard. Still, anyone who has raised a child understands that we don't necessarily get to reprogram our children at will. They take some of what we say, and leave much of the rest behind.

I believe that game designers face a similar dilemma. Can games change people's minds? At all?

It might seem like an odd question at first. Of course they can! Can't they?

Let me be more specific. Can games deliver a particular message to a player? Especially a young player? Can game designers alter the way people see the world, similar to the way a parent, a book, or a movie can?

I have a controversial opinion on this matter. I believe that games do not change people's minds in the same way as linear narrative forms of entertainment. Linear narrative asks us to accompany a character (who we come to empathize with) on a journey, and the fact that we do not have any control over that journey allows (or forces) us to go places we were not expecting to go. If this journey reveals human truths to us, then that revelation changes us.

Games are not like that. Not even close. I believe that the true power of games is to reveal systemic truths.

Systemic Truths

It may be strange to think of systems as having any truth value at all. What do systems reveal about the truth? Does the public transportation system of a city have some kind of higher truth embedded in it?

There are many truths embedded inside a public transportation system:

  • Crossing a city takes time. How much is not just a factor of distance, but of how the design of the streets and the vehicles and many other things interrelate.
  • The more connections one must make in a connected system like this, the less efficient any particular journey will be...
  • ...but, without points in a transportation system where people can make choices to go different directions, the system loses a huge amount of its value.
  • The overall efficiency of a system is related to its complexity and its flexibility.

And so on. These are technical truths. Are there deeper truths we can find?

  • The users of a public transportation system will tend to be a less affluent, more vulnerable population. These kinds of systems support certain groups more so than others.
  • Without public solutions to transportation problems, humans will tend to destroy their own cities. Or, at the very least, growth will be capped.

Or, how about:

  • Cities require public systems (like transportation) to thrive...but also to lessen the harm that cities do, both to the environment and to the people who live within its bounds.

Those are some examples of what I mean by systemic truths.

I would argue that a game that dealt with public transportation systems should embrace some or all of these truths. If it did not, it would not come across as "true" to the player.

No other art form besides games can so clearly speak to truths like these...but if we are going to use games to help prepare people (especially teens!) for the real world, we have to understand what games can and cannot do for their audience. Let's talk about how this works, and what it means to this burgeoning art form.

Agency

One of the greatest challenges that game designers face every day is how to build their game in such a way as to allow the player the right kinds of liberty.

Players do not generally want to be led by the nose. Players who are forced to take a series of scripted actions to play out linear events will balk, and rightfully so. We balk at the same thing when we experience it in real life, so why would the virtual world be any different?

It's better when games provide a playground; a set of interlocking systems that — as the player interacts with them — produce emotions and sensations in the player that fulfill the fantasy that was on the box.

Action games have combat systems, movement systems, and spaces to move and fight through, and the accumulation of all these interactions fills the player with excitement, tension, dread, and glory. RPGs and more narrative-driven games have conversation systems and character customization systems and vast areas to explore that evoke a sense of curiosity, wonder, intrigue, and suspense.

But...where is the room for the 'message' in all of this? Where is the human truth that we are attempting to reveal?

When I start up a game of Skyrim, I want to pursue my own curiosity. If the game interferes and insists that I engage with a character or a mission that has a particular moral message, I might resent the game for getting in the way of my agency. I mean, if the game designer just wanted to tell me a linear story, why did they make a game?

The best games do not do this, generally.

Freedom vs. Control

Even if we do design a game that has poignant, meaningful sequences within it, what will the player's mindset be during those sequences?

Interactivity — the great power that games have, and that other mediums do not — requires that we offer the player agency in these sequences. And that agency means that the player's own motives (curiosity, or stimulation, or mastery, or relaxation) are going to be paramount in those moments and not the message we are trying to convey.

Again and again, designers learn that if we design our games to put too many limits on agency, players walk away. But without offering a very narrow experience, we lose the ability to draw any kind of conclusion about what the player will walk away thinking or feeling.

The more freedom we offer players, the less control we have over how they will feel and think after they have played our game. It is almost a truism (more freedom = less control), but it is often overlooked in game design.
But this can't be the whole story. Games do change peoples minds.

So, how can we do that? What are the limits?

Messages

When we think about how entertainment can make the world a better place, we often refer to landmark books or films that made a huge impact on society. Roots, or Thelma And Louise, or more recently, Get Out. Orwell's 1984. Sun Tzu's The Art of War. The Diary of Anne Frank. Works that opened the eyes of a large population to parts of the world they would never have seen for themselves.

The methods employed here are simple: the creative team generates characters that the audience can identify with and then puts those characters into situations that will reveal the world as it actually is.

But key to this method is the notion that those characters act on their own agency. The audience has no input in what those characters will do, and so the viewer/reader is forced (with consent, of course) to ride alongside these characters as whatever happens to them reveals itself.

Empathy is the primary key to narrative's ability to change human minds.

Drama vs. Curiosity

What I have just described is my definition of drama. Drama is the emotional experience of the tension that is created by watching a character who I have come to care about move into a moment of danger (or, at least, uncertainty) when I have no control over what that character will do. That empathy-induced anxiety is actually pleasurable for many people, and it opens the mind.

I believe that drama (as I have defined it here) is required to change minds with this technique.

In games, however, the exchange is different. I, the player, am that character. I get to decide (within bounds) what the character does. I expect to have some choice and liberty in how I play this game.

When I am exposed to a narrative choice in a situation where I have this kind of agency, my experience is very different.

Consider: Should I have my character save my daughter or the doctor, who will be able to save so many other lives in the future?

As a player, that moment has a certain amount of tension in it, to be sure. But, often, instead of drama, players in these situations experience a kind of tense curiosity. "What will the consequences be?" the player thinks. The mind engages a kind of value equation, searching for some reason to make one or the other choice. That experience can be illuminating...but if I choose the doctor, what have I learned about the world?

Not much, most likely. I've maybe learned something about myself (something games are amazing for), but I probably have not have learned much about life itself.

This pattern repeats itself across games that make an effort to illustrate the world. We game designers often set up narrative situations of great import and meaning...and then, without intending to, drain them of their dramatic power by putting the player in a position to (intellectually) weigh the outcome.

Interactivity and Systemic Truth

So are we doomed? Are games unable to change minds at all?

Quite the contrary. The answer to this dilemma rests in the greatest strength of games: their interactivity.

For something to be interactive, there must be some kind of system that the player can interact with. The simplest systems are built on action: if I push this button here, something predictable happens over there. More sophisticated systems are build on automation, or on top of other systems: this train runs in a loop, and if I stand on this platform here, I can step onto the train when it shows up, and be whisked away to the other side of the city.

On the surface, there does not appear to be a great deal of opportunity for message here.

The question game designers keen to change minds might want to ask themselves is this one: which systems should they be modeling?

Truth

Anyone who has played action games quickly begins to understand the way that space (the placement of walls, the shape of the floor, entrances and exits, etc.) affect their odds of success. Outnumbered? Find a doorway.
These learnings — the models that players are building in their heads, if you will — turn out (in many cases) to be true in the real world as well. Doorways are actually a great way to defend yourself against a larger force.

In the same way, games that simulate, for example, economic disparity (such as Sim City), or how living conditions affect human beings (such as RimWorld and other survival simulations) in a way that mirrors enough of the real world as to be at least somewhat true present the player with the opportunity to interact with those systems, experiment, and learn. And then, when they go out into the real world, those players will be carrying those true models with them. They will have been changed.

Games are Practice

Games, unlike any other medium, invite repetition. If the systems being modeled are interesting, and if the play is stimulating, players will want to come back. Humans love learning.

"Practice" sounds a lot like homework. Still, players often love to practice. Good games make practicing a joy, often by hiding the effort of learning underneath great content.

Games struggle with revealing large, human truths. But games invite players to engage with systemic truths — such as the way architecture guides people through spaces, how systems of conflict interact with each other, or how playing your position as a part of a team can produce amazing results — constantly and repeatedly until they know them in a deep way.

Games are practice for life. And while this art form does struggle with moving people towards grand revelations, there is no better medium for offering an opportunity to practice what they have learned.

Build the Truth

My belief is that games do not change people by showing them movies, or forcing them through narrative funnels. Games change people by putting them in the midst of systems that in some relevant way mirror the systems they are experiencing in their actual lives.

We can teach players how the world actually works. This is something that movies and books have a more difficult time doing; they can tell their audiences how the world works, but that is not the same thing as teaching.
What we give up for this extraordinary power is at least some of our control over what message our players will take away from the systems we model for them. We cannot know in advance what those players will want to do with our games; nor should we. It is the player's liberty that makes learning so much more powerful in games than it can be in other mediums. Students who want to learn accumulate knowledge so much faster than those who don't.

As we know, teens are in a part of their lives where they are absorbing information about how the world works at an extraordinary rate. If we want to make a large, positive change in our world, I believe the best route is to focus on providing teens with better models for the world.

Models that prepare them for and ask them to develop their empathy. Models that show them the complexity of the world without overwhelming them. Models that ask them to develop as leaders, as collaborators, and as guardians. Models that demonstrate the positive consequences of taking responsibility and giving back to the world you live in.

Some designers are already doing this. One example is Eco from Strange Loop Games, which proposes a world you must save from a looming meteor strike without upsetting its ecological balance (at least, not too much.)

So: "How can a game change people's minds in a positive way?" The primary question is: what systems has the game design team modeled, and what models are their players walking away with? Those models can change the world.

If you are a game designer, ask yourself:

1) What practices do you want to see flourish in the world?

What routines, what habits, what behaviors would you want to pass on to your children? I'm not talking about moralizing here; what actual behaviors would you like to pass on to the next generation?

For me, there are many: a dedication to quality, a daily striving for self-knowledge and honesty, working towards more efficient outcomes, altruism, valuing and acknowledging our differences and our similarities...there are many more, but you get the idea.

2) What are the systems that these practices that you want to pass on exist within?

Self-knowledge, for example, exists in a system where:

  • Humans are all different from each other in ways that are difficult to predict, but are entirely codifiable
  • Humans must discover themselves through several means — question/answer, being put in choice-rich environments, being put under pressure, etc.
  • The variation in humans is a large part of what will determine where they end up fitting into the world

3) How can you model those systems in a way that will reveal systemic truth?

As an example: it is one thing to offer the player several positions to play on the field of battle (warrior / mage / rogue / healer), but it is something else entirely to offer them a roleplaying system that relates to actual personality types.

Imagine a system that would allow young people to explore their actual selves, and in a way that is not confined by the need to win your particular game, but rather embraces their real individuality. There are such systems everywhere — Buzzfeed gives us hundreds of personality tests per week, it seems, and character customization systems often do an amazing job at this. For teens, could we somehow harness that drive better?

Trust your Players

These examples can of course be extrapolated to other types of games. The point is this: If you want to change your players' minds, first, decide what practices you want your players to voluntarily adopt. Then build a world that contains the true, systemic realities that those practices would fix.

Players would then be able to engage with those systems. They could follow their own curiosity, their own values, and experience for themselves the consequences of those truths.

They would then carry that learning with them out into the real world. For the rest of their life, they would know the truth that you showed them.
I like to think that this is how positive change begins: by young people learning the truth of the world.

Build the truth. Trust your players to find it. Help them to engage with it, in a place where they can safely practice.

The rest, as any parent knows, will be up to them.

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Postscript

I need to add a caveat to my position.

After writing this article, I had a remarkable encounter with a designer who insisted that I was wrong about some of the assertions I make here. He explained that — for him — video game characters have always been emotionally real people. He explained that although he of course understands that these digital characters are fictional, his emotional reaction to them is nonetheless indistinguishable from his reaction to real people. I asked him, "How do you feel about pushing around a third-person character, then?" and he explained that he tells himself that he is helping the character, as though making suggestions with his input.

Because of this experience, he claims that playing third-person video games with fully realized characters is one of the most intense narrative experiences of his life. He finds this article's claim that game narratives do not change us in the same way that other narrative styles do to be completely false in his case.

Unsure, I took the question to the internet. I asked my Facebook network if there was anyone else who could relate to this "game characters are as real as real-life characters" experience. Much to my surprise, I got fifteen more responses — passionate ones — from people who absolutely agreed and were willing to go into great detail about what this means to them. (I have little idea what this number represents as a percentage of the population; my intuition says "less than 10%" but that is in some ways a total guess.)

I still believe the position I take in this article to be true. Still, I need to add the following caveat to the whole thing: "...for a majority of people." It appears that there are people who experience systemic narrative as powerfully as they do traditional narrative.

For the record, this is something I am delighted and excited to have stumbled across, and I look forward to digging into its implications in the near-term.

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About the Author

Jason VandenBerghe directs the design department at ArenaNet, which is the studio behind the Guild Wars series. Jason has been making video games professionally for over twenty years, and has worked on nine shipped titles including Ubisoft's For Honor, Far Cry 3, and the delightfully rompy Red Steel 2. In his spare time he has made a study of player motivation and has given a series of talks on the subject at the Game Developer's Conference (GDC) called The Engines of Play — several of which are freely available. He is "dad" to more than a few young adults and husband to one of the greatest ladies to walk the earth. His writings, presentations, and a few ramblings can be found at www.darklorde.com.

An Interview with Kinful: Bringing Cross-Cultural Empathy to Schools with VR

By iThrive Games

How do we prepare today's students to thrive in an uncertain world? One proven technique is for schools to wholeheartedly support students' social and emotional development — their empathy, their ability to bounce back after failure, and their capacity to connect meaningfully and sensitively with diverse people across the world. Schools are demanding effective social and emotional learning (SEL) approaches now more than ever, and Michael Auerbach and Sam Williamson, co-founders of Kinful, are two of the visionaries rising to meet the need.

The Kinful curriculum is designed to build five key social and emotional skills in students from elementary through high school. Among SEL programs, one really unique thing about Kinful is that it leverages the power of virtual reality (VR) to empower students to connect in meaningful and empathy-building ways across geographical boundaries.

Students in Kinful classrooms — so far in New Jersey, New York, Texas, Washington, South Africa, Turkey, and soon the Ukraine — create 360-degree videos to share their daily activities, interests, thoughts, and feelings with peers across the country and the world. iThrive caught up with the Kinful team to find out more about their inspiration, their successes and obstacles, and their hopes for the future of the program.

Students using Kinful's VR headsets react to 360-degree videos created by students from another country. Image source

iThrive: You have shared that Kinful's mission was inspired by your Peace Corps service. From there, how did you decide to use VR in schools to support cross-cultural empathy?

Kinful: Peace Corps exemplifies a powerful aspect of humanity: the innate ability of humans to empathetically connect with one another despite vastly different cultural backgrounds. Peace Corps volunteers and host-country nationals instinctively laughing together, crying together, and caring for one another highlights how empathy can transcend cultural boundaries. The idea that empathy is the thread that binds humanity together is a central inspiration for Kinful.

We knew we needed active engagement, as opposed to passive engagement like watching a documentary, in order to recreate the Peace Corps experience in the classroom. The immersive aspect of VR provides the exact type of active engagement needed!

iThrive: What are the key components of the Kinful curriculum?
Kinful: A typical Kinful lesson consists of non-sequential workstations where students rotate between activities. Half of the workstations are VR-related (viewing and filming), and half are "standard" SEL activities (e.g., teamwork games, group reflections, etc.).

The VR and the 360 filming activities within that rotation are fundamental to Kinful's vision and impact, but they make up only a portion of the greater Kinful whole. The tech and non-tech activities support and extend each other. As students move from one workstation to the next, they experience and reflect on SEL themes individually, in groups, and through someone else's eyes (VR).

The Kinful kit comes with a range of engaging materials — including VR headsets — teachers can use to support students in building 5 key social and emotional skills. Image source

iThrive: What is it like when a student first connects with a peer from another place and way of life? What emotions do you see being shared, and what kinds of stories?

Kinful: It's all smiles when a student puts on a headset — but to be honest it's hard to tell if the smile is coming from the inherent delight in identifying with someone else in a different country, or if it's coming from the awe of using VR presumably for the first time. It's probably a little bit both, which is fine with us!

iThrive: What about after the connection — what do you see or hear from students? How do they talk about the experience?

Kinful: In an effort to get students to relate to one another, we always prompt students to share videos of universal experiences like spending time with family/friends or taking care of responsibilities. Of course, these things will look different across cultures, but the general concept is always recognizable and relatable.

From there, students usually come out of a Kinful video saying something like, "I eat lunch with my friends too!" or "I also have to do house chores after school!" These simple and universally translatable experiences help bridge cultures — moving us away from a more removed, academic understanding (fun facts of a foreign country) and getting us closer to a more personable familiarity ("Mohammed from Senegal loves walking his dog in the morning. So do I!").

iThrive: What has surprised you most about what students want to share with each other through the videos they create?

Kinful: What they want to share hasn't been particularly surprising (again, our prompts revolve around everyday stuff), but how they've been sharing has been surprising. By that, I mean their eagerness! I anticipated awkward hesitation in our students' first videos (probably because I could easily imagine my twelve-year-old self awkwardly talking about my Warren G CD or Green Day blacklight poster). But no — teachers tell us their students love filming themselves!

A student uses a head-mounted camera to create 360-degree video for Kinful peers around the world. Image source

iThrive: What's your biggest (or favorite) success story to date?

Kinful: Our biggest success story to date has been our adoption of "standalone" VR headsets, which are headsets with an operating system and screen built in. Prior to this adoption, we used a smartphone + headset setup to view VR videos through a Kinful app, which involved two central hurdles: 1) procuring a smartphone and 2) Wi-Fi connection to stream videos.

Standalone headsets solve these two hurdles because: 1) the price of a standalone headset is a fraction of the cost of a smartphone and 2) standalone headsets allow us to upload our entire VR library onto the device, bypassing the need for Wi-Fi to stream (smartphones typically don't have the capacity to store our library).

iThrive: What are some of the obstacles to extending the reach of a program like Kinful into poor and rural areas across the globe? What are some solutions you are using or planning to use?

Kinful: The biggest obstacle was internet access needed to view our VR videos. Our recent adoption of standalone headsets with our VR library preloaded has solved this problem. Now, we're able to send a Kinful kit to a partner site with everything needed to execute Kinful programming (VR hardware, activity supplies, etc.).

A student donning the Kinful VR headset. Image source

iThrive: What advice would you give a developer who wants to design tech- or game-based experiences that promote or support empathy?

Kinful: Our mission is to encourage students come to their own conclusion that what binds humanity together is greater than what divides us. We want students to watch these videos and notice the similarities they have with students from all over the world. Once those connections start being made, empathy naturally follows. That's why we've stocked the Kinful video library with universal, relatable experiences.

In that vein, we've thus far shied away from creating traumatic reenactments to promote empathy, like first-person angles of bullying for example. That's not to suggest we believe such a video would be ineffective — it's just that we've found students to be more open and vulnerable when engaging with less threatening material.

iThrive: It's no secret that it can be really challenging to get both SEL and tech-based programs adopted and implemented widely in schools. What obstacles have you faced and how do you get around them?

Kinful: The biggest challenge has been schools figuring out how to pay [for Kinful]. Most schools we've talked to don't have an SEL budget, but they do have a tech budget. Problem is, Kinful doesn't neatly fit into a tech category since we're not targeting tech outcomes. With our main focus being SEL, we've had the most success engaging with schools that already have SEL initiatives taking place.

iThrive: What advice would you give to a teacher who is uncomfortable using technology in the classroom? What about teachers who struggle with teaching SEL?

Kinful: The first bit of advice for a teacher uncomfortable with using technology or integrating SEL would be that there's no need to reinvent the wheel! There are a lot of high-quality resources out there that present best practices, materials, and tutorials for both.

We definitely wanted to try and get out in front of any potential unfamiliarity with tech or SEL by creating a curriculum that is largely student led. Teachers who are uncomfortable with tech and SEL have in Kinful a simple yet high-quality way to get started without the pressure of creating their own programming. With all materials and directions supplied, the teacher just stages the room and follows the steps to facilitate the lesson. We designed Kinful to be as useful to a savvy veteran teacher as it would an inexperienced summer camp counselor.

iThrive: What's your vision for what's happening at Kinful in 5 years?

Kinful: Kinful is ultimately building towards creating a global community of schools, an international network of students and educators discovering connections and growing together towards a more empathetic future.

However, as we've designed Kinful to be molded by students (prompts are open-ended, and we encourage students to film and share what matters most to them), we imagine that as the years pass they will change and shape the program, bringing us to a place we had never even imagined!

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To learn more about the Kinful curriculum, visit www.kinful.org and check out the team's orientation video for partner schools:

Nier: Automata – True Kindness in Games Requires Sacrifice

By iThrive Games

We created iThrive Game Design Kits for game designers and developers looking to create games that support social-emotional learning in teens. Check them out here!

Editor's note: This guest-authored post was inspired by a panel discussion called "Find the Kind" at MagFest in January of 2018. The panel was led by Heidi McDonald and Sean Weiland of iThrive Games, James Portnow of Extra Credits, and Dr. Shaun Cashman of Pfeiffer University. Please note that THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS for the game Nier: Automata.

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Being kind is easy in the abstract. When asked if we would save a child, rescue a kitten, or help a starving village most of us would say yes. But saying so is easy, the doing is so much harder.

Truly acting kind often requires something of you. Whether it's not having as much to spend on yourself because you chose to give to someone else or having an hour less in your day because you decided to listen to a friend in need, kindness often comes with a sacrifice and this is what so few games capture.

But there is at least one game that does: Nier: Automata (rated 18+ years).

The visually stunning world of Nier: Automata. Image source

Before we talk Nier though we have to talk about why most games fail on this front: it's because most games are about you, the player. This means that most acts of kindness within games are about you as well.  When you're asked to save a village or help a child, you're going to get a reward, you're going to be called a hero, it's going to show off your prowess...and, perhaps most of all, the actual saving of that village or rescuing of that child is going to be fun.  It's something you're going to want to do.

But real acts of kindness aren't about you. They sort of can't be by definition. Real acts of kindness have to be about the people who you are being kind to. They can't be self-centered or self-motivated, they can't be for the praise they'll bring or the reward they'll grant. They have to be acts of empathy, of pathos;  acts of caring for other beings in the world. This is why most games struggle to deliver on acts of kindness that truly feel like being kind.

What's more, most games are about empowerment. They're about making you feel good, about making you feel strong. In many ways this is excellent, but sometimes we as game designers are too afraid to do anything which might make you feel as though you have a limit or as though something is being taken away from you.  This means that almost no game asks for real sacrifice when it asks you if you wish to be kind.

Sure, some games may ask you to give up a few thousand gold to help a war-torn town, but by that point you usually have enough wealth to make this trivial, to make it not feel like a sacrifice at all. Other games may ask you to do a hard fight or beat a level in a more challenging way in order to do something kind, but that's just giving you more of what you love. That's us as designers finding a way to tell you that you made a tough choice to do the right thing when really we're actually just offering you something fun, exciting, or different to do for making the "kind" choice.

There are a handful of games that have moments that ask something more of players, from Papers, Please to This War of Mine. But there's one game that stands out for requiring true empathy and kindness, for requiring real sacrifice from players themselves. There's one game that made me put down the controller and sit for 30 minutes asking myself, "Am I really willing to make that type of sacrifice to do the right thing for people I'll never know?" This is, of course, Nier: Automata.

[NOTE: SPOILERS AHEAD!]

At the end of Nier: Automata you face an incredibly difficult boss battle, one that's nearly impossible. Each time you die you are met with a few words of encouragement from other players, so you reload and try again. After a few deaths you're presented with a new option: other players have offered to rescue you. Will you take their help? You load again to try a last time and, one by one, ships flock in, each with its own name, with its own real person associated with it, and the music swells from a single melody line to a chorus. Now you're not alone. Now you can win. As you fight and as they die — these people who have come to help you — you're told their data is lost. But at last, you win. Because of them, you can see the real end of the game.

The final cutscene rolls. You get to see the ending you've played so long to see. Then you're presented with one last choice. You can help someone out there. You can be one of those little ships sent to rescue a player who is stuck. But there's a cost. You must give up your save data. It will be deleted forever. The dozens of hours you put into this game, gone. Your chance to finish those quests you left undone, gone. The possibility of playing the finale again and watching the ending one more time, gone.

A player sacrifices save data to help another unknown player of Nier: Automata.

For players this is a real, meaningful sacrifice, something that giving up a handful of gold can never be. You have to let go, you have to give up all those characters you love. But when you remember the ships that came to save you — the other people who made this choice never knowing who you were, those people who came to help you anyway — if you're anything like me, you push that button.

You push it not out of gratitude or even out of respect, you push it because you know that there will be someone else out there like you, someone sitting in front of a screen excited to be close to reaching the end. Someone who will never get to see that ending without help. You understand what it is to be that person, so you push that button and watch as, line by line, item by item, the game deletes all the things you've done.

It's a moment of empathy for someone you've never met and will never meet. An act which will garner you no praise, for which you will be rewarded directly in no way by someone else. It's an act of pure kindness towards a stranger. It's a game reminding us: in the end, we're all in this together.

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice – Why the World Needs a Hero with a Mental Illness

By iThrive Games

Editor's note: This guest-authored post is part of iThrive's series on games and mental health. Articles in this series reflect iThrive's commitment to use and design games in support of teens' mental health and well-being, both within and outside of traditional therapeutic contexts.

Talking about mental illness can be difficult, confusing, and sometimes even scary. Many people first learn about mental illness from what they have seen on screen and from stories they have heard. However, relying on media portrayals of mental illness can leave people unprepared to empathize with someone coping with one since such portrayals are often exaggerated and promote harmful stereotypes. Independent video game developer Ninja Theory aims to change that with their latest and most courageous title, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice (rated 18+ years), whose heroic protagonist is no stranger to mental illness.

Senua's Quest
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is the story of a young woman named Senua on her quest to save her slain lover. As she journeys through Helheim, the land of the dead from Norse mythology, Senua battles monsters, gods, and her own inner demons. If this game had been developed with only this premise it would have been intriguing enough, the gameplay would have been smooth enough, and the graphics beautiful enough to make it as entertaining as many other AAA games. However, developer Ninja Theory wanted to try something new.

In a behind-the-scenes interview, Tameem Antoniades, the Chief Creative Ninja of Ninja Theory, confirmed Senua suffers from "anxiety, depression, hallucinations, and delusions." To best capture what it is like for people who cope with these conditions, the developers worked with Professor Paul Fletcher, a psychiatrist and professor of health neuroscience at the University of Cambridge. The developers also worked extensively with people who had experienced psychosis and integrated their perspectives into the game. With guidance from both professionals and people with lived experience, Ninja Theory was able to create a detailed, immersive, and scientifically informed adaptation of mental illness for video game players to experience.

Senua begins her quest. Image source

In Hellblade, players experience a small measure of what it might be like to cope with severe symptoms of mental illness. For example, as soon as players start the game, they hear a series of voices telling them to turn back, questioning their every decision, and whispering worries of impending doom. These unsolicited voices warn, deride, guide, and encourage Senua throughout her quest. The audio was specifically designed so players would feel like the voices were whispering in their ears or circling around them, making it feel like the voices were in the player's own mind.

Several other aspects of the game were modeled off symptoms of severe mental illness. For example, the game requires the player to solve a series of puzzles to advance. To solve these puzzles, the player must find specific patterns in the environment. It is common for people coping with psychosis to see patterns where there are none, and this game mechanic was specifically designed to reflect that experience for the player.

Senua pieces together runes. Image source

Why We Need a Hero with a Mental Illness
The portrayals of persons with mental illness in movies, on TV, and in video games often feature disturbed, violent individuals and cackling villains. It's much harder to remember a hero with mental illness than to name scores of mentally ill villains. In Otto F. Wahl's 1995 novel, "Media Madness," he describes mentally ill characters as "more likely to be presented as villains than as heroes" (p. 66). Any "crazy," "psycho," or "schizo" villains are written to have originally been law-abiding and peaceful citizens who only become villains after developing a mental illness. This is harmful because it reinforces a social stigma that paints those who are coping with mental illness as dangerous, untrustworthy, or morally corrupt. In fact, persons with mental illness are not only less likely to perpetrate violence than they are to be victimized, they also are 12 times more likely to be victims of violence than persons without mental illness.

However misguided, stories about a pure-hearted and clear-headed hero who triumphs over the insane is how we express a fear of mental illness. Yet, to personify mental illness as a typically irredeemable villain, a being that can only exist in two ways — as maliciously powerful or permanently vanquished — does not inspire a deeper understanding of the complicated circumstances experienced by the mentally ill.

Hellblade confronts this stereotype by offering a character who is living with a mental illness and is also a hero. Her mental illness does not make her less human but instead makes her a more vibrant, complex, and sympathetic character. In other words, Senua is a fully realized character coping with a mental illness rather than a caricature playing out a tired stereotype. By inviting players to engage with a complex, humanized depiction of a person confronting severe mental illness, Hellblade creates a learning opportunity that can move the conversation about mental illness in a more compassionate and mindful direction by prompting players to consider the social stigma surrounding mental illness.

Senua battles Valravn, god of illusion. Image source

What Hellblade Offers Us
When playing Hellblade, players get to see someone with a mental illness as a hero and  as someone worthy of understanding and empathy. The game reminds us that people with mental illnesses are, despite marginalization and misrepresentation, whole people. The game also offers players the chance to compare their own struggles with Senua's. We have all, in some measure, experienced anxiety and depressive moods. By playing Hellblade, players are given a chance to think differently about their own struggles with mental health and how they have embarked on their own quests to find redemption, salvation, or simply some inner calm.

For those who have experience with mental illness, but have had trouble communicating their experiences to loved ones, this game offers a helping a hand. One of the greatest challenges when coping with mental illness is the struggle to properly communicate ourselves. Our common language (reflecting how little our society talks about or considers mental illness in everyday life) doesn't have a lot of readily accessible language for us to use to describe our complicated thoughts or feelings. This can leave us and our loved ones confused about the reality of living with mental illness. (Senua had it even worse, only being able to refer to her disorders as a terrifying and mysterious "darkness"). By showing others the depictions of common symptoms of mental illness that we see in Senua, we can show others a glimpse of our struggles and help them better understand us.

Throughout the game, Senua experiences anxiety attacks, flashbacks to trauma, out-of-body experiences, and hallucinations. According to the developers, in their behind-the-scenes footage, she even experiences episodes of compulsive behavior where she cannot to move forward in certain areas of the game until she accomplishes a task or solves a visual puzzle. People who experience any of these symptoms can use this game to show others a compassionate and heroic depiction of their struggles, something rarer and far more helpful than the villainous portrayals we often see in media.

Ultimately, Hellblade encourages players to be more mindful and compassionate of those who are coping with mental illness. Playing this game can help dispel some harmful confusion and stereotypes and give players an opportunity to practice compassion for others' mental health struggles. What Ninja Theory has done is recognized art's use as a form of interactive education and created an opportunity for any and all players to learn more about mental illness, in themselves and others, and stoked the conversation about mental illness and its representation in the media.

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About the Author

Courtney Garcia's writing focuses on the practical use of games and other forms of media as therapeutic tools for developing emotional intelligence. She is a lifelong gamer and has experience as a secondary school educator using games to enrich her social and emotional learning curriculum. She has seen, firsthand, the engagement and creativity teens experience when they approach games as educational tools that can boost their well-being, too. Courtney earned her BA from the University of California, Riverside, where she graduated magna cum laude before earning her Masters in Education. Courtney has published research in scholarly journals and regularly writes articles for Screen Therapy, a blog about games, movies, and how we can use them to help ourselves.

Wallop! You Died (Again): Growth Mindset and Cuphead

By iThrive Games
My name is Ian McDonald. I'm 13 and I love to play games! Roleplaying games (RPGs), puzzle games, platformers, shooters...you name it. I took a quiz at a site called Quantic Foundry to tell me more about what kinds of games I might like, and my results made complete sense to me: I tend to like really difficult games, and games with puzzles and mysteries to solve. I also really like story games with immersive worlds.

Ian McDonald, 13 years old.

My favorite game right now is Cuphead (rated 10+ years), released this year by Studio MDHR on Xbox and Windows. A lot of the Let's Play videos for Cuphead on YouTube (like this one by Markiplier, one of my favorite YouTubers) are hilarious because they show a lot of people failing. It is a super difficult game, but the designers make it really fun to fail. The premise is that there's this cute little dude whose head for whatever reason is a coffee cup, and he has a bendy straw that bounces adorably while he runs around. Cuphead and his brother, Mugman (whose head, naturally, is a mug) accidentally lost their souls to the devil while gambling at a casino. In order to get their souls back from King Dice, the evil casino manager, they have to bring in the soul contracts of all the other characters who also lost their souls in that casino.

 

Cuphead and Mugman.

If you've played this game, then you probably hear the "Floral Fury" stage music playing in your head right now. If you haven't, then allow me to give a brief summary of the game. Cuphead is a mix between a boss rush and a shoot-em-up platformer, constantly switching between platforming levels and boss battles, and all done to ridiculously catchy jazz and swing music. This game makes the levels challenging and hardly ever gives you a fair fight, but still manages to keep you in a decent mood with its colorful and interesting art style. The whole game features hand-painted cel animation that was popularized in the cartoons of the 1930s, which lends itself really well to imaginative characters and whimsical situations. Between the Barber Shop Quartet singing the title music, and the lively and memorable boss music, this game has amazing music that adds to the fun and interesting gameplay.
While playing this game, I found my mind returning to a certain topic I've been learning about at school: growth mindset, or the idea that you can get better at something through practice and failure. This also means you don't give up, and you continue to persevere no matter how difficult the task because you can learn from failure, and failure makes you better when you think about your mistakes. I feel that growth mindset matches well with Cuphead, because it is always throwing new and more difficult challenges at you without warning. While playing Cuphead you will notice that you die a lot. I mean...A LOT. You probably won't make it through the game without AT LEAST a hundred deaths. But...dying that often is the only way to eventually beat the game. I beat Cuphead on the regular difficulty setting after about two weeks of playing during every spare minute I had. I died around 250 total times before finishing it.

What it looks like to die right at the end of a level in Cuphead. So close!

All the deaths are frustrating (and funny), but every time you die, it teaches you something you'll need to know to get closer to beating the level. In a level called "Floral Fury," I constantly died when the flower reels back and launches his face right at you. After dying to that attack a few times I understood the flower's behavior and knew to dodge the attack next time!
When fighting "Dr. Khal's Robot," there are four main stages to the fight with the first and second being the hardest. You must destroy a laser beam on the top of his head, a station that sends out little bombs, and a weird electricity field. Every time you destroy one of these things, a new mechanic is added to the fight, replacing whatever you destroyed. This quickly gets annoying and kills you constantly, but there is a pattern that you learn by dying. When fighting King Dice, the final game boss, there is a pattern in his behavior that you can only memorize through repeated death.
I felt so much more accomplished each time I defeated a boss that I'd died many times trying to beat, because I had shown persistence and learned to recognize that death and failure are just part of the process you have to go through in order to beat Cuphead. While growth mindset is usually used to describe your overall work ethic and your personal sense of motivation in life, I think that there are ways that games can encourage this, too. Cuphead is a great example because it helped me to think about how games can relate to growth mindset, and it helped me want to keep going even though I died a lot.
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Editor's note: iThrive Games seeks to highlight the voices of diverse teens on our blog. If you are a teen — or know one — who loves to play and talk about video games, please contact us!

Meaningfully and Realistically Using Games in the Classroom

By iThrive Games

Practical barriers can keep the most enthusiastic teacher from using games in the classroom. Let's get real — and realistic — about ways to approach game-based learning for the classroom. Teachers are busy, and usually spend much of a given school day completing work from that day while simultaneously preparing work for the next day.

So how, then, do teachers find the games to use in class, play the entire game to understand what and how it teaches, and review best practices? Often, they don't. Here's a more realistic approach to using the power of game-based learning in the classroom.

Look for the Helpers

Game-based learning has gained enough traction in our learning communities that it is much easier than it was in the past to find both high-quality games and powerful resources on how to use them. The trick for teachers is to realize that these resources exist. Look for collections of educational games as well as specific guides for implementing game-based learning.

Collections of Games

My favorite clearinghouse of games is the free Game Up website offered by BrainPOP.  These games are curated to share the best games currently available by a wide variety of developers, and the games are grouped by content area. The BrainPOP team aligns the games with Common Core and other standards and offers recommendations on how to integrate the games into instruction. While the games are free of advertisements, BrainPOP does provide links to related content in its subscription-based collection of videos. My team at the Learning Games Lab has placed several of the games we have developed into the collection.

The free gaming portal at BrainPop offers curated games on a wide variety of topics, as well as strategies for using the games, links to additional content, and assessment suggestions. brainpop.com/gameup

Other free collections also offer a range of games. Games for Change offers recommended games on different content, from typing to math to social justice. Playful Learning Network offers games they have developed, as well as guidance on using games. Paid collections offer a subscription model to access different content. This may be unrealistic for a single teacher to access in many cases, but it can be powerful when a district subscribes.
Simply conducting a search on "educational game for [content]" is surprisingly effective, often pointing to content-specific collections curated by Common Sense Education and other larger sites.

[Related: iThrive's Curated Games Catalog features titles that may support teens' social and emotional skills including kindness, curiosity, empathy, and growth mindset.]

Strategies for Using Games

You may not always have the time to play a game all the way through before using it in your classroom. Fortunately, game overview videos and lesson support materials can help, such as those that accompany our Math Snacks collections of games. Often, if a game developer has not created these support materials, other teachers have. Simply searching for "[name of the game] in classroom" will yield links to overview videos and lesson plans. These can reduce your prep time by helping you understand how to best use the game, and what the gameplay will look like.

Invite Students To Be Reviewers

While it's valuable for students to learn through gameplay, they also need to develop literacy skills for assessing what makes games valuable. Include students in your game selection and review strategies as part of their learning.

In our Learning Games Lab, we asked a group of students to help us identify the best math games in a given content area. We picked about 21 games on algebra and divided students into four groups. Each group was assigned 8-10 of those games to play, so that most games were played by a multiple students. Before playing, students engaged in a group discussion to identify what would make a game "a good game." For example, the class agreed that it had to be interesting, teach the right kind of math, and be challenging.

Turn your students into game evaluators by asking them to play and review games. Ask them the same questions you would ask your teaching colleagues, and ask them to advise you.

After the students played the games, we broke them into three new groups. One group was tasked with making recommendations to teachers on the best games; one group was asked to make a case to parents as to which games they should encourage their kids to play; and the third group was asked to make recommendations to game developers on how to craft the best games. These middle school students spent time in the evenings seriously reviewing the games and playing them through. They had thoughtful discussions about the content in the games and the ways in which each game helped the player. Students quickly grew tired of games that simply quizzed them and started looking for games that encouraged more in-depth application.

Ask students the same questions about games that you would ask your colleagues: "Which are the good games?", "Is this the best way to master this content?", "How should we build on what the game teaches?", and  "How long will it take to play it all the way through?". You'll find your students are powerful allies in game-based learning.

In engaging students as game review partners, they are better able to articulate which games are worth the time invested to play and can explain how game-based learning is valuable. They can also help teachers understand which games are worth integrating into class time.

Know What to Do When Students are Playing

Gameplay is active even though it can seem passive. Watching our students play games — and hearing them talk about game strategy with each other — is a powerful way to assess their ability and knowledge. While students are playing, walk around, ask them questions, and encourage them to talk with each other. When students talk to each other about the gameplay, they are also talking about the content, so encourage a noisy, collaborative, and social atmosphere. Encourage students to ask you and each other questions when they are stuck, and ask them to explain what they are doing.

I've found it's powerful when a student hits a difficult place to identify with them and encourage them to learn from others. "That does seem hard. Class, has anyone else mastered this? I don't know how to get past this one level." Redirect students' questions to each other so that you can understand if they need help with gameplay or content. Often, I've found that a student who is weak in the content area may be strong with gameplay strategy, and it helps both students feel valuable.

When your students are playing a game, take the opportunity to observe and ask questions. Ask, "How did you know how to do this?" or "Can you explain your strategy to me here?" It can be a powerful way to assess students' understanding.

Encourage students to reflect on their gameplay. This may happen as you ask them questions while they play, or as you encourage them to share what they did with others. It's also important to reflect as a group once the gameplay is done. "How did we solve this problem?" "What was the hardest part of the game?" "What can you do now that you couldn't do at the beginning of the game?" This reflection helps them identify how they have improved and helps you know what gaps still need to be addressed.

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There are some practical barriers to using games in school. But once we go to the effort to remove these barriers, let's make sure our gameplay time is the best possible way to help our learners understand the content and processes we're trying to teach. It's our work as educators that helps our students more than any one game. When we take an active role in choosing games, helping students evaluate games, and learning from students, we model more than just game-based learning — we model lifelong learning.

* * *

About the Author

Barbara Chamberlin, PhD, oversees research and development at the Learning Games Lab at New Mexico State University, a non-profit educational production studio. She has a passion for user testing, math and science education, and hands-on learning. Her current projects include apps for pre-school students on physical education and healthy eating, chemistry learning tools for college students, and pre-Algebra games for middle school students. Learn more about her work at learninggameslab.org

About Game Jams

By iThrive Games

iThrive hosts idea jams, paper prototype jams and 48-hour digital game jams at universities, organizations, and regional game festivals, with the goal of bringing together professional developers, game design students and high school teens to build games together using our science based, expert-developed design resources. Our jams not only demonstrate what kinds of games can result from these design concepts, but are also important events to foster ongoing collaboration and to facilitate mentoring relationships at multiple levels...and, they're fun! These jams also allow us to test and refine our design resources with the help of the people they are intended for.

There are some key ways in which iThrive's Game Jams differ from other types of Game Jams:

  • Participant Groups: Combines three specific, key groups of people as attendees, to foster cross-pollination, mentoring relationships, and learning for everyone:
    • Professional developers
    • Student developers
    • Teen developers
  • Design resources: Offers iThrive's science-based, expert developed design resources about designing for prosocial outcomes in a block of instructional content at the outset, with subject matter expertise on-site throughout.
  • Strengths-based approach: Emphasizes a strengths-based approach to game creation as opposed to treating a social problem or emotional condition as a disease.
  • Teen focus: Focuses specifically on making games for a teen audience.

Types of iThrive Game Jams

Idea Jam

An Idea Jam is a 4-hour jam which includes instructional content about designing for prosocial outcomes, and focuses on the generation of a game idea based on that instructional content.

The host location provides the space, publicity, and owns the registration process. iThrive Games provides supplies (paper, writing utensils, stickies, etc.), facilitator, instructional content and materials, subject matter expertise available throughout, and snacks and beverages. Planning for this event can happen over three months.

The deliverables of this type of jam are fleshed-out game ideas designed with the benefit of the instructional content, developed for a teen audience. The benefits of an Idea Jam as opposed to the other two types of jam products we offer include a shorter time commitment from participants, a larger focus on the instructional content, and that the results are easy to share online.

Prosocial Prototypes Jam

A Prosocial Prototype Jam is an 8-hour jam which includes instructional content about designing for prosocial outcomes, and focuses on the generation of an analog game (board game, card game, or paper prototype for a digital game).

The host location provides the space, publicity, WiFi, and owns the registration process. iThrive Games provides supplies (office supplies but also gaming supplies like timers, dice, spinners, game boards and playing cards, etc.), facilitator, instructional content and materials, subject matter expertise available throughout, lunch, snacks and beverages. Planning for this event can happen over three months.

The deliverables of this type of jam are paper prototypes of digital games, board games and card games, designed with the benefit of the instructional content, developed for a teen audience. The benefits of a Prosocial Prototypes Jam as opposed to the other two types of jam products we offer include a focus on design thinking rather than on digital tools, accessibility for people of all ages and experience levels to be able to participate, and the fact that it works well in a situation like MagFest where people are constantly coming and going, and team members can tag in and tag out at any time. What can be challenging about this type of jam is that the deliverables are often difficult to share online.

48-Hour Digital Game Jam

A 48-Hour Digital Jam, much like the Global Game Jam, operates over a full weekend. It includes instructional content about designing for prosocial outcomes, and the output is a playable digital game prototype. It is the only jam type that is competitive, with judging and prizes; judges are a mix between iThrive team members with various disciplinary backgrounds, and faculty members from the host university or staff from the host festival.

The host location provides space, security, computer labs and appropriate digital tools (where possible), publicity, WiFi, and ownership of the registration process. iThrive Games provides facilitator, instructional content and materials, subject matter expertise available throughout, (in locations that do not provide free food, like Google) meals, snacks and beverages, and prizes. Planning for this type of event generally takes three to six months based on the logistical needs of a longer jam.

The deliverables for this type of jam are digital game prototypes. The benefits to this type of jam over other types include helping people learn or practice their digital game-making skills (natural mentoring relationships develop between professionals, students, and teens); the prototypes are usually easily shared online; and teams often want to continue working on their games, toward possible release. The challenges with this type of jam include time commitment for the participants, higher operating costs, and technological considerations.

Instructional Content and Materials

At the start of each iThrive Game Jam, regardless of type, there is an hour of instructional content presented, so that participants understand:

  • Who iThrive Games is and why we host these jams.
  • Explanation of our design resources and where they came from, and encouragement to share feedback about the resources so that we can continue to make them better.
  • Important definitions of specific prosocial concepts, including what the concept is and is not (ie., "sympathy versus empathy" and "being nice versus being kind") and examples of what the concepts look like in daily practice.
  • How specific prosocial concepts can manifest in games, including specific systems, features and game mechanics, with game references as examples.
  • Suggestions for what ways might help enhance prosocial concepts in games, and what things might take away from these concepts.
  • Defining what a "transformational framework" is and providing guiding questions that help participants form a transformational framework for their game.

Participants are given hard copies of iThrive's Designer Guides (from our website, and they can either choose which design guide to work with or use one that follows a specific concept, like the Empathy Jam we held at DigiPen), and transformational framework worksheets. Participants are also given the link to an online survey where they can fill out information about their idea or prototype and the contact information for team members, so that work can be shared later on the iThrive website. (At digital jams, online survey completion is necessary for the game to qualify for prize consideration.)

Key lessons on providing instructional content at Game Jams:

  • Developers really like having specific game references to help inform their work.
  • The design resources on their own are helpful, but are not enough; equally important and also required is information about the transformational framework (ie., What specific change do we want to see? What barriers exist to that change taking place? How will our game remove those barriers and also encourage change? Can change be measured?)
  • It's important to have subject matter expertise available to participants throughout the event. Not only do questions come up during the design process, but developers like to know that they are on the right track. iThrive team members hold several check-ins with each team over the course of the event helps them be more confident about the material, which in turn offers iThrive a valuable glimpse into their processes and intentions.
  • Many developers fall into the trap of approaching the concept like a cure for a disease, rather than from a strengths-based position; this needs to be specifically called out and clarified appropriately at the outset.

 Want to host a jam? Contact us HERE!

VR and Empathy: Tread Carefully

By iThrive Games
Contributors to this article were Michelle Bertoli, MA (director of content for iThrive Games), Kelli Dunlap, PsyD (game developer, psychologist, and research consultant for iThrive Games), and Susan Rivers, PhD (executive director and chief scientist for iThrive Games).

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Heidi McDonald, iThrive's senior creative director, felt inspired at the start of a recent virtual reality (VR) innovators meetup. In line with iThrive's mission, Heidi was eager to explore with the group how VR can create new opportunities to build positive practices like empathy — connecting and engaging with others' feelings and perspectives to prompt more caring, responsible behavior in the world.

Conversations began to verge on uncomfortable when some attendees got excited about how VR could be used to immerse people in intense experiences they don't typically have. "Men could see what it's like to get an abortion!" and "People could experience illegal deportation, natural disasters, or living in a war zone!" were some examples.

VR can open the door for audiences to have novel experiences and bear witness to deeply emotional circumstances. But is asking someone to experience another person's trauma necessary for developing empathy? As VR design and use takes off, how are we thinking about the ethics around creating immersive, potentially traumatic experiences?

Distress doesn't equal empathy
Just because you can drop someone into the thick of (simulated) loss, fear, pain, and chaos using VR, it doesn't mean you should. When you immerse players in a violent, intensely emotional, or graphic event that feels real, it's possible you'll cause them distress or trauma. Immediate reactions to trauma include shock and denial, meaning that a person shuts down and disconnects emotionally. Isn't that precisely the opposite of what we'd want an empathy game to do — engage and connect people?

Playing a game is different from how we engage with other media. As game developer Lindsay Grace likes to say: "Readers read, viewers watch, and players do." VR technology adds to this "doing" a deep level of immersion, complicity, and embodiment — the sometimes unsettling sense that you're really there in the thing you're doing. We don't yet know how psychologically powerful that immersion might be. In fact, VR's ability to blur the line between fantasy and reality is one reason for the continuing concern, unfounded or not, over whether VR is safe for kids.

Careful planning and a clear goal are essential when designing and deploying VR experiences meant to evoke strong and potentially distressing emotions in the name of building empathy.

VR and empathy: A process for intentional design
At iThrive, there is a set of questions we encourage all VR devs to ask before designing in the name of empathy:

1) Who are my players?
2) What do I really want my players to do?
3) What does the science say?

A graphic depicting iThrive's approach to designing for empathy in VR.

1. Who are my players?
Take a participatory co-design approach to build empathy with your end users.

Earlier this year, we featured on our blog an interview with Dr. Doris C. Rusch, a game developer with expertise in wielding empathy as a design tool. She created the game Elude to give people who don't suffer from depression a window into what it feels like. Accordingly, the co-designers and playtesters who informed Elude were people with depression, their loved ones without depression, and clinicians who understand and treat the disorder.

At iThrive, we do something similar in Game Design Studio: we use a participatory, co-design approach when we invite teens to lead our design process. Over several sessions, we encourage teens' self-expression, identify themes that are meaningful for them, and constantly elicit their reactions to what we've created. That's a key way we ensure that the experiences we create are ones that are valuable — and not distressing — to the players we want to reach.

Kinful offers another helpful model in which the end users are the content creators. Kinful uses VR technology in schools to support students' empathy through cross-cultural exchanges. Students who participate in the Kinful curriculum create 360° immersive videos of their own lives to share with peers around the world.

If you understand who your players are and include them in every step of the design process, you'll be better able to design for what you want your players to do and ensure that you're getting the intended results.

2. What do I really want my players to do?  
Set a clear goal and consistently revisit it.

Why are you motivated to create an empathy game in the first place? What change do you want to see in your players, and what kind of experience do you want them to have?

There are many valid reasons for making a meaningful game: self-expression; helping players realize they're not alone; encouraging players to understand and care for others who are far away in distance or life experience from themselves; prompting activism. Some — but not all — of these motivations require that players feel empathy.

Whichever of these or other goals you are designing for, be specific and revisit the goal consistently. Getting players to feel something is a very different undertaking from getting them to do something in the real world. And remember that just because a game lets players experience something new, intense, or shocking, it won't necessarily promote empathy.

Consider Dys4ia, a short web-based game that Anna Anthropy made to express her experience with gender dysphoria and hormone replacement therapy. The game was praised as an "empathy game" that could help players understand the experience of a transgender person. But Anthropy pushed back on this categorization:

"If you've played a 10-minute game about being a transwoman don't pat yourself on the back for feeling like you understand a marginalized experience." - Anna Anthropy

It's far from a given that someone who plays a game like Dys4ia suddenly understands what it's like to be transgender or is equipped to act in a meaningfully better way towards and about transgender individuals as a result. And, in this case, Anthropy says that's not why the game was made.

Make sure you design and test your experience for the specific outcome you want. To support that process, you need to understand how changes in feelings, attitudes, and behaviors come about. That's where the science comes in.

3. What does the science say?
Create a multidisciplinary design team to weave in content expertise.

When creating a game to evoke feelings of empathy, make research a part of your design process from the very beginning. There are at least two ways to do that.

First, explore and understand empathy. Empathy is a set of complex thought processes and emotions that enable us to identify — and identify with — another's thoughts and feelings. In the best-case scenario, that identification helps us act in more considerate, kind, and helpful ways towards others. Empathy is different from sympathy (pitying or feeling bad for someone) and has two distinct types: cognitive empathy and affective empathy. These types (and their subtypes) can align with specific design goals, so ensure you choose and learn as much as you can about the type you're seeking to influence.

Second, include researchers, clinicians, and other content experts in the design process from the start. Someone with clinical training can help you assess and plan for meaningful change in players, monitor whether an immersive experience has crossed a line into overly distressing territory, and decide whether players might need additional resources to process what they have seen and felt. Games intended to have some positive social impact can only benefit from a multidisciplinary design team that represents a range of likely perspectives and responses.

__________

VR is an exciting medium and one we should use to its fullest potential for great entertainment and education. Given its relative newness, there are many unknowns. As developers, tread cautiously, plan, and seek good information and partners. By infusing empathy — both for your players and what they'll experience, as well as a deep knowledge of what empathy is — into your design process from the beginning, you stand a greater chance that empathy, not trauma, will result.

Have a concept for an empathy game — VR or another medium? iThrive Games can help! Check out our resources on empathy and contact us for consultation.

How Bad Data Have Given Video Games a Bad Rap (and How To Read Beyond the Headlines)

By iThrive Games

I'm a psychologist, game designer, and researcher studying how people interact with games and how games impact players. I also make games that explore mental health issues and analyze how mental health is represented in games. I love talking about the psychological complexities of designing games and how games can be used to help us understand ourselves. But when it comes to talking about psychology and games, I often spend most of my time answering the same question over and over: Aren't video games bad for you?

This is a question that has been asked for decades, and before Pac-Man ever said his first "Waka-waka," the same question was asked about pinball, the radio, jazz music, and even the written word. For the last few decades, our technology-related boogeyman has been video games. Video games, especially those with violent content, have had a bad rap almost since the very beginning. And although many of the concerns about violent games stem from sensationalized media coverage, psychologists have added fuel to the fire by making big claims based on little evidence.

A Brief History of Violent Video Games
Controversy over violence in video games can be traced back over forty years. Death Race, a black and white, coin-operated arcade game, holds the honor of being the first video game to start a media panic in 1976.

"A new coin‐operated driving game called 'Death Race' that puts players behind the wheel trying to run down humanoid figures on a television screen is apparently catching on in amusement parks around the country—to the outrage of the National Safety Council." - The New York Times, December 28, 1976, Page 12.

Arcade flyer and gameplay capture for Death Race, a game advertised as being about "chasing monsters" (not "humanoids") and which caused a media panic in 1976. Image source.

The rhetoric against violent video games spiked in 1992 with the release of Midway's competitive fighting game Mortal Kombat.

"Cold blooded murder is making Mortal Kombat the most popular game in history. Kids relish their victory and their bloody choice. Should they pull out their opponent's heart or simply rip his head off just to see his spinal cord dangle in a pool of blood?...[Mortal Kombat] is expected to sell 2 million copies at $50 a pop. A horrifying possibility for parents...The bottom line, parents wonder if kids can separate fantasy from the real thing." - FOX, 1993

In response to national media coverage of Mortal Kombat and games like it, Senator Joe Lieberman called a press conference condemning violent video games. He stated, "We're not talking Pac-Man or Space Invaders anymore.... We're talking about video games that glorify violence and teach children to enjoy inflicting the most gruesome forms of cruelty imaginable." A Senate inquiry followed, but due to a lack of evidence connecting violent video games to real-life violent behaviors, senators could only ask the game industry to create a rating system.

The 1999 Columbine High School shooting radically raised the media profile of violent video games. Both gunmen had played the video game Doom, a fact that was highlighted as a possible contributing factor to the shooting. Linking killers with their use of violent video games continues to be commonplace in the aftermath of tragedies such as the Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, and Aurora shootings. In fact, there's no evidence of a link between video game consumption and gun homicide.

The Sept. 10, 2013 Fox & Friends newscast propagated an unsupported link between video gameplay and real-world gun violence. Image source.

Psychology and the Violent Video Game Debate
In 2005, the American Psychological Association (APA) — the leading professional and scientific organization for psychology in the U.S. and a major influencer of attitudes about controversial psychological issues — released a policy statement outlining its stance on violent video game content. The APA stated that exposure to violent video games increased aggressive thoughts and behaviors and decreased helpful behaviors.

Although the recommendations outlined in the statement fit into the social zeitgeist around violent games at the time, the research from which  the conclusions were drawn was, at best, weak and inconsistent. The lack of solid evidence was the reason the 1993 Senate inquiry on violent games ended without legislative action. Unfortunately, the APA did not demonstrate the same respect for good research.

In 2013, the APA created the Task Force on Violent Media to review current scientific research on the impact of violent games. The task force's review was supposed to ensure that the conclusions and recommendations made in 2005 reflected modern research.

Timeline: Controversy over violent video games has raged on for decades.

A lot changed in the field of psychological games research between 2005 and 2013. Before 2005, the vast majority of published scholarly research had focused only on the relationship between violent games and aggressive behaviors. Around 2008, psychologists began examining factors other than violent content that could be responsible for the relationship between violent games and aggression, such as competitive versus cooperative gameplay or family violence. Academic journals like Criminal Justice and BehaviorPsychological BulletinPsychology of Violence, and Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking started to publish studies that found no relationship between violent games and behavior, something that was almost unheard of prior to 2005.

The 2013 task force was an opportunity to change the narrative around video games and correct past mistakes. A group of 228 psychologists and media scholars wrote an open letter to the task force noting the decline in societal violence since video games entered the scene and voicing concern about overstating the evidence and drawing broad conclusions from a field of research that was so divided and with such inconsistent findings. The letter closed with an offer to support the task force in their research. However, according to The Huffington Post, over the next two years no one from the APA even contacted this group of field experts.

In 2015, the Task Force on Violent Media doubled down on the APA's 2005 policy statement and announced they had found "a consistent relation between violent video game use and increases in aggressive behavior, aggressive cognitions, and aggressive affect and decreases in prosocial behavior, empathy, and sensitivity to aggression."

Issues with the Task Force on Violent Media's 2015 Report
Outlets like The Huffington Post, Newsweek, Rock Paper Shotgun, Pixelkin, and Kotaku published reponses and close analyses of the 2015 report following its release, and I recommend giving these a read. Critics called the report, among other things, "dead on arrival," "nonsense," "junk science," and "truly disappointing."

Indeed, there were several issues with the 2015 report, including the biased way studies were chosen, the quality of the studies, and the questionable objectivity of the task force members (more than half of them had conflicts of interest).

One significant issue with the task force's report was the flawed way in which they defined "aggressive behaviors." Completing word fragments with "aggressive" words (e.g., completing MU_ _ER with "MURDER" instead of, for example, "MUTTER") is one example of how "aggression" was measured in studies the task force reviewed.

Should filling in letters to complete a negative word really be called an "aggressive behavior?" At worst, it's an "aggressive thought process," and even that may be a stretch. However, that is one behavior upon which the task force based their findings of a "robust" link between violent game content and aggression.

Including questionable experimental methods like these in their review was exactly what the task force was warned about in 2013 by the 228 psychology, games, and media scholars. It is why the scholars urged the task force to refrain from drawing broad conclusions and offering recommendations based upon unreliable data, as was done in 2005.

It's Complicated, But We'll Get There
Human behavior is complex. We often are blind to our own biases and seek out the truths that fit with how we see the world. Simple explanations that, on the surface, seem like common sense are easy to digest and can even feel comforting. It's easier to scapegoat video games when senseless violence occurs than to accept that we might never know exactly why someone made the choice to end others' lives. However, making broad statements based on weak and inconsistent research does more harm than good. It obscures the true causes of aggressive behaviors and ultimately hurts the credibility of psychological science.

Here's what I know based on years of playing and designing games and reviewing and contributing to games research:

  • Violent video games don't make people act violently. But that doesn't mean that a game's content is appropriate for everyone, and that includes any online social content a game might offer. Be sure to talk to your kids about safe online practices.
  • It pays to play games with your kids. If you are concerned about the games your kids are playing (and even if you're not), play the games with your kids. Let them teach you how to play. Ask them open-ended questions about the games (what's it about, what do you like about it, what do you think of what that character just did?). You will learn a ton about the games and why your child enjoys them. And most importantly, you'll be spending quality (yes, quality!) time together.
  • The info you need is at your fingertips — check ratings and reviews. Commercial games are assigned an age and content rating by the ESRB, the equivalent of PG, PG-13, R, etc. ratings for movies. A quick search of the ESRB games guide will tell you everything you need to know about what's in the game and who the game is appropriate for. You can also check out family-friendly sites like PixelKin or Common Sense Media for game reviews and information.
  • Look into "indie" games. Many independent game developers make engaging games with positive social messages, opportunities for cooperative play, and themes related to helping others or improving the world and its many systems. Check out the Games for Change website, home to over 150 games that engage contemporary social issues in a meaningful way.

What do you think — are we as a culture making progress towards less alarmist conversations about video games? Share with us in the comments!

__________

Learn more about Kelli Dunlap, PsyD, by visiting her website and following her on Twitter.

We Can’t Design Games for Teens Without This

By iThrive Games

iThrive Games and EdTogether are co-designers and co-facilitators of Game Design Studio, a special game-based social and emotional learning program for teens. In this post, you'll learn: what teens in Game Design Studio have said really matters to them; the goals and structure of the program; its key features; and a primary takeaway from our design work with teens. You'll also be able to watch a brief video about Game Design Studio and learn more about iThrive Games and EdTogether.

It was week four of Game Design Studio at a Boys & Girls Club an hour west of Boston. We opened our session asking teens to complete these statements: "It drives me crazy when adults...." and "I wish adults knew that...".

The flurry of activity—the teens writing their responses on sticky notes—was unexpected. It was as if they couldn't write fast enough to keep up with their thoughts. The eagerness with which teens jumped up to share their responses reflected the urgency of giving voice to their experiences.

"I wish adults knew that teens have their own goals."

"It makes me crazy when adults...punish us, but they never own up to their mistake and never act like they did anything wrong. They never have to say sorry."

"We kids spend a long day at school walking from class and doing homework. We get tired too. And they call us lazy."

"It makes me crazy when adults don't need to do something the child asks, but when the adult asks the child, it HAS to be done."

Across their dozens of responses, many teens came together around mutual respect. That's not really too surprising.

Teens' Need for Respect

Although there are many individual differences across teens, something they share in common is a biologically-driven need to feel respected both by their peers and by adults. Respecting teens means engaging them with the intent to listen and to take their needs and interests seriously.

Even the most well-meaning adults are sometimes guilty of trying to enhance in young people the strengths we want them to have (ahem, self-regulation) rather than empowering them to pursue what they love and to build the unique profile of strengths that makes them, well, them.

In the 1990's, the disability rights movement launched the motto, "Nothing About Us Without Us." The same credo should guide the creation of games intended for teens. It's only when we involve teens directly that we can know whatever we create is truly FOR them.

We have collaborated with EdTogether to create a context for engaging with teens in a deeply meaningful and transformative way. Game Design Studio is our program that encourages teens to express what matters to them and to create games that reflect their point of view, ideas, and experiences.

Game Design Studio: An Outlet for Teen Voice

In Game Design Studio, teens explore who they are and express that to others across a series of sessions as they play, analyze, and co-design games.

Teens create characters, game worlds, rules, and mechanics around themes they identify as relevant to their lives. They test existing games and games of their own design to assess player experiences during gameplay. They alter game mechanics to test hypotheses around what affects player experiences and use that data to make gameplay more satisfying.

"I put what I thought, how I felt, into the game, and I knew that players would feel the same way I felt since I designed the game." - Game Design Studio participant, Age 13

We then share teens' insights with professional game developers with the goal of creating more meaningful games for teens. Game Design Studio strives to create a tight feedback loop in which teens' voices inform the design of digital games, teens play and analyze those games, and the feedback teens provide helps developers to iterate on and continually improve those games.

Inviting teens to dissect games in this way engages them as prosumers. They become critical analyzers of games and make more informed choices about what they spend their time playing. They think about how games were designed to make them feel, and whether they are comfortable with that or not. They are able to articulate what they like and don't like about games, and why. Instead of merely consuming media, they become their own informed advocates.

Key Ingredients of Game Design Studio

We structured Game Design Studio to have six key features that ensure an authentic and meaningful experience for teens:

  • Focus on Teen Interests. Nearly all teens play games. Engaging teens starts by focusing on something that genuinely appeals to and motivates them. Games offer an excellent context for authentic discussions and learning that meets teens where they are. Games are used as the launch pad for teens to reflect and focus on their own social and emotional challenges and opportunities.
  • Co-design. Game Design Studio's co-design approach invites teens directly into the game design process. Co-design changes the power dynamic of a typical learning interaction and empowers teens to directly engage with adults, challenge them, and co-design as equals. In this way, teens practice finding their voice and raising it in service of their own learning and development.
  • Dynamic. The structure of Game Design Studio is intentionally adaptive to the insights and reflections from teens. We're constantly adapting to what teens find meaningful because that's what's going to produce games that feel authentic to teens' lived experiences.
  • Universal Design for Learning. Game Design Studio was designed using Universal Design for Learning principles. In designing each activity, we consider the diversity and variability inherent to the teens involved and work to prepare the learning environment to be rich with options for how teens take in information and express their new knowledge and skills.
  • Social and Emotional Learning. Game design requires social and emotional skills. How does the design of the game affect players' feelings? How does the design of the game keep a player engaged? These are critical social and emotional skills — identifying and managing other people's emotions. As teens work together in design teams, they build their collaboration skills.
  • STEM Skills. In Game Design Studio, teens pinpoint the emotion they want someone else to feel and then leverage engineering principles to reflect, question, ideate, define problems, collect and analyze data, and build and test their creations. This kind of iterative, critical process is essential for learning. It also helps to redefine for teens what "science" is. Science is not confined to test tubes and programming; it's using curiosity about ourselves, others, and the world to pose questions and to experiment with possibilities. This can help to break down some of the barriers to belonging in STEM fields that many teens experience.
Key Takeaway: The Limitations of "Average"

Before iThrive Games and EdTogether launched Game Design Studio, we had only general impressions of "what teens like." But we soon found out that the general or average doesn't actually reflect any one person's experiences, values, or preferences. The huge range and complexity of interests and needs teens bring to Game Design Studio means that we just cannot design meaningfully for teens without engaging with them deeply and authentically.

We engage with teens to listen, not to impose our ideas of what's best for them. We at iThrive Games and EdTogether have committed to only designing for teens alongside a lot of authentic engagement with teens. We heard them ask for mutual respect. We listened and are acting accordingly.

"Game Design's definitely given me confidence in what I think I can do, but it also helped me think about how I could build off of other people's ideas in order to reach one progressive goal." - Game Design Studio participant, Age 13

Get Involved in Game Design Studio

Interested in making a difference with and for teens? Contact iThrive Games about hosting or sponsoring Game Design Studio!

More About iThrive Games and EdTogether

iThrive Games exists to empower teens to thrive using great games. Teen development is impacted by the settings they inhabit — their home, their classrooms and school, their neighborhood, their city. More and more, teens are inhabiting virtual settings. Their screens are available 24/7. They can and do take them anywhere and everywhere. The interactions they have in these settings impact how teens think, behave, and what they value. Video games are prevalent and offer an opportunity to engage teens where they are. iThrive Games is committed to creating meaningful experiences for players in games, experiences where they cultivate assets to support their thriving across the teens years and into adulthood.

EdTogether works to leverage emotion in education in order to engage all students. So many students (and especially students with unique learning needs) experience consistent disengagement from their educational experience, feel negatively about learning, and lack critical supportive relationships at school. This puts them at a significant disadvantage. They are, in essence, emotionally excluded from learning. EdTogether seeks to enhance the spirit of learning among all students by designing educational settings that spark and leverage curiosity and motivation.

Oxenfree: Spooky and Meaningful Halloween Play

By iThrive Games

I'll be hearing eerie radio static in my nightmares for the foreseeable future.

That's because last night, in preparation for my favorite holiday, I turned out the lights and spent three hours taking in the delightfully spooky Oxenfree, a horror game that uses tuning a handheld radio as a core mechanic.

Released in 2016 by Night School Studio, this adventure game that's "equal parts coming-of-age tale and supernatural thriller" offers depth and meaning alongside enough ghostly encounters to leave anyone jumpy.

What starts out as an overnight island beach party for the local high school seniors takes a sinister turn when Alex and her friends accidentally open a portal to the world of the dead. As the teens attempt to close the rift and escape the island using just a map and a radio, the past is unearthed and bonds are formed or broken, depending on how you play.

It's just a bonfire at the beach until someone opens a ghost portal.

Considering this game through the lens of the mission of iThrive Games — to provide meaningful experiences for teens through gameplay — here's why I really liked Oxenfree:

  • It's teen-focused. According to Oxenfree's lead artist, Heather Gross, the game captures the "delicious awkwardness" of the late teen years. It manages to tackle both run-of-the-mill teen drama — fitting in, rivalries, crushes, family dynamics, deciding what to do after high school — and life-changing tragedy. Writer Adam Hines says of Oxenfree's teen characters, "I wanted them to be intelligent, complex, complete, surprising characters. I didn't really think, 'What would a teenager say?'" The result is authentic characters that kept me engaged throughout. And it's rated 14+ years by Common Sense Media, so Oxenfree is developmentally appropriate for teens to play, too.

Oxenfree's teen characters are relatable and authentic.

  • It's insightful AND creepy. The supernatural storyline is punctuated by unexpectedly poignant moments that remind the player not to take for granted bonds with friends...or even frenemies. It touches on universal themes of love, loss, friendship, sacrifice, and discovering what makes life meaningful. But also, as the player, you will contend with ghosts who want to live inside you and demonic voices from who-knows-where asking if you want to play. It's a horror game, after all.

The mouth of the cave is where the real trouble begins. Put down that radio!

  • Choices matter. Player agency matters a lot in games and Oxenfree certainly provides that with over 12,000 possible lines of dialogue and at least 10 different possible outcomes based on how the player speaks and behaves. [SPOILERS: Here's a guide to Oxenfree's possible endings.] As your own incarnation of Alex, the complex female protagonist, you can choose to be silent, snarky, kind, aloof, nosy, rebellious, brave, and selfless. You can take sides or stay neutral, be judgmental or accepting, tell others what to do or mind your own business. The choice is yours and, just like in real life, often there is no clear right answer for every situation.

Alex has meaningful dialogue choices that shape the outcome of the story over time.

As you watch your Oxenfree story come to its conclusion, you're invited to reflect on how your actions and inactions changed the course of the tale. After only one playthrough, I couldn't help but feel that pieces of the story were still missing. That's as it should be. The impressive complexity and depth of its branching means that the Oxenfree has many secrets to reveal over multiple plays.

So, tonight, after the trick-or-treaters have come and gone, I might just re-enter the world of Alex and the spirit portals and do everything differently than I did it before. If you're looking for a meaningful story and a good scare, I recommend you do the same. Happy Halloween from iThrive Games!

Have you played Oxenfree? What did you think? Please share with us in the comments!

My Favorite Games from IndieCade 2017

By iThrive Games

From Oct. 6-8, I was lucky to attend the 10th IndieCade International Festival of Independent Games in Los Angeles. The weather was beautiful and ramen was available in more varieties than I was able to consume (although I tried). I set out through Little Tokyo to play as many games as possible and chat with developers from various backgrounds.

Video games are the mainstay of IndieCade, but there were also tabletop games, role-playing games, and games that were a mix of digital interaction and guerrilla theater. The commonality was developers using games as a form of expression — rather than merely a dopamine-dispensing mechanism — something several developers told me was important to them. Developers, media representatives, and attendees were there to see what was new and have a meaningful experience through gameplay.

There were just over 100 games on display this year and the majority of those I got to try incorporated themes of social change, equality, and empathy for others. Here, I share the top IndieCade games I tried that left an impression on me. I would recommend these for players looking for a fun gameplay experience that's also eye-opening and meaningful.

  1. A Normal Lost Phone (ages 18+, developed by Accidental Queens) asks players to explore the contents of a lost cell phone to find out what happened to its owner. It tackles themes of sexual identity and privacy. (Note: iThrive Games supplied the diversifier that helped inspire A Normal Lost Phone at the 2016 Global Game Jam! Accidental Queens dev Elizabeth Maler talks about that in the video clip below, starting at 3:22.)

http://https://youtu.be/Q7X8DDjREWM?t=201

  1. _transfer (not yet rated*, from developer Abyssal Uncreations) is an intriguing text-based game "about computers, memory, and identity." The soundscape and DOS-era prompts make it a unique and ambiguous experience, and it's supposed to be that way. A primary theme of the game is exploring gender and sexual identity.

Woman with short hair and rainbow gloves playing _transfer on a laptop at a table.

IndieCade attendee sampling _transfer. Photo Credit: Sean Weiland.

  1. Bury me, my Love (not yet rated**, developed by The Pixel Hunt, Figs, and ARTE France) is "a story of love, hope and migration." It follows Nour and Majd, a Syrian couple who are separated as Nour immigrates to Germany to escape the Syrian conflict. The player plays as Majd and communicates with Nour via a WhatsApp-like cell phone interface. The game is informed by real events.

Hands holding a smartphone with images from Bury me, my Love. Art from the game is arranged on the table in the background.

Playing Bury me, my Love at IndieCade. Photo Credit: Sean Weiland.

  1. Four Horsemen (not yet rated***, developed by Nuclear Fishin' Software), an IndieCade 2017 Finalist, is a visual novel that infuses authentic humanity into a portrayal of the immigrant experience. Players take the perspective of four teenagers that come from one of 12 fictional countries. The teens find an abandoned bunker to live in, and the player's decisions determine what kind of community the teens build.

Woman playing Four Horseman on a laptop at an exhibit table.

IndieCade attendee sampling Four Horsemen. Photo Credit: Sean Weiland.

If you're looking for more games to try, I highly recommend checking out all the IndieCade 2017 nominees and award winners (just make sure to check out the content of each title you're recommending to teens). These games represent a wide range of perspectives and approaches to impactful design.

IndieCade has attracted a fantastic community. It speaks to the quality of the festival that developers from all over the world make the effort to come to this more intimate, non-AAA event. The devs I met were supportive, intelligent, kind, and open. No surprise that they make engaging and meaningful games! I am looking forward to exploring the games I didn't have time to play and continuing the many great conversations I started there.

Did you attend IndieCade this year? If so, what games and developers impressed you? Please share with us in the comments!

———-

NOTE: Parents and guardians should be informed of the content of games their teens are playing and decide together what is appropriate for them.
*According to the developers of _transfer, the game is appropriate for ages 15+. They caution that there are "a few scenes of intimacy and sexuality but nothing terribly explicit."

**According to the developers of Bury me, my Love, the game likely will be rated by Pan European Game Information (PEGI) as appropriate for ages 12+, but standards may not translate exactly from PEGI to ESRB and "it might be better to be a little older than that to really get what's going on."

***According to the developers of Four Horsemen, the game is appropriate for ages 15+. They caution that the game contains "a LOT of profanity...(in multiple languages)" as well as "a small amount of blood and a few realistic (but not graphic) depictions of hate crimes some players may find traumatic."

That’s a Wrap on Design Hive 3

By iThrive Games

What do you call an enthusiastic gathering of game devs and psychologists? In the world of iThrive Games, that's an #iThriveDesignHive!

Our third Hive took place Sept. 21-24, 2017 in Anaheim, CA. We added a fantastic group of individuals to our collective Hive Mind, which includes indie, educational, and AAA devs and studio heads, top researchers and professors of game design, and social and emotional learning experts.

For Hive #3, we were lucky to host 6 stellar influencers who joined us in a series of discussions about what makes games meaningful and where there are opportunities to help games, game devs, and players more fully realize their potential. Attendees were:

  • Jason VandenBerghe, ArenaNet's brilliant studio director of design and former creative director at Ubisoft, who lent an invaluable AAA industry perspective.
  • Sheri Graner Ray, also from the world of commercial games, who's a game industry veteran and the founder/CEO of Zombie Cat Studios. She's been called an "industry hero" for championing gender diversity in games.
  • Mitu Khandaker, PhD, an entrepreneur, BAFTA Breakout Brit, game scholar, and professor at the NYU Game Center who helped us to think deeply and critically about what gives players an authentic emotional stake in their gameplay.
  • Chris Hazard, PhD, of Hazardous Software, who lent his point of view as a computer scientist, game engine architect, and game theory expert who's working to make AI more responsive and emotionally compelling.
  • Paul Darvasi, a doctoral candidate and educator who's an expert at engaging his 12th grade English students in deep learning using a range of games, many of his own invention. For more on that, check out his blog "Ludic Learning" and the post he guest authored for us. Darvasi also wrote UNESCO's report on empathy in games.
  • Barbara Chamberlin, PhD, professor and project director for the Learning Games Lab at New Mexico State University. She knows pretty much everything about building engaging games that teach and assess the skills students need most. Look out for her forthcoming book on transformational game design with Jesse Schell.

From left: Hivers Chris Hazard, Mitu Khandaker, and Sheri Graner Ray discuss meaningful game design.

We also were thrilled to host as a guest presenter Diana Divecha, PhD, a developmental psychologist with expertise in adolescence and social and emotional learning. Diana encouraged this group of game devs to consider teens' unique potential as well as their vulnerabilities. She reminded us all that "If you're producing experiences for teens, you're hard-wiring their brains." A big responsibility, yes, and also an amazing opportunity!

Diana Divecha (center) with iThrive team members Susan Rivers (left) and Michelle Bertoli (right).

Dr. Divecha shared some compelling design challenges for teen audiences that attendees were eager to explore. For example, how can we use games to empower players to manage feelings of loneliness? What about dealing with discrimination and microaggressions? Or harnessing the power of strong feelings to guide wise actions and choices?

Hive attendees Jason VandenBerghe (left) and Chris Hazard.

The highlight of the weekend for us — beyond getting to know and work with these industry heavy hitters — was making progress on shaping our strategy for spurring the production of more meaningful games that can improve players' lives and maybe even the world. Feedback from our Hivers validated and opened new pathways for our focus on:

  • Expanding our current offering of developer tools
  • Exploring the potential of games for learning and building social and emotional skills
  • Engaging teens both as reflective players and designers of games, as we have begun to do in Game Design Studio and through other strategic partnerships

iThrive team members Jane Lee and Sean Weiland enjoying the Hive.

At iThrive Games, we continue to build a network of passionate and thoughtful partners on the road to making more meaningful games. We are so grateful for their contributions to our vision and mission. Thank you, Hivers!

Making a Game in One Hour: The Power of Our Choices

By iThrive Games

Editor's note: At iThrive Games, we're always curious about how video games—playing them and making them—can support personal growth and transformation, especially for teens and young adults just venturing out on their life's path. Here, guest author Belinda Zoller, community manager for Extra Credits, reflects on a game design project that delivered meaningful insight...and fueled a key career decision.

***

It was just after 7 p.m. on Dec. 4, 2016 when my friends called wanting to go on a leisurely drive downtown. I packed up my tiny, outdated tablet PC that ran only an hour or so on battery life and jumped in the passenger seat of my friend's car with one goal: make a game.

It was an unconventional office space for making a game, but I told myself it was now or never. I had already procrastinated on my entry for the upcoming Self-Care Game Jam for weeks.

At the time, I wasn't working in games full-time, but that's where I really wanted to be. I just didn't know how to move forward. I had let myself get wrapped up in graduating from school and "learning to adult" and I was feeling disconnected from a greater purpose for my life beyond everyday survival. My day job back then was marketing for a B2B startup. I loved the work itself, but the company's mission and clients didn't leave me feeling like I was making a real difference, creatively or otherwise, in the world.

Even though I lacked a road map for how, exactly, to get where I wanted to be, deciding to make a game that night represented driving in the right direction.

My laptop's terrible battery life created a one-hour time limit to reach my goal and also inspired my subject: an interactive journal entry about the decisions we make every moment.

Taking this time to lay aside any existential concerns about my long-term worth as a creator, I dedicated my game's purpose to exploring my decisions in this exact moment. I'm in a car with my friends, going on a leisurely downtown drive, with no distracting internet access. What are the (ordinary) ways this scenario could play out? What choices am I making right now as I'm both participating with my friends and, at the same time, observing all of us experiencing this moment together?

A screenshot featuring one of the choices December 4, 2016 asks the player to consider.

I listened to the passionate conversations between the other people in the car as they discussed relationships and life. I stared at the hazy Christmas lights in the neighborhood and concentrated on not getting motion-sick. Those observations were opportunities for choices I could make, even when I felt limited in my choices for how to spend my daily working life.

Hyper-focusing on these mundane choices I found myself making throughout my design process—when to listen in or speak up in the conversations, when to pay attention to the outside scenery versus the blank Twine editor—made me curious about the bigger choices I found myself seemingly unable to make. Why was I unable to move forward when I knew what I really wanted to be doing? What outside pressure was I allowing to keep me stuck?

Much like the driving car that was my design office for the evening, the personal drive to create and express ourselves is not really a constant acceleration the way we tend to use it in sentences: "They lack the drive to finish this game." Really, we're always driving, even if it means waiting our turn at the intersection for a green light to flash, for that motivation to keep going even when we're running low on inspiration. Being able to make this short "trip" to the destination of just finishing and publishing a game, any game, empowered me to realize that, no, I don't have to keep being a passenger in my own life.

This realization guided me through the rest of the week. On Monday I found myself laid off. Instead of panicking about my seeming lack of direction or income, I took it as a sign that my instincts on Sunday night were spot on: I had no more excuses to procrastinate my passion. By Friday I had renegotiated a previous part-time gig into more stable, consistent employment at one of my dream companies. I wasn't directly working on games, but I was nonetheless ecstatic to contribute my skills to a cause I cared about—helping other people find their own creative fulfillment.

What unfolded in December 4, 2016 doesn't necessarily fit my vision of what a game that I make could look like. For one, it offers far too few and far too mundane choices. You'll find at least one typo in it. There will never be a polished version or a second pass. But when I look back at it as an experiment in exploring my sense of purpose, I realize that game design has the power to shine a light on the choices that are already in my power to make.

***

About the Author: Belinda Zoller derives the most joy from helping other people's unknown but good games succeed. She currently works as a games marketing freelancer and a community manager for the YouTube channel Extra Credits. Follow @theberlz on Twitter!

Heidi McDonald Has Been Promoted to Senior Creative Director of iThrive Games

By iThrive Games
We are pleased to announce that Heidi McDonald was promoted from Creative Director to Senior Creative Director of iThrive Games, effective July 1, 2017. In her new role, Heidi uses her natural zest and creativity to lead our organization's strategy for partnering with game developers and scholars across the world, spurring the production of meaningful games that support teens' positive development.
 
Since moving to iThrive in October 2015 from award-winning studio Schell Games in Pittsburgh, Heidi has been instrumental in proposing and testing ways to directly involve game developers and scholars in our work. She has helped select game development projects to fund and co-produce — including the empathy-focused games Companions (with Filament Games) and Cycles of Empathy (with 1st Playable Productions). She also has led the effort to build iThrive Design Guides, resources to help developers design around positive psychology concepts like empathy, growth mindset, and curiosity. The Design Guides are developed and tested through two of Heidi's flagship projects: 1) iThrive Design Hives, think tanks that bring together notable experts from academia and the game industry to explore the intersection of games and positive psychology, and 2) iThrive Game Jams, where we guide developers in creating innovative game prototypes focused on positive psychology themes.
 
[Related: We are hosting an empathy game jam at DigiPen in Redmond, Wa. on Sept. 15-17, 2017. Contact us for registration details. Space is limited!]

 

In her new role, Heidi will scale up activities that extend iThrive's reach within the game industry. This includes launching two new projects with the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) at Carnegie Mellon. We are sponsoring ETC's semester-long student project on game design and positive psychology, which kicked off on Aug. 28, 2017 under the faculty supervision of Heather Kelley and Ricardo Washington. We also are guest editing a peer-reviewed special issue of ETC's "Well Played" journal, focusing on how games can support growth and thriving.

 
[Related: There's still time to submit your paper to "Well Played." Submissions are due Oct. 1, 2017.]
 
As Senior Creative Director, Heidi offers consultation hours to developers who want to discuss game ideas or ongoing projects that incorporate positive psychology concepts including identifying and using strengths and positive mindsets to thrive socially and emotionally. Contact us to schedule a consultation, and please join us in congratulating Heidi on her promotion via Twitter and Facebook!

Heidi (second from left) at 2017's Serious Play Conference.

More About Heidi McDonald
Prior to breaking into games in 2011, Heidi worked as a freelance writer, a communications and events specialist, and an elected councilperson in Edgewood, Pa. Heidi began her game industry career at Schell Games, where she spent over four years as a designer and writer. At Schell Games Heidi worked on nine titles including PlayForward: Elm City Stories (with iThrive partner, Play2Prevent, housed at Yale University), The World of Lexica, and Orion Trail. In recognition of her flair for game design she won Women in Gaming's Rising Star Award in 2013. She was an integral part of the Orion Trail writing team that received an honorable mention for Excellence in Narrative from the Independent Games Festival in 2016. She publishes and speaks internationally on various topics including romance in games. Her book, "Digital Love: Romance and Sexuality in Games" will be released Nov. 1, 2017 from CRC Press.

Putting It in Context: Using Commercial Video Games in Education

By iThrive Games
EDITOR'S NOTE: As teens head back to school, we're putting the focus on how one inventive and passionate educator makes commercial video games (as well as games of his own invention) a vibrant part of his teaching approach. Paul Darvasi teaches high school English at Royal St. George's Academy in Toronto, Canada. 

***

I'm a high school teacher, game designer, and researcher who's experimented with a variety of digital and pervasive games in diverse instructional settings. If there's one thing I've learned after over a decade of teaching with digital games, it's that designing suitable contexts is essential for targeting learning outcomes. This especially applies to educators who want to integrate commercial off-the-shelf games (COTS) that were not deliberately produced for education. Take Civilization, for example, a sprawling turn-based history simulator that has made frequent appearances in classrooms. "Civ," as it's popularly known, starts at the dawn of time and, as the eons pass, players grow their empire as they carefully manage culture, technology, religion, economy, diplomacy, military, and political ideology. Even during informal play at home, players can't help but learn as they exercise strategic thinking, judicious resource allocation, and cost benefit analysis, to name a few skills requisite for imperial domination. But, when the game migrates to the classroom, standards and objectives can easily get lost amid the manifold demands of empire building. I love the idea of a class where one student incites sectarian violence in Cuzco, while another beefs up culture in St. Petersburg to rival Paris but, for better or worse, educators must rein in the action to achieve specific ends. Enter context.

Empire building in Civilization VI. Photo source.

Civilization's epic magnitude is not unusual by current video game standards. Players today expect to spend up to hundreds of hours immersed in digital worlds, so big studios bake in an impressive volume of choice-based, open world, and re-playable content. This can, of course, prove a tad overwhelming for a teacher looking to meet a specific outcome. There is also no guarantee that players will absorb the relevant learning material, as they often focus on efficiently beating the system at the expense of savoring narrative and/or information that isn't absolutely necessary to win the game. For example, every unit and concept in Civilization is linked to the "Civilopedia" that provides historically accurate background info; however, it's rare for a player caught-up in the frenzy of besieging a city to pause and read about the origins of the catapult in the third century B.C.

By strategically designing the right context, educators can remedy these issues and shepherd their charges to the glories of immersive learning unwittingly afforded by popular video games. Here are three key tactics to shape context to meet instructional goals:

Priming: This is a good way to foster socio-emotional responses, such as compassion, mindfulness, and empathy. Research has found that presenting relevant material prior to play can better sensitize players and foster awareness of emotional content. Using documentaries, articles, or narratives about the lived experiences of refugees to preface gameplay can lead to a more sensitive reception of refugee storylines in games like Skyrim, World of Warcraft, or Dragon Age: Origins. Similarly, reading testimonials about the challenges of LGBTQ youth may lead to a more nuanced reception of Gone Home or A Normal Lost Phone.

Ancillary Material: Curating accompanying material to support gameplay helps students hone in on learning objectives. Ancillary material can include readings, films, field trips, or lectures. I recently worked with a high school history teacher where we used Total War: Rome II to relay the idea that recorded history is necessarily grounded in perspective and bias. Although narrower in chronological scope than Civilization, Rome II is a complex Roman Empire strategy game with many moving parts. The history class's mini-unit concentrated on Caesar's first battle that launched his highly successful campaign in Gaul. Students read Caesar's own account of the battle in his autobiographical "The Gallic Wars," watched episode 12 of "The Conquerors," and had a hands-on Roman artifact workshop at the local museum. We projected the pertinent portion of the game on the big screen and students took turns playing it for two classes. It was all tied together with a culminating Harkness table discussion that addressed how each medium had its own unique affordances and constraints, and how each source omitted or added portions of the story. They not only absorbed a detailed account of a pivotal conflict, but clearly demonstrated a newly gained appreciation for the nuances of historical representation.

Supplementary material can be used before, during, and/or after gameplay.

Dialogue: I buy into a school of thought that proposes that knowledge is socially constructed, and that collaborative, dialogic approaches improve retention and better invest us in what we learn. Furnishing spaces for directed discussions, debates, and collaborative knowledge-building is an effective way to meet learning goals. These might include online forums, private Facebook groups, Socratic and Harkness table discussions, or small group mission-oriented task forces. Prompts, guiding questions, moderation, and artifacts can help keep the conversations on track. One of my favorite examples is Norwegian educator Tobias Staaby's use of The Walking Dead to teach moral philosophy. His students learn about diverse approaches to moral philosophy, and then enter the zombie apocalypse to field test their newfound knowledge. Staaby cues the game to a segment where the main character must make a difficult ethical decision. Before the choice is made, students break into small groups to determine their choice, which they must justify according to a specific branch of moral philosophy. Animated and informed discussion both preface and follow the decisive moment in the game.

Video games are highly malleable instruments and, as seen above, can be bent, repurposed, and reshaped to fit the lesson. Educators don't have to use the entire game, but can choose to play only what is applicable. Developers have created tools to modify games like Portal 2, Civilization, and Kerbal Space Program for users with little to no technical expertise, which has proven useful for the classroom. Also, if you don't have copies for every student or enough devices to go around, the games can be projected in front of the class and students can take turns playing, which can lead to a valuable shared experiences. In some cases, this "hotseat" format may be preferable even if budget and technology aren't barriers.

There are a growing number of existing lessons, mods, and teacher reviews available online for using video games and creating contexts, but more commercial game developers might also be wise to join the fray. By providing contextual educational material and lesson plans, along with affordable school licensing options, they would not only contribute to making education a better place, but also breathe new life into their product as it takes "just one more turn" at the market cycle.

***

About the Author: Paul Darvasi (@PaulDarvasi) is an educator and researcher who keynotes, lectures, writes and consults on the intersection of digital games, simulations, narrative, social justice, culture and learning. He holds a Master's degree in Educational Technology (MET) and is a PhD candidate in York University's Language, Culture and Teaching program. He designed The Ward Game and co-designed Blind Protocol, an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) to instruct high school students on privacy and surveillance. His case studies on The Ward Game and Gone Home are available in Teacher Pioneers: Visions from the Edge of the Map from ETC Press at Carnegie Mellon, and he recently authored a paper for UNESCO on how digital games can support peace education and conflict resolution.
For more of Paul's insights into teaching with games, visit www.ludiclearning.org.

Psychology and Game Design: One Possible Future Path

By iThrive Games

**EDITOR'S NOTE: Ian Schreiber joined iThrive Games for our October 2016 Design Hive, where he learned about our mission and felt inspired to post about it on Facebook (check that out here). This blog is an extension of the thoughts he shared there.  

"Is flow the only concept from positive psychology that...help[s] us design better games regardless of our motives for doing so? Or is it just the only one that the game design community has discovered so far?" - Ian Schreiber

It's rare to find a game designer who hasn't studied any psychology. Our job is to craft compelling experiences; understanding how humans experience things is vital to our work.

And yet, much of the field of psychology is devoted to what happens when things go wrong. As with medicine, there is more of a focus on pathology than maintenance or wellness. Most of the training doctors and psychologists go through focuses on how to fix problems, with little attention paid to taking happy, healthy humans and maintaining or improving their health. Much of a game designer's study of psychology, then, focuses on human weakness. When I teach game design in a classroom, for example, I cover topics like these:

  • Why most people misunderstand basic probability, and how to design our games' random systems so that they aren't misperceived as unfair (or conversely, how gambling games and some free-to-play games exploit these misconceptions for money);
  • Reasons why players are jerks to one another in online games, and how to design our games' social systems to minimize the effects of trolls and griefers;
  • Behavioral conditioning, addictive behavior, and other mind hacks that trick players into continuing to play our games long after they would otherwise choose not to;
  • Cognitive biases, fallacies, and other traps that our designer brains and player brains lay for us so that they can destroy the fun in our games, and how to design with these very human fallibilities in mind.

This is not to say that these things aren't important. They certainly are. But most players of games are physically and emotionally healthy and well-adjusted humans. Especially if we are designing for the mass market, it would seem prudent to understand not just abnormal psychology, but also the healthy, whole, and thriving mind.

POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

The field of positive psychology is concerned primarily with improving an individual's happiness, well-being, and self-fulfillment. Rather than focusing on curing mental illness or eliminating maladaptive behavior, positive psychology seeks ways for individuals to improve their happiness, whether or not they suffer from any disorder in the DSM-V. Here are some examples of concepts studied by positive psychology researchers:

  • Empathy: Understanding what others are feeling, and why
  • Curiosity: Cultivating a desire to explore the world around us
  • Gratitude: Being thankful for the kindnesses of others
  • Growth Mindset: Believing that we can improve rather than being limited by our DNA
  • Mindfulness: Being present in the moment in a non-judgmental way
  • Purpose: Pursuing a life of meaning
  • Flow: Challenging ourselves at the peak of our ability

...Wait, what was that last one? It probably sounds familiar, because Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's work on flow, a key concept in positive psychology that was popularized in games by Raph Koster's Theory of Fun, is standard content in most Game Design 101 classes.

BETTER PEOPLE, BETTER GAMES

Game designers, particularly those of us working on games for entertainment (as opposed to "serious games"), are primarily tasked with making our games fun, to the extent that this will help the games sell enough copies that our studios can keep making games.

I've met a lot of game designers in the last couple of years who seek a greater purpose—far more than I've seen in the 15 years before that. Some of us want to make games that don't just entertain, but that make the world a better place. Not all of us are driven by this ideal, of course, but it seems there are more of us talking about this than ever before.

Even if you're the type of game designer who just wants to make games that are fun and views that as enough of a lifelong challenge without also having to save the world, thank-you-very-much, you've still probably heard of this concept of flow, and maybe used it to improve your games. Not because you want to improve players' lives, but because this concept from positive psychology helps you make games that are more fun. Any lifestyle improvement that happens as a result is a nice bonus, sure, but you wouldn't even bother except that it also makes your games more compelling.

This begs the question: Is flow the only concept from positive psychology that has this property, helping us design better games regardless of our motives for doing so? Or is it just the only one that the game design community has discovered so far?

Given that positive psychology deals with things that improve people's enjoyment of life, it's likely that these concepts would also improve our players' enjoyment of our games. We just need to figure out how. And once we do, perhaps we will enter an age where our best entertainment games do, in fact, make people's lives better. Not because they were designed to do so, but merely because they were designed well as pure entertainment.

If you agree there is potential here, then, consider this your call to action. Join in seeking ways to apply these concepts to game design. I look forward to seeing the better worlds that you create as a result. (If you couldn't guess from the location of this post, iThrive Games is a non-profit organization specifically working in this space, so if you are reading this and thinking that this is describing your 

current or future projects, or that you'd like to know more, I'd suggest getting in touch with them.)

***

About the Author: Ian Schreiber (@IanSchreiber) has been in the game industry as a designer, programmer, and educator since 2000. In addition to his role as an assistant professor of game design at Rochester Institute of Technology, he has worked on several shipped titles including online trading card games, console games, online social games, and some "serious games" for corporate training. He is also an author and a co-founder of the Global Game Jam.

Come See iThrive Games at IPPA and Serious Play!

By iThrive Games

iThrive Games is excited to have a presence at two conferences this month. From Thursday, July 13 to Sunday, July 16, Michelle Bertoli will be at the International Positive Psychology Association (IPPA) Fifth World Congress (Palais des congrès de Montréal, Canada). She'll present a poster on iThrive Games' theory of change for how games can support teens' positive growth on Friday afternoon from 2:30-3:30. Please stop by!

Then, catch our team at Serious Play (George Mason University, Virginia) from Tuesday, July 18 to Thursday, July 20. We're sponsoring afternoon coffee on Tuesday from 3:30-4 and on Wednesday from 3-3:30. As you grab your afternoon pick-me-up, make sure to visit us at our sorting table, where we'll reveal your signature strength! On Thursday at 10 a.m., don't miss Susan Rivers and Heidi McDonald, who'll be co-presenting on "Guiding Principles for Teen Games."

We can't wait to learn from and connect with you at the conferences this month!

Tweet about it:
@iThriveGames, #thisishowithrive
@IPPAnet, #WCPP17, #positivepsychology
@SeriousPlayConf, #SeriousPlayConf

Games for Personal Growth: A Design Process

By iThrive Games

EDITOR'S NOTE: We were lucky to have Brie Code at our February 2017 Design Hive in Anaheim, CA. She told us that our discussion of positive psychology and strengths inspired new design approaches at her studio, Tru Luv Media, and she shares her insights here. Also check out our interview with Brie.

"When I think of my friends saying they want to 'grow and change' from the media they consume, I know they would find games designed around developing their strengths to be rewarding." - Brie Code

***

I love video games, deeply. Video games have been a resource for me at key moments of my life. They have been a safe space for relaxation, for meditation, for introspection, for identity experimentation, and overall, for growth.

But most of my friends don't like video games. In fact, when I talk with my friends, their biggest misconception about video games is that games are a waste of time and don't help them grow or change.

At my company, Tru Luv, we're making games with the intention of repairing this misconception. First, each project is designed with someone who doesn't like video games. This helps us break out of geek culture. And second, each project is designed with personal growth at its core.

The first step in our design process is the Why. We start by brainstorming around a specific meaning or purpose that comes from the heart of the creator.

The first game we'll release, a game called #SelfCare, is designed with Eve Thomas, a magazine editor and artist from Montreal. In early brainstorms with Eve the concept of self-care came up fast. Eve was seeing an increasing number of posts on Tumblr about self-care and it was resonating with her. When she first came across the trend, it annoyed her. Why should women need a medical-sounding term, an authoritative excuse, to take some time for themselves? Why not just take a bath and call it a bath?

Then Eve realized that for many of us, we need external permission to take care of ourselves. Women have been raised to take care of everyone around us. We've been taught to be polite when people cross our boundaries. We've been taught to do the majority of the housework, childcare, and care for aging family members. At the office we learn that our ideas get made when we give them to a man. In general we aren't used to demanding what we need. Eve decided if the concept of self-care helps women block off some time for that bath we may desperately need, then that's fine.

However, with so many external demands, even once the permission is there, not all women can find that time. So Eve wanted to make a mobile game that was a moment for self-care, a moment of relaxation and peace while boiling water on the stove or taking an elevator to an important meeting.

The second step is How. How can we convey that this game is a refuge for taking care of yourself? We decided that the game should calm panic, should bring positive energy, and should feel satisfying and not frustrating.

The third step is Who. Who are the characters in the game? Who does the player interact with? Who is the player? We decided that the game would have one character, a person who couldn't face the world and who stayed home for the day and stayed in bed—a person who is living the ultimate delicious fantasy of taking a mental health day.

The fourth step is Where/When. Where and when is the game set? We set the game in the bedroom of the person who stays home. The bedroom is welcoming. It's decorated in a familiar, current style for people who love Tumblr and Pinterest and Instagram. It's full of familiar, comforting objects. Maybe you can't afford that cute Tarot deck in real life, but you can have one in the game.

The final step is What. We design the game mechanics last. They emerge from all the previous steps. What game mechanics are calming, positive, and satisfying but not frustrating? What game mechanics feel like a mental health day? What game mechanics feel like a comforting, tasteful bedroom? We decided that for each object in the bedroom, there is a different meditative interaction you can do that is calming for the character and calming for the player as well.

From there, we created a prototype of the design, gave it to Eve, worked with her to identify changes or next steps, and repeated. We are very flexible about trying new, strange ideas.

When we're designing the game mechanics we think a lot about what psychological rewards are relevant for the core meaning and purpose of the game. Video games are about managing rewards so that the player is never too bored and never too overwhelmed. Most games achieve this by managing the level of stress—the   fight-or-flight stress response triggers dopamine rewards in the brain and is very satisfying. But we're not interested in making stressful games. We consider other reward systems, ones that lend themselves more to understanding and growth.

First, we look at a different stress response, not fight-or-flight, but tend-and-befriend, mediated by oxytocin and opioids. I think often about managing oxytocin rewards instead of dopamine. Opportunities to display care in a game can be rewarding. Eve's game is very much a place for the tend-and-befriend stress response.

Beyond stress reactions, we think about other branches of psychology and what rewards we can find there. We think about Quantic Foundry's Gamer Motivation Model. We also think about personality psychology and the Big 5, and how people will tend to seek out situations to display their dominant personality traits and find it rewarding to do so. Customization and other opportunities for identity experimentation in games can be very rewarding.

And then earlier this year I attended an iThrive Games Design Hive and learned about positive psychology and the VIA Strengths. This was a key that was missing in Tru Luv's design process. While most psychology is about fixing psychological issues, positive psychology is about identifying your unique strengths and developing them—about personal growth. When I think of my friends saying they want to "grow and change" from the media they consume, I know they would find games designed around developing their strengths to be rewarding.

Right now we're busy debugging #SelfCare for beta release. But on each subsequent concept, we'll be experimenting with integrating strengths into the brainstorm process. If we were re-designing #SelfCare thinking about strengths, I would start by asking Eve to do the VIA Strengths profile. If Eve was attracted to the concept of self-care, it is probably because there are some interesting correlations or tensions between that concept and her dominant strengths. I'd ask her how her strengths relate to the topic of self-care. And then as we brainstorm the game mechanics, we could start with those individual strengths. What kind of game mechanics could develop those strengths? In the case of #SelfCare, I could imagine expanding it beyond the meditative interactions for calming stress. Once the character feels just well enough to leave her bedroom, I could imagine further rooms in her house that are designed around developing strengths that seem related to self-care, such as Appreciation of Beauty & Excellence, Humour, Creativity, Kindness, or Self-Regulation.

***

About the Author: Brie Code is a speaker, writer, AI programmer, and the CEO and creative director of Tru Luv Media, a video game studio making games with people who don't like games. Previously she was a lead programmer at Ubisoft Montreal on the soft, ethereal game Child of Light and three Assassin's Creed games. Her favorite games are This War of Mine, Skyrim, and The Colonel's Bequest.

Seeking Contributors: Special Issue of Well Played

By iThrive Games

UPDATE: Aug. 23, 2017. Please note that the deadline for submissions has been extended to Oct. 1, 2017.

iThrive Games, in cooperation with Carnegie Mellon's ETC Press, has released a call for submissions for a special peer-reviewed issue of the Well Played journal. We have recruited a team of highly respected game academics from around the United States to review papers submitted to us by Oct. 1, 2017. Papers can be data-driven or theoretical.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

  •     Identifying personal strengths and abilities through gameplay
  •     Designing games for empathy
  •     Cooperative gameplay and prosocial outcomes
  •     Games as a space for self-exploration and identity experimentation
  •     Fostering growth mindset through gameplay
  •     Cultivating optimism through gameplay
  •     Gameplay to enhance persistence in real life
  •     Promoting teen health and well-being
  •     Building teens' self-awareness through gameplay
  •     Boosting self-efficacy through gameplay
  •     Games as a tool for social and emotional skill development
  •     Developing resilience through gameplay

iThrive Games' vision for this special issue is to encourage new scholarship in the area of game design for personal growth and prosocial outcomes, to give academics and junior faculty a place to share their work, and to share the latest theories and studies within academia and the games industry as a means of advancing knowledge in this field. In other words...we want to know what cool studies are happening, and what case studies we can showcase!

There is no length requirement for papers, but please submit them in 12-point Times New Roman font, formatted in APA (American Psychological Association) style. Submissions should be sent to Heidi McDonald at heidi.mcdonald[at]ithrivegames.org by Sept. 1, 2017. Our team of peer reviewers will assess the papers through a blind process and notify all authors of their submission status by Nov. 1, 2017.

Well Played is a forum for in-depth readings of games that parse out the various meanings to be found in the experience of playing them. Contributors are encouraged to analyze sequences in a game in detail to illustrate and interpret how the various components of a game come together to create a fulfilling play experience unique to this medium. Follow Well Played on Twitter to learn more.

The ETC Press is an academic and open-source publishing imprint that distributes its work in print, electronic, and digital form. It represents an experiment and an evolution in publishing, bridging virtual and physical media to redefine the future of publication.

We look forward to reading your submissions! Please contact heidi.mcdonald[at]ithrivegames.org with questions.

GUIDE: A Video Game for Challenging Your Fears

By iThrive Games

"The voice in your head is not always a truthful guide, and the journey of fighting your fear starts by making the choice to question your own narrative." - www.guidethegame.com

You are Fia, a baby phoenix just born back into the world from a pile of ashes. Lightning strikes the tree you call home and you fall from your nest, only to awaken flightless and alone on the forest floor in thick darkness. A mysterious orb of light floats towards you and urges you to follow. It is a friend, it seems. It will take you to safety.

You take some cautious steps forward, the orb of light illuminating your way. Then the light urges you to jump across a wide chasm. "You will make it," your guide says, stoically.

You take a running leap, but miss the ledge and fall down, down, down into a world of dead ends, shadows, and ever-vigilant eyes. Maybe your guide isn't so trustworthy, after all...

* * *

This is the introduction to GUIDE, a puzzle platformer about anxiety and the value of challenging the fearful voice in our heads. Made by University of New Brunswick alumni Rebecca Goodine, Elliot Coy, Jade Yhap, and their teammates,* GUIDE won second place in the international student design competition for empathy games that iThrive Games co-hosted with Games4Health in 2016.

GUIDE was a standout among the submissions owing to its charming art style, unique mechanics, and compelling theme of questioning the inner voices that keep us stuck. Since the competition, the team has had time to build on the original concept, so we checked back with them to find out how GUIDE is coming along and what's next for the intriguing empathy game.

Michelle Bertoli: What inspired you submit an entry to the empathy design competition iThrive co-judged with Games4Health? Why does empathy in games matter to you?

GUIDE Team: We were approached by one of our professors (and now team member), Jeff Mundee, with the collaborative iThrive and Games4Health empathy competition. The theme was immediately intriguing, as it stood out from a lot of other themes in similar competitions at the time, and it also aligned with our personal design and research interests. We wanted to design a game about social anxiety because it was a condition that had affected us and people we knew. Empathy was an important vehicle through which we could address the issue of social anxiety. GUIDE attempts to prompt empathy in an experiential way, but also can be a catharsis for those who identify with anxiety.

MB: Why is it important to you to give players a window into how social anxiety feels?

GT: Social anxiety can be a very isolating and internal experience, and with GUIDE we wanted to show that struggle in a way that allows players to relate to Fia and these very personal battles. Our goal is that the game allows players to reflect on their own struggles, or helps them better connect to a friend or loved one with social anxiety.

MB: GUIDE encourages players to question the internal voices/narratives that keep them stuck in fear. How does this contribute to empathy?

GT: The internal voice or narrative is represented in GUIDE by a small light who leads Fia through the game's forest. The AI for the Guide hovers towards geometry the player needs to see to progress through levels. This light from the Guide, like the thoughts in our heads, "clearly" illuminates the path the Guide wants us to follow. However, over the course of the game it becomes apparent that the Guide is not always right, and the player should start to question the Guide, since there are other, sometimes better, roads to travel. In this way, GUIDE players must begin to acknowledge the perspective of others and how it differs from theirs.

The eyes that hide from the Guide's light in the game represent social anxiety. Players feel like they are being watched and may be able to empathise with Fia's fear. They can start to relate to how people with social anxiety feel like they are being scrutinized. Players also learn that the voice of the guide is an internal voice, like the voice in their heads that can sometimes lead them astray.

MB: Why is it important for teens and young adults to challenge their own internal narratives?

GT: Teens and children are bombarded with messages from all angles, and at such a vulnerable life stage, it is important for them to know how to question the ways they think about themselves. We hope that our game can be used as a springboard for learning such self-improvement skills.

MB: Fia can flap her wings to light fires and burn down obstacles to move forward. It's a really fun and unique mechanic! Where did you get that idea, and what's its significance?

GT: It was important for us to represent Fia's internal journey through external and player-visible mechanics. As Fia progresses in the game and learns about herself, she also gains greater control of her phoenix powers, like fire and gliding.

As a phoenix, players go through a transformation before the game even begins, watching in the introduction as Fia burns out and becomes a chick once again. This shows how Fia in a sense is a blank slate; all her experiences are new once again. We want players to recognize that Fia is new, her experiences are new, her actions are new, that she does not know what the world is like anymore and that she has only a Guide to trust moving forward. This shows how someone with anxiety may see the world, that their inner voice may not be so trustworthy.

MB: How does GUIDE's art design contribute to the emotional impact of the game?

GT: The art of GUIDE is designed to be "storybook"-esque, evoking feelings and memories from childhood. This is designed to help put the player in a state of greater openness towards and acceptance of our game's metaphors. It also allows them to engage in a form of "dangerous" play. That is, they can explore a stressful situation in a contained environment that provides a level of safe abstraction, "levelling up" their empathy skills by relating to the content in an affectively risky, but not truly harmful, way. Through our research we have found that one way that people can gain empathy is to first experience and simulate those skills in a safe, virtual environment.

MB: You have done some playtesting of GUIDE in after-school programs. What has stood out most to you about young players' reactions to the game?

GT: The reaction to Fia stands out the most to us. Players have been receiving her well, commenting on how it is cool to be the "bird that can light things on fire." Players really enjoy playing through the levels using Fia and her abilities, and they seem to think that the challenge/flow state is enjoyable.

MB: You are working to design some curricular materials to accompany GUIDE. How do you envision teachers using GUIDE with their students?

GT: The curricular materials are discussion guides. We believe that the lesson of GUIDE is best received through a short discussion, otherwise a player may misinterpret the message. The vision for GUIDE in a classroom situation would be for teachers to briefly introduce the idea of GUIDE, have students play it, then have a classroom discussion, asking students to expand on what they thought about the message of the game as well as some of the concepts that may be difficult to grasp immediately. GUIDE could also be used by guidance counsellors to help children work through anxiety, by creating an avenue to talk about how Fia may be feeling, and associating her character with themselves. GUIDE is a game first and foremost. It is meant to be a fun experience. At the end of the day, if a child played our game, had fun doing it, and learned a quick lesson on empathy, that's the best way they could have learned.

MB: What have you learned about designing a game for empathy that you most want to share with other game developers?

GT: We have found it very helpful to draw on our own personal experiences with anxiety in the creative process, as it allows us to connect to what we are making in a tangible way. However, it is also important to research the subject you are interested in to ensure that you are portraying the subject matter in an accurate way.

MB: The current version of GUIDE ends with "To Be Continued." What can you tell us about what's next for GUIDE, both in terms of the narrative and in terms of GUIDE's exposure? Congrats on GUIDE's acceptance to the Smithsonian American Art Museum Arcade in August!

GT: Thank you! We are indeed excited to be presenting GUIDE at the Smithsonian SAAM Arcade in Washington on August 5th and 6th, 2017. We also were recently featured at the Jalloo Festival of Animation and Games, Congress 2017, and the Women Making Waves film festival.

In terms of plot, GUIDE will be delving into the perspective of a character introduced at the end of the current version of the game: the "Thunderbird." Players will learn about the background of the Thunderbird and why it is pursuing Fia. They will understand why the Thunderbird seems to be so angry and aggressive, so that they may begin to empathise with the character.

Interested readers can check out our progress on GUIDE at www.guidethegame.com and follow us on Facebook and Twitter: @GuideTheGame.

* * *

*The GUIDE team:
Rebecca Goodine: Team lead, story, level design, and art. For more of her games-related work, please see www.rebeccagoodine.com.
Jade Yhap: Research, story, level design, and networking.
Elliot Coy: Lead programmer.
Jeff Mundee: Advisor.
Virginia Alecia: Art and illustration.
Jordan Roherty: Audio, music, and sound effects.
Nick Tremblay: The newest addition to the GUIDE team, Nick will implement new features and polish the existing game.

 

Zest in Video Games: Teens Need Some Excitement

By iThrive Games

This article is part of a series that captures game industry experts' opinions on game titles and mechanics that might boost habits, mindsets, and skills that empower teens to thrive. These insights arose from discussions at an iThrive Games-sponsored think tank with game developers and scholars.

Teens are wired to venture out, take risks, and discover who they are in the world during what should be an exhilarating time of life. So it's troubling that so many teens report mostly feeling bored, stressed, and tired at school, and excited less than 5% of the time. Developmental psychologist Diana Divecha told us that teens can get disconnected from their natural enthusiasm for life outside of school, too, when they experience too much stress or family conflict or have too many energy-draining activities scheduled in their day. Teens need time to reset, rebuild their energy, and explore the things they're enthusiastic about on their own terms. And since teens' brains are incredibly plastic, the teen years are an important time to cultivate and protect their zest for life.

What exactly is zest? Zest is sometimes described as vitality or "feeling alive." It means embracing experiences or life in general with positivity, enthusiasm, and energy, and it looks different in different kinds of people. For instance, an extravert might show zest by energizing others to join a cause, and an introvert might show zest by exploring a personal passion in a quiet, reflective way. But however it manifests for any one person, studies have found that teens who report higher levels of zest also report greater satisfaction with life, fewer symptoms of anxiety and depression, and greater feelings of self-efficacy, meaning they believe they are in charge of and capable in their own lives.

There are many ways to support zest. Practicing healthy habits like exercise, healthy eating, mindfulness, and getting enough sleep are important for good physical energy. People can also support zest when they savor life's good experiences, practice optimism and gratitude, and maintain good social relationships. And video games are another tool that might empower teens to reconnect with the enthusiasm and energy that they don't often feel in school (and to engage in other habits we mentioned, like exercise and social connection. More on that below). We talked to game developers and scholars about how exactly this might work. Besides the fact that video games are a ton of fun, what specific features and mechanics can support teens in tapping into their energized enthusiasm?

VIDEO GAMES MIGHT SUPPORT ZEST WHEN THEY:

  • Feature whimsy, humor, lightheartedness, and joy. Video games that use bright colors, upbeat music, and funny dialogue and characters can contribute to a high-energy, positive mood. Pikmin (10+ years) and Zoombinis (8+ years) feature cute, whimsical characters and entertaining sound effects. Grim Fandango (13+ years) and Monkey Island (12+ years) are silly and playful with over-the-top memorable characters, quirky art styles, and funny circumstances that inspire happy, energized feelings.
  • Let players take risks and be daring in a safe environment. In the Assassin's Creed (18+ years) and Infamous (16+ years) series, players feel the thrill of doing parkour without the physical risk. In Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD (13+ years), players can dare to try awesome skateboarding tricks without getting hurt. Just be sure teens are realistic about how risky these activities can be in the real world.
  • Allow innovation and exploration. Goat Simulator (11+ years with certain settings) and Octodad: Dadliest Catch (10+ years) both have an absurdly silly premise. They allow the player to be able to do almost anything and to see their experimentation pay off in unexpected and hilarious ways. Minecraft (8+ years) gets players fully absorbed in building anything they can imagine within a gigantic open world that features soothing music and vibrant colors.
  • Encourage a sense of exhilaration and adventure. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (18+ years) and Uncharted series (14-15+ years) inspire a sense of adventure, allowing players to explore lavish, beautiful environments and to uncover stories of intrigue. Classic adventure games like Myst (13+ years) and Monkey Island (12+ years) intrigue players with fun puzzles.
  • Let players make social connections and fun memories. Party games like Charades or The Metagame (14+ years) have players interact with, perform for, and play off of each other in fun, creative, sometimes physical, and often silly ways.
  • Give players a chance to contribute to a meaningful cause. Some players might be really motivated and energized by real-world positive outcomes of their gameplay. Check out our post on purpose in games like Sea Hero Quest (E for Everyone) and Foldit (all ages) for more.
  • Keep players engaged right to the end. "Completionists" show their zest through their dedication to exploring, doing, and collecting everything possible inside a favorite game. Open-world games like Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (18+ years) can inspire this, and so can games like Pokémon Go (13+ years) with their emphasis on creature collection ("Gotta catch 'em all!").

When have games helped you to feel zest, enthusiasm, and energy? What games or mechanics have we missed? Share with us!

Brie Code: Cultivating "Tru Luv" for Video Games

By iThrive Games
"Most people who follow me seem to be playing video games more for what they wish they were than what they are. We all tend to agree that games as a medium has so much, so much potential and that we are just beginning to explore what that potential is." - Brie Code

When indie game developer Brie Code—author of the fantastic "Video Games Are Boring"—joined iThrive Games for our February design hive, we were inspired by the depth and openness of her thinking, her cool, calm demeanor, her adventurous travel style, her awesome tattoos, and the fact that she makes games with people who don't like games. We were so intrigued—what inspires her to do this, and what disservice are developers doing when they make games only with people who already love them in mind? How can developers cast a larger net and make new converts of people who haven't yet experienced the transformative potential of games? Brie generously provided some insights into the workings and philosophy of her new studio, Tru Luv Media, and what games have meant for her personal learning and growth.

MB: You founded Tru Luv Media to make video games with and for people who don't like video games. What inspired you to take this on? Why is it important to you to reveal the power of video games to this audience?

BC: All my life I've had friends who don't like video games. We share the same tastes in music, film, art, even food. My friend Kristina, for example. We like all the same things except video games. But then three years ago her husband's brother gave her his old PlayStation 3 and she asked me if there was anything she should play. I was thrilled, and I recommended the game Journey. It turns out she didn't like it as much as I thought she might, but it did intrigue her enough to try a few more games.

At some point, I recommended my favourite game, Skyrim. She looked it up online and laughed and said she wasn't interested. She doesn't like medieval fantasy and she doesn't like violence. A few weeks passed. And then one evening she phoned me and she was crying because she had accidentally killed one of the characters in Skyrim, Lydia. She had been playing Skyrim obsessively over those few weeks. She said to me that for all these years, it wasn't that she didn't like video games, it was that she didn't know what video games could be. She didn't know they could be about creating a version of yourself in a world full of characters you care about and who care about you. I hadn't realized that she didn't know.

At first, this delighted me because I realized I could share the thing I love with the people I love. But then it made me angry because I realized that I had had this great resource throughout my life for stress management and for learning about myself, and Kristina and my other friends had not had this resource. Not because they don't like games, but because we don't make games that welcome them. So I decided to make my own studio to make video games for my friends who don't like video games.

Then I took it a step further and decided that not only would I make video games for my friends, but I would make them with my friends. Each game is co-designed with someone from a different creative field who doesn't like video games.

MB: What's your process for finding and working with this non-player audience? How diverse is it in terms of age, gender, background, etc.?

BC: For the first few concepts my studio is working on, I've asked the six most interesting people I know from outside the games industry. This is a diverse group in some ways: women and men, different ages, different nationalities and backgrounds. Different interests. But since each of them is a friend of mine they aren't as diverse as I would like. As I grow my studio over time I plan to collaborate with a wider range of creators from all backgrounds.

MB: How have video games, or one in particular, changed your life? What is it about the power of video games that you most want to share with those who don't play them regularly?

BC: Play is how we naturally learn. Video games offer a variety of learning experiences from concrete skills in games such as DuoLingo (which is totally a game) to more abstract personal growth in games such as Skyrim. I've used video games at key stressful moments of my life to experiment with my identity and imagine a better future for myself and what steps I would need to take to get there.

The first game that gave me this opportunity was The Colonel's Bequest, an adventure game made by Roberta Williams in the late '80s. I had this game when I was 9 years old. I had been living with a few different families over the preceding years and had recently been separated from my sister. The main character in The Colonel's Bequest was an inquisitive university student named Laura Bow. Getting to play as Laura Bow and explore an old house and learn about the characters in the house gave me a meditative activity to help me cope with my tumultuous life. It also helped me begin to understand myself and my unique talents and values and needs and what kind of future I wanted when I was older. It gave me hope of what my life could be one day when I went to university. I ended up gaming the system at my high school to figure out how to skip 11th grade to get to university earlier.

I graduated from university when I was 20 and I wasn't ready for adult life yet. I didn't start my career right away. I wasn't sure what career I wanted. I kept my student job and saved up and went traveling to find answers. But in the end I didn't find my answers while traveling, I found them while playing Morrowind. Just like The Colonel's Bequest, Morrowind helped me cope with the changes in my life. It was meditative, and it gave me a place to experiment with and discover more about my identity and how I wanted to relate with people and how I wanted to move through the world. I realized over this time that I needed to find a creative, pro-social way to use my computer science degree. I wanted to work with creative people and I wanted to help the world in some way. And then I started my career in the video game industry.

MB: What have you found to be the primary elements that make existing video games unappealing to non-players?

BC: I think there are two levels on which existing video games are unappealing to many people. The first is that video games can range from quite aggressively off-putting to just simply unwelcoming. They rely on offensive stereotypes, they mainly reference geek culture and not more mainstream culture, and they assume the player understands certain conventions from how the controls work to how the game mechanics work. The second is that video games don't offer deep, meaningful experiences to all people. They are often designed around the fight-or-flight response to stress: They are designed to keep the player in a flow state by keeping the player slightly frustrated. But not all people have the fight-or-flight response to stress and are looking for other rewards from the media they consume. They may want to experiment with their identity, to take care, to connect with characters or other players, and to understand the world more.

MB: What has surprised you most about the reception to Tru Luv Media's mission, both among other game developers and players?

BC: What has surprised me most is how unreceptive some people who love games are to the idea that other people might love something different. Not everyone has to like the same thing.

MB: What overlap have you seen between meaningful in-game experiences for people who consider themselves gamers and those who don't play video games much or at all?

BC: The overlap I see in terms of product design. A good product solves a problem in people's lives. Life is hard and I think most people turn to entertainment to help them cope and to help them navigate their lives. Games can offer a safe space in which to relax and to learn. Games could offer this safe space to anyone, if we made the right games.

What differs on top of the need to relax and to learn is the different ways that people relax or the different aspects of themselves that they feel good developing.

MB: Your team is currently developing a video game about self-care. What inspired that game? What are some of its essential mechanics, and how were they chosen?

BC: #SelfCare is the first game we'll release. The concept was created by Eve Thomas, a magazine editor and artist in Montreal. When Eve first noticed the rising trend of self-care being discussed more and more on Tumblr and Instagram, it disturbed her. She didn't like that people seemed to need an excuse to take care of themselves, to make their own health a priority. But then she realized that people did need an excuse for this, and she wanted to make a game to help people take that space for themselves.

It's a mobile game about a character who has stayed in bed for the day. Their bedroom has different activities they can do for self-care. While the character practices self-care, so do you.

After we designed the activities, I read a book about post-traumatic stress disorder treatment and discovered that each activity we designed corresponded to one of the treatments in the book. We did that intuitively, partly based on how I've used games to process traumatic periods of my life. I found this discovery fascinating.

MB: You've mentioned that you're interested in how video games can support post-traumatic growth. Can you tell me more about what that looks like, and how it has worked for you personally?

BC: A few years ago as we were in the final crunch finishing Child of Light I was diagnosed with cancer. My mother had died of cancer at the same age I was at the time, and a very good friend of mine had died of cancer at the same age just a few months before I was diagnosed. As a systems programmer I have an overdeveloped sense of pattern recognition and so I couldn't help myself—I had this creeping fear that I was next. I went into surgery the morning that the reviews of Child of Light came out. It turned out that the tumour was very early stage and very slow growing and very easy to remove. I was extremely fortunate to have found it so early, and I still feel a bit guilty for my experience with cancer being so breezy and lucky. In the months following, I retreated into video games again to process the whole experience.

Over that time, everything became crystal clear in my life. Until this period of introspection, I had been taking opportunities as they came up in my life based on where I seemed to be needed in the moment. I didn't have any larger purpose. But during this time, I had some strong realizations about how I used video games differently than the developers I worked with, and about how my friends who don't like video games seemed to want the same things out of video games that I did. We wanted video games about identity, care, and characters. I developed a strong sense of purpose around the idea of making these games and mentoring young people who wanted to make these kinds of games. I reorganized my priorities and my life completely around this purpose. I quit my job, traveled for a year to meet young developers around the world, and founded my studio.

A big inspiration to me was Jane McGonigal's TED talk about her game SuperBetter. She talks about how video games can help build the resilience that leads to post-traumatic growth. It really resonated with me, especially during this time.

MB: We've followed you on Facebook and you ask the best questions! (Eg: "When are you most likely to play video games? In what emotional state?" and "How do you feel after you play video games?") What are some of the most striking insights you've gotten from your Facebook network about the feelings and motivations that surround playing video games?

BC: Thank you! I reach out to my network whenever I am grappling to understand something, usually when I am working on a new article or a new talk, or trying to make a design decision in my game. To me, the most striking thing is that most people who follow me seem to be playing video games more for what they wish they were than what they are. We all tend to agree that games as a medium has so much, so much potential and that we are just beginning to explore what that potential is.

MB: What inspires you to create a new video game, and what's your design process?

BC: When I work with someone to create a game concept with them, we start with a problem in the person's life. What is something that is bothering them, or that they wish they could change? This could be about themselves, about the world, about anything.

From that problem, we begin brainstorming the purpose, the message of the game. We start general and work towards specifics: We build on the purpose to identify a style and a set of systems and mechanics that would support that message. Story and characters appear on top of that. But this can vary based on what type of thinker the creator is. I try to adapt the process so if someone thinks more in stories we start with story and extract the message from there and then build the rest. If someone thinks more in visuals than we start with art direction and extract the message from there and then build the rest, etc.

As soon as we have any sort of rough idea of where we are going, we develop a prototype. I bring the prototype to the creator and we see how they interact with it. From there we bounce around some more ideas and try some changes in the prototype. And we continue like that. We test each new idea against the purpose of the game so that the game stays consistent and true.

MB: What tips would you give other game developers who want to make video games that speak meaningfully to a broad range of people, including those who don't regularly play?

BC: The most important tip is to talk to your target audience early and often. Immerse yourself in their culture and invite them into your design process. Test your concepts early and often. Prototype early and often. And be very open-minded. Pay attention to their subtle cues when they seem uncomfortable with some aspect of the game or seem intrigued by some aspect of the game. When discussing ideas, gently ask yourself and your target audience "why" many times a row to get at the underlying purpose and meaning in the discussion. For example: "I like this colour palette." "Why?" "Because...." "Why?" etc.

If the game is built around a purpose and a message that truly resonates with some people then it is worth making and has a chance of resonating with a broad range of people. This is true especially if no other game has yet truly addressed your unique purpose.

MB: Thank you for your time and insights!

For more gems, follow Tru Luv Media on Facebook and @briecode and @truluvmedia on Twitter.

Purpose in Games: Empowering Teens To Explore Who They Are

By iThrive Games

This article is part of a series that captures game industry experts' opinions on game titles and mechanics that might boost habits, mindsets, and skills that empower teens to thrive. These insights arose from discussions at an iThrive Games-sponsored think tank with game developers and scholars.

Only about twenty percent of high school-aged teens already know what they want and where they're going in life, and that's probably just as it should be. Adolescence isn't about nailing down a life course. It's about searching for one. In the words of developmental psychologist Diana Divecha, "Teens, especially 11-15, need room to explore and pursue their temporary interests, whatever they might be." And teens who are actively engaged in an authentic exploration of their purpose experience more well-being and hope than their less purpose-oriented peers.

Unfortunately, it's no secret that typical high schools have a long way to go towards prioritizing students' free, trial-and-error process of self-discovery. Patrick Cook-Deegan, who leads an initiative to create "purpose-provoking" experiences for teens, laments, "Our current model of high school rewards perfection and discourages risk taking,...students are either rewarded for being perfectionists or shamed for failing." Given this high-stress, high-stakes approach, where can teens turn to engage in the critical process of exploring their purpose in a low-risk, supportive environment?

The rich experiential learning opportunities video games provide can offer teens meaningful experiences with the potential to shift their perspectives, attitudes, and knowledge about their own interests and capabilities and may open their eyes to needs and possibilities that exist in the world that they weren't aware of before. Together with expert game developers and scholars, we brainstormed some of the ways video games might serve as one of many settings where teens can take the lead on building self-awareness about who they are and what they might eventually want to accomplish. Games might support teens' path to purpose by:

  • Prompting self-discovery. Games of all types support self-directed exploration in an environment where risk and failure are just a fun part of the journey. Games offer the agency and low-risk experimentation that teens rarely get in traditional learning environments but sorely need to discover who they want to be. Intriguing open-world sandbox games like Minecraft and The Sims inspire teens to set their own goals and explore what interests them most. What are they most drawn to doing when the options are nearly limitless? Role-playing games let teens explore the skills, traits, and mindsets of many archetypes (mage, warrior, healer, etc.) and decide what abilities and characteristics are most important to them to hone.
  • Modeling purpose through a character's noble quest. The list of beloved, purpose-driven characters in games is a long one. Think Link and Mario's never-ending missions to rescue Zelda and Peach in Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Bros., respectively. (Sure, the damsel-in-distress thing is antiquated, but you've gotta admire their commitment.) Aloy's search to discover her identity and prevent calamity in Horizon Zero Dawn is another mission teens can get behind. The torch-bearing avatar in Road Not Taken conquers increasingly bewildering puzzles to rescue children lost in a storm and reunite them with their families. When teens take part in the hardships their characters endure to save the world, stave off extinction, solve a mystery, rescue someone, or defeat evil, it reinforces the power of a (wo)man on a mission and shows how not to give up on a cherished goal.
  • Connecting teens with "something bigger." Feelings of awe can inspire purpose by showing teens that they are part of something larger than themselves, counteracting feelings of meaninglessness. Games are a powerfully immersive way to remind teens that they exist in an interconnected web within an amazing world and that their action (or inaction) has important consequences for that world. Eco makes tangible teens' place within and impact on Earth's fragile ecosystem. Abzu sparks awe by depicting in beautiful depth and color the amazing wonders worth protecting under the ocean's surface, and lets teens restore health and beauty to neglected areas. Kerbal Space Program sparks awe and curiosity about the vastness of space and encourages teens to expand their minds and skills in order to travel there.
  • Sparking epic cooperative efforts. Video games help demonstrate what can be accomplished when many hearts, minds, and fine motor skills unite. Gameplay in the service of a noble purpose can do authentic good for the world: it can literally help scientists progress towards curing diseases like HIV/AIDS, cancer, and Alzheimer's. Foldit asks everyday people to put their puzzle-solving abilities to work in the service of discovering all the myriad ways proteins can fold, a key to understanding disease processes and therapies, and something computers still can't do quickly enough. Sea Hero Quest, a charming mobile navigation game for all ages, has already helped scientists collect many decades worth of data on spatial navigation skills across the lifespan to inform the diagnosis and treatment of dementia. By playing and (optionally) sharing anonymous data with the scientists, teens can play a key role in advancing the process of curing a devastating disease.

Teens stand to gain important insights about their interests and skills and to learn more about what's possible to do in the world through rich gameplay experiences, perhaps especially when gameplay is designed with that purpose (pun intended) in mind. How else can developers make games to deliberately encourage teens to think about their purpose, explore their strengths, and reflect on the tenacity and effort it takes to make progress on their chosen path? What games have we missed here? Let us know in the comments!
***
VIDEO GAMES THAT MIGHT INSPIRE PURPOSE:

  • Abzu (10+ years): Dive below the ocean's surface, exploring awesome underwater ruins and observing deep-sea creatures as you work to restore neglected areas.
  • Eco (all ages): Work collaboratively with others to save the world from an impending meteor strike by building new technologies, but don't ruin the environment in the process.
  • Foldit (all ages): Solve 3D protein-folding puzzles that help scientists test potential therapies.
  • Horizon Zero Dawn (13+ years): Lead warrior huntress Aloy on her quest to discover where she came from and what destroyed the civilization that came before her in this visually stunning role-playing game.
  • Kerbal Space Program (8+ years): A rocket-building sim that lets you launch missions to "the Mun" and other destinations in the Kerbal universe using real rocket science principles.
  • Legend of Zelda series (8+-12+ years): Solve a series of clever puzzles on the way to banishing villains and rescuing Zelda in this classic action-adventure role-playing game.
  • Minecraft (8+ years): Move through a virtual "sandbox" with nearly endless possibilities for what you can create from the resources you gather.
  • Road Not Taken (10+ years): Solve tricky puzzles to rescue children who were lost in a blizzard and reunite them with their families.
  • Sea Hero Quest (E for Everyone): Steer your boat through magical seas to find unique creatures in this mobile game that gives scientists real spatial navigation data they can use to understand and treat dementia.
  • Super Mario Bros. (6-10+ years): What wouldn't Mario do to save Peach? Fight the bad guys, conquer Bowser, and save the princess in the many manifestations of the Mario universe.
  • The Sims series (12-16+ years): Choose your ultimate aspiration and help your Sim achieve it in this life simulation where almost anything is possible.

John Krajewski, "Eco" Developer, On Play that Saves the World

By iThrive Games

It's almost Earth Day, folks. To celebrate, get out there and hug a tree, join your local March for Science, then settle in and play Eco, Strange Loop Games' award-winning online, multiplayer survival sim.

Eco calls on players to work together on a shared server to tackle only the most pressing dilemma of our era: How do we save the world...from ourselves? Players work within a simulated ecosystem to develop the technology to prevent a catastrophic meteor strike without dismantling that ecosystem in the process. Players collect natural resources to build things and drive an economy, analyze data to make projections (At this hunting rate, when will the elk go extinct?), and work together to enact laws to protect vulnerable populations.

Eco brings the consequences of resource mismanagement into sharp relief, especially for those of us who haven't (yet) experienced them in drastic ways in the real world. Eco players have to confront the conflict between individual wants and collective needs (Isn't my mansion awesome? Oh, wait, where'd all the trees go?). This design encourages a mindset oriented towards the common good. Case in point: When considering how much to "charge" other players to use his in-game crafting table, Eco game reviewer The 8-Bit Ninja sets a generous rate, musing, "Everybody should have access to crafting. That's, like, a basic human right." Well said.

So, how does John Krajewski, founding CEO of Eco studio Strange Loop Games, approach designing a game that relies so much on players' self-awareness, cooperation, and empathy? He was kind enough to share some gems based on his experience developing this fantastic multiplayer sim.

MB: People sometimes describe Eco as a game about saving the environment. You've said that Eco is actually, first, about creating a civilization and, second, about the wise use of natural resources. Can you talk about why you took that approach?

JK: I believe it's more powerful as a secondary goal. You give this player a rich system where they have things they want to do unrelated to "saving the environment," but through pursuing those goals they begin to see the importance of the ecosystem and the world around them. Letting players realize that, rather than beating them over the head with the message, is much more powerful. The game is still in early stages, but it's great to see discussions among players about what should be allowed in the world, and all the different opinions that people weigh in with. They're really looking at the wider view and working to understand other people's perspectives. Debating your point with other players with vastly different specialties and immediate goals is challenging and a key aspect of the game.

MB: In terms of a game design approach, what's the difference between requiring cooperation and creating a world in which players want to cooperate? How does Eco encourage authentic cooperation?

JK: In Eco there's nothing forcing you to cooperate, but you'll be a lot more effective if you do. It's rewarding both in gameplay terms and personal terms. We allow a big range of cooperation in the game, from asynchronous interactions in the economy (buying at your store) to sharing property and building together. Since the game is all about social institutions, the relationships you form and how you interact with other players is a key mechanic to the game.

MB: What role does a player's social intelligence play in a "social sim" like Eco?

JK: With the game focused on social institutions like governments and economies, social intelligence becomes a huge advantage. It's all real people you're dealing with in Eco, trying to hash out the best way forward based on simulation data and the history of events in the game.  This is a mechanic that's a great fit for many games, giving players responsibility for a world and challenging them to solve problems that require consensus (in a world where players naturally have very different viewpoints and goals). Our goal is to use this similar structure for many subjects, building on the Eco engine.

MB: Was one goal for Eco to help players feel empathy for the needs of other species? If so, what are some specific design choices that you used to trigger empathy?

JK: Yes, you're existing in their world, in a natural, beautiful place that they thrive in. You need to take from that environment to survive and succeed, but you can easily kill off that beauty if you're not conscious of what you're doing. There's an instant connection when something is vulnerable, you're connected to it and take on responsibility for it.

MB: How might playing Eco in middle school (where it's been embedded into classroom instruction) impact players' longer-term environmental awareness?

JK: When you're growing up, your world can seem a lot smaller than it really is. The concept of something that happens on such a vast scale of space and time as climate change is nearly impossible to imagine when you have this tiny vision into the world that you barely recognize is tiny. Our goal with Eco as a game is to shrink down that vastness of time and space, let them experience in the game world, among their peers, over the course of 30 days, an analogy to what happens in our massive world, among billions, over hundreds of years. It gives you a view and experience that you don't get otherwise, but is very relevant to the challenges we face now.  Widening a person's viewpoint at that age is especially powerful.

MB: What are the most important things for game developers to consider when creating fun games that also encourage critical skill-building for teens (and adults!), like cooperation, empathy, and social awareness?

JK: It's important to think about the kind of social landscape you're building. What are the types of interactions that will take place in the world you've designed? How do you keep those positive and/or challenging? What are the hidden incentives of your structures? It's surprisingly easy to incentivize the opposite of what you intend. Multiplayer is so key to these skills as well, and so much more powerful than simulated interactions. With games so ubiquitous, there's lots of opportunity for connecting real players.

MB: Do you feel that in Eco you succeeded in making a game that does entertainment and education equally well? What advice would you give other game developers who have this goal?

JK: We've got a good start! With a successful Kickstarter and strong Early Access sales on our website, we're confident it will continue to do well in the entertainment market. My advice for games that merge education and entertainment is you really have to have a love and appreciation for the subject first, and see the beauty of it. If you approach it from the angle of, "We'll trick them into doing this classwork by wrapping points and leaderboard and gameplay elements around it," you're not going to create anything useful. Respect the medium of games, understand how fundamentally different (and I would argue more powerful) it is compared to traditional schoolwork, and integrate the learning deeply into the game. Whatever you're learning in a game shouldn't be the obstacle you need to get past to succeed. It should be what lets you succeed. The education subject should be your sword, not your boss monster. (Author note: is John quotable, or what?!)

MB: What's the best way for teens (and people of any age) to access and play Eco now?

JK: You can join our alpha build now at strangeloopgames.com/eco. We also have dev tier packs where we share the source code with players.

MB: Thank you, John!

JK: My pleasure!

Hear more from John on how Eco helps players feel meaningfully connected to the beautiful world his team created:

From Angst to Engagement: Insights from our DePaul University Game Jam

By iThrive Games

iThrive Games has been hosting a series of paper prototype game jams in recent months. We had one in January at MagFest, and on April 1, we held one at DePaul University in Chicago. No fooling!

This jam was different in that we included both college students and high school students. We presented game design resources to help them design around positive psychology concepts, and then let them loose to come up with game ideas. Some 42 people attended, and eight games were conceptualized or even designed! Spending the day with these folks was very rewarding for me, and left me with these important insights:

1. The high school students, by and large, had better ideas. The college students were coming up on final exams, so the instruction they'd experienced all semester about things like systems design and game balancing were at the forefront of their minds when approaching the exercise. While this meant that their ideas were often very well fleshed out and robust, it was the high school students who were unlimited by any constraints, who were more able to think outside the box and demonstrate great innovation. Pairing college students with high school students benefitted both groups and improved the ideas!

2. More presentation time resulted in more thoughtful design. At the MagFest Jam, we spent only 15 minutes talking about how to design for positive psychology and expected that the participants would be more dependent on our handouts to help them. This time, we spent 45 minutes explaining the resources and walking people through an example of how they might go about the process. This resulted in much more thoughtful ideas about what concept to use and how to express that in a game! We learned that participants respond well to more explanation, and the products reflect a greater understanding of what we're trying to do.

3. We learned how to engage reluctant teens. We had one 17-year-old participant who arrived with his mother. An aspiring computer programmer, he initially scoffed at the idea of an analog game jam. When we talked about things like kindness and empathy, he became openly hostile. They were getting ready to leave. I recognized immediately that this young man represents a contingent of typical teens, so I was intent on figuring out how to reach him. Here's what kept him at the jam until the end, until he had a game to present!

4. Even computer programmers need to understand and know how to prepare game design documents. In the games industry, everything you do on a game is reflected in the game design document. People of all disciplines need to know how to read these documents, respond to them, document their work, and to prepare their own (to help other team members understand how all the pieces of a game need to exist and interact with each other). Our jam requires you to prepare a game design document, which can help you with a required industry skill!

5. Finding out what games teens like, and why they like them, can provide direction. Popular games like Call of Duty, Doom, and Halo (which might be criticized as violent) are games that can still encourage positive things in certain kinds of players, so shouldn't necessarily be dismissed. The key is to recognize that each family needs to work together to determine what healthy gaming looks like for them, and this mom was okay with her son's gaming choices. This 17-year-old boy (a high school senior) likes shooters and horror games because they let him blow off steam, and let him explore and overcome danger. We decided that this connected well with resilience and curiosity, and he was able to move forward.

6. Not every positive psychology concept has to be "touchy-feely." For those kids who don't feel as comfortable exploring concepts such as kindness, optimism or empathy, there are equally important practices such as curiosity, growth mindset and resilience that might appeal to them to use.

We emerged at the end of the afternoon full of pizza and game ideas about everything from breaking up cliques, to a multi-player escape room experience to fight anxiety, to a cooperative game where players rebuild a destroyed city. People really enjoyed themselves and even stayed afterward to thank us and ask us to do more events!

Interested in attending or hosting an iThrive Games Jam? Leave a comment or send us a message!

Doris Rusch, Deep Games Developer, Talks Designing for Empathy

By iThrive Games
"I firmly believe that everything can be made relatable. We are all, after all, humans. Our experiences may vary (sometimes A LOT), but we all carry everything within us. We just need some ways of accessing this deep, dormant understanding of the whole range of the human condition." - Doris Rusch

One moment I was bounding from one branch to the next, scaling a giant tree, weightless as the birds chirping nearby. Suddenly, barbed vines emerged from below and dragged me deep underground, where I sank helplessly through layers of quicksand. No measure of will or button mashing could stop it. This is the essence of playing Doris Rusch's Elude, a hauntingly beautiful online game intended to help players relate to the lived experience of depression. (It takes 5 minutes to play. Go ahead! I'll wait.)

As a believer in the power of games to build empathy for difficult experiences, I was eager to hear about Doris's process. What motivates her to design for empathy, and does it work? I "sat down" with Doris (over email) to get a download from her brilliant brain. (Note: I could never fit all that brilliance into even the thickest volume. This interview has been edited for length.)

MB: How and why did you get involved in designing Elude?

DR: Three factors converged to inspire Elude. I had just presented a game on substance abuse (Akrasia) at the Games 4 Health conference in Boston. A child psychiatrist (Atilla Ceranoglu) was in the audience. He approached me afterward and said, "That's cool, let's make a game together!" I was going through a rough time myself and an acquaintance had recently committed suicide (a suicide he had announced on Facebook). All of this happened at the same time and so it seemed obvious to make a game that helped communicate to friends and relatives of people with depression what it's like to help fight stigma and promote support.

MB: Is the game successful at helping players to empathize with someone who's depressed, and how do you know?

DR: We tested the game a lot when we developed it, making sure we got it in front of friends and relatives of people with depression. Afterwards, it was picked up by many self-help blogs where friends and relatives could access it. I still receive emails from people from all over the world (including Thailand, Singapore, Europe and the U.S.) who played the game and want to share their experiences. It has also been used in nursing education by Barb Harris at DePaul University.

My evidence is anecdotal but based on a wide player base. What I heard consistently from players who don't suffer from depression themselves was, "I felt like I didn't have a choice. All of a sudden, when those vines came after me and dragged me down, I was helpless. I couldn't do anything!" They say this with a realization that depression is not a character weakness. The loss of agency is very real. Often, friends and relatives of people with depression experience tremendous anger and frustration that their loved ones can't "pull themselves together." Understanding that it doesn't feel like that's an option is key to a better dialogue and more empathic relationship.

MB: What's unique about trying to understand depression by playing Elude, as opposed to, for example, reading about someone's personal experience with the condition?

DR: Elude uses games' capacity for embodied learning. Players submit to the rules of the gameworld, which model the inner landscape of someone with depression. "What it feels like" becomes the law in this world, as real as gravity. As the player, it is your happiness that is now constrained, your agency. Sinking deeper and deeper into the quicksand of despair is your reality. That's what other media cannot portray.

Elude creates this sensation by first modeling happiness, letting the player soar higher and higher through a sunny sky using leaves and flower petals as footholds. Then it slows and drags the player down through the tree canopy and into the darkness, modeling the loss of capacity for happiness in a tangible way. And there is no way to just "try harder" to break out of this stuck place because the rules of the game—following the lived reality of depression—don't permit it.

I came to feel that the game should focus on this part of the experience, and not on the healing part. I wanted people who don't necessarily "get" depression to just sit with it for 5 minutes and allow it to be. People often want to "fix" the person with depression, but that devalues their experience and underscores that "something's wrong with you," so wrong that we can't even talk about it. Sometimes, being able to talk about it, accepting it the way it is, is crucial to establish a dialogue and relationship that is productive for change. That's why Elude focuses on conveying what it's like without offering a solution.

MB: What is your process for designing a game meant to inspire empathy in the player?

DR: I first need to understand deeply the reality that the game should model. I do a lot of background research. For Elude, I drew on my own experiences with depression but also did a ton of complementary reading to get a broader picture of what it felt like to others. I read William Styron's "Darkness Visible" and Julia Kristeva's "Black Sun." It was not a happy year! I also dug through a lot of clinical literature provided by Atilla Ceranoglu and we discussed his expert perspective on the issue. I had in-depth conversations with people who'd experienced depression, my subject matter experts (SMEs). I looked for metaphors in the language they used because our inner worlds are abstract and we often draw on metaphor to make them concrete.

Sometimes, I co-design with SMEs. We might make every design decision together, or I might derive a preliminary metaphor/rule system from SMEs' reports, prototype a game, and then let my SMEs play it and give feedback, on which I iterate.

The SMEs' feedback is essential but not the only factor in the design process. If the goal is for the game to convey to people without lived experience "what it's like," I also playtest with those people. They need to get it. If the experience the game models is too idiosyncratic, the metaphor too obscure, I have to find a way—with the SME—to make it more relatable. I firmly believe that everything can be made relatable. We are all, after all, humans. Our experiences may vary (sometimes A LOT), but we all carry everything within us. We just need some ways of accessing this deep, dormant understanding of the whole range of the human condition.

MB: When your goal for a game is to inspire empathy, how does that affect your design choices? I'm especially curious about the decisions around the main character, who appears to be a teenage boy.

DR: We could have just as well designed the main character to be a teenage girl and if we had had the time, we would have done both and let players choose. But we thought: it's a game. Teenagers play games. Teenagers often struggle with depression. So, if we make a game, our target audience is probably friends and relatives of teenage boys with depression who play games and use them to self-express, relate, explore. It made sense for the topic and the audience. We thought parents might be able to see their child in the character and other players might be able to see themselves. But yes, having a female version would have been good, too.

MB: What else do players need to do or know outside of this game to enhance their empathy for someone with depression? Why is the game alone not enough?

DR: The game is a good starting point, but its purpose is to foster dialogue. Nothing beats real, human interaction. Often this interaction needs a little nudge. We hope Elude can be this nudge by offering a shared experience that can then get people talking about it. The game can also help those with depression to "feel felt." I heard this often from players who have firsthand experience with depression. They know the designer gets it. Someone gets it. They are not alone. But then this needs to spread to their friends and family and possibly even strangers.

MB: Why should game developers design for empathy, and how can they do it better?

DR: Games are great media to enable embodied experiences because players learn through consequences of their actions and can experience inner worlds by submitting to their realities. It's extremely powerful to see life through someone else's eyes (at least salient aspects of it and for the time of the game). But it all starts with listening, with being truly open to the experience the game aims to convey. It is easy to project and assume, and when you do that, what the game depicts has little to do with "what it's like" for the single mother, the refugee, the person with an eating disorder, or the teenager who thinks she's just no good at math because math is not for girls.

Design approaches should be participatory, including people with the actual, lived experience as experts. To design for empathy, you need to have empathy yourself first. You need to make room for the reality of others and make it your job to understand it as fully as possible. It's a great "no-ego" exercise. And this leaks into other areas of life, too. Making a lot of empathy games is a powerful way to adopt empathy as a permanent mindset. I think creating empathy games so more people can play them and learn something from them is important, but it would be just as important for people to learn how to design empathy games themselves.

For more about Doris Rusch, check out her Play for Change lab, pick up a copy of her book on designing deep games, and don't miss her TEDx talk on April 18th, 2017!

Congrats to Colleen Macklin: HEVGA Fellow and Game(s) Changer

By iThrive Games

What's more fun than playing The Metagame*, a hilarious and thought-provoking party game? How about playing The Metagame with Colleen Macklin, one of the game's inspired creators? That's exactly what the iThrive team had the privilege of doing when this creative dynamo joined our most recent design hive, a vibrant think tank of game developers and scholars who are invested in making great games that also do good.

We saw Colleen's creative mind at work, so we weren't at all surprised when, on February 27, she was elected by her peers in game design to join the first class of HEVGA Fellows, a group of scholars who have made outstanding contributions to design, theory, or research in games. HEVGA (the Higher Education Video Game Alliance) advocates for the importance of creating and sustaining quality video game programs in colleges and universities, and their new fellows program recognizes leaders whose work illustrates how valuable games really are.

In addition to being a fantastic guacamole chef and stylish ball-pit crasher (evidence below), Colleen makes seriously fun games with a serious impact. As a developer, professor in design and technology at Parsons School of Design, and co-director of Parson's PETLab (Prototyping Education and Technology Lab), Colleen makes games that manage to increase players' awareness about major societal issues while offering up a huge dose of fun. Case in point: her game Budgetball teaches college students fiscal responsibility using sports, eggs, oven mitts, and inner tubes (you know you're curious). She also partnered with the Red Cross to invent a card game that helps vulnerable communities to prepare for impacts of climate change, like deadly storms and flooding.

Colleen knows—and teaches her students—that games are serious fun; they involve experiential learning that helps us solve problems and experiment with how the world and relationships work. As Colleen says in her TEDx Talk:

"I believe recess is the training ground for us to solve the most challenging problems we face; everything from managing the federal debt to climate change and beyond. Why? It's because games are systems. In fact, games help us domesticate systems, put them in our hand like a furry little kitten, play with them, see how they interact and learn in a safe environment.... And the problems that we face, they're systems too."

Congratulations, Colleen! We join HEVGA in recognizing you for making—and teaching a new generation to make—games that empower people and communities to thrive!

*The Metagame (14+ years) is a "creative judgment" card game in the tradition of Apples to Apples (but headier) and Cards Against Humanity (but without all the adults-only content). Players express their opinions on a range of silly and serious subjects, and see if they can predict which answers will win over "the judge" of a particular round. The Metagame is really multiple games in one, with several ways to play that can accommodate anywhere from 2 buddies to 50 partygoers. You can support Colleen Macklin's game design cooperative, Local No. 12, and have a ton of fun by buying it here. iThrive does not benefit financially from promoting this game. We just really like it, and the people who made it.

Video Games: A Safe Place to Wonder

By iThrive Games
"Games are driven by a curiosity over what's in the next level, what's in the next chest, or who the next boss will be." - Mark Filipowich

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article is part of a series that captures game industry experts' opinions on game titles and mechanics that might boost players' positive habits, mindsets, and skills. These insights arose from discussions at iThrive-sponsored think tanks with game developers and scholars.

Without a desire to explore our world, how could we learn? In fact, how could we have survived at all if our ancestors had not ventured into new territory to find food or experimented with ways to start a fire? They had to control their fear of the unknown in order to get the big payoff of expanded knowledge and resources. And in order to overcome fear, something powerful had to motivate them—something like curiosity.

THE POWER OF CURIOSITY.

Curiosity is so rewarding to the brain that it activates the same circuits as sugar. But it is better than sugar, because curiosity helps us learn. When we are curious, we pay closer attention. We think about information more deeply and remember it better. Plus, curiosity gives us a dose of feel-good dopamine, making it a reward in itself. Curious teens report feeling greater life satisfaction, positive emotion, purpose, and hope than their less curious peers.

Generally speaking, people are naturally curious. But fear can get in the way of exploring novelty because, well, the unknown is risky. Venturing outside of our comfort zone can result in failure, or worse. For example, some scholars have argued that traditional education in subjects like science can actually shut down kids' curiosity when it focuses too much on getting the right answer and avoiding mistakes.

"Teens need self-directed opportunities to express their curiosity and explore to their imagination's content within safe boundaries." — Diana Divecha, PhD, developmental psychologist

Teens' brains are especially sensitive to rewards, and they are driven to take risks that broaden their understanding of the world and their ability to navigate it independently. However, the stakes of failure in traditional academic and social settings may hold teens back from fully diving into the trial-and-error process of learning on which curiosity thrives. To engage with new and (for some) intimidating topics like science and technology, or the exploration of personal identity including sexuality, teens can benefit from environments where they feel safe enough to make mistakes and have the freedom to direct their own actions and find personal meaning in the content.

ENTER VIDEO GAMES: A SAFE SPACE FOR CURIOSITY.

Video games are a fantastic playground for curiosity because they are (arguably) a perfect blend of risk, reward, and safety. Players constantly fail but usually stick with it for the promise of great rewards (and often a great story). And when players fail, the stakes are low—they don't lose much beyond a little bit of pride. Because failure is such a natural part of learning to play a game, the process is perhaps less distressing than it might be in "real life." What's more, game developers' skills mixed with technological advances make for virtual worlds that are incredibly intriguing, sometimes purely for their visual splendor and mystery. It's no wonder that teens are drawn to exploring these worlds for hours at a time, testing the limits of what's possible within them.

At iThrive, we are interested in how games can provide a powerful outlet for feelings of curiosity about topics that are constructive, meaningful and relevant to teens' lives and aspirations. We seek out great games that provide opportunities to put curiosity to good use to build skills and learn about the world.

We spent time with expert game developers and scholars to come up with a list of games in diverse genres that are especially promising for channeling teens' curiosity—the strength of seeking out new knowledge and experiences for their own sake, and embracing uncertainty. We share their insights here:

GAMES MIGHT ENCOURAGE CURIOSITY WHEN THEY LET PLAYERS SOLVE A MYSTERY, LIKE IN:
  • Her Story (16+ years): More an interactive film than a game, players use a police computer to solve a murder mystery via video clips and searchable transcripts.
  • Kentucky Route Zero (10+ years): A point-and-click adventure game/interactive novel "about a secret highway in the caves beneath Kentucky, and the mysterious folks who travel it." - http://kentuckyroutezero.com/
  • Nancy Drew series (10+ years): A series of point-and-click mystery adventure games. Players interview characters and search for clues to solve the mystery at hand. Bonus: Depending on which game from the series players choose, they might learn about topics like physics and electricity or become more familiar with other cultures as they play.
  • Myst (13+ years): Players explore and examine objects on a mysterious island to reveal secrets about an injustice that they can then help to right.
  • Broken Age (13+ years): Players switch between two teenage characters living in very different worlds. They combine objects and explore the world to ultimately discover how the characters' destinies intertwine.
GAMES MIGHT ENCOURAGE CURIOSITY WHEN THEY LET PLAYERS NAVIGATE WORLDS THAT TURN THE LAWS OF PHYSICS AND GRAVITY ON THEIR HEADS, LIKE IN:
  • Portal 2 (10+ years): In this spatial puzzle-platformer, players help their robot companion to "find the portal gun, rescue other test subjects, and rebuild the dilapidated facility...Players have to figure out where to shoot portals, how to jump through them, and at what velocity and angle." - www.commonsensemedia.org
  • Monument Valley (7+ years): Players experiment with physics and gravity to move a silent princess through a beautiful world of MC Escher-inspired architecture.
  • This Is The Only Level series (6+ years): A set of online games where the level stays the same, but the mechanics constantly change. Guide the elephant to the exit...once you figure out the rules!
GAMES MIGHT ENCOURAGE CURIOSITY WHEN THEY LET PLAYERS EXPERIMENT TO CREATE NEW THINGS, LIKE IN:
  • Spore (11+ years): An evolution simulation where players create their very own species and guide creatures through 5 stages mirroring real-world evolution: Cell, Creature, Tribe, Civilization, and Space.
  • Little Alchemy (8+ years): A simple but delightful online game. Players start with just four elements (air, earth, fire, water) and combine them to create over 500 different objects.
  • Minecraft (8+ years): Players move through a virtual sandbox featuring nearly endless possibilities for what they can create from the resources they gather.
GAMES MIGHT ENCOURAGE CURIOSITY WHEN THEY LET PLAYERS DISCOVER THE SECRETS OF FANTASY WORLDS, LIKE IN:
  • The Legend of Zelda franchise (8+-12+ years): A classic action-adventure role-playing game with a series of clever puzzles to solve and massive dungeons to explore on the way to banishing villains.
  • Dreamfall (18+ years): A mature adventure game that takes place in a future world where the ability to dream is in jeopardy. "An epic adventure across continents, and visit exotic locations in an action-packed and emotional storyline." - www.dreamfall.com
  • Dragon Age: Inquisition, (18+ years): An open-world fantasy role-playing game that offers opportunities to explore a massive world and complete quests that interest the player.
  • The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (18+ years): A fantasy role-playing game with a vast, beautiful world to explore, and countless quests players can opt to take on or ignore. Choices shape who the player becomes.
GAMES MIGHT ENCOURAGE CURIOSITY WHEN THEY LET PLAYERS EXPLORE THE FAR REACHES OF THE "REAL WORLD," WITH SOME TWISTS, LIKE IN:
  • 80 Days (13+ years): Players race to make it around the world in 80 days, meeting fellow explorers and learning about 19th-century cities along the way.
  • Kerbal Space Program (8+ years): A rocket-building sim that lets players launch missions to "the Mun" and other destinations in the Kerbal universe (similar to our own) using real rocket science principles.
  • Abzu (10+ years): Players dive below the ocean's surface, exploring underwater ruins and observing sea creatures as they work to restore neglected areas.
  • Pokémon Go (13+ years): An augmented reality game where players explore the real world to catch virtual Pokémon and train them to be strong fighters. The game intrigues players with the shadows of mysterious creatures they haven't yet seen.
GAMES MIGHT ENCOURAGE CURIOSITY WHEN THEY LET PLAYERS EXPERIMENT WITH SOCIAL ROLES, INTERACTIONS, AND IDENTITIES, LIKE IN:
  • The Sims 4 (12+ years): This life simulation game lets players fully customize the appearance and personality of their sim and then experiment with interacting with other sims in a variety of kind, mean, and romantic ways.

Video games are a safe and intriguing setting for teens (and all of us!) to let curiosity reign and to freely explore the worlds and topics that interest them as they discover their identity and purpose. Have these or other games let you explore the far reaches of your imagination, or learn about new cultures, places, or eras? What other ways have games let you use or expand your curiosity? Tell us on Twitter at @iThriveGames!


Curiosity Takes Us to the Mun an Beyond

By iThrive Games
"Curiosity is nature's built-in exploration bonus. We're evolved to leave the beaten track, to try things out, to get distracted and generally look like we're wasting time. Maybe we are wasting time today, but the learning algorithms in our brain know that something we learnt by chance today will come in useful tomorrow." - Tom Stafford

This week's exciting news of the discovery of several Earthlike, potentially life-sustaining planets 40 light years from our own solar system is the perfect illustration of the big payoffs of curiosity, a strength of character that drives us as individuals and as a species to explore the vast unknown and to gather knowledge and experiences for their own sake. Curiosity about space is one area of inquiry that's found an outlet for expression in video games, and games like Kerbal Space Program can, in turn, stoke the fire of teens' curiosity about science and technology. iThrive's Creative Director, Heidi McDonald, shares a story about her son's experience with Kerbal:

"A couple of years ago, my (then) 10-year-old son—who is not especially passionate about science (he's more of a performer at heart)—became obsessed with trying his hand at rocket launches thanks to the video game,Kerbal Space Program. This rocket-building simulation game lets players use concepts from actual rocket science to conduct space explorations and send Kerbals—adorable green creatures that resemble the Minions from Despicable Me—to the "Mun" and other destinations in the Kerbal universe. My son's favorite character in the game was a Kerbal named Jebediah, and he poured hours into finding a way to get that lovable creature to the Mun. 

"The day came when the in-game mission was a go. My son sat rapt, watching as the rocket containing his friend Jebediah went up, up, up toward the Mun...but then missed the Mun completely, and flew directly toward the sun. Apparently, the calculations were a bit off. All my poor boy could do was sob as he watched his favorite Kerbal float helplessly toward the Sun. 

Fortunately, the Kerbal Space Program developers weren't so cruel as to have Jebediah char to a crisp. Instead, Jebediah's ship was now in constant orbit around the Sun. From then on, whenever my son played, he would sigh deeply each time he saw Jebediah make another revolution—a sad reminder of how he had failed his buddy. "I'm so sorry, little dude!" he would say every time.

We talked about whether or not he should just reinstall the game. The potential issue with doing that was it might mean that he'd never see Jebediah again, depending on the way the game was designed. Games like The Sims randomly create a set of characters to populate the world for gameplay. This is called procedural generation. My son and I didn't know whether the Kerbals were procedurally generated or not. If they were, he could reload the game, but Jebediah would not exist in that new version. My son wondered, do I continue to watch my friend orbit the Sun forever, or do I reload with a chance of never meeting him at all? It was the most intense existential crisis I've ever seen a 10-year-old have.

As it turned out, I was headed to IndieCade that October. Kerbal Space Program was going to be exhibiting there, and my son begged me to ask the developers about procedural generation in their game. When I approached Kerbal animator Daniel Rosas (not at all crying or grabbing him by the lapels and explaining my son's desperation!) he kindly invited my son to email him directly with his questions. As it turns out, most characters in Kerbal Space Program are procedurally generated, but there are six which were specifically created...and Jebediah is one of the six! This gracious developer also explained that it was possible, using the real science in the game, to mount a rescue mission and bring Jebediah back from the Sun!

My son was THRILLED to hear this. He emailed the developer and in return got a few tips on how to mount that rescue mission. He was adamant that he didn't want the answers—only clues to help him figure it out for himself. It took him seven more months, but, with curiosity as his motivation, he was finally able to rescue his favorite character. And he eventually conducted a successful space mission that put Jebediah on the Mun."

Games have the power to inspire our curiosity about science, technology, and the world around us, and this was clear watching a 10-year-old boy play Kerbal Space Program. Heidi reports that she had never seen her son so passionate about wanting to explore what he didn't know as when he was playing the game. Suddenly, he was asking philosophical questions, questions about the design of the game itself, and questions about things like torque and trajectory that he needed to investigate to get Jebediah home and to the Mun. His curiosity gave him the tenacity to go straight to the developers for answers.

Kerbal Space Program created a fantastic environment for a young boy to exercise his curiosity about how things work, and it made him want to mount his own space missions. The developer went one step further to individually encourage and reward his curiosity. We don't know if he will ever be motivated to scan the skies for habitable planets as a career, but if he is, there's a good chance that the seed of his curiosity was planted by a great video game.

Check back with us next week, when we'll dig into other ways games might prompt players to practice curiosity.

What games have made you curious about science, game development, or the wider world?

Celebrating Random Acts of Kindness

By iThrive Games
"A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees." Amelia Earhart

Several weeks ago, I was sitting in line in the Starbucks drive-thru, waiting for my iced grande nonfat chai tea latte with one pump of caramel. I was feeling pretty down about the tension and division in our country (and briefly pondered whether my 11-word-long drink order was part of the problem). I drove up to the window, credit card in hand, ready to pay. The barista beamed at me and reported dutifully, "The person in front of you paid for your order. She said she hopes you have a great day!" I had heard about this happening in drive-thrus, of course, but it was the first time I experienced it personally. It was a simple thing, but it gave me a rush of goodwill and hope for society (which was magnified when the same thing happened three more times that week!). I gave a polite honk and waved at my benefactor as she drove away. I took a moment to savor the warmth of a stranger's kind impulse and wondered if it was just my imagination that the chai tasted a little extra delicious that day.

Because kindness is a powerful tool, that woman's act of kindness benefited her as much, if not more, than it benefited me. Kindness is one of the 24 strengths of character that, according to the founders of positive psychology, is nearly universally valued and considered key to a good life. Research by scientists including happiness scholar Sonja Lyubomirsky suggests that doing kind things for others is a reliable way to boost our own health and well-being. Receiving kindness has the power to heal, and often sets off a chain of paying it forward to others. (But beware: greedy acts are contagious, too—putting kindness into the world is a better choice for everyone).

Over the next few days, still touched by that small, thoughtful act, I was on the lookout for sneaky kindness opportunities. I got a little bit of a rush just contemplating making someone else's day. Buying someone's coffee was an obvious choice. I did it a few times and loved it. But soon I needed to change it up. Research on happiness-enhancing activities—like showing kindness or expressing gratitude—shows that people get a bigger boost when they vary the activities they do. Choosing a novel act of kindness to try every now and then is one way to ensure that the effort delivers maximum happiness payoff.

It turned out that new opportunities to show kindness were everywhere I looked. I donated some of my paid time off to a fellow employee who needed more hours to spend with her father in hospice care. I took the time to get out of my car and stop a shopping cart from rolling into the side of a stranger's truck. Almost every time I did one of these small kindnesses, I noticed yet another that was paid back to me. The man in front of me at the airport noticed I was rushed and insisted I take his place in line at the baggage drop. A stranger took the time to pay me a sincere compliment as we crossed paths.

Stories like these abound, and in honor of Random Acts of Kindness Week (February 12-18, 2017), let's give a shout-out to a few ways that opportunities for kindness show up in and around the world of games:

  • Mission: Kill with Kindness: In Cruel 2 B Kind, Jane McGonigal and Ian Bogost's experimental pervasive game, teams compete to be the first to "assassinate" other players in public spaces through kindness. The trick? You don't know who's playing, and who's just an "innocent bystander." Compliment a non-player, and you've made their day. But compliment a fellow Cruel2BKind-er and you may have carried out a successful kindness assassination. What other games do you know of that get throngs of people shouting super nice things to each other in the streets for the win? Watch Cruel 2 B Kind gameplay below (or here).

  • Gifting In Games: In Farmville, an online social game where you deck out your own little farm, there are certain objects you can only get through friends' generosity. Gifting things like ducks, bird baths, and topiaries raises the likelihood that others will gift back to you, resulting in fancier virtual farms for all involved! And in case you're wondering, it's okay to be kind because you think your kindness will be appreciated or reciprocated. Getting a benefit for your kindness doesn't make it less meaningful (and in fact, being appreciated for your sacrifice might make future kindness feel more worthwhile).
  • Gifting THE Game: Show your love for a favorite game (and the developers who created it) by gifting it to others! A Redditor known as "gildedkitten" bought license keys to Stardew Valley for strangers in order to combat piracy and support the game's developer, and this act set off an inspiring chain of giving. Platforms like Steam also let you gift games to friends. Show kindness by gifting play!
  • Gamifying Acts of Kindness: While it's not a game, using the compliment generator at www.happify.com may impart a sense of achievement and a warm glow by letting you visualize the chain of kindness that grows when you share sincere praise for those you love and inspire them to do the same for others. Also take advantage of ways to track your random acts of kindness (and discover new ones you hadn't thought of) at https://randomactsof.us/ and https://www.kindness.org/.

Happy Random Acts of Kindness Week from iThrive! Where else have you seen kindness in the world of games? What are some ways you can be kind in MMO's and other social, multiplayer games? Share your experiences in the comments!

I Haven’t Leveled Up…Yet: Growth Mindset in Video Games (Part 2)

By iThrive Games

Note: This article is part of a series that captures game industry experts' opinions on game titles and mechanics that might boost players' positive habits, mindsets, and skills. These insights arose from discussions at an iThrive-sponsored think tank with game developers and scholars.
Last week, we introduced the idea that video games like The Sims might encourage what Carol Dweck calls a growth mindset—the belief that abilities are not fixed but can improve through effort.

Research with thousands of young people has shown that a growth mindset boosts achievement, motivation, and persistence. The research on growth mindset in digital games, however, is limited and has focused on "serious games" (those with a primary purpose other than entertainment) like Refraction, a math game that uses a "brain points" incentive system to reward effort and use of strategies instead of just correct answers.

We at iThrive were curious about how existing entertainment games might also foster the mindset that abilities can be built one step at a time. So we asked some experts to weigh in.

ITHRIVE DESIGN HIVE

We hosted a think tank ("Design Hive") with six video game experts to gather some insights about the potential for entertainment games to boost skills like growth mindset that are important for teen thriving. These industry experts—a mix of developers and scholars—met with us over a long weekend to trade reflections on games and design features that open the door to positive practices like growth mindset, even if by accident.
Here are seven ways the experts thought games might support a growth mindset:

  • The Buster Principle. The Buster Principle encourages game developers to ensure that games "recognize" when players have hit a wall. In the "brain points" version of Refraction, for example, players have the option to start a new level after 3 minutes of struggle without success. It is important for growth mindset that players don't give up completely just because they don't (YET) have the skill to succeed at one specific task. The Buster Principle urges game developers to design for sustained perseverance by making the task just a little easier when players have repeatedly failed, arguing that, "A small decrease in the difficulty may be the difference between an unhappy player throwing the controller across the room and an ecstatic player rejoicing and pumping their fists upward with a sense of accomplishment." - 100 Principles of Good Game Design
  • Leveling up. This basic feature of role-playing games (RPG's) like World of Warcraft is one reason so many people find them endlessly engaging. Similar to the brain points system of Refraction, small actions completed over time in RPG's accumulate experience points (XP), skills, and stats that let players "level up," becoming more powerful and effective.
  • Learning how NOT to die. It turns out that both adults and children with a growth mindset pay more attention to what they do wrong. It might sound counterintuitive to thrive by focusing on your errors, but what it really means is that people with a growth mindset aren't afraid of their mistakes. They know that mistakes contain super important information. In some video game genres, including platformers like Super Mario Bros., errors in timing = virtual lives lost (just Google "Ways to die in Super Mario Bros"). This is fantastic motivation for paying close attention to errors: ensure they'll teach you how to survive longer next time. Video games may be safe spaces to learn from failing, instead of letting it shut down effort (or the player).
  • Visualizing the growth you're headed for. Games have many methods for showing players where they're headed if they persist. Progress maps show players where they've been and what's left to explore, lending meaning and direction to each small step. Ability trees in games like World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XV let players plan for which skills they will choose when they level up, giving a concrete destination for incremental progress. These games tend to feature visual reminders of the effort put in over time, such as more intimidating armor for players who have achieved more.
  • Literal growth through effort. Games like Dominion, Castles of Mad King Ludwig (both tabletop games), Clash of Clans, and Civilization highlight the literal move-by-move strategic growth of a kingdom, castle, or empire. In games like these, effort and persistence manifest as expanded influence and control and bigger and more impressive castles. In Pokémon Go, players' persistent effort enables them to evolve the creatures they've collected into bigger, more powerful fighters.
  • Rewarding dogged persistence. Masocore games and challenging platformers like Spelunky, with its ever-changing levels and traps, reward players who stick with it. Games like these may not make much use of the Buster Principle—they're designed for those who really want a challenge, like gamers with a Mastery motivation. It would be interesting to learn if players who already practice growth mindset are more interested in mastery and more attracted to games like this in the first place.
  • Gamifying real-life growth. "Helper apps" and websites with game-like elements such as Fitbit, Lumosity, and Happify track incremental progress towards physical, cognitive, and emotional fitness, respectively. They are built on the premise that growth through effort is possible, and they make that growth measurable and accessible through game-like interfaces.

Because games are designed to be beatable and fun, there is an inherent optimism that we can succeed, given enough time and effort. We expect games to challenge us and to present a learning curve, but we also trust that they will teach us the strategies and skills we need to progress. And some games will inevitably do this better, or more intentionally, than others.

Our Design Hive experts recommend these games (and gamified "helper apps") that are developmentally appropriate for teens and may provide opportunities to practice growth mindset*:

  • Fitbit: A wearable tracker that charts progress towards healthy habits like exercise.
  • Lumosity: Online brain training that hones players' mental speed, flexibility, memory, attention, and problem-solving skills.
  • Happify: Online "games" that help build habits like gratitude that boost happiness.
  • The Sims series: Players create and customize characters, then guide them through the ups and downs of life, befriending other Sims and building a range of interesting skills from charisma to alchemy.
  • Pokémon series: Gotta catch 'em all! Players explore their surroundings to catch Pokémon, then train and evolve them into powerful battlers.
  • Spelunky: A platformer set underground where levels are randomized, challenging players in new ways every time.
  • Super Mario Bros. series: A classic platformer with many variations and lots of chances to hone timing skills.
  • Dominion: A card game where players are ambitious monarchs, challenging one another to build the largest, most civilized kingdom.
  • Castles of Mad King Ludwig: A tile-laying board game with the goal of building an extravagant castle room by room.
  • Civilization series: A turn-based strategy game centered on building an empire.
  • Clash of Clans: A strategy game where players train raiders to fill their coffers.
  • RPG's: Role-playing games like Final Fantasy XV and World of Warcraft let players aim to achieve a set of skills in areas that interest them, and see their persistence pay off one level at a time.

Have you played any of these games? How have they (or other games) helped you or someone you know to practice growth mindset? Share your story!

For more guidance on adopting a growth mindset, read this.

*Note: iThrive produced the curated games list in a joint effort with expert game developers and scholars. Their recommendations are rooted in evidence-based definitions and examples of growth mindset provided by iThrive. These games have not been scientifically proven to boost growth mindset, but they contain features that appear to provide opportunities to develop it.



I Haven’t Leveled Up…Yet: Growth Mindset in Video Games (Part I)

By iThrive Games

The first time that I realized that social skills can be developed was, ironically, not in my job at a social and emotional learning research lab. It was when I first played The Sims 3.

I had spent maybe 20 minutes lovingly putting the finishing touches on my Sim, getting her eyebrow shape and her personality quirks just right, until she was a (slightly thinner) mini-me named Victoria. I was, for whatever reason, thrilled by the prospect of guiding her through the mundane activities of daily life in miniature on my computer screen.

I bought her a house and set her off on her daily tasks of burning spaghetti, falling asleep in random places when I didn't get her to bed on time, and going to the bathroom, like, a lot. But it was delightful.

I was getting into a routine when a message popped up on the screen. "Victoria wants to socialize! Invite some people over to give your Sim a mood boost." I hovered the mouse over "Throw a party" and saw that I'd have a limited amount of time to host a get-together which would be judged by my guests. I hesitated but clicked, curious to see what would happen.

When Sims of all shapes and sizes strolled through the front door and started making themselves comfortable in Victoria's house, my heart actually started beating a little faster. In real life, I hate throwing parties. The pressure to have fun and be fun is sometimes too much for this introverted homebody. So, my Sim guests put me a little on edge. Sure, they were just NPC's, but I felt almost the same urgent need to impress and entertain them as I might in real life.

I greeted a Sim named Tom and was taken aback when a bright red minus sign lit up over his head, indicating that I had said something he didn't like. "Tom thinks Victoria is being boring," a notification informed me. And, after another attempt, "Tom thinks Victoria is being awkward."

Fantastic. I am hopelessly awkward and even the game knows it! There's nothing I can do about it. About a million middle school social traumas flooded my mind.

I turned to my (real-life) husband and demanded, "Why don't these dumb Sims like me?!" "Well," he grinned, noticing I had maybe spiraled just a little, "it usually starts out like that. But you can compliment your guests and joke around to win them over. Just keep doing it over and over again."

He patiently showed me the dialogue options with the best chances of success, and soon I had triggered enough plus signs (see photo) to get feedback like "friendly" and "amusing." Aha! I could grow my social skills here little by little. First impressions didn't mean everything. After several interactions, Tom became my friend.

It occurred to me after some practice striking up and maintaining friendships in The Sims 3 that, in real life, there are concrete, meaningful actions anyone can take to build and nurture friendships despite shyness or anxiety. Regular contact, sharing jokes, giving sincere compliments, and showing genuine interest in other people's likes and feelings are deposits in the friendship bank that add up over time.

This was easy for me with some people in my life, but when I was meeting someone for the first time or felt some anxiety in a new group, I found myself conjuring up memories of Sims gameplay as a reminder to get to the basics of social interaction—smile, tell a joke, compliment. Having played out the scripts in a virtual space and getting positive feedback (and new friends) was crossing over to my life outside of the game.

I began to visualize an imaginary Sims-inspired "friendship meter" filling up in my real life each time I struck up a conversation with someone new or finally scheduled that coffee date with an old friend after too many months. My usual anxiety of meeting new people was not as high. (Thanks, Sims!)

GROWTH MINDSET

The Sims, I would argue, is one example of a digital game that plants the seed of what Carol Dweck calls "growth mindset." Growth mindset is the belief that abilities aren't fixed or static, but that trying and effort make a difference in how sociable or proficient in math a person can become. It doesn't mean that everyone has the same potential in every area. It does mean that applying optimism, effort, and effective strategies has the potential to move the dial on the skills you'd like to improve.

Dweck and colleagues including Eleanor O'Rourke recognized the potential for digital games (in this case, an educational computer game called Refraction) to train growth mindset. They collaborated with game scientists to create a modified incentive system that, in their words, was "designed to reward the micro behaviors that are indicative of productive struggle." In other words, their "brain points" system rewards small, incremental actions like trying a new strategy or starting over, instead of rewarding only the slightly longer-term achievement of completing the level.

The researchers found that the 7,500 students who played the version of Refraction with the "brain points" reward system stuck with the game longer and used more strategies than the students who received traditional "level completion" rewards—and they also were more engaged and persistent.

The research on growth mindset in digital games is limited and has focused on serious games—games designed for a primary purpose other than entertainment. But experiences with entertainment games like The Sims made us at iThrive wonder what other types of games already out there could be mined for growth mindset principles. And what would happen if more developers deliberately designed games to boost skills like growth mindset using principles of great game design?

We've sat down with expert game developers and scholars to discuss just that. Check in with us next week for Part 2 to see what we discovered!
Has a game ever helped you or someone you know to practice growth mindset? Share your story!

For more guidance on adopting a growth mindset, read this.

Design to Thrive: The MAGFest 2017 Game Jam

By iThrive Games

The halls were alive with the sound of electric guitars and dancing Pikachus...

...and amidst the levity and chaos, 28 game enthusiasts (many wearing delightfully goofy hats) gathered in the ballroom to tackle the question: How do we embed positive psychology into games?

This was the game jam that iThrive hosted last week at MAGFest 2017. Short for Music And Gaming Festival, MAGFest is an annual event that draws people from all parts of the world to celebrate video games, video game music, and gaming culture. And what is a game jam, you ask? It's a lively event where participants have a limited number of hours to think up and prototype an original game centered around a theme revealed at the start of the session. Participating takes the kind of creativity and passion that MAGFest attendees have in spades (as evidenced by the number of elaborate costumes on display, including too many Pikachus to count). We couldn't wait to engage these enthusiastic gamers in the challenge of designing games around one of our favorite things: positive habits.

Guided by iThrive creative director, Heidi McDonald, and expert jam consultant, Brad Hill, jammers had 9 hours to brainstorm, create, and present games designed around one (or more) of six habits teens can use to thrive: kindness, empathy, gratitude, optimism, zest, and purpose. We were super curious to find out what mechanics, themes, rules, or gameplay styles jammers would decide might best inspire players to use these skills.

Special Guest, James Portnow of Extra Credits, kicks off the jam.

After a few words from special guest James Portnow of Extra Credits, we started the clock and jammers were off to the races! We encouraged them to consider how to create thoughtful, real-time spaces for social interaction and to think "subtlety" in their designs (i.e., don't hit players over the head with the idea that this game is about kindness).

Jammers organized themselves into teams of 4 or 5, dug in, and found that designing a game around positive habits is deceptively complex and surprisingly rewarding. We left the jam with three key insights to apply to future experiments in game design grounded in positive habits:

1. Kindness and empathy inspired cooperative games!

The theme of positive habits "changed our idea," one team shared. "We walked in here with an idea for a game and then we realized our initial idea was selfish." Several teams echoed this idea that it was natural to design for self-interest (being empathic as a means to a selfish end), and jammers had to battle that tendency to stay true to positive themes. They found their ultimate workaround in cooperative (co-op) gameplay. The co-op approach allowed for the possibility of authentic feelings of kindness and empathy that weren't merely a path to coming out on top. In a jammer's words, "I may help someone else, but if it's always about my own self-interest, the kindness is incidental. But if you change up the win scenarios and allow for multiple winners, then there's an added benefit to everyone." Almost every completed prototype at our jam included cooperative components, which jammers reported as generally being more fun than competitive play.

Another jammer reflected, "This was an interesting way to think about co-op games. I usually prefer games where everyone is working towards the same goal, games where there's no room for bullying. I gravitate towards those games." Designing with prosocial behaviors like kindness and empathy in mind seemed to encourage the use of more inclusive and egalitarian gameplay styles.

2. Making games about positivity inspired creative thinking!

Teams who walked into the jam with preconceived plans to use specific systems and mechanics quickly found themselves in need of fresh ideas. "It forced us to think about games being more non-adversarial," said one team. "A lot of the fun game mechanics out there we wanted to leverage didn't work within the theme. But we were euphoric once we figured out how to do it." Another team added, "It really changed the direction of our game....working within the parameters of positive psychology, it forces you to be more creative." Interestingly enough, research shows that positive emotions broaden people's thinking and encourage cognitive flexibility, and we saw this phenomenon play out in jammers' approaches to the positive themes.

3. Positive themes produced positive player experiences!

Once the teams' ideas had come to life in the form of playable paper prototypes, it was time to see how players would engage with the "positive" games. Would the design intentions show up in the player experience?

Anecdotally, we can say that the positive games at our jam brought out the best in players (just check out those smiles in the picture below!). Throughout the ballroom, we heard players encouraging and supporting each other, exclaiming, "You can do this! You got this!" Ultimately, teamwork and unity were the big winners!

At the end of the jam, we all agreed that we had fun. Lots of it. And we were gratified to see that the themes of kindness, empathy, gratitude, optimism, zest, and purpose made their way into more than just the game mechanics. They infused the design process itself and fostered a palpable positivity among those playing the prototypes. Our jammers mined for positivity in some unexpected places (evil clowns, neuroses, battling mad kings), and each team brought a special zest to their designs. Although the theme manifested differently across the teams, a commitment to positivity brought it all together.

iThrive looks forward to our next jam in partnership with DePaul University in Chicago in March 2017. Stay tuned for more details!

Video Games Can Boost Empathy

By iThrive Games

Note: This article is the first in a series that captures game industry experts' opinions on game titles and mechanics that might boost players' positive habits, mindsets, and skills. These insights arose from discussions at an iThrive-sponsored think tank with game developers and scholars.

Researchers and policy advocates have spent decades tallying the dangers of video games. But there is growing scientific evidence that prosocial video games—those with opportunities to help instead of harm others—can boost players' empathy and prompt them to be more helpful towards others in the real world.

Many games that demonstrate prosocial outcomes in research (Lemmings and Super Mario Sunshine are two examples) were designed first and foremost for entertainment, not to leave players hankering to do good. So the empathy boost captured in much of this research appears to be a happy byproduct of great game design, not—at least not always—an outcome developers deliberately target. It turns out even games with violent themes can prompt prosocial behavior in players who play in cooperative mode.

This made us at iThrive wonder, what other great games already out there might be brimming with opportunities to hone skills and habits that benefit teens? And what would happen if more developers did aim to boost skills like empathy using principles of great game design?

ITHRIVE GAMES' DESIGN HIVES

To gather some insights into these questions, we hosted a think tank ("Design Hive") with six expert video game developers and scholars. These industry experts met with us over a long weekend to trade reflections on games and design features that open the door to positive practices like empathy, even if by accident. We left with a curated list of promising "empathy games," shared below.

We launched the discussion on empathy with iThrive's evidence-based definition (adapted from the work of emotion researcher Dr. Jamil Zaki): Empathy means feeling what others feel, imagining how they view situations, and being motivated to do something with that knowledge. Here's what the developers had to say.

INHABITING THE MEDIUM

One insight permeates the rest: video games are special in the world of media. Games researcher Katherine Isbister (who attended the Design Hive) writes in her book, "At their heart, games differ from other media in one fundamental way: they offer players the chance to influence outcomes through their own efforts. With rare exception, this is not true of film, novels, or television."

The ability to fully inhabit the world of a video game, to embody characters with agency and a chance to impact the world and characters around them, is foundational to many of the experts' other insights about games and empathy. The action in a game, unlike in most other media, is the result of something "I, the player" have done. This stands to make players uniquely invested and immersed in the story before them. And research shows that immersive presence can be linked to increased empathy.

So, from the perspective of "me," the agentic player, these are a few of the ways games offer chances to develop empathy:

  • I see other perspectives as valuable currency. In some games, I have to consider points of view different from my own in order to succeed. I must examine both sides of a family feud in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, decide how probing a question to pose to each character in Telltale's The Walking Dead, and interview characters in detective games like Nancy Drew to piece together what really happened. I take my time to listen because missing something important has real consequences for my success.
  • I act from different points of view. In games like Never Alone, Brothers, and Telltale's Game of Thrones series, I can switch from one character to another. This lets me see the same world through many eyes and viscerally explore and appreciate each character's unique perspectives and abilities to move the action forward.
  • I inhabit difficult circumstances. Even though I may never do it in real life, I can experience the perils of war in This War of Mine and 1979:Revolution, embody someone who is different and marginalized in Dys4ia, see the world through the eyes of a boy with autism in Max: An Autistic Journey, and care for a child with a terminal illness in That Dragon, Cancer.
  • I lose someone important. When I lose characters or companions who have helped me or kept me company throughout the game—like in Passage, Fable 2 or Dragon Age: Origins—I wonder if there was something I could have done differently to save them. I have to strategize about what I'll do without them and adapt to their absence. I might feel more empathy for the experience of loss in general.
  • I make choices that impact others. In Mass Effect, I choose which character will perform a potentially fatal mission. In Undertale I decide which characters to help and which to fight, and in Papers, Please I find out how willing I am to break the rules to help someone else at a personal cost. In multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft, my choices have an impact on real players. I weigh whether to cooperate or compete, whether or not to share my loot, and learn how it feels when others make these decisions about me. I watch the consequences of my choices play out for better or for worse.

One thing was clear after this session: video games can model and prompt empathy, and it doesn't happen in a vacuum. It helps if players are willing and able to reflect on what they encounter and have the supports necessary to do so effectively. At iThrive, we strive to identify or create the supports that allow games to be meaningful for teens' well-being. But starting with great game design certainly doesn't hurt.

In that spirit, our Design Hive experts recommend 8 games that are developmentally appropriate for teens and may provide opportunities to practice empathy*:

  1. 1979 Revolution: Black Friday
  2. Never Alone
  3. Papers, Please
  4. Passage
  5. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
  6. That Dragon, Cancer
  7. This War of Mine
  8. Undertale

Have you played them? How have these or other games helped you or someone you know to develop empathy? Share your story!

Note: iThrive produced the curated games list in a joint effort with expert game developers and scholars. Their recommendations are rooted in evidence-based definitions and examples of empathy provided by iThrive. These games have not been scientifically proven to boost empathy, but they contain features that appear to provide opportunities to develop it.

Why Do Teens Play Video Games?

By iThrive Games

 

97% of American teens play video games. You'd be hard-pressed to find many other activities that 97% of teens do. Maybe school and sleep. Maybe. So what is it about video games that appeals to nearly all teens? Well, to get the obvious out of the way, video games are play, and play is fun. (It's also more important than many people realize.) But in addition to using video games as a source of play, teens might be doing something else quite sophisticated. Whether they know it or not, teens are harnessing video games to boost well-being by meeting their psychological needs.

GAMING TO THRIVE

According to Self-Determination Theory, all people share three basic psychological needs: competence, autonomy, and relatedness. And the same psychologists who developed this theory argue that one reason video games are so motivatingis that they help players meet all three of these needs. Here's how.

COMPETENCE: VIDEO GAMES CAN HELP TEENS FEEL MASTERFUL.

You know those word searches on the back of Honey Nut Cheerios boxes where you have to locate obscure cereal jargon like "milk" and "spoon"? Have you ever started one of those and refused to leave the table until you completed it, even though you had long since devoured your bowl of Cheerios? No? Just me? Well, in a (honey) nutshell, that's the need for competence. Teens (and people of all ages) seek out opportunities to be challenged and to master a given task-even if that task is finding inane words on a soon-to-be recycled strip of cardboard.

Video game developers use a set of tools that reliably help players feel masterful. Great video games get harder as you progress through them. They ensure that you're always challenged, but not so much that you'll give up. And they provide constant feedback via leaderboards, achievements, and progress bars to make your accomplishments tangible and highlight how to succeed.

Take Guitar Hero. As you play through story mode, the songs get harder, requiring trickier strumming patterns and more fingers on the fretboard. But you also get concrete affirmations of your skills: the song sounds radio perfect when you get it right, your note streaks are satisfyingly tallied and displayed on the screen, and the crowd cheers you on when you shred a sweet solo. In other words: Challenge? Check. Mastery? Check. More fun than the Cheerios word search? Check.

AUTONOMY: VIDEO GAMES PUT TEENS IN CHARGE.

In Self-Determination Theory, the need for autonomy means that people are more motivated to do something if they can make choices about it and shape their own experience. This need becomes a top priority as kids grow into teens. Teen expert Laurence Steinberg calls becoming autonomous "one of the fundamental developmental tasks of adolescence."

The majority of people who play video games do it because they want to, not because they have to. The very decision to pick up a controller and pour hours into a boss battle is one way a teen exercises autonomy. What's more, there are so many styles of games (racing, action-adventure, role-playing, simulation, platformers...) that, just by picking a genre that matches their tastes, teens have the freedom to generate the experience they want every time they switch on a PC or console.

And there's one video game genre that's just brimming with opportunities to feel autonomy. "Sandbox" games-Minecraftis one example-let the player roam wherever, build whatever, and complete tasks whenever. Minecraft players have the choice to build a home (or not), explore the far reaches of the map (or not), and slay the Ender Dragon (or not). In games like this, teen players have the freedom to-quite literally-craft their own experience.

RELATEDNESS: VIDEO GAMES CONNECT TEENS.

What is relatedness? Relatedness is friends. Relatedness is fellow adventurers, soldiers, teammates, band members, and super heroes. Relatedness is humans' desire for connection with others. Positive relationships are key to leading a healthy, fulfilling life, and research finds that teens are using games to make friends.

According to a Pew Research Center report, gaming is social for most teens. Three-quarters of teens play video games with other people at least part of the time, and nearly half of the time that gameplay is done with someone a teen already knows in "real" life.

Katherine Isbister looks to players' publicly posted reflections on gameplay as one way to research how digital games support relatedness. Isbister's book calls out examples of meaningful connections forged through gaming, like the surprisingly deep bond a player felt with an unknown fellow traveler in Journey, even though no words passed between them. Or another player's re-connection with an old friend she didn't know lived in the same city, until Words With Friends matched them up for a challenge.

Game-based relatedness covers a range of connections. Feeling the warm fuzzies for a non-playable character run by the game's artificial intelligence, deepening a connection with someone a player already knows, or taking a friendship with a fellow player out into the real world are just some of them.

APPRECIATING WHY TEENS PLAY

So the next time you're playing a video game (or watching a teen play), see if you notice how the game challenges, frees, or connects. Does the game succeed at teaching skills little by little, paving the way to mastery? Are players free to customize their avatars, choose their difficulty level, or explore at their leisure? Are quests more fun when completed with companions sitting across the room or across the globe? Considering video games from the viewpoint of competence, autonomy, and relatedness, you may develop a deeper appreciation for why many teens choose great video games as one reliable way to meet their needs.



Thriving Teens Use Their Superpowers

By iThrive Games

DISCOVERING AND USING STRENGTHS IS A PATH TO TEEN THRIVING.

Teens have superpowers. Need evidence?

Consider Malala Yousafzai. At just 15, she defied the Taliban by insisting on her (and all girls') right to go to school. The Taliban shot her in the head, and she survived. Then, she strode right back into the classroom and the public eye to promote equal access to education for all. At 17, she became the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner ever. Her superpowers: bravery, a thirst for learning, perseverance, and a passion for justice.

Malala's superpowers are on display for the world to see. But each teen has his or her very own set (even if they're hidden under a Peter Parker hoodie for the moment). What are these superpowers? They're the strengths of character that form the foundation of a person's unique impact on this world.

TEENS SET THE STAGE FOR THRIVING WHEN THEY DISCOVER AND USE THEIR STRENGTHS.

Using strengths to thrive is a keystone of positive psychology. Martin Seligman and Christopher Peterson, founders of the field, identified 24 universally valued strengths—including hope, zest, and kindness—that form the pillars of thriving. According to Seligman's model of flourishing, individuals who discover and use their strengths are taking active steps to generate the 5 components of well-being in their lives: positive emotions, engagement, achievement, good relationships, and meaning. Put simply, teens can use their strengths to feel good, do good, do well, and connect both with others and a greater purpose.

Research backs up the link between strengths and well-being for teens, and even shows that strengths can give teens an academic advantage in school. What's more, some studies suggest that cultivating strengths may have a bigger payoff for personal growth and well-being than "fixing" weaknesses.

HOW DO TEENS DISCOVER AND BUILD THEIR STRENGTHS?

Like muscles, strengths of character can be enhanced over time with attention and effort. And, compared to adults, teens' efforts to grow their strengths might be especially effective. That's because teens' brains are remarkably plastic. This malleability makes the teen years a perfect time to learn and build positive habits that can last a lifetime.

At iThrive, we encourage teens to take charge of their well-being by finding opportunities in both the real and virtual worlds to practice habits that align with the strengths of positive psychology.

Here are three things teens can do right now to reveal and strengthen their superpowers:

1. BE CURIOUS.

Exploring different identities and possible future selves is a key part of teens' development. Make strengths a part of that exploration. Teens can take the free VIA Youth Survey to discover their signature strengths. Once those are tallied up, teens can ask themselves: Where did my strengths come from? How and where can I use them more often? How far can I take them?

2. ADOPT A GROWTH MINDSET.

How far can teens take their strengths? Time will tell for each individual. But teens are likely to feel motivated to grow their strengths if they believe their abilities can be stretched and magnified through effort. Teens who think in this optimistic and expansive way are practicing what Carol Dweck calls growth mindset, a state of mind that has established links to achievement and resilience among youth. One way to cultivate a growth mindset is to frame failures as opportunities to learn.

3. PLAY!

Play expert, Stuart Brown, argues that humans of all ages are built to play and learn important skills through play. For teens, video games are one socially acceptable way to incorporate playfulness regularly into their lives (Related: Why Do Teens Play Video Games?). And through this type of play, teens stand to improve their self-awareness. Video games prompt players to constantly reflect on their skills and strengths in order to assess their readiness to take on the challenges at hand. Many video games also offer the opportunity to try on a range of identities and roles. Does a particular teen gravitate towards embodying the healer, the warrior, the builder, the explorer? These tendencies may uncover strengths that teens can explore further in their offline worlds.

Have video games ever helped you identify one of your signature strengths? Tell us about it.