Making more of games: Cultivating perspective-taking through game design
Introduction
Perspective taking (PT) has long been acknowledged as an essential feature of human interaction (Johnson, 1975; Selman, 1981). At its core, PT entails “the active consideration of others’ mental states and subjective experiences” (Todd & Galinsky, 2014, p. 374), and is central to a variety of social processes such as: navigating interpersonal relationships (Epley, 2014), overcoming conflicts (Corcoran & Mallinckrodt, 2000), and increasing understanding of – and reducing prejudice toward – members of other social groups (Van der Graaff et al., 2014). Moreover, PT has been identified as a key component of vital skills such as collaboration, argumentation, problem solving and creativity (Grant and Berry, 2011; Hesse, Care, Buder, Sassenberg, & Griffin, 2015; Kahn & Zeidler, 2016). Though PT can be exploited toward immoral ends, it is fundamental to the ability to reflect on, and behave in line with, the needs of others, and is essential to the development of empathy (Zaki & Ochsner, 2012).
The importance of PT has risen further in recent years in light of increasing political polarization coupled with the emergence of digitally-mediated communication and ideologically homogenous echo-chambers. These developments highlight the importance of the capacity to transcend one's perspective (Dishon & Ben-Porath, 2018; Kreikemeier & James, 2018; Middaugh, Bowyer, & Kahne, 2017). However, PT is neither simple nor automatic, and it requires motivation and practice (Gehlbach, Brinkworth, & Wang, 2012; Lin, Keysar, & Epley, 2010).1
Though still a nascent area of research, video games have been presented as a ripe setting for engaging students in PT (Roussos & Dovidio, 2016). Due to their immersive and interactive character, video games enable an experiential form of PT, in which one can almost “walk a mile in another's shoes” (Gehlbach et al., 2015; Hilliard et al., 2018). However, existing research has largely concentrated on game playing, leaving out game making (see Belman & Flanagan, 2010 for an exception). In recent years, academic and commercial interest in offering players more substantial roles as designers, both within- and out-of-games, is on the rise. From the emergence of sandbox games such as Minecraft (Minecraft, 2011), in which gameplay itself involves construction, through games that endorse player “modding” – modifications and additions to games created by other players (Gee & Tran, 2015), to the growing popularity of game design platforms and communities (Kafai & Burke, 2015).
We propose that game design can function as a particularly fruitful site for engaging students in PT. First, as games are intrinsically other-oriented – created with the intent of being used by others – they could elicit motivation to analyze one's work from the perspective of future players (An, 2016; Belman & Flanagan, 2010). Second, designers can (relatively) easily receive immediate and live feedback via playtesting sessions, since games are an interactive activity that can be pursued over short periods of time in public spaces (Fullerton, 2014). Finally, establishing an interactive rule system that governs the social interactions within the game space demands a complex form of PT: reflecting on the perceptions, motivations and behaviors of future players as they develop over time across a host of possible choice sets (Salen & Zimmerman, 2003). Therefore, we suggest that when pursued iteratively, game design entails translating abstract insights concerning users' experiences to concrete design choices, thus potentially positioning games as what Papert (1980) termed an “object-to-think-with” in the case of PT.
We start by discussing the characteristics of PT, followed by an examination of how researchers have strived to facilitate a design process attentive to players' perspective, emphasizing the affinities between PT and iterative game design, along the three stages of this process: (i) Design: game design's other-oriented nature; (ii) Test: opportunities for feedback and modification in iterative design; and (iii) Analyze: the use of games as objects-to-think-with in the case of PT. We then introduce a multiple-case exploratory case study of two groups' work in a game design workshop we conducted with high school freshmen, who, working in groups of four, designed digitally-augmented carnival games using Scratch and MaKey-MaKey. Drawing on the main themes identified in these two contrasting cases, we outline avenues for inquiry concerning the potential of game design as a context for engaging in PT. We conclude by pointing out the limitations of the current study, and outlining directions for future research.
PT is not a discrete act in which individuals instantaneously grasp the perspectives of others. Instead, it is a complex and ongoing process, shaped by actors' underlying motivations, the strategies they employ, and their interactions with others (Gehlbach et al., 2012). PT usually develops via a multi-stage and iterative process in which individuals gauge the differences between their initial assessment and the relevant situational cues received from the actual perspectives of others (Epley, Keysar, Van Boven, & Gilovich, 2004). Three aspects of this process are worth noting: first, in the absence of conflicting situational cues, individuals either overestimate the affinity between their own perspective and others', or rely on simplified stereotypes when encountering individuals from a divergent social group (Epley & Caruso, 2008). Second, in the absence of explicit feedback on one's assessment, and opportunities to modify it, PT will likely be partial, at best (Lin et al., 2010). Finally, the amount of effort one invests in moving away from an egocentric or stereotyped focus depends on their motivation to arrive at an accurate estimate (Berndsen, Thomas, & Pedersen, 2018).
Accordingly, engagement in PT depends both on an individual's aptitude (Kim et al., 2016), and on contextual factors such as those described above (Todd & Galinsky, 2014). Though the exact interplay between these two factors requires further research, it is clear that certain conditions elicit engagement in PT, which can, in turn, lead to its development over time. For instance, bilingual children have been found to have a more developed PT capacity due to the constant practice in anticipating diverging perspectives in conversation (Hsin & Snow, 2017). Yet, not all PT is born equal. Kim et al. (2018) distinguish between two levels of PT. The more basic level – articulation – entails “the act of making an explicit statement that refers to the thoughts, feelings, preferences, and orientations to the actions of another person.” (p. 26). A more complex level of PT also includes positioning, which “involves explicitly situating, and usually interpreting, the point of view attributed to another person in the contextualization of knowledge about that person” (Kim et al. 2018). This form of PT is more advanced because it demands integrating the situational and personal factors that play a role in shaping others' perspective.
Despite a growing interest in the potential of video games to facilitate PT (Hilliard et al., 2018; Roussos & Dovidio, 2016), and a well-established tradition of user-centered game design, the cultivation of PT via game design has not been directly explored. Research on game design has mostly examined how this activity could serve as a pathway to introducing youth to programming (often in an effort to engage underserved populations), as well as a context for developing design-thinking, problem-solving, and creativity (Çakir, Gass, Foster, & Lee, 2017; Denner, Werner, & Ortiz, 2012; Robertson, 2012; Topalli & Cagiltay, 2018; Yang & Chang, 2013). Here, we focus on one aspect of design-thinking, namely, the opportunities offered to designers to engage in PT. Although games are intrinsically other-oriented – created with the intent of being used by others – educators can render this aspect central or peripheral. A host of approaches that intentionally highlight the other-oriented character of game design have emerged, such as constructionism (Kafai & Burke, 2015; Ke, 2014; Papert, 1980), participatory design and cooperative inquiry (Kalmpourtzis, 2019; Yip et al., 2013) and variants of user-centered design (Holbert, Thanapornsangsuth, & Villeroy, 2017; Merilampi, Koivisto, & Sirkka, 2018; Savazzi et al., 2018). A common feature of such approaches is that they involve an attempt to predict and analyze players' experiences, and hence to engage in PT.
However, the mere fact that an activity is other-oriented does not ensure that designers will engage in PT. In fact, students tend to focus on their own view of the game world, or to simply emulate popular games (Ke, 2014; Robertson, 2012). Even when they wish to engage in PT, designers often have a hard time viewing the game from other perspectives (An, 2016). In light of these challenges, researchers have identified various ways to support reflection on players' experiences. First, the most direct way to do so is to facilitate dialogue with the actual target audience. This can range from interviews with future players (Holbert et al., 2017), to participatory design and cooperative inquiry in which users take an active and ongoing role in the design process (Yip et al., 2013). Here the emphasis is less on PT, as it is on directly interacting with future users.
Second, researchers have outlined scaffolds that support attention to players' experiences. One way to do so is by defining certain ends games are intended to achieve (Kafai, Franke, Ching, & Shih, 1998; Ke, 2014). Alternatively, researchers have identified design constraints that steer designers away from their taken-for-granted ways of thinking, and focus them on players experiences (see Section 2.1 for a more detailed example – Grow-A-Game cards). Such constraints facilitate reflection on the interplay between players' perspectives and the game's core mechanics – the essential actions performed by players to achieve the end-game (Belman, Flanagan, & Nissenbaum, 2009; Kalmpourtzis, 2019). Yet, such scaffolds are often not in themselves sufficient, and they need to be strengthened by encouraging dialogue among designers, and with instructors (An, 2016; Baytak & Land, 2011).
Finally, PT can be elicited by facilitating an iterative design process, based on a cyclical process that includes brainstorming and designing prototypes, testing (usually with others), and critically iterating the game design in light of feedback (e.g., Chang, Wu, Weng, & Sung, 2012; Flanagan & Nissenbaum, 2014; Zimmerman, 2003). Through feedback from users, designers learn about their perspective, whereas attempts to modify the game in light of this feedback elicit attentiveness to players' perspective in future iterations. Moreover, opportunities to playtest other designers' games (and offer feedback) can further enrich designers' reflection on players' experiences (An, 2016; Robertson, 2012).
Accordingly, we suggest that an iterative game design process, which includes scaffolds for engaging with players' perspective, can serve as a model for a constructionist approach to cultivating PT. Iterative game design is well-aligned with the iterative nature of PT, and could (ideally) facilitate a complex and situated PT process: attempting to predict players' behaviors when designing the game, analyzing their conduct during playtesting, and modifying the product in an attempt to reshape players' experiences (Fig. 1). In this respect, iterative design can be understood as “an ongoing dialogue between the designers, the design, and the testing audience.” (Zimmerman, 2003, p. 176). Critically, in iterative design students have intrinsic motivation to gauge others’ perspective, as part of their effort to improve their game. This reflection and feedback are endogenous to the learning process, rather than an external element added in retrospect, as is often the case in educational activities. Moreover, PT is amplified in the case of games due to two central reasons: (i) games are dynamic systems that respond to players' decisions, and hence require engaging with players' perspective along multiple choice sets (An, 2016); (ii) games are an interactive activity that can be pursued over (relatively) short periods of time in public spaces, allowing designers to directly watch players engage with their product (Fullerton, 2014).
Therefore, we offer that within an iterative game design process, games can function as what Papert (1980) termed an object-to-think-with: “User-appropriated cognitive tools, or artifacts that provide a tangible and shareable mid-ground between sensorimotor and abstract knowledge” (Malinverni, Ackermann, & Pares, 2016, p. 333). Objects-to-think-with support meaningful engagement with complex phenomena by allowing students to observe, manipulate and explore tangible artifacts, thus serving as bridges between concrete experience and abstract concepts (Holbert & Wilensky, 2019). The most famous example of this concretization is the LOGO turtle: through the manipulation of the turtle in a physical space, children were meant to enrich their thinking on abstract mathematical concepts. Analogously, we contend that students stand to benefit from objects-to-think-with that would allow them to observe, manipulate and reflect on others' experiences. More specifically, due to their interactive and public character, games could serve as particularly fruitful instantiation of the need for a tangible and shareable mid-ground with which to examine and reflect on the perspectives of others. Put differently, iterative game design could concretize the syntax of the PT process – a cyclical process of predicting, trying out, analyzing and refining one's view of others' perspective. Yet, being responsive to feedback does not necessarily entail PT. Designers might merely modify game elements that were identified as problematic in playtesting without reflecting on players' perspectives. Therefore, games are more likely to function as objects-to-think-with when designers consider the interdependence between game mechanics and players' perspectives.
As an initial examination of game design's potential to support PT, we introduce a multiple-case exploratory case study (Yin, 2014; Creswell, 2012), from a game design workshop we designed and conducted with high school freshmen. In light of the above research, our analyses explore the following working hypotheses concerning engagement in PT (or lack thereof) in game design, along the three stages of this process: (i) Design: engagement in other-oriented game design would elicit engagement in PT (albeit, limited and simplified in the initial stages); (ii) Test: playtesting sessions, which entail feedback from players, would motivate designers to engage in PT concerning players' experiences; (iii) Analyze: games could function as objects-to-think-with in the case of PT, facilitating more complex levels of PT.
Section snippets
Context, participants and workshop design
We designed and conducted a collaborative game design workshop with high school freshmen (16 participants; 10 boys, 6 girls, ages 14–15).2 Situated in a metropolitan city in a US northeastern state, the workshop was part of a partnership between the participants' school and a local science museum. Participants reflect
Findings
We now turn to present the various themes and subthemes that emerged in the three stages of the iterative design cycle (see Table 1 for a summary of these themes).
Discussion
The premise guiding this inquiry is that positioning youth as game designers, and not solely as players, could support a unique engagement in PT. Taken together, these case studies offer initial insights into the potential and pitfalls of this constructionist approach to PT.
In contrast to our first hypothesis, other-oriented game design did not elicit even simplified or inaccurate engagement in PT during the brainstorming stage. Yet, the diverging trajectories of the two cases expose the
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Gideon Dishon: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Writing - original draft. Yasmin B. Kafai: Conceptualization, Resources, Supervision, Funding acquisition, Writing - review & editing.
Acknowledgments
The research reported in this paper was supported by a collaborative grant from the National Science Foundation to Yasmin Kafai (NSF-CDI-1027736). The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Foundation or the University of Pennsylvania. I am grateful to Matt Parker for his help with the workshop, and to Emma Anderson for the conversations that sparked this project, and her advice and patience along the way.
Gideon Dishon is a lecturer (tenure track) at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He holds a PhD in education from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Master's and Bachelor's in philosophy from Tel Aviv University. His research interests lie at the intersection between philosophy of education, the learning sciences, and educational technologies, examining (theoretically and empirically) the interaction between situational characteristics of educational settings and the forms of learning
References (63)
- et al.
Resisting perspective-taking: Glorification of the national group elicits non-compliance with perspective-taking instructions
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
(2018) - et al.
Embedding game-based problem-solving phase into problem-posing system for mathematics learning
Computers & Education
(2012) - et al.
Computer games created by middle school girls: Can they be used to measure understanding of computer science concepts?
Computers & Education
(2012) - et al.
Many ways to walk a mile in another's moccasins: Type of social perspective taking and its effect on negotiation outcomes
Computers in Human Behavior
(2015) An implementation of design-based learning through creating educational computer games: A case study on mathematics learning during design and computing
Computers & Education
(2014)- et al.
Social perspective-taking performance: Construct, measurement, and relations with academic performance and engagement
Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology
(2018) - et al.
Reflexively mindblind: Using theory of mind to interpret behavior requires effortful attention
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
(2010) Making games in the classroom: Benefits and gender concerns
Computers & Education
(2012)- et al.
Engaged in learning neurorehabilitation: Development and validation of a serious game with user-centered design
Computers & Education
(2018) The development of interpersonal competence: The role of understanding in conduct
Developmental Review
(1981)
Improving programming skills in engineering education through problem-based game projects with Scratch
Computers & Education
Productive framing of pedagogical failure: How teacher framings can facilitate or impede learning from problems of practice
Thinking Skills and Creativity
A case study of educational computer game design by middle school students
Educational Technology Research & Development
An investigation of the artifacts and process of constructing computers games about environmental science in a fifth-grade classroom
Educational Technology Research & Development
Exploring the creative potential of values conscious game design: Students' experiences with the VAP curriculum
Eludamos. Journal for Computer Game Culture
Instructional methods and curricula for “values conscious design”
Loading
Using thematic analysis in psychology
Qualitative Research in Psychology
Audience in the service of learning: How kids negotiate attention in an online community of interactive media designers
Learning, Media and Technology
Development of a game-design workshop to promote young girls' interest towards computing through identity exploration
Computers & Education
Adult attachment, self-efficacy, perspective taking, and conflict resolution
Journal of Counseling and Development
Educational research: Planning, conducting and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research
Citizenship Education through the Pragmatist lens of habit
Journal of Philosophy of Education
Don’t@ me: Rethinking digital civility online and in school
Learning, Media and Technology
Mindwise: How we understand what others think, believe, feel, and want
Perspective taking: Misstepping into others' shoes
Perspective taking as egocentric anchoring and adjustment
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Values at play in digital games
Game design workshop: A playcentric approach to creating innovative games
Video game-making and modding
Making social studies social: Engaging students through different forms of social perspective taking
Theory into Practice
Cited by (25)
Night and Day, Why Radiologists Need Play
2024, Academic RadiologyYour shoes or mine? Examining perspective taking in social interaction
2023, Learning, Culture and Social InteractionDesign and evaluation of an augmented reality cyberphysical game for the development of empathic abilities
2023, International Journal of Human Computer StudiesCreating morality through play: digital games, moral perspective-taking, and empathy
2022, Creativity and MoralityDeveloping students’ digital competences through collaborative game design
2021, Computers and EducationCitation Excerpt :The cultural level is involved when students are engaged in designing and making publicly shared computational objects. Game design engages students in computational participation that involves developing, testing, and refining these objects (Kafai & Burke, 2016), discussing them with peers and larger audiences (Dishon & Kafai, 2020), receiving feedback and critiques (Hwang et al., 2014; Melander Bowden & Aarsand, 2020), and creating and sharing meanings (Akcaoglu & Koehler, 2014). Melander Bowden (2019) examined social identities enacted by students in a pairwise game design process.
“So, we kind of started from scratch, no pun intended”: What can students learn from designing games?
2024, Journal of Research in Science Teaching
Gideon Dishon is a lecturer (tenure track) at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He holds a PhD in education from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Master's and Bachelor's in philosophy from Tel Aviv University. His research interests lie at the intersection between philosophy of education, the learning sciences, and educational technologies, examining (theoretically and empirically) the interaction between situational characteristics of educational settings and the forms of learning they facilitate, with an emphasis on broader educational aims such as civic and character education.
Yasmin B. Kafai, the Lori and Michael Milken President's Distinguished Professor, is a learning scientist and designer of online tools and communities to promote coding, crafting, and creativity across K-16. Her research empowers students to use computer programming to design games, sew electronic textiles, and grow applications in biology with the goal of supporting creative expression, building social connections, and broadening participation in STEM. Her award-winning work has received generous funding from the National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation.