When people hear the term game-based learning, they often picture students staring at computer screens while navigating elaborate virtual worlds. Or perhaps a lone student staring into a VR headset in isolation. Those experiences certainly have their place (at times).

However, some of the most powerful learning happens around a table with a deck of cards, a game board, a handful of dice, or a simple simulation. As schools rethink the role of technology in the classroom, it’s worth remembering that low-tech games don’t simply reduce screen time. They also tap into what we know about cognitive science and child development. It’s a chance to tap into collaborative learning by creating experiences that are memorable. So, today, I want to explore the power of low-tech game-based learning.

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Exploring Game-Based Learning

In 2017, I worked with a group of fellow doctoral students on a game to explore the themes of turbulence, equity, justice, and empathy. We began by playing Rockville, a game that began with us developing our own avatars and ultimately competing for a fictional scholarship. This simple element led to a deeper sense of identification with the character. For me, the character of Julio felt real (perhaps because he reminded me of so many of my former students).

Afterward, we met in teams of 4-5 to design our own game that would teach the concepts and ideas within our course. Note that this wasn’t a trivia review game so much as an immersive experience where participants would learn the concepts through the gameplay. In our case, we also wanted to see them experience a new perspective and gain empathy (a critical idea in design thinking). It helped that we had a member on our team who had both experiential and academic knowledge on equity, so she brought up critical questions that helped us explore potential biases.

We began with a user-focused exploration and then moved into ideation fairly quickly and chose Sabotage Island as our concept:

To this day, I feel a bit proud of the logo I created for it!

Sabotage Island begins with the premise that two teams are stranded and need to figure out how to get home. Along the way, they compete against one another to acquire the tools needed to build the item that would help them reach the transistor and call for help. Here’s a snapshot of the game board that I created:

I was nervous when we had to test out our game with our classmates. Suddenly, I felt the tension between teaching concepts and creating suspense in gameplay. What if it failed to work? What if it didn’t actually teach the concepts we were hoping to teach? What if it was boring and people decided to quit?

In the end, the game worked well and the debrief was powerful. We later modified the game play and used it with undergraduate students.

 

What is Game-Based Learning?

Game-based learning is an immersive experience, where students master learning targets through gameplay. Unlike a review game, game-based learning introduces new ideas and concepts through a virtual environment. These games might be online but they can also be physical and hands-on. The key thing here is that the learning happens through the game rather than before the game. Often, these games take on the form of a simulation that might involve world-building and character development.

Greg Costikyan breaks gameplay down into the following components:

• Interaction: the game changes with the players actions (and often with the players’ interdependent actions)
• Goal: there is a purpose to the game (and often this includes a winner or loser)
• Struggle: every game has an element of a struggle, even if it’s a non-competitive game (think Minecraft or Sim City, where the struggle is often creative)
• Structure: games have rules, procedures, and systems
• Endogenous Meaning: here the game structure creates its own meaning

Game-based learning incorporates these five components in a way that leads to content mastery.

 

The Power of Game-Based Learning

When I was a kid, we used to play Oregon Trail and I pretty much always died of dysentery:

However, game-based learning has grown immensely in the previous three decades. We’ve seen an explosion of games ranging from computer simulations and virtual worlds to hands-on games built around localized play. So, why would a teacher choose to embrace game-based learning when designing a unit or even a course?

The following are seven benefits of game-based learning:

1. Game-based learning boosts engagement. They go beyond what Phillip Schlecty calls “strategic compliance” (high attention but low commitment) and into a place where they have full buy-in. Students get the opportunity to make decisions, pursue a goal, and check their own progress.
2. The information sticks. Here, students experience higher retention of the content. Often, the games become mental models that students go back to in order to make sense out of what they have learned. Also, the debrief experience connects an often emotional, memorable experience with the content in a way that leads to a deeper, more permanent understanding.
3. Immersive games can help students make connections between concepts and ideas. They see learning as interconnected. Often, we teach content in silos, with clear objectives and direct instruction. However, with game-based learning, students discover the content in a way that is connective rather than linear.
4. Game-based learning bridges the abstract and the concrete. They are fully immersive. Participants maneuver within their environment to make sense of the information. It’s a way to teach concepts and systems that might seem opaque and distant in a way that is visual and experiential. It was hard for my students to wrap their minds around economic systems or imperialism, but a simulation game helped them make the connection. In some cases, they take on specialized roles and build empathy by taking on the role of characters. When we played Rockville, I cared deeply about the character I had created because our professor asked us to play the role of that character.
5. Information is more accessible. With game-based learning, students at all levels can participate in the process. There’s a low barrier of entry. Too often, we expect students to have tons of content knowledge or a strong mastery of reading and writing. But with a game, students get the chance to discover the content on more of an even playing field.
6. Students engage in critical thinking. Students are making decisions that require the analysis and synthesis. Later, they can use the simulation to answer critical thinking questions.
7. Games can help lead to a love of learning. Games are fun. And when students engage in game-based learning they begin to fall in love with the subject and the content and the ideas. They realize that it is intrinsically rewarding to geek out on learning. And that takes them one step closer to being lifelong learners.

Note that simulations work best when dealing with abstract ideas and complex systems. A predator and prey version of tag can help students think about the food chain, but a simulation showing how stanzas work will tank. A poverty simulation can help students make sense out of the human side of geopolitics. However, a How to Solve Linear Equations game might not work. Although some of the best games focus on human systems, you can create immersive systems that aren’t quite as humanistic. I once saw a game called Integer Wars that helped students determine what to do with positive and negative integers. It was simple but it had the best elements of game-play, including a challenge, suspense, and incremental success.

 

What makes a game work?

There’s an excellent book out on game design by Richard Rouse III, where he explores why people play games. These include the challenge, the chance to socialize (or conversely, to have a dynamic solitary experience), bragging rights, emotional experience, and the chance to explore, fantasize, and interact.

I’d argue that games are essentially participatory storytelling, with the added unpredictability of who, if anyone, will actually win. The best games have the components that make up a great story:

• Conflict: Okay, maybe not conflict, per se. But there should be a clear goal. You should be struggling. It might be a competition against others (not unlike having protagonists or antagonists) or it might be more of a man vs. machine conflict (like Tetris).
• World-building. This isn’t necessarily true in things like card games but for larger simulations, the world-building piece should make a difference. It should feel immersive from the moment you begin. The onboarding process should be quick and easy to understand, with the users discovering the rules as they begin.
• Rising Action: Some of the best games have incremental success. Either the challenges get harder or the stakes go higher. This helps develop the sense of suspense.
• Surprises: Often, this involves an element of chance. There was a great role reversal that happened in the game we played (Awesome University) and it changed the outcome entirely. This sense of surprise helps maintain the suspense. Even in a game like Minecraft, there’s an element of surprise and discovery
• Logical Consistency: Not only should the world have consistent rules but they should reflect a season of reasonableness. People don’t want to be stuck in a loop (like the Atari E.T. game). Just like a good novel or movie, they want to feel a sense of progression.

I’d also note that there are things players expect from a game that they might not expect from a story:

• A Sense of Fairness. Players expect fairness when playing a game. Note that we are currently working on our Sabotage Island to help redefine the inequities we included in our simulation.
• Agency: Players want to feel like they have power and control over what is happening.
• Dynamic: The key difference between a puzzle and a game is that users can interact with a game. There should be no third wall.

 

Why Would We Go Low-Tech With It?

As I think about that experience with Sabotage Island nearly a decade ago, I still remember it vividly. I spent hours designing a massive board game and using coffee to make the map look weathered. I had a teammate create small artifacts out of modeling clay. Everything about it was hands-on and tactile. A part of me thought, “Really? This much work? Does it actually need to be physical?”

However, as the other groups gathered around and began to play it, I noticed something powerful. They were immersed in the gameplay. They sat around the table, leaning in, offering eye contact, whispering as they made decisions together. The physical element kept us right there in the moment but also allowed everyone to use their imagination. So, there it was on hand multisensory but it was also imaginative. We were anchored in the here and now but transported to an island.

But I also noticed something else. This extended time playing together led to powerful conversations in the debrief. Part of this was the element of play. The shared time being vulnerable, negotiating ideas, and making decisions drew the groups together. I know this might sound odd but playing together first led to more honest and open conversation afterward.

Would it have been possible to do this type of game on a computer? Perhaps. I actually think there are deep bonds formed during shared gaming experiences on platforms like XBox Live. However, the physical element played a key role here. Members were communicating non-verbally in a way that shifted easily into the hard conversations they had afterward. The shared space where they leaned into a table not only boosted engagement but increased group cohesion.

When I taught social studies, we often used game-based simulations to process complex ideas. Students engaged in a communist, capitalist, and socialist version of Monopoly and students took surveys to see whether they attributed wealth or poverty to luck or good decision-making. Ultimately, they took on roles as characters in a society that had to design a mixed economy.

We played a modified version of Risk in order to understand how the alliance system, imperialism, and nationalism would contribute toward World War I (and how a single “small event” could launch a war). Here, we also looked at war poetry comparing the Great War to cricket matches and contrasted that to the sheer destruction of World War I. We turned the class into a factory and created an urban planning game to learn about industrialization.

With that in mind, I’d like to share some reasons for going low-tech with game-based learning:

1. Games Leverage Retrieval Practice

The best games require students to repeatedly retrieve information rather than simply recognize it. Decades of cognitive science suggest that this type of retrieval strengthens long-term memory far more effectively than passive review. Rather than studying content in isolation, students continually recall and apply what they know in pursuit of a meaningful goal. This low-tech approach is inherently multimodal which can help with the retrieval process.

2. Games Increase Meaningful Social Learning

Physical games naturally lead to conversation, explanation, debate, and collaboration. Students learn by thinking out loud, challenging one another’s ideas, and building shared understanding, all of which deepen learning. This social interaction also strengthens communication skills while making thinking visible to both peers and teachers. While it’s possible for this to occur in virtual spaces, there’s something powerful about the human connection that occurs when we are face to face.

3. Games Develop Executive Function

Many tabletop games require students to plan ahead, inhibit impulsive decisions, adapt their strategy, and monitor their progress. In the process, they strengthen executive functioning alongside academic content. These cognitive habits transfer beyond the game itself and support learning across subject areas. Slower games played in person can help with the executive function rather than trapping students in short term dopamine releases or constant distractions.

4. Games Provide Immediate Feedback Without More Screen Time

One hallmark of effective learning is timely feedback. Hands-on games provide constant feedback through the game itself while avoiding the additional screen time that increasingly concerns both educators and families. Students can quickly recognize mistakes, adjust their thinking, and try a new approach without waiting for formal assessment.

5. Games Are Concrete and Embodied

Students move pieces, manipulate cards, roll dice, and physically interact with materials. This kind of embodied learning can make abstract concepts more accessible while keeping attention anchored in the physical classroom rather than another digital environment. For younger learners in particular, concrete experiences provide a developmentally appropriate bridge toward more abstract thinking while reducing many of the distractions that accompany screen-based activities.

In the end, there is nothing wrong with online games. However, low tech options can help facilitate deeper thinking in a way that is centered on human development. Here, they learn the content at a deep level while also gaining the types of skills they’ll need as they navigate a complicated world.