Serious Games
Our Serious Games are designed in-house, in the context of a class about the Psychology of, you guessed it, serious games! In the class students take a deep dive into the literature on the intersections between Psychology, Game Design, and Social Justice. As they learn, they chose a social issue and design a game that should serve as an intervention following the principles of game-based learning.
Do our games work, as intended?
In our lab we are testing this question. In the 2025-2026 academic year we are testing the game Crusaders for Change with both middle schoolers and college students. Results so far are promising: beliefs are changing in both age groups. Turns out "disability awareness" can be a fun thing to learn about, when the playful conditions support it.
Crusaders for Change: A serious game for socially just adventurers; under assessment
The Curse of Ironbrook: under development
In the 2025-2026 year we are developing new games too. The Curse of Ironbrook, for example, is a game designed to increase emotional resiliency through exercising healthy coping under "disastrous" circumstances. We intend to start testing its effectiveness in the 2026 - 2027 academic year, alongside Seeds of Tomorrow, designed to improve sustainability related behaviors.
Seeds of Tomorrow: under development
We started our game design work in the 2024-2025 academic year. Pictured below is the first cohort of game designers presenting our work on campus and at the Seattle Indies annual Games-Education-Industry-Collider in Seattle, WA.
As a part of our design process our games get play tested by both college students and middle schoolers. These events are essential for ensuring that our games work, and it's extremely fun, too! Shout-out to our community partners at the Forest Grove Community School for making the play testing events a reality.
The Fall 2025 Play Testing Event with the Forest Grove Community School middle schoolers and PSY 3/480: Psychology of Serious Games students.
Media Matters Conference Presentations - Serious Games
Funai, P., Tsybina, D. & Kleinknecht, E. (2026, anticipated). Crusader’s for change: Serious game play changes middle schooler’s beliefs about disability. Poster presentation submitted for review, for the biennial meetings of the Cognitive Development Society, Montreal Quebec, CA.
Tsybina, D. Funai, P., & Kleinknecht, E. (2026, anticipated). Rewriting Narratives Through Play: Using Games to Shift Disability Beliefs. Poster presentation submitted for review for the annual meetings of the Association for Psychological Science, Barcelona, Spain.
Articles - Games and Cognition
Flynn, R. M., Kleinknecht, E., Ricker, A. & Blumberg, F.C. (2021). A narrative review of methods used to examine digital gaming impacts on learning and cognition during middle childhood. International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijcci.2021.100325
Blumberg, F., Flynn, R., Kleinknecht, E., & Ricker, A. (2019). Cognitive development and gaming in the digital age. Ubiquitous Learning: An International Journal, 12, 39 – 50. Doi: 10.18848/1835-9795/CGP/v12i02/39-50.
Home | <-- Site Navigation --> | Meet the Team
Questions about any of the works you see featured here?
Please contact Prf. Erica Kleinknecht, PhD: eko at pacific u dot edu