Amy Liu

Video games have overall grown to become an increasingly relevant form of media, surpassing even the film and music industry in revenue. This growth has also been reflected among young children, with children ages 5-8 spending an average of 45 minutes playing video games each day. Because of the prevalence of games within the 5-8 age group and the benefits of game-based learning, video games have the potential to be a powerful tool for learning in young children. One major topic of interest that can be explored via games is culture. Previous findings have shown that media can have both positive and negative effects on children’s self-esteem depending on how one’s race and culture is represented within the media they consume. Misrepresentations can contribute to harmful stereotypes and biases against those affected as well as lead to lowered self-esteem, while positive representations lead to higher self-esteem and perceptions of one’s own identity. Because the influence of positive representation in media on children's perceptions of themselves has been mostly established through TV shows, my goal is to find out whether this also applies to video games. Specifically, I will investigate what effect positive representation of one’s culture in games has on children from ages 5-8. In the past, several games have been made for cultural learning. However, there is still limited research surrounding this topic, especially concerning younger age groups. To test my research question, I will design and create a game targeted to the 5-8 age group that focuses on positively representing Chinese American culture. The game will be focused on Chinese New Year and will consist of many smaller minigames within a larger game. After the game is created, to test my research question, I plan on designing a study which will involve participants, questionnaires using the Likert scale, and interviews which will then be analyzed. The results will hopefully have implications in the use of video games for education in young children, specifically on the cultural front.