What do games make possible?
Design features of digital games and what they make possible for different children.
Past research has analysed the particular design features that appear to support children’s digital play in various ways. However, studies considering the design features associated with children’s well-being are scarce and there is little existing work considering how multiple, complex mediating factors matter in the relationship between particular design features and aspects of children’s well-being. The theoretical starting point for this aspect of our own research was Mastin Prinsloo’s account of new literacies as ‘placed resources’. In his study of digital technology use in Cape Town, South Africa, Prinsloo drew attention to the idea that the literacy practices associated with digital technologies work entirely differently in different contexts. The practices afforded by digital technologies, which can in one sense be observed globally, are nonetheless also specific to particular contexts and must be studied as such. Prinsloo’s notion suggests that the opportunities that digital games offer for particular users is something that must be established through situated research, within very localised family and community ecologies.
While children’s digital play drivers and experiences of digital play were diverse, a range of specific design features appeared particularly important in supporting many children’s experiences of subjective well-being. This list is not exhaustive, but some example of the most important design features are included below:
Mechanics enabling the creation and aesthetic customisation of avatars, characters, homes and spaces.
Mechanics that enabled choices with consequences for gameplay.
Challenges that were personally meaningful and at different levels.
Mechanics to enable individual control over entry to game spaces and editing permissions.
Opportunities to skip levels.
Games that were representative of diverse children and childhoods.
Games that were accessible for a wide range of children.
Opportunities to empathise, for example through character mechanics and aesthetics and the structure of narratives.
Opportunities to nurture and tend, for example through pet care.
Multiplayer formats.
Opportunities for sensory stimulation.
Opportunities for physical play.
Opportunities to experience humour, for example, through humorous characters and narratives.
Opportunities to create multimodal texts.
How did this look different for different children?
Particular design features of digital games sometimes supported, or did not support, various aspects of well-being for different children. For example, being able to skip levels supported a sense of autonomy and competence for some children, but did not for others, who felt skipping levels was a form of cheating or failure. Likewise, games like World of Goo offer different ways to solve puzzles. This choice afforded feelings of freedom and autonomy for some children, but others felt the game did not offer opportunities to play in flexible ways, often compared to more open-ended game.
An important implication is that designers cannot 'design in' particular well-being outcomes for children as a whole. No single digital play experience can be all things to all children. By using the RITEC-8 framework as a tool and considering the design recommendations provided in our research report, however, designers will increase the likelihood that their games contribute positively to children’s well-being. A positive approach within this would be to design digital games with the particular needs of one or more groups of children in mind. It is clear that, in order for the digital play needs of all children to be supported, a diverse range of carefully designed games should proliferate.
Research spotlight: Ethan
‘I really love that game. And actually, it also I think it's helping me with my school in a way. It's because like, the game encouraged like, thinking a lot and like using critical thinking and stuff. It's my… it's because they’re always puzzles. Like, you need to create things and try to figure out a way around things [...] I guess that game was designed so that everyone plays differently? And they have their own way of doing things? [...] They make it so that you can, like, create anything using this ultra hand tool - at all. And there are, like, different ways you can think of things [...] So it's like there's no one way to do things. Also, when you go to the mat you get you could go anywhere really and like you could go to four places or you could explore you could go to the chasms below and stuff I mean, you could like get weapons, but each way kind of links to a story makes the experience really fun. And you can solve problems and defeat bosses if you do it in that way.'
Specific design features were important for children’s well-being, but these were sometimes different for different children. For 12-year-old Ethan (WAF4), who lived in Australia, the open-ended nature of gameplay in action adventure games supported experiences of autonomy and creativity.
Ethan particularly liked games like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, because he felt games of this nature made it possible to choose how he played and choose how he responded to puzzles.
In this illustration, which has been created for the project by a professional illustrator based on our research data, Ethan is playing The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom on his Nintendo Switch in his lounger chair in the living room. As he plays, Ethan notices the multiple, branching pathways opening up to explore.
You can read many more examples like Ethan's in our full report.
All of the photographic images on this page are representative of the interests and activities families told us about and are not taken from the dataset. They are all free to use images sourced via Unsplash.com (https://unsplash.com/). Unsplash photos are made to be used freely. All photos can be downloaded and used for free for commercial and non-commercial purposes and no permission is needed (although attribution is appreciated). For 'Mechanics enabling the creation and aesthetic customisation of avatars, characters, homes and spaces': Girl with red hat on Unsplash. For 'Mechanics that enabled choices with consequences for gameplay': Egor Myznik on Unsplash. For 'Challenges that were personally meaningful and at different levels': Jeremy Sheppard on Unsplash. For 'Mechanics to enable individual control over entry to game spaces and editing permissions': Florian Gagnepain on Unsplash. For 'Opportunities to skip levels.': Richard Bell on Unsplash. For 'Games that were representative of diverse children and childhoods': John Schaidler on Unsplash. For 'Games that were accessible for a wide range of children': Daniel Ali on Unsplash. For 'Opportunities to empathise, for example through character mechanics and aesthetics and the structure of narratives': Chayene Rafaela on Unsplash. For 'Opportunities to nurture and tend, for example through pet care': Юлія Дубина on Unsplash. For 'Multiplayer formats': Artem Kniaz on Unsplash. For 'Opportunities for sensory stimulation': MI PHAM on Unsplash. For 'Opportunities for physical play': Giu Vicente on Unsplash. For 'Opportunities to experience humour, for example, through humorous characters and narratives': Mieke Campbell on Unsplash. For 'Opportunities to create multimodal texts': Maïa Leleu on Unsplash. The illustration on this page is representative of a particular family in our dataset. The illustration was created for our project by Alexandra Francis, an independent illustrator, designer, and animator based in Manchester (UK). Find out more about her work at https://alexandrafrancis.com/.