When students suggest using video games at school, it’s easy to dismiss it outright. Kids spend enough time online as it is, right? And video games have no educational value, right?
However, as educators, we should consider any opportunity to meet our students where they are—or even halfway. That means getting creative about connecting with them through media they enjoy and finding ways to use it to enrich their learning. After all, change has been in the air for a long time: Increasingly, students consume information digitally, including literature, and as many parents will tell you, video games attract and retain their attention like little else.
As the video gaming industry continues to grow at a rapid pace ($180 billion in 2020, larger than movies and North American sports combined), educational platforms like Khan Academy have gamified their experiences to engage students, and apps like Duolingo and Brainscape that are designed to be gamelike from the get-go are exploding.
This is not a call to eliminate traditional book reading from instruction, but rather a challenge to incorporate video gaming into ELA instruction to supplement traditional literacy strategies.
TEACHING ELA AND NARRATIVE THROUGH GAMES
Structuring a unit around a video game is not so different from the way you do it with a book; the only real change is in how your students consume the story.
One way to do it is to have an entire class play through a story and then share similarities and differences in how they played it, like following different story trees, in much the same way that students read a book or a play, watch a film version of it, and then compare the two. That approach surfaces nuances in narrative and introduces different vocabulary terms and literary devices within the same story, as well as stimulating discussion about themes. For instance, in The Stanley Parable, a first-person exploration (walking simulator) game that has been hailed as “inventive, preposterous, and brilliant,” the essence of the game is chosen, making it an engaging springboard for a discussion about free will, a theme appropriate for middle and high school students.
Many of the narrative games I assign are single-player, but I do have students play in groups so they can have discussions among themselves about what’s happening in the story. This approach also cultivates cooperative learning and group decision-making.
You can also have students play different games, much like choice reading, and write papers or do presentations on the game they chose to play.
With narrative games, the assignments can remain the same as they are with fiction, like writing a one-page response to the narrative, text-to-self activities in which they compare situations faced by a character with their own or Dear Diary activities in which they write a journal from the perspective of one of the characters.
HOW TO FIND AND SELECT HIGH-QUALITY GAMES
There are all sorts of ways to find great video games you can use with your students.
Search reviews, lists, and even the news: If you’re in an app store, search on “narrative games” and read the reviews for what turns up (you may even find some reviews from other teachers). You might also find interesting narrative games by reading media outlets that cover online gaming like Game Informer and review sites like Metacritic.
Use YouTube for research: Searching on the name of the game you’re interested in with the term “play through no commentary” will usually yield a gameplay video free of voice commentary. These videos not only allow you to preview the content of many games without purchasing them but also give you time references (somewhat like page numbers) so you can plan what lessons students may be able to complete during class and how long homework assignments might take, as well as pinpoint teachable moments. (See this example from Röki, a fantasy adventure rooted in Scandinavian folklore).
Consider games that lack text: Just because a game doesn’t have text doesn’t mean it doesn’t tell a great story. Games like Journey and Old Man’s Journey (both age 13+) feature stories that are told deeply through imagery and exploration rather than through screens heavy with dialogue.
Consider games that incorporate diverse points of view: Some video games tell stories that build empathy and even awareness of world events (like Bury Me, My Love, an age 13+ game about a Syrian refugee), while in others, players take on characters with real-life limitations. For example, in Dropsy, players assume the character of a neurodiverse adult who struggles with an inability to read and write and is judged by his appearance. The entire game (also for 13+) is framed by Dropsy’s struggle with his mental development as well as the loss of a parent (a comparison might be The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which is often taught to ninth and 10th graders). Games like these can underpin typical ELA conversations about the plot and character development, but they can also lead to rich conversations about mental wellness and social norms.
Expense: Many narrative games are relatively low cost because they’re created by indie game developers, and they’re mobile, so they can be played on students’ devices or school-issued ones. As of this writing, Bury Me, My Love is $4.99 on Steam and Old Man’s Journey is $7.99, and sometimes games go on sale. The price of a subscription needn’t stop you, though—you can also use free YouTube walkthroughs, but those won’t allow for student decision-making.
