Nicole O’Connell, University of Massachusetts Amherst

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Creating Video Games for Social Impact, a course I designed as a first-year seminar, recognizes that video games act as powerful tools for social change. While incorporating an interdisciplinary approach, the course takes a decidedly composition-studies focus, encouraging students to work through a writing process and acknowledge the power of their own multimodal writing in a social context. This approach mirrors and thus reinforces students’ learning in the university’s required first-year composition course, which many students take concurrently with the first-year seminar. Creating Video Games for Social Impact introduces students to intersections between games studies and social justice and involves them in these intersections. Students discuss the status of video games in society, play selected example games, explore social justice aspects they are interested in, and move step-by-step through the process of designing a game that promotes positive social change. Students also frequently collaborate with each other through small group discussions and activities, usability testing, and workshops. No prior technology skills are required of the students.

COURSE CONTEXT

Creating Video Games for Social Impact was designed as a first-year seminar at the University of Massachusetts (UMass) Amherst. These courses are often taught and designed by graduate students, as was the case for this course. I taught two sections of this first-year seminar in fall 2023. First-year seminars at UMass Amherst are one-credit courses that invite first-year students to engage with university-level topics and research while also supporting students’ transition to college. First-year seminars are generally not required (unless students are part of specific programs with their own first-year seminar), but the University encourages students to take first-year seminars for a smoother transition into college. All first-year seminars follow core practices of demystifying the college experience, making interpersonal connections, and practicing skills of self-care and help seeking.

Creating Video Games for Social Impact takes a specifically composition-informed approach. Aligning the course with composition studies reinforces lessons and objectives (such as the writing process, peer review, and multimodal composing) that students learn in their first-year composition courses, another core academic experience of first-year students. Furthermore, writing is a social act, and encouraging students to make positive social change with their writing is a worthy goal of a writing class (Roozen, 2015).

Before I continue, I should clarify my use of terms. “Creating” is in the course title, and I often use the words “creating,” “designing,” and “making” when discussing the process of game production, but composing and writing (in alphabetic and multimodal forms) is what I teach students to understand is happening. In class, I explain that “writing” creates more than alphabetic texts and that games are products of writing. However, when choosing the course title, I wanted the title to clearly portray the course involving the process from brainstorming to circulating — with many steps in between. As many incoming first-year students believe “writing” to refer mainly to alphabetic texts, I decided “Writing Video Games” would not divulge the same breadth of understanding and the idea that playable games will be made by the end of the class, and I wanted students signing up for my course to understand that they would be making whole games.

WHY VIDEO GAMES?

Video games are prominent in our society, perhaps most commonly raising discussions around violence and whether or not they are a waste of time. Yet, as games studies scholars, such as Mary Flanagan (2009) and Ian Bogost (2007; 2011), have shown, video games, especially ones known as serious games and critical games, have the power to create positive social impact. For instance, in Persuasive Games, Bogost (2007) writes, “In addition to becoming instrumental tools for institutional goals, videogames can also disrupt and change fundamental attitudes and beliefs about the world, leading to potentially significant long-term social change” (p. ix). Writing and literacy studies scholars have also written about the significance of video games in learning and social engagement (Colby et al., 2013; Colby et al., 2021; DeWinter and Moeller, 2016; Gee, 2003a; Gee, 2003b). For example, Richard Colby, Matthew S.S. Johnson, and Rebekah Shultz Colby (2021) write in their introduction to The Ethics of Playing, Researching, and Teaching Games in the Writing Classroom that video games are “Complicated. Multifaceted. Interactive. Nonlinear. Immersive. Emotional. Powerful. Ethical” (p. 6). Part of this potential for social impact comes from games allowing the player to experience the information instead of passively receiving it. As Shultz Colby (2017) writes, games offer “a way for students to live through the experiences that shape the theory, specifically by living through the experiences of being the other. Having students play and then analyze their play can help them tangibly explore anything from queer and post-colonial theory to Marxist theory” (p. 63). Composing games allow students to deeply engage with social issues by creating experiences around these topics.

Video games also help build students’ multimodal and digital literacy skills which grow increasingly essential for many personal and professional tasks. Both Schultz Colby (2017) and Candice Yacono (2021) have suggested incorporating digital literacy into composition courses through the creation of video games. The game-making platform I use in the first-year seminar is often a new tool for students, and though students might not use it after this course, exposure to new technology will help them better adapt to newer technologies down the line. For example, in the first-year seminar, I teach students to compose on various interfaces, save and send different file types, and increase the digital accessibility of their work. Furthermore, the course involves simple coding, including CSS, and though the specific code we use in class is different from HTML and the kinds of coding computer science students might do, it forces students to get familiar with looking at and making sense of code. Students learn that while they have freedom to come up with the plot and information present in their game, the code parts of the text must be written a certain way for the game to function the way they want it to.

Another reason I teach video games is that games engage students — simply said, students have fun! Many students grew up playing video games and enjoy them, so to interact with and create games in a classroom is novel and interesting. Yacono (2021) writes that “video games offer a combination of active learning, engagement, and excitement that make them of particular interest” (p. 96). This is not to say the work is easy; students tackle challenges in this course which require critical thinking; for example: nonlinear organization, audiences moving through the game in ways unforeseen by students, and multiple ways of structuring code. Yet, students welcome these challenges because they want to create interesting and usable games. Here, composing a game is similar to playing one; James Paul Gee (2003b) explains that “Since games are often challenging, but do-able, they are often also pleasantly frustrating, which is a very motivating state for human beings” (p. 2) — students do get frustrated while working on their games, but it is a pleasant frustration that makes them want to figure out a solution even more. Especially in a first-year seminar concerned with retention, student interest and engagement are high priorities, and creating video games effectively retains student interest and engagement.

Humanities, and English programs specifically, should offer coursework, and, ideally, programs in games studies to meet their students’ needs and interests and retain a humanities approach to games. The games industry has come under fire with “crunch culture” (exorbitant hours of forced unpaid overtime), unethical workplace practices, and other “ethically suspect behavior” (Colby et al., 2021, p. 6) — teaching games from a humanistic lens may help to disrupt these issues.

COURSE ORIGIN

The origins of this course closely connect to the platform I and my students use to create video games: Twine. Twine (twinery.org) is a free, open-source tool for making text-based digital games (though the games can also include graphics, audio, and video), often similar to choose-your-own-adventure-type games. I originally learned about Twine from Danielle Pierce’s and ‘Aolani Robinson’s (2021) “Integrating and Evaluating Twine as a Mode for Training Course-Embedded Consultants in the Writing Center” and Tobias I. Paul’s (2020) “Chance (re)Collections: Twine Games and Preservation on the Internet.” This scholarship introduced me to Twine, and I built my experience with the program through learning to use it on my own through trial and error, teaching Twine to undergraduates in a creative writing workshop, and creating Twine games as part of my graduate coursework. Creating Video Games for Social Impact arose out of and was adapted from a unit project within a first-year composition course that I modified to have students remix a previous research project into an educational, digital game made with Twine.

PROCESS AND ASSIGNMENTS

Throughout Creating Video Games for Social Impact’s thirteen weeks, students move through a scaffolded writing and design process in order to create games with topic matter geared towards activism and social change. Though each student ends up creating an individual game, the class moves through the game design process together, sharing ideas each week, setting goals, and helping each other advance with their plans through collaborative activities.

First, students explore the role videogames play in society and how videogames are viewed by the class and society at large — such as common assumptions and misconceptions. This helps me gauge students’ experiences with and attitudes toward games. When I taught Twine in my first-year composition courses, at least a couple students would express hesitancy at the start of the project, saying they had not been allowed to play video games growing up. Since “video games” are in the title of the first-year seminar course, students have an idea of what they are signing up for and are almost all enthusiastic about making games. Yet, learning students’ backgrounds with video games is still useful because it allows the class to understand the variety of types of video games and their effects on players. For instance, before I began teaching video games, I had viewed them as a way to pass solitary time — something I would play at my grandmother’s house when I was the only young person there. Yet, when I started teaching with Twine, I had a conversation with a student who viewed video games as an extremely social activity, a way to connect with their friends during the pandemic when their high school classes were online. For students, gaining a wider understanding of what video games can mean provides ideas for figuring out how to have an impact with their own games.

The class then plays selected Twine games for inspiration and to understand affordances and constraints of Twine. A few games focusing on social change that we play include Black Fox Studios’ Game Accessibility Project and A Nonverbal Story, Maddox Pratt’s Negative Space, and Ambrosio’s Four Stories Covid, along with social-impact-focused games my past students have made and agreed to share with future students. After getting a sense of what one can create with Twine, students then read selected scholarly games studies chapters from Bogost’s How to Do Things with Videogames (2011) and Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames (2007) and Flanagan’s (2009) Critical Play: Radical Game Design, which not only help them think deeper about game designing for social impact but also introduce them to the kinds of academic texts they will encounter throughout college. The class also uses the example games and readings to build a toolkit of strategies to use in their own games, for example: encouraging empathy from the player, using humor and satire to critique, imbuing personal experience, informing and educating, increasing representation, and encouraging real-world actions.

Once the class gains this background information, students start thinking about their own games they want to create and what social issues they wish to explore. We consider ethical obligations we might have to players and what effects we want to have on our audience (Duffy, 2015). Students can choose to focus on social impact in any aspects the student prefers, such as race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, (dis)ability, linguistic justice, environmental justice, etc. When possible, we utilize resources on the UMass Amherst campus where we might learn more about social justice topics; for example, the Center for Women & Community, the Stonewall Center (LGBTQ+), and the Special Collections & University Archives (which focuses on collecting materials related to social change and has a large digital collection). Connecting to these campus resources also supports the broad goals of a first-year seminar to demystify college and grow familiar with campus offerings.

For the “Game” project, students submit multiple drafts and earn credit for each draft submitted. This mirrors the grading and project breakdown of essay assignments in UMass Amherst’s first-year composition courses. In the first-year seminar, points are spread out over the draft with no part carrying more than ten percent of the final grade. I explicitly point out the game design process’ similarity to the writing process in the first-year composition courses: brainstorming/generative writing, initial draft, revised draft, final draft, and reflection. For the first part of their “submitted” brainstorming, students create idea maps to help them figure out what they want to focus on. Once they have thought more about their ideas, students then create visual outlines of their game with major points, themes, options, and outcomes. Next, students write a script or storyboard, filling in the description and/or dialogue text to expand their outline and have a more-concrete idea of what they will include in their game.

After creating plans for their games, students actually create their games using Twine. We spend time in class reviewing how to use Twine, and students use the remainder of class time as well as their homework time to work on their drafts. I split the Twine walkthroughs into three parts, each done in a different class: 1) Twine basics, where we learn how Twine works, how we get started with Twine, how we make links between passages of text, and how we set up multiple options for the player to choose from. 2) Advanced functions, where we learn how to create random possibilities, how to set up a point system, and how to incorporate variables. 3) Design, where we learn how to implement effective and accessible design by using Twine code and CSS.

The last few weeks of class focus on collaborative usability testing, which serves as peer review, emphasizing troubleshooting one’s work and learning how to effectively help peers with their own projects. Because of the general higher amount of enthusiasm students have for the first-year seminar than they would have for a required course, students are usually more motivated and are able to provide more constructive feedback on how to make their classmates’ games more engaging. We have three class meetings dedicated to usability testing, intended to show students the value of working with others when creating a piece of writing. The first usability testing session focuses on: “Does this work?” with students considering if their peers’ games are playable and usable. The second session focuses on “Is this engaging?” with students considering if their peers’ writing style and design make sense in the context of the game and ways the game could be more engaging. The third session asks “How could this game be improved?” with students considering anything else they would like to see in their peers’ games as well as any last-minute changes before the final class. Before we begin usability testing, and then throughout the sessions, we review best practices in peer review, such as asking the writer questions about what they would like comments on, understanding the writer’s intent, placing oneself in the audience’s shoes, and focusing (at least during the first couple rounds) on global revision instead of local revision. I encourage students to bring these peer reviewing practices with them to other classes. Students conduct these usability tests in person during class time, writing down their comments at times, but also discussing their comments with each other. For students who miss class during the usability testing days, they have an option to provide and receive written feedback. At the end of the course, students publish their games on a class Google Site, present their games to each other, and celebrate their work.

Furthermore, throughout the semester, students complete reflections which allow them to not only consider the work they have done in class but also consider their lives as college students so far. Kara Taczak (2016) explains that reflection on writing “centers on writers’ ability to theorize and question areas such as their processes, practices, beliefs, attitudes, and understandings about writing, along with the ability to consider why they made the rhetorical choices they did” (p. 78) and that “This ability to theorize and question is especially important for writers engaging in new or especially challenging tasks because it helps writers relocate the knowledge and practices acquired from one writing site to another” (p. 78). Reflecting on their work helps students form and strengthen connections to other writing projects they are currently working on and will surely do in the future as college students. Students complete two “homework” reflection prompts throughout the semester which encourage them to consider both course content and their own experiences. For instance, the first reflection asks: “If your semester so far was a video game, what kind of video game would it be and why?” Finally, after completing their final Twine drafts, students write a final reflection in which they think back on the semester as a whole and consider aspects both from the first-year seminar course and their life as a college student so far (and hopefully make connections between the two, showing that what they learn in class matters outside of class).

OUTCOMES

I designed this course to focus on the process of creating a game and the impact students’ writing can have. These focuses connect to larger themes that students can apply outside of this class and outside of the university to their professional and personal lives. Focusing on the process of a game shows students how to break down a big project into parts and exemplifies the significance of multiple process stages that might not be apparent or even present in the ways students complete projects, such as brainstorming, revising, peer reviewing, and reflecting. Furthermore, this course encourages students to recognize the ways that writing makes social change and to realize that they themselves can make a difference. Admittedly, this aspiration is grand, but I do keep in mind that, as Elisabeth Kramer-Simpson (2024) writes, “One semester of a social justice class is like one semester of writing: it is a start toward greater change” (p. 117). This course gets students thinking about the writing process and social impact topics, and it reinforces what students learn in the required first-year composition course. Broadly, Creating Video Games for Social Impact is concerned with helping students succeed in college by making them motivated about college, the humanities, and writing.

Creating Video Games for Social Impact also teaches first-year students basic principles in usability and accessibility in design, encouraging students to apply these to writing in general in and outside of the classroom and helping to remind students that our work circulates beyond ourselves and we need to make our work comprehensible to our audiences (Donegan, 2022; Yergeau et al., 2013). Students consider and implement accessibility and usability in their games, and we discuss why these considerations are crucial to creating any communication as well as different ways we can make our work more accessible and usable. For instance, one of the example games we play, Black Fox Studios’ Game Accessibility Project, suggests strategies for designing Twine games to be more accessible for a variety of audiences, such as through using high-contrast colors and including captions and transcripts when relevant. The class also discusses and incorporates design principles into their games, considering how design and aesthetics can contribute to a game’s effectiveness. In this course, accessibility, usability, and design are not viewed as “add-ons” or options but as integral aspects of game design.

REFLECTION

While video games have gained increasing respect within academia during the past twenty years, one can still see evidence of doubts and hesitancy of treating video games as a serious scholarly subject (Shultz Colby, 2017). Additionally, even if instructors believe in the scholarly legitimacy of video games, there can be uncertainty about teaching the topic. Kendall Gerdes et al. (2020) acknowledge that instructors possess “fear that making videogames is too complicated a task for them to lead their students in” (p. 9). From my own experience, I have heard the same about creating video games being too complicated and intense to teach undergraduate students. Yet, each time I have taught Twine, I am impressed by all students competently taking up the work and am often witness to students’ skills with Twine surpassing my own Twine skills. Students understand this better than might be assumed.

However while creating games may not be as difficult as one might think, the games created may not turn out as one might think. Some students say the Twine games we play and create are not fun. Now, the games studies chapters we read in class make points about how, for social impact games, “fun” is not the goal of these games. I believe Flanagan (2009) says it best of social impact games; “They are not necessarily meant to be fun, though fun may be a side effect, and are rather meant to make people think” (p. 249). A goal of making people think, with fun as a secondary concern, was personally revelatory for me in how I think about social impact games, and this idea is also helpful for most students. For the students who are expecting something else, teaching Twine requires directing students’ presumptions of games into something more appropriate of the tools we are working with and the time we have. Twine games are not the cinematic $100+ games currently on the market. Twine games are open source and text based. While fun games can certainly be made with Twine, they may be drastically different from the games students are familiar with.

Students do accomplish a great deal in class (a whole game!), but my foremost challenge with the class is the limited amount of time it allots for. Due to the constraints of the first-year seminar format, we have less than twenty-four hours of class and homework time to not only go through the process of creating video games but also grow accustomed to life as a college student. This does not offer much time to do a deep dive into games studies or to help individual students adjust to college. While teaching Twine within a first-year composition course, I would meet with students for one-on-one conferencing twice throughout the project. During the first-year seminar, there is not enough class time to devote to one-on-one or even group conferences. I check in with each student during workshops and provide personal written feedback on drafts, but there is not enough time for substantial conversations about the work a student is doing unless that student decides to attend office hours. Furthermore, the class community is not as strong as it could be with triple the amount of in-person class time that a 3-credit course allows for.

Having more class and homework time would open up many potential avenues for expanding discussions and activities around games studies and the prominence of games in our society: crunch culture in the gaming industry, the rise of e-sports, common perceptions of violence in video games, indie games versus games from large publishers, ethics in games, representation within games including projects such as the Black Games Archive (samanthablackmon.net/bgarchive/), accessibility within games such as the “Can I Play That? website (caniplaythat.com), archival aspects and preservation of digital games, disposal and environmental impact of obsolete games, the concept of gamification, games as legitimate scholarly forms, etc. It would also be beneficial to play more games, especially non-Twine games discussed in the scholarly readings, such as Hush, Darfur is Dying, and Cruel 2 B Kind.

Additional projects could also be incorporated into the course. For example, students might design a visual such as a poster or cover for a pretend physical copy of their game that not only represents their game but also works as marketing (which encourages students to further consider their audience). In Gerdes et al.’s (2020) video games course, students were required to write an artist’s statement. In the context of the first-year seminar, an artist’s statement could be incorporated into the final reflection or as a more public-facing document.

The possibilities for how this course could be expanded or shift its focus seem endless. Creating Video Games for Social Impact is taught within a humanities and fine arts college, but even within an English department, there are many ways to make video games relevant to the work done in this field. For example, focusing on the writing and rhetoric of video games, video games as tied to literacy practices, walkthroughs and user’s guides (connecting to technical communication), games used in writing education, etc. With all these options to explore, I hope this course design encourages more instructors to consider creating video games in the classroom.

REFERENCES

Ambrosio. (n.d.). Four stories Covid. ambrosio.itch.io/four-stories-covid 

Black Fox Studios. (n.d.). A nonverbal story. makkit0.itch.io/a-nonverbal-story 

Black Fox Studios. (n.d.). Game accessibility project. makkit0.itch.io/gap-game-accessibility-project 

Bogost, I. (2011). How to do things with videogames. University of Minnesota Press.

Bogost, I. (2007). Persuasive games: The expressive power of videogames. MIT Press.

Colby, R., Johnson, M. S. S., & Shultz Colby, R., eds. (2013). Rhetoric/composition/play through video games: Reshaping theory and practice of writing. Palgrave Macmillan.

Colby, R., Johnson, M. S. S., & Shultz Colby, R., eds. (2021). The ethics of playing, researching, and teaching games in the writing classroom. Springer International Publishing.

DeWinter, J, & Moeller, R. M., eds. (2016). Computer games and technical communication: Critical methods & applications at the intersection. Routledge.

Donegan, R. (2022). The rhetorical possibilities of accessibility. Writing Spaces, 4, 110–123.

Duffy, J. (2015). Writing involves making ethical choices. In Adler-Kassner, L. & Wardle, E. (eds.), Naming what we know: Threshold concepts of writing studies. University Press of Colorado, 31–32.

Flanagan, M. (2009). Critical play: Radical game design. MIT Press.

Gee, J. P. (2003a) What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. Palgrave Macmillan.

Gee, J. P. (2003b). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. ACM Computers in Entertainment, 1(1).

Gerdes, K., Beal, M., & Cain, S. (2020). Writing a videogame: Rhetoric, revision, and reflection. Prompt, 4(2), 3–12. doi.org/10.31719/pjaw.v4i2.64.

Kramer-Simpson, E. (2024). Defining social justice according to undergraduate students. Programmatic Perspectives, 15(2), 113–119

Paul, T. I. (2020). Chance (re)collections: Twine games and preservation on the internet. Xchanges, 15(2). xchanges.org/chance-recollections-15-2 

Pierce, D., & Robinson, ‘A. (2021). Integrating and evaluating Twine as a mode for training course-embedded consultants in the writing center. The Peer Review, 5(1). hepeerreview-iwca.org/issues/issue-5-1/integrating-and-evaluating-twine-as-a-mode-for-training-course-embedded-consultants-in-the-writing-center/ 

Pratt, M. (n.d.). Negative Space. mr-joyboy.itch.io/negative-space

Roozen, K. (2015). Writing is a social and rhetorical activity. In Adler-Kassner, L. & Wardle, E. (eds.), Naming what we know: Threshold concepts of writing studies. University Press of Colorado, 17–19.

Shultz Colby, R. (2017). Game-based pedagogy in the writing classroom. Computers and Composition, 43, 55–72.

Taczak, K. (2016). Reflection is critical for writers’ development. In Adler-Kassner, L. & Wardle, E. (eds.), Naming what we know, classroom edition: Threshold concepts of writing studies, 78–81.

University of Massachusetts Amherst. (n.d.). “About Student Success.” https://www.umass.edu/studentsuccess/about-student-success

Wordcloud in syllabus created with wordclouds.com.

Yacono, C. (2021). Video game design as a multimodal heuristic: Turning the tide of composition studies. CEA Critic, 83(1), 94–101.

Yergeau, M. R., Brewer, E., Kerschbaum, S. L., Oswal, S., Price, M., Salvo, M. J., Selfe, C. L., & Howes, F. (2013). Multimodality in motion: Disability and kairotic Spaces. Kairos, 18(1). http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/18.1/coverweb/yergeau-et-al/