Games, fun, and the real world

In How Computer Games Help Children Learn, I make the arguement (drawing from the work of developmental psychologist Lev Vygotsky) that games are not primarily about fun–rather, they are a place where players explore needs and desires that they cannot fulfill in the real world.

Now, a recent survey by psychologists at the University of Rochester and researchers at Immersyve Inc. shows:

People enjoy video games because they are satisfying at a fundamental psychological level…. The research published Tuesday in the journal Motivation and Emotion found that the driving force that draws people to games was not fun–which doesn’t keep players interested–but instead a sense of achievement, freedom and even social connectedness.

One of the questions I am often asked about epistemic games where players learn to think like professionals in the real world is: “Do kids really want to play these games?”

Our research shows, of course, that they do. Children–particularly adolescents–are interested in their own sense of efficiacy in the world. They want to see what they can accomplish, and epistemic games show them how part of the world really works. These games pull back the curtain and show some of the mechanisms of power in a post-industrial economy. So the games are motivating because they give players a sense of achievement and connectedness.

This new University of Rochester survey finds something similar:

Gamers said they felt the best about their experience when the games they played produced positive outcomes in scenarios related to the real world.

Epistemic games are motivating, even though they mean doing hard work on real problems–or perhaps we should say they are motivating precisely because they mean doing hard work on real problems.