Speaking of Psychology - How video games can help kids learn and grow, with Susan Rivers, PhD

Episode Date: February 7, 2024

Video games get a bad rap -- but the right games can be a tool to reach kids and teach them important social emotional and academic skills. Susan Rivers, PhD, chief scientist at the nonprofit iThrive Games, talks about how to design games that are both entertaining and educational, what kinds of skills kids can learn through gaming and how parents can balance screen time concerns with recognizing the important role games play in their kids’ lives. For transcripts, links and more information, please visit the Speaking of Psychology Homepage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There's something beautiful about interactive gameplay that draws young people in to thinking about complex topics like narrative design, like identity, like character building, like complicated storytelling that's not linear. And all of those things line up to common core standards, which is amazing. Welcome to Speaking of Psychology. I'm Kim Mills. This week we're continuing our two-part series on the human side of technology. In January, APA joined the Consumer Technology Association at CES, the world's largest technology trade show, for a series of discussions about how artificial intelligence, virtual reality, digital health apps, and other tech developments are shaping human behavior and about how psychological science can help shape more ethical and effective technology. Afterward, we caught up with some of the panelists for extended conversations.

This week, we're bringing you our discussion with developmental psychologist Dr. Susan Rivers, executive director and chief scientist at I Thrive Games, a nonprofit organization that develops video games to advance teens' mental health and social emotional learning. Before joining I Thrive, Dr. Rivers served on the research faculty at Yale University for over a decade and was a co-founder of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. I talked with her about why video games can be such an effective vehicle to reach kids, how to design games that are both entertaining and educational, and how parents can balance screen time concerns with a recognition of the important role

these games can play in their kids' lives. Here's our discussion. If you want to hear more from Dr. Rivers and the other psychologists who spoke at CES, you can find all the talks at cES.APA.org. Dr. Rivers, I want to thank you for joining me today here at CES. It's really great that you were able to join us and be on a panel here with us this afternoon. And we're going to talk a little bit about what you do as the head of an organization that creates games, gaming for good. And your organization is I Thrive Games.

I want to know what is gaming for good and why are video games a good way to teach kids and teens social, emotional skills and mental health lessons? Great, good questions. It's such an honor to be here. I had such a great time on the panel, so thank you very much for inviting me to be here with you today. So gaming for good is really how do we think about and design games that support young people in their development towards thriving? And so how do we, one, design learning experiences or just experiences? I think most experiences are learning experiences that integrate, knowledge and understanding the science of the teen brain, the science of where teens are in terms of their mental health, their learning, their identity formation, the importance of social relationships into the design of a digital experience for them that invites them to interact with a game space with other players that, one, helps them discover who they are and what they like

different aspects of their selves that maybe they haven't explored before. Two, that brings some joy and where they have fun. Three, ideally, where they are interacting with others and forming memories together in that play space, getting to know each other, doing what matters in relationship, building, and connection. And also, I think that games are a really great place and gaming for good is a really great place

to really think about and design for the competencies that young people need to develop during adolescence and that they're really ripe to develop during adolescence and have a space to practice those in places that are in a space that is fun and where it invites failure because it's through failure that we learn. And so through failure we learn and we build

and we go back at it and practice again And so that space of the digital space of play creates the opportunity to level up your skill set and get towards mastery in it. But that continuous development. Right, which is a classic feature of a game, how you keep people engaged, that you have to be working towards something. That's right. That's right. So one of the things that you said on the panel today was that you have to make games that don't feel like chocolate-covered broccoli. Yeah. How do you do that? How do you develop a game that is both entertaining and educational? Sure. So we are working in a space that is, you know, we're up front about learning and that kids actually do want to learn.

We don't hide that in the educational learning games that we create. We invite young people in to say, help us think about what are the skills that matter to them. What are the skills that they need in the world that they identify? but also that we see as being necessary for, whether it's English language arts or civics or democracy or looking at and evaluating the validity of media or fake news. And we work with them and we connect with them about what are some of the skills that you have, what do you think you need,

how might you develop these, and then how can we create a context that's interesting and relevant to you? And so through that co-design process, we think about fun, we think about their strengths, and we design towards both of those within the context that we're working in, whether it's media literacy or relationship, healthy relationship building, whatever the context. And so we pair those things together and we continually bring content and aspects of the game to young people for their feedback. And they want to learn.

They want to develop these skills. and they want to be asked about how best to do it. And so it's through that partnership that we're able to create what's not chocolate-covered broccoli, but a meaningful, engaging learning experience. What about the vantage point of the educators who would be using these games?

Where do you involve them in the process? We try to involve them all along the way as well. It's actually sometimes more difficult to get educators at the table. We put so much stress on our, educators in terms of the things we want them to be doing in the classroom, in school settings. We've had a lot of luck of bringing together educators to sit on advisory panels when we're launching a new game design project. We have a group of educators that we've been working with over the

years that we can call upon and ask for their advice or their input about how would you use this, would you use this, what would get in your way of using this game, what would you need to know? And we need to do a better job of that. We need to be reaching out to more and more educators as we do this. One of the challenges with inviting educators into use new technologies, they don't always have the systems in place that support them to be innovative, to take risks, to have classrooms that are allowed. Gameplay often elicits conversation and laughter and joy.

And schools often don't embrace that in the classrooms. So we'll keep it down, right? focus on the material. Let me talk to you or at you, and I'll tell you what you need to know. And bringing games into the classroom disrupts that. And that can be scary and frightening for adults in the space. Do you have examples of some favorite games that you would share with us? Sure. So I'm trying to think, should I choose some of the games that we've built or other games that are out there. A little of both. I'll start with one that we used in one of our first curriculum that we created. So I was really surprised to see when I came to I Thrive about eight years ago

where games had had gotten to. I grew up in the 80s and early 90s playing Donkey Kong and Frogger. We had Atari when I was growing up. So this is old school video games. And when you look at what's available right now, the catalog of beautiful games that are out there that are telling really rich, complex stories using really incredible graphics and visuals, but also storytelling techniques that invite players in to look at the world through a character's eyes or interact with belongings in a space as a way to do storytelling. So one of the games that we found early on is called What Remains of Edith Finch. This is an award-winning game.

It's a storytelling game. and you sort of walk through this mansion that belongs to the main character, Edith Finch. And in each room in the mansion, you're looking to uncover, what is the story of the person who lived in this room? By looking at the artifacts they left behind, what can I discover about the story of this person? And so we, two things came up for us when we saw that. One is, what doesn't a person's identity even mean? And how could you understand a person's identity from the artifacts that are in,

their space and what stories can you tell and what richness is there in the context where a person resides and what's missing. And so in adolescence, there's such a richness of that work of identity formation that happens during the adolescent years that there's an immediate connection to looking at this game through the lens of who am I, who am I in who I present to the world, to the outside world, and who am I in my private spaces? And how do those go together and how do those sometimes not go together. And then that also linked up to looking at the ELA learning standards for high school in narrative storytelling, in describing place, and in many other things.

I mean, there were dozens of different lines from the Common Core, for example, that we could have pulled in as learning objectives for that. So that game created such a rich opportunity to talk about storytelling, to explore character and identity formation, but really give a hook to young people to have those really rich conversations in the classroom and prompt them to tell their own stories. So what remains to be a French is a fantastic game that tells stories, you're interacting with it, it's compelling, it's surprising, you're on edge when you're like a good mystery, when you're going through it, but opens the door to many different kinds of conversations.

And depending on who you're playing it with, lots new conversations will happen because everyone will find a different piece that really connects to them. And that's where the richness and that relationship building happens. So we really love that game. So how does that then tie in with the learning objectives that the teacher might have? Yeah. So that's where the English language arts learning standards come in. So whenever we design, whether we're pulling a game off the shelf that someone else is created or we're designing one with a partner, we look to see, and this is where we work closely with a partner, we look to see, and this is where we work closely with a, educators, what do you need to teach? Not how do you need to teach it, but what do you need to

teach? What's the core thing you need to teach when you're teaching the Cold War, when you're in history class, or when you're teaching about the amendments of the Constitution? And so we look at national standards. We look at state standards for that. And we do interviews with teachers to identify what learning objectives do we need to hit in designing the game, but also the surrounds that go around the game. So how do you introduce the game? What preparation do you need to do before you play it. What really matters during game play? How do you want to set that up so that students are prepared to look for, understand, play

with the core thing that you're really looking for them to learn and understand and unpack? And then how do you, what's the campfire post game? Meaning after you've played, what do we talk about? How do we talk about what's in there? And so those learning objectives become the thread throughout both the design process of the game itself or in selecting the game, as well as the curricular surrounds that we build within four teachers to use in the space. So how does this work in a classroom? Does the classroom need to have some kind of a big screen TV that every kid is looking at and then they're playing at their

desk? I mean, how does it work in real life? Yeah, so every classroom is different. Many classrooms have things like smart boards and projectors. So, and sometimes they just have one computer or one device to play on. And so a lot of the work that we've done around supporting teachers to bring games into their classroom are play guides. So if your classroom setup has A, B, and C, here's what you can do. If you have X, Y, and Z, here's what you can do. If you have none of those things, here's some other options.

And so sometimes they do group gameplay where one person has the controller, one student in the classroom has a controller and everyone else is watching. And often the watchers get more into it than even the person at the control. trailer. So setting up the context right is really important. Sometimes they play at home as part of homework and then they bring in, you know, things to talk about. So there's lots of different options. A lot of classrooms do have Chromebooks. So we always design for Chromebooks. A lot of students have their cell phone. So we also, when we're building our own games, we often design for mobile so that students can use what they have in the classroom. But it's definitely a challenge because every

Every school is really different in terms of what access they have to resources and the level of broadband or the different things that they, you know, allow or prohibit bringing into the school. That raises the question of another topic that you talked about on the panel, which had to do with the roadblocks that you're getting from educators. How are you getting around these roadblocks? What is it that you could do to make things easier? Are you working with teachers unions, associations of principles? I mean, how do you kind of convince people that this is an effective route for teaching children important things? Yeah, we have a lot more work to do in that space, for sure. We are a really small team, and we are designers.

We're designers first. And we're always thinking about how can we design something that will be used in the classroom that really matters to us. And there are so many barriers in the way. And so what we've started to do is work with organizations that have either inroads into classrooms themselves or are working with young people outside of the school space. So in community spaces or direct to teen access to games and really thinking about how can we design what's best for that, for the different environments or contexts that our partners are working in. And then they are responsible for making sure it works in.

the spaces they're in. A lot more work needs to be done in helping school communities, the organizations that run schools, you know, administrators, school boards to really understand the value of games in learning and the potential for games and learning because there's so many systemic structures in the way of teachers being able to play with games in the classroom and really leverage their power for engagement. And, you know, there's the saying of people who work in schools, once you've been to one district, you've been to one district, you've been to that one district, every district is really so different

and has different needs and requirements and budget constraints. So many organizations that are designing games or different tech for schools really run into a lot of barriers trying to make that happen. A lot of parents are concerned that their children are already spending a whole lot of their free time playing games. Is that another barrier you're facing where parents are saying, I don't want my kid to go to school to play games. He's already playing games all night at home.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I think that we have this. Games have a dirty reputation, I think, in our culture of being a waste of time, not useful. You know, why can't you do something else important? And I think that some of that, there is some truth to some of that. And where I get to is, well, let's get curious. Why are our kids playing games a lot?

Why are they on their phones or why are they on their gaming platform instead of doing something else? Let's get curious and ask them. And when I've asked my children those questions, it really varies. Sometimes they're bored. And so then we have conversations about, well, what else could we do? What would really get you energized? What would be another choice that you have? or what can we do together so that you're not bored

and turning to something sort of mindlessly. Other times, I have a son who plays a lot of games. He's hanging out with friends. So they are parallel playing inside Fortnite or another game, and they're having lots of side conversations. And that's how a lot of people hang out. They have, you know, interesting, emotional, or fun or, you know, just catching up conversations

while they're doing something else. And that's really important. And I don't want to take that away from my son, because that matters to him. He's also figuring stuff out, like, how would I build this game? How does this mechanic work? How do I get better at doing whatever, the building or the jumps or the complicated mechanics of this game?

So he's also pushing himself to develop more and more skills. And I see that play out in his storytelling, how he thinks about the world, how he builds things in his own outside of the game space. And so I think getting curious about how, why our kids are turning to games, not chastising them for choosing games is something. spending time on. Because when we do that, if it's something they really care about and they connect to or they identify with, if we tell them it's a waste of time, we're sending them the message that we don't value what's important to them, that we don't see the intrinsic value that

they see in this thing. We're judging it, and they'll internalize that. And that's really dangerous. We don't want to do that. So there's, I think, having a healthy balance of gameplay and non-gameplay time, but let's not criticize our kids for playing games. Let's get curious. Let's play with them. Let's have them teach us how to play. Let's discover what they love about it. How do you pick your games? How do you learn how to play? How do you figure out what you're going to play with your friends as a way to get to know them, as a way to get to spend time with them? How do you use your background as a psychologist to develop good games? What are you relying on that you learned in grad school and in your work subsequent to that? Every day I put.

on things that I've learned over the last 25 years as a social psychologist in the space of emotional intelligence and social emotional learning, it fuels good design. And so a really compelling game understands what feelings the player needs to feel to really deeply engage with the content or the game mechanics. And so in the design choices that my team and I are making in the games that we're creating, I'm really thinking about what's the emotional journey that we want to bring our young people on in this game? What kind of cognitive process do we want them to activate in this?

Is there too much happening? And so they can't dig into the details or is there not enough happening so that they can't brainstorm? So what are the behaviors or thinking processes or feelings that are important in this moment in the game? And then how do we design with that in mind to make the design,

choices that help to fuel that state for the player. But also, what are the skills that player that we want our learners to develop and work through or practice in the game? And so, you know, turning to the literature on self-regulation or turning to the literature on managing stress or what does stress do to decision-making. Okay, we want our young people to learn how to make thoughtful decisions using a process. Okay, can they do that without stress? And, then can they do that with stress? And so we look towards the scientific findings for the different kinds of impacts external events have on emotions, the game processes, and use that in game design, but also what are

the skills a young person needs to be able to do a thing related to mental health, related to learning content, related to becoming a diplomat. We're building a game right now on diplomacy and training young people how to be diplomats in this game. A lot of people could use that. A lot of fun. Yes. So how do you recruit your game reviewers?

I mean, I'm asking for our listeners who may be interested. There could be some people who are listening to this podcast saying, wow, I'd really like to, you know, get in on this and have a hand in how these games are developed. Yeah, great. We are always looking for young people to play test and design with us. And so we have a teen hub where we reach out and recruit young people to be experts for us with us. And so we will engage them through, we do online brainstorming, playtesting, prototyping sessions where we bring game concepts to them and they tear them apart and help us build them back up. Or we will go into it.

We were just in a classroom on Friday in Queens, New York, and we brought a slice of the Cold War game that we're building right now. So two acts of that game. It's a three-act game. and we set them up in gameplay groups, and they played through it, and we watched them play to see. Were they getting bored? Were they seeing the things we wanted them to see?

Were they interacting in the way that we wanted them to interact? And then they gave us a whole bunch of feedback. This was great, changed this. I didn't like that. Weren't sure what to do here. And so that was all then folded into the refinements on the game that we're doing. So all along the way from when we're trying to come up with a new idea for a game, to when we have a prototype that we're testing and collecting feedback on.

We always need young people to do that work with us. And we really value the experience that they and the expertise that they bring to us. We pay them for their time no matter what. They're experts. We need their input. And so we make sure that we are validating the input that they're giving us by paying them for their time, just as we would expect to be paid if we are providing expertise on a project for someone else.

We also make sure that we are designed, that whatever the play test or brainstorming session is has an emotional journey and a learning journey for the young people, whether it's 45 minutes or three hours, we want them to learn something throughout that process, whether it's brainstorming techniques or different ways to grapple with designing for a specific skill set. We're really thoughtful about how can we be giving something to them while they're giving us so much of their attention and expertise. I'm going to ask a really wacky question that maybe we'll throw out, maybe we won't. We're here in Las Vegas where people are playing games everywhere.

Are you observing what these people are doing? And are these games of any value whatsoever? Great question. So there's a difference between gamification and gaming. And so, and the way that I use those terms, at least, is very different. So I see gamification as what Vegas is all about. How do we continually activate the player to get them to want more, to play more, to not give up, to continue to give us our money?

And so the system in this space, and I hope that lightning bolts are not going to come down as we sit in Las Vegas, are really about cheating the player, right? Creating fun, creating interaction, but also. wanting them to lose so we get their money, right? And there's a lot of different kinds of games that are out there that are using and exploiting the reward system that, especially for young people, they really are looking for external rewards and they're really activated by that. And so I don't like that.

I don't think that's a good use of game mechanics. I think it's not very sophisticated how it's playing out, but it's not very interesting. It's not very creative. And it's not setting up a space that really supports young people in all of their vulnerability and all of their potential. And so when I think about gaming, I think gaming, especially in the space of gaming for good, and even just gaming for fun,

that we have the potential to captivate a person's attention for a specific period of time. How can we make it the most meaningful experience for them? that helps them build something, helps them develop a skill, helps them have an aha experience where they have an insight about who they are and what they're about in the world, or have an insight about someone else that they're interacting with in the game,

whether it's in real life or a character in the space. So I think there's so much more creativity that happens in the gaming space versus the gamification space that pulls on so much of the, and translates the, the science of psychology to really unpack and tap into human experience and help in that young people thrive. So that's what we're about.

That's what I get excited about. You mentioned that you're working on a game about the Cold War. Anything else in the offering that you want to preview here? Yeah, so I'm really excited about our Cold War game. We're doing a six-week unit on the Cold War that culminates in this Cold War simulation. And so students, players in that, curricular unit, high school students will develop their skills for diplomacy and they won't

just write about them and they won't just think about it. They'll have to enact them in a real world simulated experience. Really excited about that. We're also putting the finishing touches on a project we've been working on with Department of Homeland Security through funding from them to think about this space of young people who are recruited into violent extremist organizations and And how do we, it's supporting young people and identifying the early signs of that recruitment that happens in a lot of these online spaces. It's a real, really upsetting space. And young people are especially vulnerable to someone, especially when they're feeling

vulnerable themselves or feeling like they don't belong, which so many of our young people do. We all did when we were young, too. It's a part of adolescence. and that vulnerability is being exploited by these recruitment organizations and that can lead to really bad outcomes for young people and communities. And so in this game, we're really looking at how do we help young people who are observing that happening to a friend or someone they know and give them the tools to potentially

interrupt that process? What are the things you might say? What are some signs you can look for? how might you approach your your friend and say the right thing or say something that that might connect with them and help them choose a different different path well dr rivers i want to thank you for joining me here today i want to thank you for being part of APA's presence at cES true pleasure thank you so much you can find previous episodes of speaking of psychology on our website at www.

speakingof psychology.org or on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like what you've heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. If you have comments or ideas for future podcasts, you can email us at speaking of psychology at APA.org. Speaking of Psychology is produced by Lee Widenman. Our sound editor is Chris Kondyian.

Thank you for listening. For the American Psychological Association, I'm Kim Mills.