In this game, each player must use a combination of critical thinking, problem solving, and communication skills in order to be successful. Each player has to consider the advantages and disadvantages of each decision, and must collaborate with other players to acquire resources and build settlements. In the end, the player who is able to use their skills to make the most strategic decisions and effectively communicate with their fellow players is the winner. 

Settlers of Catan is available on Amazon

Games such as Settlers of Catan are a great example of how SEL skills can be used to make a difference to our interpersonal experiences. These skills can be invaluable in a variety of real-world situations, from classroom projects to business meetings. To dive deeper into this context, we interviewed Manik and Chelsea from Tomo Club for this month’s edition of Ludogogy. Tomo Club uses social games to teach skills in video meets to K-12 students. These games and meets are moderated by trained professionals who keep an eye on the activity and ensure students make progress on their learning goals.

Q. What is the importance of SEL skills in today’s world, according to you?

A. It is essential that the new generation of students is equipped with SEL skills, also called 21st century and life skills. These skills, such as collaboration and critical thinking, are necessary for today’s complex world. They are integral in helping young people to learn how to interact with others, how to manage their emotions, and how to develop self-confidence and resilience. They provide a foundation for success in academic, professional, and personal domains. Without them, the new generation will struggle to compete in the global economy and reach their full potential.

Q. How has the importance of critical thinking in particular changed recently?

A. Today, there are tools like ChatGPT that have sorted out small-scale tasks, enabling us to focus on larger areas like decision-making and strategy. Now the crucial part is to know how to use such resources, which is where critical thinking plays a role. In the near future, more emphasis will be placed on creativity, teamwork, and problem solving – from the workplace to the personal domain. It’s important to figure out what to do and align people to achieve goals – as the “how” behind such work is getting simpler with more resources to the modern person.

Q. Usually game-based learning has a challenge of being assessed and tested conclusively. How do you present progress and test learning in students?

A. We use an elaborate, descriptive rubric that is broken into competencies, subskills, and even further into 40 subskills. Each of these subskills have descriptors that can be used to evaluate and understand individual performance. In order to do this, the teacher and teaching assistant must sit together and discuss each child’s performance and provide remarks, as well as recommendations. This ensures that the evaluations are thorough and that no student is overlooked.

The teacher and teaching assistant actively engage with the students to provide guidance and support. This includes providing feedback and advice on different strategies, helping the student stay motivated, and generally being a mentor. 

Q. Who are the people involved in delivering an experience like yours?

A. We have a small, lean team that starts with the development of a suitable curriculum, then progresses to game design, art, development, followed by rigorous testing. This process begins with adults as well as children, in different geographical locations to gauge reactions. Remarkably, although children have different contexts and curricula, their behaviors and preferences for fun in games remain surprisingly similar – unlike adults. This has implications for game design as it indicates that despite geographical differences, children’s responses to games can be consistent.

Q. Games are synonymous with fun. It’s easy to give feedback that praises someone for their activity in a game. But how do you give critical feedback that addresses negative behaviors, considering children like to play games specifically for fun?

A. It’s the feedback on what we did wrong that is more beneficial in learning. Our moderators are highly trained in providing feedback that is constructive in nature. If turns are broken in the conversation, for example, it is important to give specific feedback to the individual. 

A report is shared with the parents of the student so that they can better understand the feedback. There is a section called Collaboration and Action, where resources and videos are provided to both parents and children to watch together. This helps all parties understand the feedback in a deeper way and encourages an interactive experience.

You can take a demonstration of the experience in Play And Learn events organized by Tomo Club on alternate Saturdays, where educators, parents, and curious minds try games like Secret Santa and Crisis Crew :

Q. What would be your advice to someone wanting to use games in their classrooms?

A. To integrate games effectively, our advice is to consider the context of the learner. For working with adults, providing specific, exact instructions is usually best. With kids, however, it can be tricky to give a lot of instructions, as this overwhelms them. The more we delay gratification, the better equipped the kids will be to manage stress. 

Understanding a game requires familiarity, so allow players time to get familiar with it. If a game is difficult, you can scaffold it, breaking it down into smaller, easier tasks, and then building on them as the learner progresses. 

Conclusion

In conclusion, learning SEL skills is crucial for personal and social development, and doing so in a social and fun way can make the experience even more effective and enjoyable. As evidenced by the various initiatives and programs offered by organizations like Tomo Club, engaging in activities such as games can help individuals cultivate skills like self-awareness, empathy, and communication. Incorporating SEL skills into social and fun activities can benefit individuals of all ages and backgrounds, leading to greater well-being and success in all aspects of life. The testimonials of participants in Tomo Club’s SEL programs also provide insight into this impact. Organizations like Tomo Club are making a significant difference in the lives of learners by providing opportunities to learn and grow in a socially engaging and enjoyable way. You can try these games and experiences in online events every alternate Saturday that you can register for here : https://lu.ma/gamesandeducation

The post Social & Emotional Learning (SEL) with Tomo Club first appeared on Ludogogy.

Engine-building games are reliant on making systems of resources that become more efficient and rewarding as the game carries on. As with any type of system, there is a cost of setting up, which is difficult to reason for when there is an alternative that brings immediate benefits. Let’s take an example of a railway system. In Delhi, the capital city of India, there was a lot of resistance towards building a metro train infrastructure to support the growing traffic and population. Many citizens and opposition parties reasoned that the government should simply focus on improving roads and buses, blind to the environmental and operational benefits of urban trains. Also cited were reasons of initial cost and change of habits required in citizens. More than two decades have passed since these debates were put to rest. The evidence has made a strong case for efficient systems, as trains require significantly less energy and fewer human operators even as the city grows. However, some other cities like Jakarta and Karachi
have suffered from myopic views which have led to disastrous congestions on their roads.

[Make sure to check out The Ludogogy Podcast interview with Elizabeth Hargrave, the creator of Wingspan, soon to be published on the Podcast Page.]

As it stands, most of the games around us are an exercise in planning. Engine-building games are slightly different in the aspect that they reward behaviors that force us out of reactionary ways. Mastering these games requires a farsighted approach. The most approachable example is chess. Chess players often plan their moves and the opponent’s a few turns in advance. Gradually, the placement of pieces starts becoming more meaningful – to the untrained eye, some moves may look random, but the later stages of the game usually justify why the knight was placed centrally, why the bishop was placed on a diagonal without any apparent benefits immediately.

Even though carrying the discipline to build engines seems like a utopian habit, the decisions involved are no cakewalk. There are checks and balances involved in games which ensure that engines make sense, and are not a win-all trick that will get you guaranteed success every time you play. The difference between leading and trailing teams has to be fair enough, a difference that can be recovered in a few critical turns of a game. No resource has to be overpowered, neither should a type of strategy be too penalizing. Let’s discuss some of the experiences from top board games that shed light on the design of engines.

Gizmos

The objective of Gizmos is to build an engine by picking higher cards to add to your pipeline, with the goal of eventually acquiring all the necessary components to achieve victory. This type of engine-building mechanism allows for a lot of experimentation and flexibility in terms of strategy, as there’s less focus on rigidly following a set structure and more opportunities to try out different approaches.

In terms of real-world applications, this style of gameplay can be seen as a metaphor for product management. Just like in Gizmos, product managers must build a pipeline of components that work together in order to bring a product to market. They must experiment with different strategies to determine the most effective approach, and constantly adapt their plan as the market changes. By allowing for a lot of experimentation in a quick time frame, this type of engine-building mechanism can enable managers to try out different strategies and approaches to product development, helping them to find the most efficient and effective way of working.

Additionally, by focusing on strategy rather than structure, this mechanism can encourage managers to be more creative and innovative in their approach to product management.

Gizmos is available on Amazon

Spice Road

Spice Road is a deck-building / tableau-building game where players acquire and trade spices and gems to collect victory points. The engine-building mechanism in “Spice Road” involves constructing a deck of cards that can generate resources and victory points efficiently and consistently. This requires players to carefully select which cards to acquire and when, as well as plan for how to best use their resources to maximize their points.

As a learning game, Spice Road can teach several skills and principles, such as resource  management, planning and execution, and risk management. By playing the game, players can learn how to optimize their resources and make decisions that will lead to success in the long term. Additionally, Spice Road can be used as a tool to teach economic principles, such as supply and
demand, trade, and market dynamics. The game’s mechanics simulate real-world market conditions and can help players understand the consequences of different economic decisions.

Century: Spice Road is available on Amazon

Splendor

Splendor is a board game where players collect and spend gems to purchase and reserve cards representing mines, transportation, and shops, in order to gain victory points. A typical player will usually start by purchasing cards at low cost and reserving cards that will help them acquire gems more efficiently. As they progress, they aim to purchase cards that provide more prestige points and build a well-rounded engine to efficiently acquire and spend gems.

The best players in Splendor focus on building an engine, meaning a set of cards that generate more gems or points with each turn, allowing them to make more powerful moves. This often involves carefully selecting and timing their card purchases and reserves, as well as anticipating their opponents’ moves. The result of these different tactics is that the best players tend to have more efficient and powerful engines, allowing them to outpace their opponents and win more frequently.

Splendor is available on Amazon

Azul

Lastly, Azul is a tile-laying game where players collect tiles of different colors and place them on their player boards in specific patterns to score points. The game is known for its simplicity and elegance, making it a popular choice for families and casual gamers. Players of Azul also use different strategies and engines to maximize their points. For example, some players focus on maximizing points from rows by completing them with the same color tile, while others prefer to collect all tiles of the same color to score big in the end.

The effects of playing Azul according to an engine will depend on the player’s overall strategy and the particular game state. By focusing on the middle column specifically, a player can minimize negative points and restrict their opponents, but they may also miss out on other opportunities to score points by completing rows and columns.

Azul is available on Amazon

Conclusion

We want to conclude this article by paying a special acknowledgement and note of thanks to our guest contributor Aakrit Patel. He is a seasoned meeple himself and moderates games regularly. Aakrit was our source of understanding Azul in particular for this article, as he demonstrated the benefits of playing through the middle column. He also revised some of our observations in the other games, telling us the benefits-versus-costs analyses in some situations.

The post The Power of Compounding in Games first appeared on Ludogogy.

Interestingly, the 2nd and 3rd categories are education and business respectively. Food for thought – given there is an indication that the greatest demand from phone apps is that of entertainment, learning, and productivity respectively, could there be a way to merge these in some way?

A significant section (~58%) of mobile games are puzzles, mostly to be solved in a single-player mode. Also fondly called brain training games, they are shown to improve cognitive functions, reduce anxiety, enhance memory, etc. There are different factors behind the success and effectiveness of such games, two of which will be discussed in this article.

Simplicity, The Ultimate Sophistication – Sudoku

Hitting its peak of popularity in the mid-2000’s, Sudoku was on every second newspaper reader’s mind as they were opening the pages to find the puzzles section. Next to the crossword and jumbled words would be Sudoku, a numbers-based pattern puzzle that takes just a minute to get familiar with – and at least a few weeks to properly conquer.

Sudoku players testify to the efficacy of this game – they feel more relaxed after playing a game or two. Sudoku has surprising benefits beyond mathematical confidence – from building focus to dealing with wrong choices, it brings a growth mindset to its loyal audiences. The puzzle, which originated in Europe before surging in Japan, has simple secrets in its recipe that make it an instant hit.

The first of these secrets is the simplicity of trying the game, and it goes beyond the simplicity of the rules. Most puzzles involving numbers need some mathematical knowledge, the bare minimum being operations like addition and subtraction. In Sudoku, however, no prior knowledge is required. The game is driven completely by logic – with or without mathematical experience, the game has a similar level of challenge for everyone. Even knowing the sequence of numbers from 1-9 is not necessary – they are simply different symbols whose order in the number system does not matter much inside the game.

The second factor is the continuous stream of dopamine hits the player receives, making correct entries. Providing small and rapid completion checkpoints to a player keeps them on the right track. Once they know they are moving in the right direction, they get a sense of confidence and are more motivated to continue (and finish) the puzzle. Small successes like correctly completing a row, a column, or a smaller box in the game are great ways to motivate the player and make them feel good during the game. If it were the opposite – if you get to know you are playing the game right only upon completion of the 9*9 grid, it might be too long of an exercise to correct your mistakes or enjoy the parts you got right.

Sudoku is highly engaging, to the extent that players wait for the puzzle on an almost daily basis. They even collect old newspapers or archives from other providers, just to solve a different puzzle once in a while. Veteran players of the game swear by playing the game with a pencil, so that prior errors can be erased – a direct result of seeing visible results inside the game.

Atomic Habits Put To Practice – Wordle

Wordle was the most popular puzzle game from last year, bringing a positive and welcome change to the general netizen conscience. You could not spend a single day on Instagram or Twitter without seeing a 5-unit wide set of emoji squares, in three different colors, shared with captions like “phew, almost blew this one” and “is that even a word?”. Curiosity often drove more audiences to play the game, enjoy the simplicity of the puzzle, and endorse it even further. This resulted in a virality of unprecedented scale, taking the game to 2 million people in just a matter of 3 months!

Games on language have existed for a long time; from Scrabble to Spelling Bee, they engage players in application of vocabulary skills on different levels. What Wordle did differently came to light after its spinoffs failed to achieve similar success – variations where you get unlimited puzzle challenges instead of one per day did not take off, and neither did the ones where the word length varies every day. The brilliance of Wordle can be attributed to some key design principles, which are resonant with James Clear’s ideologies from his excellent book Atomic Habits.

You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.

– James Clear, author of Atomic Habits

Clear opined that since man is a creature of habit, most of our decisions are guided by how our semi-conscious mind reacts to situations. By slowly building habits, we can drastically improve our lives in the long run. The tenets of making consistent habits have been described in his book, one of which is consistency. Consistently and regularly putting a skill to practice, even for a small objective, yields great results – something the Wordle puzzle can be applauded for.

By making one problem and just one problem available to a player for every day, the task is so well-defined and small-scale that it feels almost foolish to skip the puzzle. Moreover, the amount of challenge in these problems is not too high, and yet deceptive enough to ensure exertion is required. The stakes get higher with every try, and the real-time feedback by coloured squares guide the player to the correct word effectively. Moreover, sharing the puzzle results makes us feel more involved in a social movement. In fact, it created a culture of accountability – people felt they OUGHT to share their results, bringing to life another aspect of Clear’s ideas.

The social and mental aspects of game design make a large difference to the players’ experience. You can engage and hook your players with more meaningful rewards and challenges, for which they keep returning to the game not as an endless empty pursuit, but for self-improvement and mental refinement. There is a lot of potential in exploring these opportunities, and we hope this article gave you some actionable insights to put you ahead in your game design journey.

The post Elevate Your Next Puzzle With These Design Secrets first appeared on Ludogogy.

I tend to think of this principle frequently – basically, how can we get people to interact with a product, a service, or a concept such that they are introduced to it in the easiest possible way? The goal should be to make the first interaction happen so seamlessly that they feel it’s something simple and useful, which encourages them to dive further. After all, if something is too complicated, it’s likely to not generate interest or confidence.

In analogue games, you are interacting with the objects inside it directly, making it a direct application of the aforementioned principle of tactile stimulus. As soon as you are introduced to a game and its storyline, your resources and characters are all in your hands, both literally and figuratively. This is also why enthusiasts relish their collections, the meeples, the boards – they represent the experiences they had with these items. With that primer, I would like to to talk further about what makes the cardboard medium games uniquely powerful.

They are undeniably social

Sometimes games let us play ourselves – in party games, for example, we are not taking on new roles. We are bringing our own personality to games like Truth Or Dare, where mechanics like Disclosure are used in ‘Truth’ to reveal our true feelings about something (or someone). In many other games, we are required to step into the shoes of a different character, lending us to perspectives we don’t get to experience otherwise. Character sheets are used in RPGs to create personalities with some degree of control, and fascinating backgrounds that serve a purpose. Sometimes these backgrounds also lead to side plots that shed light into the psyche of the character. As a result, RPGs have been shown to improve social and emotional learning, and discussions on taboo topics.

When I talk about the social aspects of tabletop games, I usually start with Modern Art. The players operate as museums from fashionable cities like Milan and Paris, dealing in paintings from famous artists. In various rounds, through auctions and bidding, players have to buy and trade paintings, to obtain the most valuable collection and win the game. When I played this game a few years ago with absolute strangers, I was placing outlandish bets from the very start. It caused a lot of humorous frustration in the other players because of my unpredictable gameplay, keeping them on the edges of their seats. In just 30 minutes, we were all ablaze on the table. I also enjoyed listening to some commentary on the paintings from the players, and how they’d be proud to snatch it from my rogue grasp – which brings me to the next point.

Modern Art is available on Amazon

They are competitive – and fun

Psychologically, we are wired to feel proud of ourselves upon completing a task. One of the most important uses of gamification is making tasks fun so that we complete them. Achieving this becomes more convenient when we include the mechanics of competition into the mix. Anybody who has been to a long board game session can testify how intense it can get, bringing people to promises of ending their friendships.

Inside a room like that, everyone is playing to win, to explore a new tactic, and sometimes to induct newcomers into a favorite game. The atmosphere generates possibilities of competing, which is a psychological construct that motivates us to push on even when we are tired. It’s the reason gamification tactics like leaderboards work so well.

Self-improvement as a result of competition is the reason why we are more motivated to work out when our friends post their cycling journeys on Strava. In the same way, competing for rewards and resources brings a sense of urgency to a tabletop game. A classic example in this regard is Ticket To Ride. It has comparatively simpler mechanics and ways of completing the game, making its strategies more approachable to the rookie player. At the end of a game, it’s simple to ascertain what decisions and strategies could have been played better. Often, in Ticket To Ride, it’s easy to observe what a competing player did correctly, as this game’s progress and movement is visible on the board for everyone. We therefore compete better in the games to follow, and know exactly how to play the game. The sense of achievement we feel by making progress on something that’s fun is a central pillar of tabletop games culture, which is achieved by healthy competition.

Ticket to Ride is available on Amazon

They improve us

The evident connection of tabletop games with awareness is becoming more popular in recent years. It is a commonplace understanding that stories create deep empathy and connection with a setting and character. Games are essentially storylines with more choices and mechanics, at the end of the day. As a result, games are a medium that educates us about the intricacies of a situation by taking us through the experience, which is way better than a second-hand written account. Since first-hand experience is not always feasible to achieve, games fill in this gap.

Games can be defined and designed around a topic or theme, and playing it can inculcate a sense of curiosity and exploration. In the aforementioned games Modern Art and Ticket To Ride, some of the comments from newcomers have been downright amazing. They called Modern Art a crash course in understanding paintings – and that was not even the central part of the game! They said that apart from the auctioning, bidding, and social deception in the game, the conversations on common practices like layering and glazing gave them awareness they had simply not anticipated.

On the other hand, Ticket To Ride was applauded for introducing to them the geographies of the USA and Europe in a way they had not seen before. For people who do not get regular exposure to the cities in these continents, the knowledge is mostly based on what we hear about in the news, movies, etc. There is no reason for a movie to talk about a story which is based in Montréal, Atlanta, Dallas, etc. unless the story actually demands it. But since that is not the case usually, we might know their existence but not their location. After playing a game of Ticket To Ride, these very players were highly confident about the situations of such places on the map, even gaining secondary knowledge like their (approximate) distance from the coast.

Using board games for bringing a culture of experimentation, enquiry, and learning, is a severely underrated application. I’d like to make a callback to the first anecdote from the very beginning of this article –  that interaction with a MacBook that makes you just 1% more confident and aware about what the device feels like, what the wallpaper looks like, what the screen looks like, how the keys are placed. Just by achieving this, you feel a lot more optimistic about the product, as it opens a mental conversation inside you, with growing curiosity. Tabletop games introduce you to topics and people – sometimes in a deeper level, sometimes at a rookie level. The feedback mechanism wherein you express something and get a positive or negative response is short and fast in these games, and that’s what makes them an essential tool of the modern social learner.

The post Playing your Cards Right – Walkman Lab first appeared on Ludogogy.