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Scaffolding Digital Game Design Activities Grouping Older
Adults, Younger Adults and Teens
Margarida Romero
(✉)
and Hubert Ouellet
Faculté des Sciences de l‘Éducation, Université Laval, Québec, Canada
{margarida.romero,hubert.ouellet}@fse.ulaval.ca
Abstract. Digital game design is a complex activity relying on multiple skills
of the 21st century as such creativity, problem solving, collaboration in interdis‐
ciplinary teams and computational thinking. The complexity of the knowledge
modelling and creation process, game design is a powerful learning activity that
could benefit in learning from childhood to older adults. Our experiences take
advantage of the digital game design as a complex learning activity and engages
learners from different age groups in a joint activity. In this paper, we analyze the
scaffolding process of intergenerational game design activities as an instructional
learning strategy. We argue that the process could help learners from different
ages and backgrounds to collaborate together in doing progressive steps through
their game design process.
Keywords: Older adults · Digital game design · Intergenerational learning ·
Knowledge creation
1 Introduction
Digital ageism is a form of discrimination appearing through the use of technologies
that have not been adapted for older adults or that conveys a negative image of older
adults through their representation of older adults. For instance, digital games tend to
convey negative images of older adults and often misrepresent this age category [1].
Intergenerational participatory game design could help overcome those issues by
engaging older adults in the game design process through a collaborative approach with
game designers of other age groups. Engaging teens, young and older adults in a joint
game design activity allows each of the age groups to know each other better and ensure
their own representativeness in the game design process and product they develop
together [2, 3]. In order to explore the intergenerational game design activities as a way
to avoid digital ageism and promote intergenerational learning through game design, we
introduce in this paper the organization of two intergenerational game design workshop
activities that have been developed during the Silver Gaming Intergenerational Summer
School (SGISS) in Québec City. First, we introduce participatory game design and the
learning opportunities that are introduced by this approach. Second, we describe the
different phases of the game design workshop and the way each one of them has been
scaffolded to better support the objectives of the activity in terms of social participation,
representation of older adults and intergenerational learning [4].
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016
J. Zhou and G. Salvendy (Eds.): ITAP 2016, Part I, LNCS 9754, pp. 1–8, 2016.
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-39943-0_8
Author Proof
2 Intergenerational Participatory Game Design
Games are mostly designed by white young males, including only 11.5 per cent of
females in the field in 2009 and 22 per cent in 2016 (International Game Developers
Association, 2016). Different initiatives trying to question the diversity in the game
industry has led to highly violent campaigns; in 2014, the #gamergate put into their
collective crosshairs several women working within the video game industry, including
well-known game developers Zoë Quinn and Brianna Wu and cultural critic Anita
Sarkeesian. Women in gaming have been victims of sexism, misogyny and harassment
within the video game culture [5]. At our knowledge, older adults have not been the
object of harassment; still, they remain an age group not only underrepresented but also
misrepresented. This is especially true of older women, who are often appearing as
maleficent antagonists [1, 6]. Our research [7, 8] points towards a need for a more
participatory design process which could allow social participation and a better repre‐
sentation of different age groups, sexual and gender diversity. Participatory design aims
to engage individuals from different disciplines and backgrounds in the design decision-
making process. In the field of information systems (IS), participative design “promises
IS quality while empowering the participants and fostering relationships among devel‐
opers and users” [9, p. 1]. The participatory game co-design blurs the boundary between
game players and the professional game designers [10]. Co-design strategies could
include making games from scratch, modifying or ‘modding’ existing games [11]
through a shared-decision making process. Opening the participative design to individ‐
uals from different social groups, ages and background aims at improving social repre‐
sentation through a critical perspective.
3 Intergenerational Game Design Workshops
Game creation could be used as a participatory activity in the pursuit of developing
and strengthening the link between different generations of participants [12, 13]. In
this section, we introduce the intergenerational game creation activities that were held
during the Silver Gaming International Summer School (SGISS) in August, 2015. The
game creation workshops teamed participants from different age groups (18 to 80
years old) from secondary-level students (n = 2) to adults (n = 32). The workshops
were held in French and in English. Our main objective was to engage participants in
an intergenerational game design experience in order to develop a better awareness
of each age group game design preferences. Their contact with each other enabled them
to learn together about different aspects of game design. In order to ensure the success
of such innovative activities, the scaffolding of the different phases of the game design
workshop were the object of an important preparation during several weeks. The
researchers needed to ensure both the zone of proximal development (ZPD) [14] and
the zone of proximal innovation and complexity (ZPIC) were at the reach of all the
intergenerational teams engaged in the task. In the next sections, we introduce the
different phases of the workshop and how the intergenerational game design activity
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was scaffolded and supported to enable the social participation of all the members of
the intergenerational teams.
3.1 Scaffolding the Group Forming for the Highest Intergenerational Diversity
The intergenerational workshop game design activity is structured in teams which aims
to be the more diverse possible in terms of age and self-declared gender. In order to
create teams with the highest quotient of intergenerational participation, we introduced
a team-constitution activity based on a pyramid of age representation. As the first activity
within the workshop we asked the participants to position themselves on an age and
gender pyramid (Fig. 1).
Fig. 1. Age pyramid distribution of the workshop participants
The purpose of this exercise was to help us put together teams with the higher inter‐
generational diversity possible.
3.2 Scaffolding the Team Selection and Exploration of a Topic for Their Game
Creation Activity
The second activity of the workshop was oriented towards the team decision making for
selecting a topic to be developed as a game. Each intergenerational team had to determine
what topic they would work on. The two workshop facilitators oriented the decision
making towards topics related to the modernization of the province of Québec in the
French group and towards topics related to the recent world history for the international
English group. The workshop facilitators listed a series of events that could be explored
(i.e. the electrification of the province, women’s suffragette, Expo 67, the Baby Boom,
etc.). We noticed that the choice of topic was strongly influenced by the older member
of the teams as they used their own life narrative, having had first-hand memories of
some of those events. The three secondary-level students were aware of these topics as
they studied them in their prior school year. When asked what they knew about this
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content, they positioned themselves as “non-experts”. Interestingly, they stated that the
in-class teaching strategy used was magisterial and that the topics were greatly
simplified, not only in their transmission but also in the conversations it generated. The
intergenerational approach to the chosen event helped create more diversity and
complexity as no effort was made to abridge the topic. They also remained fully focused
during the conversations, asking questions and commenting on the topic or the life
experiences of the older adult(s) (Fig. 2).
Fig. 2. Teams during the topic selection decision making.
3.3 Scaffolding the Game Design Process
In order to support the game design process, we suggested to develop a short narrative
based on a first-person character. The workshop facilitators introduced the objectives of
creating an interactive process where the objective was to put together a short narrative
sequence centered on the decisions of a real, significant political figure that helped shape
a particular historical event. It is this semi-fictional “character” that will communicate
directly to the players by asking them questions on the chosen event. As each question
constitutes a scene of the game, deciding what to ask is an integral part of the writing
process; mobilizing and conceptualizing prior information are an important part of
creating new knowledge. In the storyboard example below, Team 2 has decided to focus
on the topic of the liberation of Nelson Mandela. He is also the main character of their
mini-game. The group has identified a first question for their mini-game “Who made his
release possible?” and has imagined (and verified in a second step) three different
answers, one of which is correct (Fig. 3).
• We scaffold the game creation process through four steps: (1) identification of a
character central to the historic event of the mini-game, (2) identification of the
question to be asked by the character, (3) developing hypotheses on the possible
answers to the questions formulated in the second step and (4) verifying the validity
of the hypothetical answers through an information search. The selection of the char‐
acter aims to engage the intergenerational team in a discussion during which they
explore together who they consider to be one ofthe main proponent in the historical
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event of their choice. The decision to focus on a character’s aims also help
humanizing the decision making related to historical event.
• The second step to undertake is to identify what questions they could ask the student.
We suggest that each team write what they spontaneously know about their topic of
choice. Then, they identify what could be rephrased as potential questions and
assemble the information in a chronological order to determine a sequence plan.
• The third step is to formulate possible answers (or hypothesis) to the questions they
chose, hence render explicit their prior knowledge. In most cases, their preconcep‐
tions are erroneous; making them explicit enables the knowledge deconstruction and
its reconstruction.
• The fourth step is to research information regarding the hypotheses formulated before
and find the right answer about the topic. As the erroneous possible answers and
knowledge that were formulated by the team could be shared by other learners, none
of them were to be discarded; instead, they constituted possible wrong answers for
the student to select. To further explain why they were not the desired answer, we
asked the teams to write a short text hinting at the right answer.
Fig. 3. Template distributed to the teams for supporting their game design process
3.4 Scaffolding the Game Creation Process in a Visual Programming
Environment
Once the game design steps were completed, teams were asked to create a storyboard
explaining what would constitute their game. They could create it by using either analog
(pen and paper, post-its, blackboards, etc.) or digital tools. Each scene had to contextu‐
alize a key question developed in step 3.3 (Fig. 4).
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Fig. 4. From game design templates to visual programming through Scratch
Now in possession of a storyboard, teams started digitally recreating their ideas in
the visual programming tool Scratch (https://scratch.mit.edu/). Scratch is a visual, drag-
and-drop programming software that allows the creation of interactive scenes and mini-
games. Its appeal is broad, as it was created to be used by individuals from 7 to 107
years old. Scratch can support the creative programming approach — which goes well
beyond the learning to code movement — to engage participants in creating new digital
media, stories and artefacts through the use of programming [7, 15]. After a short intro‐
duction in how to use Scratch, each intergenerational team had less than an hour to code
a mini-game. In order to scaffold the game creation process we provided a mini-game
template to the students. As a team, they could explore the code of the mini-game and
decide if they wanted to reuse the example as a template (changing the characters,
decorum, texts and interactions) or if they wanted to start anew. In coherency with the
growing research on ICTs, we observed that the programming part of the workshop was
seen differently by the students and the older adults. While the younger members of the
teams were trying to program through “trial and error”, adults used a more reflexive
approach; some asked for tutorials and many were trying to understand “why” it worked
as it was before starting the design process (Fig. 5).
Fig. 5. Scratch game creation based on a game character
AQ1
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3.5 Peer Playing the Mini-Games Created by the Intergenerational Teams
Towards the end of the workshop, we invited the intergenerational teams to demonstrate
their work to the other teams. Despite the different aspects that were not finished or not
functioning, the participants enjoyed showing their creations to their peers. As a
synthesis and a closing comments, participants gave their impressions of the workshop
and of coding, its limits and the opportunities it generates as a pedagogical tool. For
most of the participants, this intergenerational game design activity was a first both in
terms of game design, intergenerational team-based process and coding. Despite the
degree of novelty in the tasks to accomplish and the knowledge and competences related
to the intergenerational participatory digital game design, the participants enjoyed the
experience and were not uncomfortable despite being permanently out of their zone of
proximal development and innovation.
4 Conclusion and Discussion
We found that using a highly guided approach to scaffold the intergenerational game
creation workshop was a key element for its successful development. Having a prede‐
termined topics list also helped in getting the teams to work quickly. In the same line,
making explicit all the tasks that were to accomplish was beneficial to the flow of the
workshop and ensured to achieve the pedagogical and intergenerational learning objec‐
tives.
As for the difficulties that rose, we noted that in one workshop held at the SGISS,
one team had two computers to work on instead of one, shared by the whole team. The
result was that this separated the team into two independent groups; each produced their
own game without communicating with each other. This split hindered both teamwork
and fun for the participants. We should also consider the important time investment
required to prepare the intergenerational game creation workshops in terms of partici‐
pants’ recruitment and the preparation with the pedagogical staff in the different educa‐
tional settings (i.e. high schools and community centers). Despite the efforts required to
deploy the intergenerational game creation workshop, the intergenerational learning and
cross-age social bonding are extraordinary, as all the actors engaged (learners, teachers,
pedagogical experts, game designers, researchers) in these experiences appreciated at
the highest level the experiences. Their feedback highlighted the benefits in terms of
education, social participation and fun; this has propelled and encouraged us to continue
enabling these experiences.
All participants in the workshops experienced an enjoyable and valuable intergen‐
erational learning experience where they developed a joint knowledge creation activity
through game design. In these activities, the final game product is not the objective, but
an intergenerational facilitator; the game design process in itself is the core of the
research as it is enabling participants from different ages and backgrounds to exchange
about a certain topic and engage in a joint creative task where the competences and
specific know-how of each one is valued and mobilized towards the objective. We invite
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the digital game industry to introduce intergenerational game design and game evalua‐
tion activities when developing new products in order to better represent the needs and
interests of different generations and genders.
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