Ice Paddles, CO2 Invaders, and Exploding Planets: How Young Students Transform Climate Science Into Serious Games

In game-based curricula that leverage game design, students can learn creatively by transforming serious topics into video games (i.e., serious games). However, as these games remain mostly under-explored, we know little about how students design them and the extent to which they reflect content uptake. Here, we leverage a framework for serious games called Triadic Game Design (TGD) to analyze 391 games on climate science, which were designed by 8th-grade students with Scratch. Based on a large-scale TGD-based analysis, we provide an overview of design outcomes emerging from student games, and analyze how reality, meaning, and play are articulated in these games to reflect content uptake. Then, we ask two experts in game design and education to assess a subset of the 20 most representative games, to reflect on further design and pedagogical insights that may have not been captured by the large-scale analysis. Our results reveal a wide range of design outcomes, where Pong-like games teach players about the ice-albedo feedback loop, and CO2 molecules become targets to be shot in games like Space Invaders. Our work can serve as guidance and inspiration to help both researchers and educators evaluate student-designed games, as well as reason about how to use them as assessment tools in game-based constructionist curricula.