Better Game Studies Education the Carcassonne Way

This study examines whether exposing students in an introductory game studies course to German-style board games improves their understanding of game mechanics. Motivated by the observation that students new to game studies often frame games in terms of genre, narrative, or aesthetics rather than the underlying systems that govern play, the authors designed an experiment built around eight one-hour seminars in which a volunteer study group played and discussed several gateway board games such as Carcassonne, Settlers of Catan, and Ticket to Ride. The authors position board games as a useful teaching tool because players physically execute mechanics that digital games hide from view.

The research relied on a pre- and post-course open-ended survey administered to 68 students who completed both versions. Responses were coded as mechanics-, dynamics-, or aesthetics-centered, with a 73% inter-coder agreement rate that the authors note exceeds the commonly cited threshold for substantial agreement. The study group showed a modest rise in mechanics-centered answers, from 40.0% to 43.3%, compared with a near-flat change for the full class, from 30.6% to 31.1%. Question-level results were mixed, with some items showing shifts toward mechanics-centered responses and others showing the opposite pattern, and students frequently struggled with concepts such as player aids and abstracting a first-person shooter into a board game.

The authors are explicit that these findings are far from conclusive. The study group was very small, with only five members attending four or more sessions, and was self-selected from students who were regular digital gamers planning to major in Computer Game Design, which makes it difficult to separate the effect of the intervention from prior interest. The authors recommend future work comparing two classes taught with differing emphases on non-digital games while minimizing self-selection, and they conclude that exposure to a wide variety of game styles is valuable for game studies education regardless of the study's outcome.