Failed Games: Lessons Learned from Promising but Problematic Game Prototypes in Designing for Diversity

This post-mortem from the Tiltfactor Lab examines why several promising games designed to counter stereotypes and implicit bias that discourage girls from STEM fields failed to achieve their goals. Drawing on the BIAS project, which involved more than twenty iterative prototypes, seven of which were studied experimentally and three of which were fully produced, the authors argue that games intended for social impact must satisfy a "dual bottom line": they must be genuinely enjoyable to play while also producing measurable change in players. The analysis centers on the abandoned board game Doubtlanders, which addressed stereotype threat so literally, including explicit use of the word "stereotype," that it felt dour and heavy to players and was ultimately shelved despite being on-topic.

Comparing Doubtlanders with Teaser Totter and Skyline against the more successful Awkward Moment and Buffalo, the authors identify several recurring lessons. Overt treatments of bias tend to undermine player engagement, pushing players away from the very content meant to persuade them. Content-heavy designs with one-time-use material prove costly to produce and offer limited return. Skyline, though enjoyable, showed no significant gains in spatial reasoning compared with a no-game control after a single play session, a finding that underscores the need for empirical verification rather than reliance on intuition about a game's effects.

The overall conclusions favor indirect persuasion over explicit messaging, reusable or combinatorial content over one-off material, and continuous empirical testing throughout development. The work situates these lessons within research on stereotype threat, implicit bias, spatial ability, and self-efficacy, as well as embedded game design for attitude and behavior change. It was supported by NSF grant HRD-1137483, a STEM for women and girls initiative, and draws on playtesting feedback from the Tiltfactor team and community.