What Makes a Video Game "Good"? A Case Study with Secondary Students

This study examines what lower secondary students consider their favourite video games and the criteria they use to judge whether a game is "good." Drawing on a questionnaire completed by 301 students aged 12 to 16 from two secondary schools in northern Spain, the research finds that preferences cluster heavily around mainstream commercial titles, led by Fortnite, FIFA and Roblox. Gender differences are pronounced: boys more often chose competitive, sports-oriented and action-based multiplayer games, while girls showed a broader spread across social, casual, simulation and sandbox titles.

When rating the importance of three dimensions, students gave the highest scores to audiovisual and technical quality (M = 4.70) and gameplay (M = 4.60), with narrative rated lower (M = 4.22). Boys assigned significantly greater importance than girls to technical quality and gameplay, and their evaluative hierarchy placed narrative clearly behind the other two dimensions, whereas girls' ratings were more evenly distributed. Analyses used paired and independent-samples t-tests with Bonferroni correction.

The authors position these results as a diagnostic baseline for the Playcomp project, which aims to develop educational activities using independent games. They argue that students' familiarity with games does not guarantee critical literacy, and that the dominance of mainstream titles reflects industrial visibility and unequal cultural access rather than inherent value. The findings are explicitly preliminary, drawing on only two of five participating schools and questionnaire data alone, with qualitative discussion groups planned to deepen interpretation.