Ticket to Ride

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.

• A study of 68 introductory game studies students tested whether eight one-hour seminars playing German-style board games (Carcassonne, Settlers of Catan, Ticket to Ride) would shift students from genre, narrative, or aesthetic framings toward mechanics-centered analysis.
• The study group's share of mechanics-centered answers rose only modestly, from 40.0% to 43.3%, while the full class was nearly flat, moving from 30.6% to 31.1%.
• Question-level results were mixed, with some items shifting toward mechanics-centered responses and others moving the opposite way, and students often struggled with concepts such as player aids and abstracting a first-person shooter into a board game.