WarioWare: Get It Together!

From Player to Level Designer: Exploring Design Thinking Through Mario Maker 2

This study by Jennifer Jenson, based at the University of British Columbia, examines how playing and designing digital games can support design thinking among school-aged students in a small, rural community on Canada's west coast.

• Over nine days in April 2025, 53 students in three rural west-coast Canadian elementary classes (grades 5–7) played WarioWare: Get It Together!, sketched game designs, and built levels in Super Mario Maker 2; of 56 students who did level design, 34 levels were completed, 22 were playable, and 5 were judged exceptionally complex.
• Play-centered, low-barrier game design fostered high engagement, laughter, peer cooperation, and iterative practices like testing and revision, with teachers noting that students who normally struggled to focus were more on task and participatory.
• Game-making shifted classroom social dynamics: typically marginalized students, such as an avid Nintendo player and a usually quiet reader, became sources of expertise and moved to the center of classroom activity.