people are often surprised when I say that I do research on video games
and I'm an education because I think people often think that games are not
educational and probably don't have a place in colleges of education
Elizabeth G is part of the families that play project at the Center for
Games and Impact on Arizona State University's campus in Tempe. G is a
professor in the university's mary Lou, Fulton Teachers College. Our
project basically is about trying to get people mostly families, parents
and Children, caregivers and Children to connect if you will around games
in positive ways. Helping with this ongoing venture is Assistant Research
Professor Sinem Si han. And what we're trying to do is to understand
international play around video games and how we can design experiences
with around games to support more productive adult child interactions in
the family. Um so that's very exciting. Um And this is a new area of study.
There are very few groups currently working in this field of research,
but university officials at issue were game the idea, we did get a special
permission from the university to set up a center that requires a formal
administrative approval. And I think that was really important because it
did legitimatize this kind of research at the university to get a better
understanding of the interaction between parents and Children as they play
video games together. G and C. Han have set up family gaming events at
local schools after school programs and museums. It's really powerful when
you see people talk about something, make a decision in the game and the
game sort of gives you feedback and that feedback becomes another point of
conversation, that discussion has helped some parents learn about their
child's bullying experience, something that most likely would have gone
unsaid. I had one parent said, had I asked my kid that in the kitchen, you
know, hey, how is school? What's your experiences or have you been bullied
before? My kid would have said, no, well what is the game when it's not
about them? It's a safe space to talk about issues. They can put a safe
distance between themselves and the issue. Then the conversation becomes
natural. While video games can bring families together, it can also do the
opposite. One of the most recent examples we have are of a father who was
very highly engaged with gaming with his Children, his boys and his
youngest daughter. Um, in ways that excluded the mom because she wasn't a
gamer, the biggest obstacle for many parents. How do you hold this
controller? I don't know what button to press. You know, so very basic
things like that are really hard for adults to learn and hard for Children
to empathize with because they practically grew up with a controller in
their hand. So what we learn from this project is, uh, there's definitely
an interest on the part of parents to participate. However, it's very
clear that parents don't know how this experience can help nudge adults
and Children to interact, ask questions and not only learn from one
another but also about each other, you know? And once the parents get over
, you know the uncomfortable feeling that they're not supposed to have
their child be teaching them something. I think they can actually really
enjoy the chance to to see how their child steps up steps up to the plate
. I think game is a context where you also learn about each other. How you
you know how do you think how you go about solving your problem?
Especially with some role playing games there's always some kind of a
social issue, a real world social issue where you start thinking about, oh
I never thought about this now that I'm playing this game. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Mhm.