Formational Play: Rethinking Games in Education
A Short Essay
We often think of board games as entertainment and classrooms as sites of knowledge. But what if both are spaces for becoming? As a professor who loves games, I’ve discovered just how much they can teach us—not just about content, but about ourselves.
As an educator, I navigate the tension between the value of play and classroom engagement on one hand, and the rigor, depth, and complexity that academic formation demands on the other. Contemporary pedagogical discourse emphasizes the importance of keeping lessons exciting and accommodating different learning styles. While this helps engage diverse learners and fosters creative teaching, I worry that it risks sidelining the deeper, formational goals of education in favor of mere fun. This has become all the more pronounced with the rise of the internet, YouTube, and AI—platforms that can deliver content far faster and with far more entertainment value than any classroom teacher. How can educators stay relevant and meaningful in the age of information?
Neil Postman, writing during the era of cable television, warned of education being overtaken by entertainment. He was particularly critical of programs like Sesame Street, suggesting that children might come to associate learning exclusively with pleasure. The unintended consequence is that anything not immediately enjoyable risks being dismissed as “boring”—and therefore unworthy of attention. While I appreciate Postman's critique, I also guard against overapplying it in ways that blame students for disengagement.
At first glance, incorporating games into education might seem to fall directly into the entertainment trap Postman critiques. Indeed, many so-called “educational games” exemplify his warnings: they are often weak games with shallow learning value. These games tend to slap thematic content (e.g., the Renaissance) onto generic mechanics (e.g., rolling dice, stacking Jenga tiles) without meaningful integration. We see this practice across many sectors with the rise of gamification. By adding point systems and “unlockable rewards,” industries from education to exercise to employment have experimented with game elements to boost productivity, learning, and task fidelity.1 But psychologically, the mechanics of a game—the rules, relationships, and ways of thinking it cultivates—have a far more lasting formative impact than its theme or imagery.
Take the game Philosophy by Quality Beast, for example. Its theme is a thoughtful, late-night conversation among friends, beautifully illustrated in its artwork. Yet the gameplay itself is highly tactical—evoking the mental rigor of Chess or Go. Players spend more time calculating than connecting. While the game is enjoyable, its mechanics train analysis and competition rather than the conversational openness it claims to model. (I’ve previously recorded a video of me playing and analyzing this game with my friend and colleague Jermaine, which you can watch here.) This gap between theme and mechanic matters: it shapes what kind of person the player becomes through the act of play.2
But what if we approach games not just as entertainment, but as works of art with formational power?
In Games: Agency as Art, philosopher C. Thi Nguyen argues that games are aesthetic experiences of agency. A well-designed game doesn’t just entertain—it invites players into structured environments that cultivate specific ways of being. Mechanics and theme together create a micro-world that shapes how players act, think, and relate. In this way, games can be deeply formative.3
Instead of superficially attaching content—like vocabulary words—to a game of memory or matching, I propose that games be integrated into education the way we use poetry, film, or literature: as artistic forms that evoke embodied, aesthetic engagement and foster deeper, applied insight. A good example of this is The Mind, a minimalist cooperative card game where players must play numbered cards in ascending order—without speaking. I use it in my counselor education classes to develop non-verbal group communication, attunement to bodily states, and presence. The game isn’t explicitly about therapy, but it provides an embodied exercise that enacts key therapeutic principles.
When students play The Mind, they learn in ways that go beyond cognition. They feel what it means to be attuned to others, to listen nonverbally, and to be present without overthinking. It becomes a low-stakes, “good-enough” environment—a concept borrowed from Winnicott—for practice and reflection. Later, when we discuss therapeutic presence, they have a visceral reference point. It creates a powerful bridge from knowledge to lived application.
This example shows how thoughtfully chosen games can move students up Bloom’s Taxonomy—from remembering and understanding to applying, analyzing, and creating. The key is not to gamify content for the sake of engagement, but to use games as vehicles for activating meaningful self-states and situated agency. Games can foster experiences that are cognitively complex, emotionally resonant, and interpersonally connective—precisely the conditions where deep learning occurs.
If we want to move beyond the traditional “sage on the stage” model, games offer a rich and promising path. But their power lies not in superficial tweaks for entertainment. Rather than reducing the classroom to yet another site of passive consumption, can we elevate play into a space of rigorous reflection and meaningful encounter?
Thoughtfully integrated, games can act as a kind of eucontaminant—infecting the classroom with the joy of play and infecting play with the seriousness and virtue-forming possibility of education. To embrace this, we must ask more of both. How are our classroom structures forming students—not just informing them? And how are the games we play shaping us, not just amusing us?
So if you have the opportunity to teach, I invite you to consider: what games might help your students feel what it’s like to embody the content you’re engaging? What games might invite a more intentional formation?
In short: don’t use games just to help students remember. Use them to help students become—because teaching is about formation, not just information.
References & Further Reading
Bloom, B. S. (1956). Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals. New York: David McKay Company.
Hoard, P. & Suttle, T. (2023). "Lacanian Virtue Ethics? Cultivating Virtue Through Failure." The Other Journal, Issue 35. https://theotherjournal.com/2023/06/lacanian-virtue-ethics-cultivating-virtue-through-failure/
Hoard, P. (2024). "On Pleasure and Games." The Other Journal, Issue 37. https://theotherjournal.com/2024/07/on-pleasure-and-games/
Hoard, P. & Hoard, B. (2020). "Eucontamination: A Christian Study in the Logic of Disgust." The Other Journal, Issue 32. https://theotherjournal.com/2020/10/eucontamination-christian-logic-disgust-contamination/
Hoard, P. & Steinke, P. (2023). "Board Games as Liturgy: The Thin Space of Play." Christ & Cascadia. https://christandcascadia.com/2023/09/28/board-games-as-liturgy/
Hon, A. (2022). You’ve Been Played: How Corporations, Governments, and Schools Use Games to Control Us All. Basic Books.
Nguyen, C. T. (2020). Games: Agency as Art. New York: Oxford University Press.
Pandasaurus Games. The Mind [Board game]. https://pandasaurusgames.com/products/the-mind
Postman, N. (1985). Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. New York: Viking Penguin.
Quality Beast. Philosophy [Board game]. https://qualitybeast.com/philosophy
Winnicott, D. W. (1965). The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment: Studies in the Theory of Emotional Development. London: Hogarth Press.
Adrien Hon has written an excellent book on this very topic, You’ve Been Played, warning of some of the dangers of this kind of implementation.
This isn’t meant as a critique of Philosophy. As I mention in my video on the game, I actually think it can offer a subversive experience when viewed in the broader context of play. Precisely because it is a game, Philosophy is ultimately in service to enjoyment, creativity, and connection. The competitive mechanics—even when intense—are framed within the larger goal of shared fun. In that way, the conflict is subordinated to something more. Similarly, a good discussion should be more than a disagreement—it should be in service of something beyond itself: the pursuit of truth.