Plumbing Game Studies

If the goal of school is to learn, school isn't a game. But if the goal of school is to get a high score on a test, or raise the rankings of your university, or beat the competition to get into med school, then school looks an awful lot like a game, with winning more important than learning.
Ethan Hutt joins me to discuss the idea of school as a game, and how we can reduce the distance between learning and scoring.
Check out Ethan's book (co-authored with Jack Schneider) here: https://www.offthemarkbook.com/

Donald MacKenzie rejoins the show to talk about his book An Engine, Not a Camera, which is about how financial models aren't designed to reflect the world economy, like a camera, but drive the world economy, like an engine. This means that a large part of economics is driven by trading that resembles a Reiner Knizia or 18XX game. It also means that trading and gambling can be pretty hard to differentiate.
You can read more about Donald's book here: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262633673/an-engine-not-a-camera/

Ian Bogost joins me to discuss The Small Stuff, his book about finding gratification in physical things. We discuss his road from game studies to gratification, the place for gratification in games, and how something as small as pushing a button or cradling a joystick can make us happy.

Today I'm joined by two social scientists to address the question: is science a game? Michael Penkler, Stefan Sulzenbacher, and Stephan Voss recently published an article on this topic: Playing science: representing and doing research in board games. After a brief discussion of the way that philosophers have considered science a game, the article looks at 3 board games that simulate science.
Michael and Stefan join me to discuss their article, and what looking at science as a game can teach us about how science works.
Here's a link to the article: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09505431.2026.2630948

Molly Worthen joins me to discuss her recent NYTimes article "You Can't Game Your Way to a Real Education," which argues that the gamification of classroom learning stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of how students learn. We discuss the broader adoption of tech in classrooms, the way that standardized testing can be thought of as a game, the danger of frictionless edutainment games, and the place for games in real learning.
You can read the article here (behind a paywall): https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/19/opinion/schools-edtech-laptops-games-learning.html
Molly's website is here: https://mollyworthen.com/