What is Competitive Affordances

We have long worked collaboratively with middle school students to help them design their own educational computer games. An interesting question has emerged from this work: Do students, other than those who do the designing, find the games to be motivating? We gave a classroom of middle school students the opportunity to play educational games created by other middle school students. These students’ opinions of the games were studied and compared to their actual play behavior. This study also explored the reasons behind the children’s play behaviors and critiques through interviews. Important game characteristics identified by the children included the following: (1) storyline or context; (2) challenge; and (3) competitive affordances, especially those that promoted social interaction. Interestingly, two game characteristics touted in the literature were not found to be important to these children: (1) integration of a game’s storyline and educational content; and (2) a game’s production values.