To game or not to game.
Play some video games or do my homework? A mental tug-of-war that almost every kid of my generation and all generations after me have had to face. Video games were the villains of the story, distracting us from the real virtuous tasks of learning. Or parents worried that we were wasting too much time in front of a screen (while my dad would play after I went to bed). Video games would make us more violent, less social, damage our communication skills. The future of society was doomed!
While video games didn’t end civilization as we know it, I truly believe it has fundamentally changed how we interact with the world. Elements of games have been incorporated into almost every aspect of our society. Collecting points and earning rewards is a central part of shopping, and Employee of the month is just a leaderboard from a video game in another form. It’s not surprising that the act of learning would be influenced by gamification as well.
I’ve always believed, and the teachings of TESOL have confirmed, that we need to enjoy or at least not dislike the subject that we are learning. The affective filter feels like a real thing. If you don’t know what an affective filter is, it’s the mental state of focus and willingness to learn that your mind needs to be in to best learn and retain new information. If you are tired, stressed, bored, or distracted, you learn less. If you are engaged, interested, and participating in activity, you learn more. It’s that simple. And so, how do you make learning more fun?
Liu (2024) and Salmanov (2025) explored the positive aspects of introducing gamified elements into the L2 learning experience. They made a good case that motivating the student will improve their language proficiency by keeping them engaged and adapting to their needs. They did highlight the risks of superficial learning and cognitive offloading. Both papers were light on the details of what actual programs they used to engage their students, and Salmanov (2025) gave no actual case examples or research to substantiate her claims. But the points made in the articles I feel are correct.
In a world where games are a central lens through which we see the world, education has to adapt to meet the students where they are. But the games have to be good. And when I say good, I don’t mean as fun as possible, I mean pedagogically sound, academically challenging, designed in ways that make us think and explore, not just smash buttons or swipe at the screen. Finding that balance between fun and informative is difficult, and not many resources out there have done it.
If the debate between doing my homework and playing video games disappears because they were the same thing, I would happily sit there and learn, and play, and learn, and play all day long.
Liu, L. (2025). Impact of AI gamification on EFL learning outcomes and nonlinear dynamic motivation: Comparing adaptive learning paths, conversational agents, and storytelling. Education and Information Technologies, 30(8), 11299–11338. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-024-13296-5
Salmanova, S. (2025). Gamification and AI in language learning – A new era of digital education. Acta Globalis Humanitatis et Linguarum, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.69760/aghel.02500134
