Beyond Engagement: What This Media Studies Game Teaches Us About Learning | The Teaching & Learning Centre

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by Mari Lew, XR Software Programmer in the Teaching & Learning Centre

Is engagement the only benefit games can bring to learning? The Teaching & Learning Centre recently wrapped development on a media studies game that exemplifies what play can offer education beyond eye-catching entertainment.

Zoom Reading: A Media Studies Game

Zoom Reading is an interactive web-based experience created for the course LSO502 – Trending Now: Media, Culture, and Power. In this course, students study and contextualize media through different levels of analysis. This project idea started when Seneca professor Taunya Tremblay saw a unique opportunity to use a game to let her students experience the concept of “learning through play” firsthand.

This pixel-style game consists of three “Zoom Worlds,” each representing a different level of analytical scale. A few important media and social science scholars are scattered throughout each world, and players engage in conversations with them about the world’s key concepts. After speaking with a specific scholar and correctly answering their multiple-choice questions, players receive a key that allows them to progress to the next world. The worlds themselves visually represent this progression in scale, turning abstract concepts into a learning experience students can actively immerse themselves in.

The game was developed using RPG Maker MZ, a simple yet powerful game development tool for creating role-playing games without requiring advanced programming skills. RPG Maker MZ includes premade assets and can export games for web browsers, Windows, and mobile devices, making it an accessible option for creating interactive learning scenarios.

Try out Zoom Reading: A Media Studies Game with this link!

Why Learning Through Play?

While engagement is an important part of any lesson, learning through play can also shift students from passive recipients of information into active participants. Games are built upon a set of game design principles, which not only make games satisfying to play, but can be intentionally applied to make learning more effective (The Chang School of Continuing Education - Toronto Metropolitan University [TMU], 2026).

Player Agency

One of the defining features of games is that players have control over their actions and decisions. Rather than simply receiving information, players actively decide how they interact with virtual environments, solve problems, and overcome obstacles (Domsch & Bode, 2013, pp. 14-15). In education, agency can deepen students' understanding of course material, as well as foster confidence in their own abilities and intrinsic motivation to learn (TMU, 2026).

In Zoom Reading, players are given minimal instructions on how to play the game or accomplish their goals. Instead, they are only given the goal of speaking with scholars to find the key to each world, and then they are free to explore the environment as they wish. They learn how to play through trial and error, then apply what they learn to navigate each level.

According to Professor Tremblay, this approach was reflected in anonymous student feedback. Many students described the game as “straightforward” and “easy to learn,” while others reported needing more time and effort to figure it out without instructions. Several of those who initially struggled, however, also described feeling “pride or pleasure” after figuring it out (T. Tremblay, personal communication, October 9, 2026).

Immediate and Low-Risk Feedback Loops

Failure is an important part of any learning process. By making mistakes, learners are able to experience what does or doesn’t work and adjust their approach for future attempts. Very often in school and in the real world, students can feel that there aren’t many chances to test their knowledge in low-stakes situations. In games, however, failure rarely has serious consequences. Players are encouraged to take risks and explore alternative solutions, receiving immediate feedback while gradually learning how to succeed (Kucher, 2021, p. 219).

Zoom Reading puts this feedback loop into practice. For instance, while exploring the environment, players might try to follow a path only to discover that it doesn’t go anywhere. Or they may answer a scholar’s question incorrectly, which prompts the scholar to respond with some witty dialogue before allowing them to try again.

The game provides a risk-free and repeatable space for learning, and students can then be assessed for understanding by reflection and discussion after completion.

Sometimes, that learning becomes apparent before a formal discussion even begins:

After we played the game, we planned to discuss one of the theorist's ideas, from the game, in class. Before I could get to outlining their idea, a student raised their hand and explained how my preamble related to the theorist's idea. I asked how they knew that, they explained they learned it from the game. (T. Tremblay, personal communication, October 9, 2026)

Challenges, Progression, and Motivation

Challenges provide opportunities to apply or build upon what one knows, while progression provides a sense of movement toward a goal. Both overcoming challenges and experiencing progress can create a sense of accomplishment, which can be highly motivating to students and gamers alike (TMU, 2026).

Like many other games, Zoom Reading has the overarching goal of completing every level. The players’ progress is represented by the keys they collect in each world, and they’re challenged by the scholars’ questions along the way, motivating students to continue progressing through the course material.

Professor Tremblay described how one student’s experience of taking ownership over their progress and working through challenges reflected the kind of learning she hoped students would take away from the game:

[A] student explained that they felt frustrated at first by the lack of instructions, but once they figured out the game and began making progress through trial and error, they felt ‘a lot better about [their] capabilities’. This felt like the transferable educational experience I wanted for them! (T. Tremblay, personal communication, October 9, 2026)

Interested in Creating Games for Your Course?

Have questions about integrating play into your lesson plans? Want your own custom-developed game for your course?

Contact the Teaching & Learning Centre at teaching@senecapolytechnic.ca.

Sources

_{Photo by Andrey Metelev on Unsplash}

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