Psychology of Gaming Class Teaches Key College Skills

The class is one of more than a dozen options in the Washington College First Year Seminar (FYS) program, which introduces students to writing, research, presentation, and other important skills needed throughout their collegiate careers through unique course offerings that explore faculty interests.

“Are you feeling any toxic impulses right now?”

That jokey question was a huge part of Dan Kochli’s course, Mindsets and Multikills, focused on the psychology of gaming, one of a dozen unique offerings this semester as part of the First Year Seminar (FYS) program. Kochli, assistant professor of psychology, is a behavioral neuroscientist whose primary research focuses on learning processes and complex disordered behaviors like post-traumatic stress disorder and addiction.

The FYS program immerses first-year students in the academic program at Washington. Taken in their first semester on campus, FYS introduces students to the process of inquiry, research, idea generation, questioning, writing, and other academic skills that will serve them throughout their time here. Through the seminar, students learn how to present their ideas and engage with those of their classmates through a small, collaborative experience.

“Every seminar has its own topic, but they all share the same central mission: teaching students to engage critically with complex ideas and begin building the research and communication skills that will support their success,” said Martín Ponti, first year seminar director and associate professor of Hispanic studies.

Kochli designed his course to be collaborative, asking students to play different kinds of video games together to better understand game design (user experience and perception of design elements), social dynamics (good versus bad frustration and motivations to play games), and the positive and negative effects of gaming on individuals and society.

While not one of his usual course offerings, Kochli said Mindsets and Multikills was “surprisingly not different” from his typical research and allowed him to combine those topics with his personal interest in gaming.

“It was fun to flex those muscles and talk about things in my wheelhouse that I don’t normally teach,” Kochli said. Learning, motivation, and conditioning were all key research topics Kochli structured the course around to discuss videogames.

Course objectives included discussing videogames from various perspectives of psychology disciplines, including cognitive, behavioral neuroscience, social, and clinical/counseling; identifying elements of successful user experience in games; and discussing the impacts of gaming.

To achieve these goals, class time was divided between in-class discussion and hands-on gaming experience, playing different kinds of games in the Esports room. Mindsets and Multikills was the first course ever taught in that space.

Kochli had students play games in class for two reasons. One, to emphasize the social element of playing games, providing students with a different gaming experience than they might be used to by playing alone. And two, to take away any barriers that might arrive from needing the proper machines to support game play.

During these sessions, students would compete against each other, or work cooperatively together, depending on the game. Kochli would ask them during these sessions about the game, their experience playing it, different mechanics of the game, and ask about strategies. That’s when the “are you feeling any toxic impulses?” question was often asked.

They discussed toxic impulses—behavior meant to aggravate another player, which can be caused by competition— throughout the course. Examples of toxic impulses include gloating or saying something offensive. Online anonymous spaces—which most games contain—can be toxic because of depersonalization.

While Kochli set ground rules for the students regarding civility in class—which included no abusive language directed toward classmates or other people in the game—he said he was surprised by how civil everyone was throughout the course. He recalled more experienced gamers even explaining rules and mechanics to those unfamiliar with the games being played.

Ponti visited Kochli’s class earlier in the semester and said he saw students not only participating but engaging with one another to question and build ideas.

“Whether students were navigating a challenge scenario or sharing their interpretations, Dan guided them with thoughtful questions that pushed their thinking in deeper, more nuanced ways,” Ponti said. “His class was collaborative and welcoming, a space where students feel comfortable taking intellectual risks. That willingness to explore and to trust their own voices is exactly what we want FYS to nurture.”

Ponti said that was at the heart of the FYS program: “helping students develop curiosity alongside the academic habits that will carry them well beyond their first semester.”

Not only were traditional games like multiplayer videogames discussed during the course, they also looked at mobile games, particularly their predatory reinforcement structures to get users to keep playing and the ways they obfuscate currency so users spend more and more money without realizing how much they’ve spent.

“There’s a lot more psychology in gaming than you would expect,” said Casey Johnson ’29. “And it’s a current topic with everyone concerned about mental health and whether games are good or bad.”

Johnson described herself as a gamer and said she plays a lot of games with other people. She chose Mindsets and Multikills for her FYS in part to get a different, hands-on experience of gaming by playing in class and in part because of a past interest in psychology.

She said the class allowed for a conversation space about how games are, actually, both good and bad. Those conversations, along with other writing assignments and discussion, laid the groundwork for students’ final paper for the course, which asked students to explain an aspect of video games that motivates players to engage long-term and argue whether they are a net positive or net negative to individuals or society using primary literature.

Julia Soanes ’29 said that the coursework allowed her to vent her past frustrations about developers designing games to appeal to gambling addictions and about users—referred to as “whales”—who spend a lot of money on games.

“The class gave me an outlet to talk about and process those thoughts,” she said. Having to do scholarly psychological research on these topics, not just state her opinion, also helped her better understand and articulate those frustrations. “There was a lot of research on it,” she said.

Kochli said he also learned from the course, with students introducing him to new games and research he wasn’t familiar with previously. For Johnson, the new perspective on gaming gave her tools to evaluate games in a more in-depth way.

“The coolest thing for me about this class was learning the inside scoop about how developers make games addicting so they can make money,” Johnson said. “Now that I’ve learned some of the things game developers do, I feel like I’m critiquing games because I know what’s healthy versus unhealthy.”

— MacKenzie Brady '21