Back in 2008, when my niece was a pre-teen, I spent a lot of time thinking about how to nurture our relationship as she moved beyond childhood into those precarious years when children and their adult caregivers often diverge in their preferences of how to spend quality time together. During this time, I thought about how we could continue to play games together and talk about those games in ways that would engage us both and build a foundation for our relationship as she grew older. My interest in “co-playing” with her led me to develop a research project as a collaboration between the Game Innovation Lab and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center on what we called “intergenerational play.” We studied pairs of children and parents as they played games together to observe and understand what comes from such play, and what designers, educators, parents, and caregivers can do to enhance the prosocial aspects of co-play. These ideas developed into the concept of Joint Media Engagement (JME), or the “new coviewing,” building on decades of work about the importance of co-viewing television between children and parents pioneered by Sesame Workshop.

More recently, in my and Matthew Farber’s new book The Well-Read Game: On Playing Thoughtfully, we revisit the idea of co-play, not only between children and parents, but among players of all ages, as part of a set of techniques for learning to become more thoughtful, literate players of games within caring communities of what we term “well-read” players. In The Well-Read Game, we propose a framework of interpretive play that focuses on the personal, emotional experiences we have when we play games – what we call “player response” – and the way that these responses relate to our readings of texts of all kinds. Our concept of the “well-read game” is based on a convergence of literary, media, and play theories, specifically those of Louise Rosenblatt’s reader-response theory, and Brian Upton’s situational game theory, my own playcentric design theory, and Bernie DeKoven’s well-played game philosophy. It proposes the notion that “readers” of games, as with all texts, co-author the meaning of the experience through their active and thoughtful engagement with them. Encouraging such thoughtful engagement is central to becoming a well-read player and points to ways that we can help players of all ages build a richer understanding of what play can mean if we are paying attention to it.

We suggest that the idea that co-play – when we play together with a friend, parent, or sibling – has the potential to create a safe community to share our personal responses to games. We might co-play with a friend or a parent watching us, experiencing the game with us and open a discussion and co-interpretation about the things that happen while we play. As we found in our early study of intergenerational play, situations in which parents ask questions about the game while co-playing with a child often lead to prosocial encounters, such as opening up a child’s thoughts and feelings about the game or related experiences. In The Well-Read Game, Matthew Farber offers an example from playing the game Unpacking with his then 11-year-old son. Unpacking is a very simple game, one that is easily co-played. At the start of each level, we are presented with a room, or set of rooms, and a set of boxes. (Figure 1)

We click on boxes to reveal items that are stored within them. Then we click to place the items in the rooms. We do this over and over until we have placed all the items. As we unpack the boxes, we develop an interpretation of the narrative of the character whose life we are unboxing. As Farber watches his son play, he engages him in conversation about the game and their own recent move across the country:

“The bedroom looks a little bit like yours,” I comment to my son, who is the one actually playing the game. I am sitting next to him on the couch, making suggestions as he plays. We recently moved multiple times when I took a professorship opportunity across the country, first to an apartment, then to a house. I watch as he methodically clicks the boxes and then puts items in drawers, shelves, and closets, as he did in his own bedroom. As we play more, he remarks to me that each room seems to have one item that does not belong, like a computer keyboard mixed in with kitchen spices. … “That didn’t happen when we moved,” he says. “Mom labeled all of the boxes by room!”  As he continues to unbox and unpack, my mind wanders; I think about the unwitting trauma that my career opportunity may have inflicted on my family, who had to pack and move. In my childhood, we never moved. I always went to the same school and woke up in the same bedroom. My son has moved twice already, each time to a new bedroom, a different neighborhood, another school. As he unpacks, we hope that he, too, unboxes a better life.

 

When co-play occurs between parents and children, the children may be the experts, reading and responding to the game aloud, narrating and explaining as they play. Parents might prompt children to think more introspectively about the situations occurring in the game, guiding younger players to become more thoughtful about what they are experiencing. Like the tradition of reading books together, co-playing can be an important aspect of scaffolding young players to become sensitive and open to their emotional responses to a game. Even when siblings, friends, or partners play together, the kind of discussion that co-play provokes can provide an excellent foundation for capturing and developing our responses to play. The most important part of these situations, however, is the sense of safety they allow for speaking about our emotional responses to play. Normalizing this kind of open sharing of emotional responses is a good foundational step in building caring communities of well-read players, and can lead to an opportunity for larger group play, but also for deeper journaling and thoughtful conversation about gameplay. 

As we discuss in The Well-Read Game, the process of becoming a well-read player, like that of becoming a lifelong reader, involves both the personal process of negotiating a text and also the social practice of developing and sharing ideas with others. These practices can help us build the same skills we need to form more effective communities and participate in them more fully. Rosenblatt’s deeper reason for developing better readers of literature stems from a desire to encourage more compassionate citizens: “Ultimately,” she writes,” if I have been concerned about methods of teaching literature, about ensuring that it should indeed be personally experienced, it is because … it helps readers develop the imaginative capacity to put themselves in the place of others––a capacity essential in a democracy, where we need to rise above narrow self-interest and envision the broader human consequences of political decisions.” This resonates with our desire to promote better readers of games. Helping our children, our friends, and our partners to play more meaningfully can help them to become open to the kinds of understandings that games can provide and to becoming more articulate “players” of our real world. 

 

Today, my niece is an adult and a preschool teacher who co-plays many games with her young students. Our relationship has continued to change as we both grow older, but one moment of joyful co-play that I will always recall is meeting up on her little island in the game Animal Crossing during the early days of the COVID shutdown. I joined her on an evening when it was raining in the game, and I hadn’t seen her in the real world in what at that time seemed like an eternity. (It would get a lot longer!) As we ran around the island, she showed me everything she had built, we went fishing, and we played like children together. I was sitting alone on my sofa, starving for human companionship, and this simple experience of playing with her brought tears to my eyes as I realized how precious it was to run and play with her, sharing play, and finding comfort during the precarious moment of a worldwide pandemic. We could talk and share both emotions together–the joy and the fear–because of the foundations we had built in play.

This is the potential of co-play: the creation of strong bonds and the development of prosocial attitudes towards others in play. Playing well together is not just behaving and following the rules, it is the development of social literacy and understanding of each other and the world through play. Imagine the possibilities of a world where we take these skills into our interactions with others in and beyond the game.

 

 

 

Tracy Fullerton, an experimental game designer, is Professor and Director of the Game Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California Games Program.

Supporting Families in a Screen-Saturated World: A New Guide for Movement and Play

As digital media becomes more integrated into family life, parents and caregivers are increasingly looking for ways to strike a healthy balance—especially when it comes to screen time and physical activity. A new resource from the California Partners Project, developed in collaboration with First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom, offers timely, research-informed guidance to help.

The Tech/Life Balance: Movement & Outdoor Activity Family Guide is a bilingual tool designed to support families in building daily routines that include more opportunities for movement, play, and outdoor exploration. Backed by research, the guide affirms what many families already feel: extended screen use can leave kids feeling irritable and disconnected, while even brief moments of physical activity can improve mood, focus, and overall well-being.

Rather than offering rigid prescriptions, the guide provides flexible, low-pressure ideas that fit into real family life. From simple conversation starters about screen habits to practical tips like setting up grab-and-go activity bins, the strategies are designed to foster joy, connection, and emotional regulation through movement. As families work to find balance in a screen-saturated environment, small shifts—like a walk around the block after dinner or setting up spontaneous outdoor play—can make a big difference in children’s emotional and physical well-being.

The Movement & Outdoor Activity Family Guide is available now in both English and Spanish. Explore and download the guide here: calpartnersproject.org/techlifebalance/movement

The 2025 cohorts of the Well-Being by Design Fellowship and the Youth Design Team have been an amazing success! Our Fellowship program brings together a group of children’s media and technology designers and the Youth Design Team – hosted in partnership with In Tandem – features 20 teens from 10 states in 10th through 12th grades. Throughout the spring, youth designers have participated in panel discussions and workshops to share their experiences and perspectives, and to ask big questions to help the Fellows incorporate well-being principles into their work.

Busting myths, encountering dilemmas

In February, the youth designers and Fellows gathered for the first time for a panel discussion focused on “mythbusting.” The Cooney Center team presented a handful of common myths about kids, media, and well-being, and asked the Youth Design Team to “bust” them. The conversation quickly moved beyond debunking stereotypes about kids and technology and raised new questions and design dilemmas that will shape this year’s Fellowship work.

Myth: “Games and technology are exclusively for entertainment, not learning. If you want to learn anything, the first step should be locking away anything with a screen.”

It took little time for the Youth Design Team to pick apart this myth. Five years after the COVID-19 pandemic shifted learning online, the teenagers in the Youth Design Team see countless ways that technology and learning work together. One youth designer estimated a ratio: “I think every single class I have at school uses like 80% technology and 20% anything else.”

Youth designers described a number of their favorite examples, including Minecraft mods that are designed to teach academic content, or tools for quiz prep and study practice that they regularly use. One youth designer even spelled out the design principles that make effective learning games: high engagement, appropriate challenges, and real-world applications. In contrast, bad learning games have poor feedback systems.

After busting this myth, the conversation pointed towards some of the complex dilemmas that professional designers in the Well-being by Design Fellowship may encounter:

• Games and technology can support more kinds of learning than just academic skills and content. But how should we think about these other kinds of learning? How are they valued? If they aren’t academically-focused, when or why might a teenager engage with them?
• When deliberately focusing on academic skills and content, how are games and technology uniquely valuable? Youth designers described examples of how games and technology can drive engagement and efficiency. Is that the goal? What pedagogies do we lose if we assume these objectives?

Myth: “Even without social media, little kids these days are zombies addicted to their iPads. There’s no such thing as good tech for them.”

Fears of technology addiction loom large in the national conversation — invoking “zombies addicted to their iPads” fits the dominant narrative a little too well. During the panel discussion, the most compelling examples of childhood technology that contrast this narrative came as the youth designers recalled early experiences with PBS Kids games, imaginative play inspired by video games, and bonding with friends and siblings over shared screen time.

The youth designers were clear about what they see as some of the biggest challenges today:

• “Regulating the technology is mostly the parent’s responsibility.”
• “Some limits need to be put on it by parents. But the kids can’t control that.”
• “I have screen time limits myself, and I make other people set the passwords so I can’t bypass them. So if I don’t have the self-control, I don’t think a little kid would either.”

These comments raise an important design question: Is this a supervision issue—or a design issue? The answer, they suggested, is both. Youth proposed a variety of design features to help children stay regulated: 

• Built-in time limits 
• Daily challenges instead of bingeable content 
• Extension activities to continue playing off-screen
• Thoughtful use of child locks and parental controls

All of these design choices could be baked into digital experiences to help children stay regulated and, as one youth designer put it, “remind them that they have a life apart from the game.” But that may be a challenge for parents too, not just designers. As another youth designer described it, if the parents want devices to “do the job of… raising the kid… or you give [a device] to your child just to, you know, suppress them from being loud,” even the most thoughtfully designed digital experiences may not be successful. In reflecting on this dilemma, we are drawn to Sesame Workshop’s and the Cooney Center’s long history of the positive impact of co-viewing, where children and caregivers engage with media together. What could a similar innovation look like in a tablet-driven world?

Continuing the conversation

Mythbusting was only the beginning. The Youth Design Team and Fellowship participants have workshopped real product concepts and features in development. In our final meeting, happening later this week, we’ll turn the tables and invite the teenagers to interview the adults about their careers, how they got started, and what it’s like day-to-day — because, hey, the teens aren’t the only ones with expert perspectives to share.

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In a world where career paths are no longer linear, how can we prepare young people to thrive amid constant change? At Unity Technologies, and through my book The Career Game Loop, we set out to tackle this challenge by borrowing strategies from an unexpected place: video games.

Today’s learners face a workforce landscape filled with uncertainty. Technological disruption, gig work, AI automation, and remote jobs have rewritten the rules. Traditional models of education and employment no longer guarantee a stable career. Yet, amid this volatility, an opportunity emerges: treating career growth not as a one-time decision, but as a continuous, empowering cycle.

Borrowing from Game Design to Build Career Resilience

At the heart of The Career Game Loop is a model called the Core Career Loop — an iterative cycle that mirrors the “core loops” that power engaging games.

 Instead of a static career ladder, we frame career development as:

• Choose Your Quest: Select a career direction aligned with purpose and strengths.
• Level Up: Acquire new skills and experiences.
• Job Hunt: Apply those skills to secure opportunities.
• Job Craft: Shape your role, grow, and prepare for the next loop.

This approach empowers learners to see career building as a dynamic, skill-based journey — much like progressing through levels in a game.

Co-Designing with Young People for Authentic Engagement

We didn’t just imagine what young people needed; we spent almost a decade working with millions of learners around the world who grew up playing video games and navigated their careers successfully. Through workshops, pilot programs, and partnerships with workforce centers and high schools, we co-designed exercises to ensure the model felt accessible, motivating, and relevant.

Students helped reframe career planning with gaming metaphors: resumes became “character stats,” mentors became “guild leaders,” and career milestones were visualized as “boss battles.” This participatory design approach surfaced what young learners need most: agency, relevance, and strategies for bouncing back from setbacks.

Grounded in Research and Learning Science

The “game loop” idea isn’t just catchy. It’s deeply rooted in:

• Cognitive science around iterative learning and mastery
• Workforce development data showing that career pivots happen every 4-5 years, and most of the jobs young people will eventually move into haven’t been invented yet
• Social-emotional learning frameworks, especially around resilience, adaptability, and identity

By linking career-building to intrinsic motivators like achievement, progress, and collaboration — common in games — we foster a mindset of lifelong learning, not just one-time career choice.

Addressing Inequity through Skill-Based Growth

One of our core goals was to challenge the inequities baked into traditional career models. Degrees and pedigree have historically acted as gatekeepers to opportunity. And equally critical, access to influential networks — social capital — often determines who gets ahead.

The Career Game Loop shifts the focus to skills and relationship-building, offering:

• Low-cost pathways to in-demand skills
• Practical tools for finding and approaching mentors, coaches, and sponsors
• Strategies for building “career guilds” — communities of support that mirror in-game alliances
• Playful approaches to expanding your network even when you don’t start with one

By teaching learners how to intentionally build social capital—through informational interviews, peer communities, volunteering, and authentic digital networking—we help them create their own support systems. Every connection becomes a “leveling opportunity,” enabling young people to navigate barriers and design their own paths, even when starting resources are unequal.

Learning to Earn in a World of Change

Ultimately, The Career Game Loop offers a new narrative: your career is not a ladder, but a game — filled with quests, skills to master, allies to recruit, and levels to unlock.

If we can help young people embrace learning, earning, and advancing as a continuous, joyful cycle, we can prepare them not just for their first job, but for a lifetime of opportunity.

 

 

Jessica Lindl is the Vice President of Ecosystem Growth at Unity Technologies, leading initiatives that connect education, gaming, and workforce innovation. She is the author of The Career Game Loop: Learn to Earn in the New Economy (Wiley, 2025) and serves on advisory boards for GSV Ventures and Jobs for the Future. Connect with her on LinkedIn and at www.thecareergameloop.com.