Article 5: Balancing Game and Education in The Great Gambit

Making a good educational game isn't just about coming up with a fun mechanic. It's a question of balance. The balance between excitement and meaning. Between getting players genuinely engaged and actually helping them learn something real.

In the article, I want to dig into how I tried to maintain a fragile balance at the level of game design itself.

How the Game Feels From a Student’s Perspective

You're sitting at a table with your team.

You’re playing as one of the major social groups in early 20th-century Germany — Workers, Civilians, Political Leaders, or Colonial Administrators.

In front of you is a historical event — say, a crisis in the Balkans. Each group has four possible actions to choose from. You have to pick one.

You read your decision card: it sounds reasonable, but what will the others choose in the face of this crisis? Should we keep trying to avoid war, or is someone already so weak that we should focus on our own goals instead? How ethical would it be if we sold weapons to both sides of the conflict?

And that's just a few of the questions that come up. How deeply you analyze the situation is up to you. You can go with a quick instinct, or you can try to think several moves ahead.

You only have a few minutes. Everyone quickly discusses, glances around, tries to guess, and makes their choice.

Then comes the reveal — and you see the consequences.

What’s in the Game

The content of The Great Gambit can be split into two categories:

Educational Side:

• Historical facts (events, dates)

• Group behavioral dynamics

Gameplay Side:

• Distribution and calculation of influence (gems)

• Group behavioral dynamics

Interestingly, group behavioral dynamics, by design, sit at the heart of both sides. It's the core of the gameplay, and at the same time, the subject of reflection afterward.

Where the Real Problem Appears

So, we have:

• (Left) — Historical facts

• (Center) — Group behavioral dynamics

• (Right) — Gem scoring

If we lean too far to the left, we get a dry educational "interactive lecture." If we lean too far to the right, we get a gamified mechanic with no clear educational purpose.

But the middle — group behavioral dynamics, can be the bridge.

In my case, I decided that this had to be the true center of gravity. And both historical facts and the influence-scoring mechanics should serve to support it, not overshadow it.

To avoid tipping too much toward dry history, I included just enough historical context to make decision-making meaningful and spark curiosity — without drowning students in details.

And on the gameplay side, I deliberately hid many of the modifiers. That way, the process wouldn’t turn into dry math, but stay focused on the situation, the tension, and the dynamics between groups.

The goal wasn’t to invent something new — after all, we’re modeling how real societies work. Just like in real life, when making decisions, people operate with limited information, trying to guess outcomes without knowing how things will really turn out.

Little Joy

When we first tested the game, I was nervous — would this approach actually work?

Here is feedback from teachers:

Björn Nordlund, school history teacher, Sweden (unedited)

“I just realised that I never got back to thank you for this awesome resource and tell you how it went. We had a blast! By now we've played the game about 4-5 times across both modes and both I and the students believe that we've learned a lot. Only some of them can confidently say that they understood the deeper lessons about how history unfolds and the push and pull of ambition. Most of them understood the concepts of 19th century nationalism, imperialism and great power competition better than before however. All of them had fun and thought this was a nice change of pace."

Tyler Kynn, Assistant Professor of History at Central Connecticut State University (unedited)

“it all worked great today, the students enjoyed it so much they asked to stay a bit over class time and play a second round of it - however both times they did not avoid war and both times the students playing the workers won or were near to winning by the end of turn 7. They had a fantastic time.

I know some of the students said they loved the concept of the game for thinking of how they would use it in their own high school classrooms someday as it gives a non-US perspective of the war (as many of them in their own high school classes said they only really learned about the assassination of the archduke, 1917 US entry, and Wilsons's 14 points) - so the game gives them a ready made tool to educate their future students with a more complete perspective.”

Here’s some feedback we got from students (anonymous and unedited):

I feel that is was one of the best takes on a educational game. It is quite a general agreement that games that are made to be intentionally educating doesn't work but I think this game came really close. Since it was a collaborative experience where the teacher took part in explaining things and you got to discuss with your teammates the game kind of dodged the trap that is easy to fall into where you feel like you are basically sitting with something like a textbook that is just a bit more interactive. The game also managed to be educating without having the information impose on the gameplay too much which also is an easy pitfall. I think this was due to the teacher giving much of the information and context and that it didn't need to be in the actual game. When the information is in the game the experience can be slow and the game starts feeling bloated. Now the gaming experience felt fluid and free and was more paced with interesting nuggets of information.

I felt satisfied playing the game. It was both fun purely from a game perspective, but also from trying to analyze the situations presented and think with a historical perspective.

it was fun, and as I said before, it was a different kind of learning and it helped when you had to talk to others about it

107 students passed our anonymous surveys. Here is the full report and more real students' feedback LINK

Of course, this doesn’t mean we’ve achieved a perfect balance. To draw serious conclusions, we’d need a lot more testing across different student groups and contexts.

But this feedback is a good signal — that we’re moving in the right direction.