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The Value of Complex Gameplay and a Reinforcement of the Agential Problem Space Game(CCDS Design Lab Diary #3)
Last week, Cincinnati Country Day School (CCDS on Facebook) Design Lab ninth graders and I met for their first 75-minute sessions of Design Lab (3 classes on Wednesday and 1 on Thursday). We began with a reintroduction to the Agent-Based Problem Space Game (a.k.a Agential Problem Space a.k.a Historical Problem Space).
But first, some critical high school and educated-life skills. One of the core purposes of the Design Lab is to teach ninth graders and enable them to practice and develop durable skills including collaboration, problem-solving, design, research, and communication – all in alignment with Cincinnati Country Day School’s mission and strategic vision. Having taught historical game design in history classes for a couple of decades, I am already well aware how these skills are part and parcel of agential game design. But, as so many teachers do, I seize opportunities that arise on the go, in the classroom. More about this in a little bit. Here’s the overview of the class last week.
Metcognition and effective Note-Taking
First, I had the students write down the term “metacognition” and I talked with them about note-taking as a critical skill. I keep my definition of metacognition simple: thinking about one’s thinking or, more precisely in the learning context, thinking about one’s learning and making corrections as needed to succeed. In the context of note-taking metacognition for a ninth grader, three questions are critical, well four really. The first is to understand the ultimate purpose of the notes: a project, future demonstrated performance in a skill, an essay test, etc. But then, when taking notes from a teacher talk (or a trainer, coach, instructor, or employer), a note-taker should ask themself three questions:
Read more…Introducing CCDS Design Lab and Agent-Based Problem Spaces to the Ninth Graders (DL Diary #2)
(Go to Design Lab Diary #1)
Monday, I traveled to Camp Livingston in Indiana to introduce our Cincinnati Country Day School (CCDS on Facebook) ninth graders, who were finishing a weekend leadership retreat, to Design Lab. Engineering and Maker-space educator and Design Lab colleague Jamie Back and I quickly surveyed the program for the 9th graders, including
- the importance of game design as a means of thinking about agency in systems and problem solving
- the role that collaborative work would play in the design process
- the opportunities and exciting challenges of crafting for the final game prototypes in the Maker Space.
If this sounds optimistic, that was the intention: heavy on the joy and excitement and joy of agent-based game design, with the nitty-gritty details to come.
After the quick introduction to the program came the introductory session on game analysis and design. I thought carefully about the game I would use for introducing the 9th graders to agent-based game design. Let me pause for a moment and quickly introduce / reintroduce Agent-Based Problem Space Design A.K.A Agential Problem Space Design A.K.A. Historical Problem Space Design. In the course of the couple of years I spent writing my newest book (Designing Historical Games for Classrooms: A Practical Guide for Educators) I realized I wanted to help more designers, not just designers of historical games, use the Historical Problem Space Framework to design any game about agents in a space (any beings who can make goal-oriented choices — this has nothing to do with AI btw) with goals and action choices, contextualized in that space. Now, mostly, I work on designing and having my students design games around researched, real-world, historical agents and spaces. But I wrote a little appendix in the new book just pointing out that Literature teachers and Sociology teachers and anyone who wanted to design researched games in their field about agents and systems in a world could do so with the Historical Problem Space. But then we could re-dub it an Agential Problem Space. To make this more accessible to ninth graders, I have started calling it an Agent-Based Problem Space, and games about this Agent-Based Problem Space Games (a mouthful of words to be sure).
All agent-based world games, historical or not, can be analyzed the same way and this provides a helpful descriptive guide for design too.
Read more…Welcome to CCDS Design Lab (DL Diary #1)
Very excited to introduce the Cincinnati Country Day School (CCDS on Facebook; ) 9th graders to Design Lab on Monday at the Ninth Grade retreat. For those just tuning in, here’s the nutshell. All of our ninth graders will collaborate in small groups to research and design a boardgame on a contemporary modern world issue/problem (we have selected a set for this year and provided research tools and guidance. Students will rank their top three choices from the six issues and be grouped into teams of 2-3 based on those choices. Three is our optimal size, but of course, classes don’t always divide neatly and the team felt that groups of 2 were better than groups of 4 — with groups of 4, one or more students can drift more. The current topics:
- Scarcity of Water, Water Needs, Water Issues
- Affordable and Adequate Housing
- Migration, Immigration, and Refugees
- Bullying and School Communities
- Mental Health and Well-Being for Adolescents
- Generative AI and LLMS, Human Impacts and Sustainability
We aimed for issues that felt important for us, were appropriate for ninth and sixth graders, and offered some variety for student interests.
Read more…Pre-Order Page is up for Designing Historical Games (July 31st, 2026)
Debriefing in History class with Defensible Models in history games: A quick report
Today was my second day of having my 10th grade students play the Grizzled. As I’m pretty sure all teachers know, end of year we often get exhausted and careless about details, kids and teachers. The 10th graders are bright and capable Honors Students. I have analyzed a number of historical games with them this school year so they know the deal. Or so I thought. But the understandable exhaustion was setting in and I saw it. If I didn’t shape up, we’d lose the analytical parts of playing the game, hardly fitting for the capstone game of the year. I knew I needed my students to get into the granular analysis of the historical problem space of the Grizzled and its implementation in pieces and mechanics. Then they could discuss and take notes and we could all discuss, and the hoped for learning happen.
Recently (past few months) I started talking more explicitly to these kids about the idea of whether a given historical game has defensible models. I have used that term since my first writing in 2010 and in Gaming the Past, First Edition (2011). But I have not always taught it consistently to my students. After my draft musings on defensible models and defensible problem spaces from March, it clicked that the question of whether a game has defensible models is an outstanding way to debrief a class on a historical game. That did not fully click until today. The debrief went beautifully, in large part because I used the concepts of defensible models and the Historical Problem Space framework to guide the debrief.
Recall my proposition that a history game has defensible models to the extent that one can support with valid evidence that some agents existed in a place like THIS (i.e. like that this game represents), and had goals like THIS, in a world system like THIS, and were able and did at times make action-choices like THIS to achieve those goals. In other words, a game is defensible to the extent it models a valid-evidence-supportable historical problem space.
Read more…9th Grade Game Design Lab at Cincinnati Country Day School
I finally get to share this and I am so excited! Next year I will be co-leading a Ninth Grade Design Lab for all incoming 9s at Cincinnati Country Day School! Here’s the nutshell. All of our ninth graders will collaborate in small groups to research and design a boardgame on a contemporary modern world issue/problem (different issues for different groups and tbd).
The boardgame will be designed using the Historical / Agential Problem Space Framework for game design that I have written about for years and will share even more widely in the upcoming Designing Historical Games for Classrooms Designing Historical Games for Classrooms: A Practical Guide for Educa. As the groups learn essential skills for research, collaboration, and game design, they will also develop Makerspace skills under the expert guidance of co-leader Jamie Back and develop their skills at presentation. Note the focus on skills: this Design Lab is about the process, about developing future durable (as I think is the “in” term) skills that will serve the kids in life, high school, and college.
When they have finished designing and engineering the board game, they will give a presentation on the real world topic and their game-based analysis to our 6th graders and have them play the games and provide critical feedback, an empowering moment for 6th and a great vertical connection to make between our Upper and Middle Schools!
I am so very grateful to get to put into practice my agential game design pedagogies, that I have used in my own classes here for years, to an entire school program that I think will be truly a transformative educational moment for our 9ths. Let me know if I can gush some more on details 🙂
This week in history games / game histories at Cincinnati Country Day School
In my part of the amazing Cincinnati Country Day School this past week.
– Students in Honors 10th Modern World History and 9th Grade Ancient World History submitted their playtest analysis essays where they assessed: 1) how effectively their researched game design fit the historical problem space they had researched and 2) The results of the second round of playtests they ran and 3) The next steps for the penultimate revision
– An amazing independent study student finished their research and began conceptualizing the final 15-20 minute video-essay they will craft comparing the Iliad, Ancient Historians on the Homeric Period and Warfare, Troy the Movie, and A Total War Saga: Troy (videogame) as different media histories of “The Trojan War”
– Two amazing independent study students for next year come closer to solidifying their proposals. One will craft a Twine complete with recorded sound effects illustrating how the soundscapes of Victorian lives differed by social positions. The other will develop their Shogunate historical boardgame into a full historical game with Print and Play.
All of these works are developed with strict attention (that’s my job, of course) to rigorous historical research and analysis.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg of all the amazing things students did last week (I didn’t even mention the applications for senior peer mentors are in now!)
Oh and shameless self-aggrandizement moment — look who got into the curriculum guide!
Pre-Order Page is up for Designing Historical Games (August 17th, 2026)
The Possibilities of an Agential Problem Space Framework
This is a quick post just to start a conversation and/or further work. It might be useful to notice all games with worlds can likely be helpfully be analyzed as Agential Problem Spaces, building off of the Historical Problem Space framework for analyzing (and thus thinking about designing) historical games–analog, ttrpg, and digital.
In origin, I proposed the Historical Problem Space Framework to point out that the ways Historical games characterize any given part of their history content cannot be considered independently from that parts functional role in the game’s historical problem space. https://www.playthepast.org/?p=2594
And that developed into a full framework that is still developing (even into current book project, Designing Historical Games for the Classroom). Bottom line, though, is that systemically functional nature of games about worlds–regardless of whether those worlds are fictional historical etc.
https://gamestudies.org/2003/articles/mccall
So any game with a world (and inhabitants if that’s not understood) can be analyzed using something like the Historical Problem Space framework. I really have not had time to explore this in detail, but I’m going to start referring to it, for consistency and connection to HPS, as an Agential Problem Space.
Now, I’m a historian and a history teacher and a historical game designer and a historical game studies academic. I do NOT have ANY substantial grounding in (post Roman) literature or literary theory. So when I speculate next, why seeing games as agential problem spaces might be useful, it is based on my perspective in all those areas listed in the last paragraph
So since HPS is also a theory for how games shape historical content maybe? an Agential Problem Space framework for literature-based game studies interested in how game designer present a world in their game that is
1) based on a literary / text lore corpus
2) purporting to be the “real world” or a “real historical world”
Because then an Agential Problem Space can help with terms and tools for seeing how a game medium shapes literature and lore and perceptions of the world into a game, which basically means a medium that is structurally like an historical game. ???
I also think an Agential Problem Space framework might? be very helpful for teachers in other disciplines than history, not least of all lit & lang (but any subject that purports to represent the world: science, social science, etc.) As an approach to how they & their students could design world-based games in their areas?
What do you folks think?
New set of print and play prototypes for history classes
In a flurry of posting productivity on Gaming the Past, I added a new project this morning. The prototype (still in need of work but playable) for Rhetoric and Revolution. This is a card game about the political competition around drafting the 1791 constitution. (#3 on the page). As always, please send me any and all constructive feedback. These are early works-in-progress. But the 3 listed have all been tried in some form or other with students and can be a good learning activity (so long as your class reflects and criticizes them at least a little!)
https://gamingthepast.net/tabletop/jeremiahs-prototypes/
GTP Designer Talks
Interviews with designers of historical video games. Posted here and on Spotify , Google Play, and Apple Podcasts.
