BIO

I'm a lifetime Floridian who was born and raised in Tampa. Most of my family have come through FSU, and I am proud to continue that legacy as an Economics major, which I will soon graduate with. Something I enjoy in my downtime is video games, especially games that require strategic thinking and planning. It occurred to me one day, that many of these games have an economic system. Something I have learned from easily a dozen different games is that investing in research and building up industry is essential to keeping your empire running smoothly. So, for this project, I wanted to see how reliable and accurate some of my favorite games got their depictions of Economic concepts, modifiers, and determiners.

Can Video Games Teach Economic Concepts?

Abstract

With the popularity of gaming on the rise, scholars have been examining the use of educational video games as an instructional tool to teach economic concepts and how this compares to traditional classroom methods. If educational video games are useful to facilitate learning, how well, if at all, could non-educational games based on economic concepts serve as instructional tools? In particular, this research asks: What elements of 4X strategy games stimulate economic understanding? The researcher created and deployed a survey to discover what core economic, and economic adjacent factors were viewed as the most important, and how well certain games depicted them. The survey covered questions pertaining to specific games (Civilization V, Hearts of Iron IV, Stellaris, Endless Space 2), economic concepts, and demographic characteristics. Preliminary results from 18 respondents revealed the following: most respondents were not familiar at all with most of the games in question. But those who were provided some insight into what they perceived the games they did know well. These areas generally pertained to trade and industry, with a lower emphasis on public opinion. In terms of educational policy recommendations, this study suggests that there is potential for these types of games to educate individuals, especially in the areas of trade, industry, and currency, with a strong emphasis on agriculture, and a lesser one on public opinion. Future research should examine these patterns in greater detail on a larger scale, thereby giving more credence to the theory that these games are viable for educational use.

Keywords: Video Games Economics Education