Games for Change’s Dr. Rachel Kowert and Arana Shapiro on Raising Good Gamers

Concerns around games have been the same for the last fifty years. Parents are concerned about overuse, overdependence, and overexposure to explicit content. In the [“Raising Good Gamers” white] paper we're like, “Okay, let's take a look back at what those actual concerns are and reframe them.”—Dr. Rachel Kowert

At this year’s Games for Change (G4C) festival that was held at The Glasshouse in New York City in late July, I sat down with Dr. Rachel Kowert and Arana Shapiro, who are spearheading a new G4C program that’s designed to help bridge the gap between common perceptions about how video games impact minors especially, and what the latest research actually shows.

It was an enlightening conversation; Player Driven published a podcast of the full discussion at the end of July. In this Design Desk refresh, we’ll augment that convo with new content and additional context.

Dr. Kowert is a research psychologist who’s studied “the uses and effects of games for about fifteen years.” She’s also Research Director at G4C, authored a new white paper that we’ll get into shortly, and she’s a Visiting Researcher in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge in the UK.

Shapiro is the Chief Operating and Programs Officer at G4C. Her background involves “how games can engage kids and do more than just entertain them, to learn things,” and she’s leading the Raising Good Gamers project, which was unveiled at G4C 2026.

This week’s Design Desk will be shorter than usual since our exchange lasted about 15 minutes.

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How Video Games Tend to Impact Kids, and How G4C’s SPACE Framework Can Help Families Mitigate Gaming’s Potential Downsides

Raising Good Gamers is “a place for parents to come to understand what is happening when their kids are playing games, what can go wrong, but also what can go right. To help them parse through that, and help them understand how to have conversations with their kids about what's happening when they're playing games, and build norms and rules and boundaries together. It's really about helping parents do those things.”—Arana Shapiro

At G4C 2026, Dr. Kowert gave a talk that summarized her latest white paper, “Raising Good Gamers: What Families Need to Know About Video Games and Well-Being.” It’s available on the Raising Good Gamers site (a link to the home page is in the intro).

The white paper framed a problem that involves longstanding stigmas and tropes about video games and the people who play them. The paper also pointed out that some common perceptions about how video games impact kids are dourer than the best available research shows. Last, it surfaced some resources that may help overcome these misperceptions and it outlined a pivot that families can make to remove some of the frictions that heavy gaming activities can cause.

More color on unveiling of this paper and a few photos from Dr. Kowert’s keynote are here.

Let’s “start with the white paper,” I said, after we’d settled in and introduced ourselves.

“One of the things you looked at,” I said to Dr. Kowert, “was something like 200,000 media articles related to health and games, or healthy gaming habits between parents and children…In your talk a little earlier today, [you described] something of a moral panic. I think you even described how some people view video games as a ‘murder simulator’…”

“Absolutely,” Dr. Kowert responded. “Parents are really concerned about a lot of things when it comes to games.”

She elaborated, saying that many of these concerns “center around questions of addiction, or concerns around violence.”

“What we wanted to do in the paper is lay out those concerns and let parents know it's okay to have concerns. I have children. I'm concerned about everything my children do all the time. But…it's not all doom and gloom, which is what parents are exposed to in the media, or on their social media networks, which is that FTI research you were referring to.”

To be clear, the review of 200,000 media articles that I’d referenced was conducted by FTI Consulting. Tencent, which has partnered with G4C to support the Raising Good Gamers program, commissioned the media review, and Dr. Kowert’s white paper cited some findings that came out of that effort.

“Actually, in the research” you noted, Dr. Kowert said, there’s a relatively “optimistic picture of how games are impacting us.”

I said something about a media bias problem.

“In the popular media, like the news media,” Dr. Kowert clarified, “there are more positive than negative news stories. But the negative ones get shared a lot more and amplified a lot more.”

“As humans, we have a negativity bias. We will attune and pay attention to things that are more negative because we want to survive. It's an evolutionary artifact, I'm sure, and because of that we have a distorted view of games and their impact.”

“In the talk,” she continued, “I said we have a biased information ecosystem. Despite the fact there are a lot of positive stories, the negative ones really just stick.”

I nodded, and switched the “pivot” or “reframe” that she suggested in her white paper can help counter these entrenched perceptions.

“Can you talk to me a little bit about the pivot part, or the reframe part of it?” I wondered. “What were some of the highlights that came out of your research in terms of what's the most useful way to think about reframing these issues” in a constructive direction?

She went to the issue of overuse to exemplify the process she envisioned.

“This is a question of addiction,” she began. “Can my kid not pull themselves away from the game? And it's like, instead of thinking about the sheer amount of time [spent playing], let's think about what purpose is playing? What is the context around the play?”

“My kids play a lot on the weekends. If they're getting along, I let them be. If it's a school night, I do not. They have to go to bed.”

“Having those kinds of reframes about…how they're using games, and the role in their lives, can really help parents, give them a little sense of relief, I think, that ‘We don't have to worry about everything.’”

I switched my focus to Shapiro, and asked her to lay out some of the benefits of playing video games that may be underappreciated, a topic that was addressed in the white paper.

“Yeah, absolutely,” Shapiro responded. “I think one of the things that we're trying to do is help parents understand what's happening when their kids are playing games.”

One of the most important things to know about that is that, with most forms of media that kids are consuming, it's very passive. Kids are just kind of watching something. But games are active. Kids are making choices, they're interacting with other kids, they're collaborating, they're problem solving, they're thinking systemically.

“There are all these really important skills, high-level skills, that we want our kids to have as they move into the world as adults,” continued Shapiro. “Games are actually a perfect practice space for a lot of those. We're trying to help parents understand how to be careful, but also allow those kinds of things to happen, so that kids can use that practice space to their benefit.”

“Right,” I interjected. “I've heard it said many times that gaming is a verb…”

Shapiro nodded.

“There was also an acronym in there called SPACE, and I think I'll come back to you, Rachel, on this one,” I said. “What is SPACE about? And if you don't remember...”

“Oh no!” blurted Dr. Kowert, laughing.

“…I won't make you do it!” I said.

“Maybe you can at least highlight what is SPACE about, what are the advantages, or the hope that this will lead to over time,” I added.

“So, SPACE is an acronym that is distilling all of the research and information we know about gaming, and how to engage with your kids,” Dr. Kowert began.

“The hope is that if you follow these five things, which I will try to remember in a minute, we're going to take games from a source of conflict to a source of conversation. Or panic to partnership.”

Got it.

Drumroll please…

“So,” she began, it’s “’Start with curiosity.’ ‘Play together.’ ‘Adjust for context’—which is what we were talking about earlier, like, it's not just about time—'Cultivate digital citizenship’—which I think a lot of parents overlook; the opportunity here [is] to start having conversations about online safety in the context of games—and then E is ‘Establish boundaries together.’”

…and she stuck the landing!

“Again, it's about a source of conversation,” clarified Dr. Kowert. “It's not all coming from top down: ‘You will do this and you will do that.’ Kids don't buy into that. But if you establish it together and you have that conversation, then maybe we won't be fighting so much about games. Because games aren't going anywhere.”

Wait a sec. Someone else said something very similar to that in the talk she’d just given:

Now it was me nodding.

“I've got a ten-year-old who plays a lot of Nintendo,” I confessed. “I think spending some time with her, and playing with her” is something she truly appreciates. “You said it in there,” meaning the white paper. “A lot of kids are really asking for this.”

“Exactly,” responded Dr. Kowert. “Parents should show up. The ESA research found that 60% of kids want their parents to play more with them. And parents are very apprehensive about playing games. They think they'll be bad at them.”

An Entertainment Software Association-sponsored survey of ~1,900 people in the U.S. indeed found that almost 60% of 5-17 year-olds wanted to play more video games with their parents in 2025.

“It's funnier if you're bad,” added Dr. Kowert. “It's okay. Or they don't know where to start. But I think calling out Nintendo is also a great example. Nintendo games are made for younger children, generally, so it's very easy for anyone to pick it up and learn. So, just give it a try.”

“So, Raising Good Gamers,” I said, turning back to Shapiro. “That's not just the name of the white paper, I believe, but it's also a broader initiative from Games for Change…”

“The white paper is an encapsulation of what we believe raising a gamer should be,” began Shapiro, nodding. More broadly, the Raising Good Gamers program has “some exciting things happening. We are launching a workshop series for parents.”

“In that workshop, we really are helping to unpack a lot of those issues that are laid out in the white paper. ‘What does the research say?’ ‘Is there something to be scared of, [and] what is it?’ But also, ‘What are the things to lean into?’”

We all are going to acknowledge that kids love playing games. They're not going away. They're here to stay. They've been here a long time. So, if we can leverage that, we argue that you can build connections with your kids in ways that you might not be able to otherwise. And that connection can help to foster a healthier relationship at home around the tension that sometimes can happen with games.

“These workshops are going to help parents understand all of that,” added Shapiro, “and then leave with some actionable tools.”

“We have a conversation guide, so how to have these conversations with your kids,” she elaborated. “Also, how to create a family code of conduct, a gaming code of conduct, that will help parents, collaboratively with their kids, decide how the family is going to handle boundaries around games, tensions that might arise. What happens if you're playing on the weekend versus if you're playing during the week,” and so on?

The program is really about “guiding parents and helping them understand how to shape those kinds of conversations, and policies, rules, boundaries, with their kids, so that everyone's bought in. And the vision is just this kind of healthy, happy gaming family.”

ChatGTP’s rendition of “an American family having way too much fun playing video games.”

I asked Shapiro where people will be able to find all this stuff.

“We have a Raising a Gamer site which will house materials, so downloadable materials like the white paper, like the template for a family gaming code of conduct, the conversation guide.”

As noted earlier, this website is now live and all of these resources, and more, are there.

Added Shapiro, we’ll also have “a series of webinars, me and Rachel engaged in a conversation around this kind of stuff, so those will just be accessible” at no cost as well.

“Then we are rolling out workshops, partnering with organizations that are already working with parents. So, think, like, the PTA, and Boys and Girls Club, and libraries…to bring this workshop to parents.”

To date, the program’s home page isn’t showing any more info in these local, in-person workshops.

Bonus Round: Self-Determination Theory + Gaming = ???

Since I had a research psychologist with a deep background in gaming in front of me, I couldn’t help but scratch a personal itch (that fans of Design Desk will recognize).

“Self-determination theory,” or SDT, I said, turning back to Dr. Kowert. I’m aware it’s widely used to help “design video games, and support live ops content…How do you think about SDT in the context of both…[applying] in a game, where you experience, hopefully, needs-fulfilling experiences, and then, also, when they come out of the game world, and start dealing with their family again, in that social context?”

“It's kind of a rambling question,” I admitted.

“No, it's a great question!” said Dr. Kowert, rescuing me.

‘Self-determination theory,” she said, “is the idea that all humans are motivated by three things: the desire to feel autonomous—free to make their own choices—feeling related to each other, and a sense of achievement.”

“Games are really good at hitting all three: You go into a game, [and] you get a sense of achievement by completing a mission. You're related, playing with other people, or an example I like to give is [Nintendo’s] Animal Crossing. They're not real people, and you're not really playing with them, but you have a sense of relatedness. And then autonomy, ‘I'm free to choose and go where I want.’”

How you meet those [psychological] needs in-game, the research has shown, does translate into how you go and then interact in the world. So, making those achievements and having that sense of freedom and autonomy in the game can absolutely meet those needs. And when you go into the real world, they feel met by those places that you've gone.

“Also, the things that you learn and are achieving in those spaces, you're taking into other contexts. And I think that's what your question is getting at, is about the context, and the modality switching.”

Ah ha! So, there’s a science-y term for what I was fumbling to describe…

Modality switching is used in cognitive psychology, and other fields, to describe what happens when people change up the mode through which info is transmitted or processed.

“We are seeing people, for instance, learn social skills or observe social skills in massively multiplayer online games,” Dr. Kowert continued, “and then going into their school, and using those skills, and trying those skills. So, in that sense, it does translate” across the digital divide.

In the moment, I reframed what I thought I’d heard.

“Games for Change has this idea that video games can be a force for good in the world,” I said. There are “a lot of wonderful academics [here] who are trying to build that bridge more strongly. And it seems to me that SDT is an opportunity, or at least one of those pathways, that could” be used to make that happen, right?

“Yes, one of them,” responded Dr. Kowert.

“There's research around an effect called the Proteus effect,” she added, “which is the idea...”

She saw me nodding.

“You talked to Nick Yee?”

I kept nodding.

Design Desk’s breakdown of our discussion with Quantic Foundry’s co-founder is here; it posted in April.

The idea, Dr. Kowert said, finishing her thought, is that “for instance, if you're more generous in games with other avatars, you go off into the world and you behave more generously. So, that also speaks to the mirroring of these spaces.”

“Cool!” I said, “I think we'll leave it there. This has been super interesting...”

…And I still think that’s true!

In next week’s Design Desk, we’ll rinse and repeat with our onsite interview of G4C’s President, Susanna Pollack. Catch you on the modality flipside.