#547: From Mechanics to Meaning: Tracing Systems Thinking in Learners’ Game Design Talk

Game design has emerged as a promising context for fostering systems thinking, yet little is known about how such thinking manifests during the design process itself. This study investigates how learners develop systems thinking while collaboratively designing tabletop games. Drawing on frameworks that treat games as systems, we analysed the discourse of two 9th-grade students participating in a two-day game design workshop. Our analysis revealed that learners exhibited five key systems thinking features through their design talk: interconnectedness through rule dependencies, causality through action-consequence mapping, synthesis through coherence checking, emergence through playability patterns, and system function through design evaluation. These findings suggest that systems thinking emerges as an evolving process embedded in the collaborative act of game-making. The study contributes process-level insights into how game-making activities support systems thinking development.