Video Games Are Education in Disguise

The boundaries between education and entertainment blur as Dr. Daniel Kaufmann (Dr. Gameology) takes us on a thought-provoking journey through the cognitive benefits of gaming in this premiere episode of Solo Quest.

Drawing from his extensive background as a clinical psychologist and passionate gamer, Dr. Kaufmann introduces us to the concept of video games as "learning boxes" – sophisticated environments where players develop problem-solving skills, cognitive flexibility, and personal growth through play. Whether navigating the moral choices of Baldur's Gate 3, solving the environmental puzzles of Legend of Zelda shrines, or creating in the infinite sandbox of Minecraft, each gaming experience trains our minds to approach challenges with creativity and resilience.

The episode delves into how gaming mechanics mirror real-life development, with the concept of "leveling up" serving as a powerful metaphor for personal growth. When we gain experience points in games, we're practicing the same persistence needed to advance in education, careers, and relationships. Through examples from various genres, Dr. Kaufmann demonstrates how games reveal our values and priorities while simultaneously providing tools to develop in those directions. The behavioral reinforcement in Persona games teaches social dynamics, while the problem-solving in Metroidvania titles translates directly to academic and professional challenges. Even using gamified apps like Habitica can transform mundane tasks into rewarding quests for self-improvement.

Join us for this insightful exploration of how gaming shapes our learning and discover why the skills developed through play might be exactly what we need to become the heroes of our own life stories. Subscribe to The Gaming Persona podcast for more episodes that destigmatize video games and celebrate their potential to make us better thinkers, better problem-solvers, and ultimately, better humans.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Solo Quest
• 2:15 Video Games as Learning Playgrounds
• 6:44 Gaming's Impact on Cognitive Flexibility
• 11:44 Transferable Skills from Gaming to Life
• 16:27 Leveling Up in Real Life
• 19:28 Closing Thoughts and Future Episodes

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to the first ever episode of Solo Quest, part of the Gaming Persona podcast. I'm Dr Gamology. My real name is Dr Daniel Kaufman. I have a PhD in counselor, education and supervision. I provide supervision and clinical services to clinicians and life coaches across the United States and I create certification parameters for many clinical topics that are important to me for people around the world. Internationally, I work with the International Problem Gaming and Gambling Certification Board. I work with the American Society of Addiction Sciences. I do research work for the American Psychiatric Association and I write books. I play video games on stream. I'm on Twitch. I do research work for the American Psychiatric Association and I write books. I play video games on stream. I'm on Twitch, I'm on YouTube.

Speaker 1: 0:50

I am all about getting the story of what video games actually can do for us in a psychological sense, out into the public. To destigmatize video games, help them become more accepted as an important part of society. Geek culture, fandom, but just day-to-day living as well. What it can do for us to self-soothe, to give us a challenge, to refine our problem-solving skills and our cognitive processes, to get us to interact with training our executive functioning in the brain, to give us a goal, a time limit that we want to excel at and also just something that we can do for fun. I think in society today this certainly affects me. Having fun is okay as long as dot dot and whatever follows after that dot, dot dot For me over time has made it so fun is not actually encouraged, because my brain wants to be so efficient and so task oriented because of what I've become in academia, what I've become as a clinician, what I've become in my personal life, which is there's not enough, there's not a lot of room for fun. And this brings me to our first topic today for Solo Quest is how does gaming actually improve education? And the thing that I want to talk about here is that, whatever video game you play, whatever genre, whatever things bring you into video games and give you that fun that you're looking for, whatever genre, whatever things bring you into video games and give you that fun that you're looking for, that fix, that something that you wanted in your day.

Speaker 1: 2:31

Video games are learning boxes. They are playgrounds for learning, for giving the brain a new process, for finding new processes and be able to use them in our life in a compelling, innovative, creative way, and it does not matter if you're playing a game that has Mario in it or Link or something in the Nintendo umbrella or platform. It doesn't matter if you're playing something that is hardcore, like a Souls-style game where you might die 17 times an hour or five times a minute. It doesn't matter if you're playing a game that is free-flowing and process-oriented, like Tetris. It doesn't matter if you're playing something relaxing and meant to give you a flow state, like Stardew Valley or like Journey. We just played Journey and Sky Children of the Light a little bit on the channel today, and it's all about creating experiences for people to let our minds unlock from the parameters of reality, which can be very limiting because we are just us, and give us a different world that we're able to get into.

Speaker 1: 3:49

So when I'm doing an episode of Solo Quest, these are meant to be bite-sized little episodes to add to the gaming persona where you just get to listen to me. The chat is here in Twitch. I will interact with you. I see a lot of people in the chat. I'm very excited that you're here. You can always ask questions, follow-ups, you can stay on topic, you can see if you can drag me off the topic, but again, it's not a very long episode. These are meant to be bite-sized little conversations with me where I just ad-lib on the topic. So the topic today is meant to be how gaming improves education.

Speaker 1: 4:26

So part one, video games, are learning playgrounds. They are constantly taking your input, the way you're playing, the buttons you're pressing, and giving you feedback. Do you succeed? Do you get to move on to the next space? Did your character die? Do you need to start over? Do you need to reload a save? And then also, what dialogue choices did you make? Did the person accept your idea? Did they reject your idea? And then you move forward in the game based on those ideas being set as feedback for your input.

Speaker 1: 4:59

I was just playing Baldur's Gate 3 for a little bit this morning because I had an issue with the save file. I had to go back and replay the 15 minutes that I did yesterday because the save corrupted, but luckily I kept some of my past saves. I only had to redo 15 minutes of the game. That's a whole other thing. Right there I was playing Baldur's Gate and I found some NPCs. Those are non-playable characters, and in Baldur's Gate 3, this some NPCs. Those are non-playable characters and in Baldur's Gate 3, this is basically like playing Dungeons and Dragons. You can play it by yourself, you can play it with a group of up to four people and you have this party that's walking around in this world trying to get to Baldur's Gate. And I'm at a portion of the game where you're about to get to the gate itself Act 3, everything's building up. I've completed a lot of quests that are extra. I think my party is max level At this point. We're level 12. So now it's just about finishing the quest, finishing the story and the vampire character.

Speaker 1: 5:58

Astarion finds two people from his past One is his sister and her boyfriend and he gets really ticked off in this conversation and he decides to become aggressive. And I had three dialogue choices this morning. I could let him choose on his own, let him have agency, no input. What is Asterion going to do? Or I could be brutal and say kill him, emperor Palpatine style, like from Revenge of the Sith, kill him, kill him now. And then there was the third choice, which is to do a persuasion roll and to ask him not to murder that other vampire in cold blood.

Speaker 1: 6:40

But if you do that, you have to roll a dice. You have to be able to hit a persuasion check. When you check something in Dungeons Dragons, you're rolling the dice to see if your answer for the conversation was compelling enough to encourage the other person to see your way of thinking. It could be persuasion, it could be intimidation, it could be deception, and when you roll the dice high enough, you usually get what you want. And I did roll high enough. I actually rolled a nat 20, a natural 20. So on the dice that you roll, these all have 20 sides, like the one I just rolled for Geeky Saga, for our topic today, and I rolled the d20 and it gave me 20. So I got absolutely what I want.

Speaker 1: 7:26

Asterion decided not to kill the person. We got more information out of him, and that sets up our quest a little different and it keeps Asterion in a morally good category, at least morally neutral. In a morally good category, at least morally neutral. I think that when we're playing video games and we're interacting intellectually with the video game or philosophically, we have a moral base. We're trying to be a good person, we're trying to be an evil person, we're role-playing different things. You're letting your mind become flexible and so there's different levels of learning, and this goes with Piaget's stages of cognitive development.

Speaker 1: 8:07

Thank you so much for the follow. I really appreciate it. By the way, I will acknowledge people during these little podcast episodes. That is part of the show, I'm perfectly happy with it and this is a new thing. The gaming persona has not always had these episodes. That is part of the show, I'm perfectly happy with it and this is a new thing. The gaming persona has not always had these episodes. But that cognitive flexibility being able to move from concrete thinking and then moving into abstract levels of thought Video games are great at encouraging abstract thinking because the problem solving process if it's concrete, you can use a strategy that's worked in a previous room.

Speaker 1: 8:40

But if it's concrete, you can use a strategy that's worked in a previous room. But if it's abstract, you have to identify a new way to solve the problem. So if you think about the little temples and shrines in the Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild and Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, you get these skills and abilities with link and thank you so much for the follow. I appreciate it. This is so great. Every new shrine that you get challenges you to use link skills, but in a new way and by repackaging these skills in new ways. You're learning the extent that you can push the engine of the game to do the physics and to solve the problems. You have to be very creative in order to succeed.

Speaker 1: 9:24

Shrine after shrine after shrine, in the Legend of Zelda, breath of the Wild, and even with all of that cognitive activity, hyrule is a sandbox for learning. You're constantly walking around, you're constantly getting damaged or even life ended by the monsters that are in the plains and fields of Hyrule, and you're learning what works and what doesn't work. Should I come back here when I have different weapons or different armor? Should I stay away from here completely? Because my play style is inconvenient for this area? And I really felt when I was playing these games that my play style was inconvenient for the way. Link is not very durable. I need better weapons, I need better armor. I want to max out my stats and being that weak is really challenging for me, which brings me into other games that have that sandbox learning potential.

Speaker 1: 10:16

Minecraft is amazing for this. It is. Basically, if you took sand tray therapy, removed all the limits and made it infinite, and then you put it into a digital world and used it for therapy, then you would have Minecraft. Okay, you can create and express anything that you want if you're patient enough and creative enough. In a game like that, it's all about building, and you can also play survival mode and things like that. I have to admit I'm not very well versed in how Minecraft works, because that's not my style of game, but one thing that the Twitch channel is doing for me during 2025 is, since we achieved partner and since I can plan out the things that I want the channel to be without necessarily worrying about numbers, I have been branching out to play different types of games, different genres. I'm not limiting myself to just one game. I'm playing actually five or six different games right now, and that's challenging as well. But gaming can improve education this way and this is the final idea here of what I wanted to give all of you to think about the strategies that we have to learn in video games are more than enough to be successful in an academic or work, vocational or relationship or family setting.

Speaker 1: 11:43

You can actually do a lot for yourself and your self-esteem and growth through video games. You can learn a lot about how to have conversations and support other people through empathy with video games. Think about it we just talked about Baldur's Gate and persuading someone to make a good choice. I love the Persona franchise because there are constantly this mechanism of say the right thing and the other person listening will get music notes that dance above their head. That is behavioral reinforcement you say something empathetic and supportive to another person and they will respond with positivity towards you. That's also a mechanic that happens in life. That is the exact dynamic that governs your friendships and relationships with other people.

Speaker 1: 12:25

You can learn in a safe space where you're allowed to mess up. You can learn in a Persona game. You can learn problem solving to get through temple rooms and unlock different areas in your map. That's a Zelda thing, that's also a Metroidvania thing. You can do so many things that will help you not give up and see things from a different angle, get outside of the box and really show what it is your brain is capable of. And you can refine those skills in video games, whether it's hard skills, like being able to learn, or soft skills like mental rotation things you can't actually see or tell about a person until they demonstrate it for you. Video games are filled with these opportunities and if you can use these to relax, to cope and de-stress. We can also use them to learn by new ideas, new intentions within ourselves and be able to elevate what we bring to the table philosophically, intellectually, academically and just. Our spirit can be unleashed by the way we play video games. So do I think video games can improve education. They absolutely can.

Speaker 1: 13:43

One of my first peer-reviewed articles was about how I used an app called Habitica to create a task list for myself every day and that task list would give my little wizard, my 8-bit wizard avatar, experience points and I could unlock new wizard robes and new hats. I could unlock new creatures, new dragons, new animals that can be ridden. I could unlock new familiars to float next to my shoulder. This app made it so. Every day I wanted to gain EXP and those tasks were not video game tasks. They were the tasks for me to become Dr Kaufman, to become, eventually, dr Gamology, to get that PhD and finish the program. And the research I was working on at the time was looking all at the personality styles of play for over 500 Star Wars, the Old Republic players.

Speaker 1: 14:37

I was looking at how we play MMORPGs and how that connects with our personality, and our personality is what creates our identity and how we interact with other people, other situations, other challenges, and the way that we prefer to rest and restore our energies in life, make our decisions and structure our life or not structure our life. Are you heavily planned or heavily spontaneous? Are you moderately planned? Moderately spontaneous? The way we play video games connects with who we are as people. So if, as people, we value education, then the way we play video games will enhance our approach to education. If, as people, we are excited by the way we connect with others and build relationships, video games will help you see a lot about yourself, the way you connect with others and facilitate growth in relationships. Video games will help you see a lot about yourself, the way you connect with others and facilitate growth in relationships. If you are excited by mastery and difficult challenges, video games will give you the difficult challenges and see how much suffering you're willing to overcome and problem solve in order to gain mastery. Video games are just a blank canvas for us to decide what we want to unlock for ourselves in life. It's not that video games take away or help develop education. It's that video games help us develop who we are as people.

Speaker 1: 15:57

The way that we relax, de-stress and cope with life is a reflection of what we wish our life had in it. Those things that restore us are the things that we long for, and this episode today is just a little talk. It's just the beginning, the tip of the iceberg. It's the very top part of the mountain that we're all climbing is really, how can video games help us through life? How do they build us up and make us better? How can I level up as a gamer to be the absolute best version of myself? That's what my book, the Gamer's Journey, is all about. It's about looking at the stages of life that we all live and the challenges we take on, and figuring out what stories echo this challenge and what heroes have helped me to believe in myself during all the tough parts of life.

Speaker 1: 17:01

Whether we're at the beginning and we're in our ordinary world and we just see a problem and want to be a part of the solution, or whether we have said my time is now, I'm going to do this, and you start the journey, you step out of that comfort zone and you separate from it and you initiate the process of growth where you can actually achieve the skills, find the treasures that will make you better, and these treasures are not literal treasures. They could be philosophical, they could be moralistic, they could be a worldview, they could be a set of skills, unlocking your talents and abilities, becoming better than you ever were. That's what leveling up is. We level up through gaining experience, just like we gain experience in our grade level for an entire year and move on to the next level. That's a real life level up. Just like we invest ourselves in our work and eventually we might get a promotion and a raise. That's a real life level up. Just like we connect with other people and we build that feeling of love over time that makes us want to live every single day of our life with that person. Maybe you connect with them in a lifelong way. That's a real life level up.

Speaker 1: 18:14

We practice leveling up in video games because we want to become better in that world. But the whole time, I think the lesson we're learning on a subconscious level is how can we level up in anything that we find valuable? So if you find education valuable and that growth and getting a degree and having a new professional ability so you can do different work and do different things to make an impact on your world, and that's how video games will improve your education is. It's unlocking your connection to valuing experience so you can level up and become the hero of your story. That's what my book is all about. That's what this whole thing that Dr Gamology is about. It's what the podcast the gaming persona is about and it's what Gameology is about. It's what the podcast the Gaming Persona is about and it's what SoloQuest is about.

Speaker 1: 19:05

So thank you so much for hanging with me on this mini episode. It's going to hit the podcast feed later in the week. I'm excited to give it to all of you. I may start doing something to release it early for Patreon subscribers and Twitch subscribers and YouTube members people who are paying for extra content. You can still get the episode from me live when I do it on Twitch, so that's the way to get it for free and get it in real time while it's happening.

Speaker 1: 19:42

I appreciate all your support and I think all of you are great. I hope you enjoyed it and I hope that what started with the D20 chat topic has grown into actual podcasting episodes. It was my first time doing one of these completely on my own. I'm excited. I just want to do more. This was really great. I appreciate all of you. Thank you for the people who put in the chat their support, their follows, their subs while I was talking. I appreciate all of you and we're going to do this again. I don't know how often. I'm testing out a lot of different things to see what we can do to make the world better destigmatize video games and help people who maybe don't play games to see it in a different way. But if you do play games, to be proud of what you do every single time you log in. So that's the message today Find that experience, enjoy it, appreciate it, let it fill you up and, as always, continue the journey, friends.