Gone Home: A Video Game as a Tool for Teaching Critical Thinking Skills
A screen grab of a clue found in the Gone Home trailer.
Educators are held responsible for several aspects of English-language arts competency with their students: critical thinking, writing, assessing narrative structures, thinking about how characters develop and how setting affects character. Teachers have a variety of vehicles for conveying those lessons, but a new tool has emerged for learning with digital games.
Books have a linear format; films have an arc; art has a focal point; stanzas in a poem are read in order. But a recently published game called “Gone Home” is testing the traditional progression of learning by flattening the story. Players have questioned whether it qualifies as a game since it doesn’t include traditional points, prizes and leveling up (the game is self-titled as “a story exploration video game”). Critics have praised “Gone Home” as a new way of storytelling, and it’s beginning to make its way into the classroom, as a viable substitute for traditional text. The game is non-linear and players have a great deal of agency for filling in the gaps to arrive at their conclusions.*
Solving a Mystery
The game begins with a typical opening of suspense and mystery. The main character, Kaitlin “Katie” Greenbriar, comes home on a dark and stormy night to her family’s house in Oregon after a year abroad. She discovers that no one is home, and it appears her family has left in a hurry. Signs of the suspended life appear in notes, food in the refrigerator, messages on an answering machine — and all of those pieces serve as clues for discovering what happened to Katie’s family.
