Episode 158 Meghan Gardner on Gamification for Emotional Engagement
Meghan Gardner on Gamification for Emotional Engagement
Episode Summary
This episode of Experience Points features transformative design expert Meghan Gardner, who shares how gamification can create emotionally engaging, healing, and educational experiences. Meghan explains how structured play and role-playing; using techniques like “alibi” and safety signals—help learners explore tough topics while feeling safe and in control. She highlights the importance of session zero and post-game debriefs in turning gameplay into meaningful, lasting transformation. Meghan also unpacks how emotional engagement boosts memory and behavior change, sharing a moving example of a game that led young adults to initiate real-life end-of-life conversations with their families. Drawing on her work with the Smithsonian, Royal Caribbean, and Harvard, Meghan offers practical strategies for educators and designers looking to use games as tools for empathy, connection, and growth.
Meghan Gardner
Meghan has been working at the intersection of education, games, and stories for the purpose of creating transformative games and experiences that address trauma, educate, and build bridges between people since 1999. She is the founder of Guardian Adventures which provides consultation and development of innovative and educational online and live classes using games and stories to create emotionally immersive and culturally appropriate experiences. Meghan is also a story-based adventure designer and staff trainer for Royal Caribbean and a program developer for the Smithsonian. In 2025, Meghan was a guest speaker at the 80th United Nations General Assembly addressing games as a mental health intervention. As an annual visiting lecturer and expert panelist at Harvard Graduate School of Education, and an international presenter and speaker on the topics of Transformative Experiences in Education and Games, Meghan has presented to 10s of thousands of people over the years.
(LinkedIn): https://www.linkedin.com/in/guardup/
(YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/@Guardup
(Website): https://www.guardup.com
Dave Eng:
Hi, and welcome to Experience Points by University XP. On Experience Points, we explore different ways we can learn from games. I'm your host Dave Eng from games-based Learning by University XP. Find out more by going to www.universityxp.com
On today's episode, we'll learn from Meghan Gardner. Meghan is a pioneer at the crossroads of education, storytelling, and game design. Since 1999, she's been crafting transformative experiences that heal, educate, and connect.
She's the founder of Guardian Adventures, a consultant for the Smithsonian, a designer for Royal Caribbean, and in 2025, she even spoke at the United Nations on games as a mental health tool. From Harvard lectures to global stages, Meghan's work is reshaping how we learn and grow through play. Meghan, welcome to the show.
Meghan Gardner:
Thank you, Dave, and thanks for the invitation to be here. I've been following your work around educational games for quite a while.
Dave Eng:
Great. Thank you, Meghan. I'm glad to have you on the show. I was also glad to have your proposal, your session at the Games-based Learning virtual Conference in the past, and I'm really excited to jump into your work.
The first question I want to ask you is just the whole aspect about healing through play. I know that you've worked at the intersection of many different areas, specifically education, storytelling, and trauma recovery. In your opinion, how do games create safe emotional spaces for healing and growth?
Meghan Gardner:
Oh, that's a good question.
I see games as essentially structured play. That's a very short, concise definition, I know, but there's so many different forms of games that I found that that's pretty much the most succinct way of describing it. Within that structure, we can create safe exploration by creating guidelines for what's acceptable for the player to explore.
In those guidelines, of course, there are ways for them to withdraw from the experience if it becomes overwhelming. Particularly in role-playing games, we have the power of something called alibi, which is when I am role-playing a character, I actually dare to say and do things that I, Meghan, would not dare to say and do. That's pretty exciting when you're exploring healing, or cultural bridge-building, or other challenging topics, because it's really fascinating.
When I lean into that alibi, I am literally exploring feelings that I may not be prepared to explore because I can blame it on my character. I can withdraw at any moment, and I can go in a different direction, but if anyone challenges me, I simply say, well, that's my character. Because of that, it makes a space for me more willing to step outside my comfort zone.
Then the structure creates a space so that if I'm a little bit too far outside my comfort zone, I have a way to bring it back closer to it.
Dave Eng:
Thanks, Meghan. These are one of those aspects that I think about regularly with games, this whole aspect that you said it before, with structured play.
When we're playing a game, we are playing usually as someone other than ourselves. My question, though, is I feel like with games and with a lot of players in general, we're generally comfortable with the fact that, okay, it's a game, we're playing as someone who's not ourselves. But when you use it for therapeutic or applied use, do you ever run into any challenges where you have to talk to your participant, your learner, like this is a game, you don't have to act the same way you would do in the real world, you can do something different? How do you have that conversation with your players?
Meghan Gardner:
Yeah, well, when we are really looking for a transformative experience, then there's an invitation.
The invitation is very clear that we don't want you to be too far outside your comfort zone, but we do ideally want at least one foot outside the comfort zone. And so embracing a character can allow you to do that. There's a lot of warm ups we can do.
So we break up our games for a 20 minute game, I will actually set aside a full hour, because we workshop it in advance, we do what's called a session zero, which is setting up all your safety mechanics. And then we have time afterwards for our debrief, which is to kind of de-role and talk about what your character did in the third person, so that you can help process because this is my little stump I'm going to get on for a moment. People think that games are educational, and a really well designed game can be kind of educational.
It's the debrief afterwards, where all the processing and the comprehension and the application is at power and at work. And so I go to conferences on occasion, and it hurts my teeth, because I really want to stick up my hand and go, y'all are expecting games to work miracles when you're not talking about the debrief or the framing of the game. My big mantra is frame your game, make sure that you are doing the workshop ahead of time, having the game experience, and then having the debrief afterwards, so that you can then create not just a safe experience, but a transformative experience.
Dave Eng:
All right. Well, thank you, Meghan. I know that that's an aspect that I really talk about myself, specifically with the debrief and not exclusively relying on the game as a teaching tool, but rather as another form of media that you would use in a learning environment, but also situating it, contextualizing it, and I think also discussing it afterwards is very important.
And that leads into my second question, which is overall emotion and how that fuels learning. So can you discuss what role does emotional engagement play in retention and comprehension, and how can educators tap into that without overwhelming the learners overall?
Meghan Gardner:
Well, there's a lot of science and research that backs up how emotional engagement applies to memory and desire for application. And I would add that, so I make a very specific, my expertise is transformative game design, which is different from game design, even educational game design, because the objective of transformative game design is to have the game result in a prolonged and sustained change of behavior or perspective.
So it's, and I would add measurable. I am a bit of a data nerd, I love doing quantitative data, I'm constantly looking for surveys that can help capture, did this game create a sustained, and not just doing it right after the game, but three months, six months, sending out surveys and getting responses on whether or not the game actually inspired a change of behavior or perspective. And so, so a lot of that is around the emotional engagement, you asked, how do you do this in a way that makes it safe? That comes from what we call session zero, which is anytime you're going to be in a highly emotionally engaged game, and that's especially in role playing games where I have that freedom to step way outside my comfort zone.
You want to first preface the game with a workshop or a session zero, which describes here are the gestures that we can make or the words that we can give that will let everyone else know this is getting out of hand for me and I need to take a step back. Now, in a visual environment, that might be that, for example, let me say that I'm role playing a character, you're role playing a character, and my character is yelling at your character, and I want to check in with you, Dave, to see if you're okay. So while we're looking at each other and all worked up, and our characters all worked up, I'm going to give you a thumbs up, which I'm asking you, are you okay? And your response will either be a thumbs up, like, yeah, this is great, let's keep going, without saying anything, without breaking character, or you're going to put a thumb to side.
And that tells me, ooh, he's getting a little uncomfortable. So I'm going to tone this down. Or you put a thumbs down, and I immediately stop that engagement, I don't even have to break character, I can just go whatever and walk away.
That gives you the space to disengage. So we have these signals. There's a variety of other many, many other types of signals that different games will use.
But I like to keep them very simple. And that's why I really like the thumbs up one. But something that just is a very clear indicator that that any player can give at any moment that says, I need to step away, or let's just tone this down a little bit.
And of course, everyone has the right to just stop the engagement. And what we call calibrate or recalibrate in that instance, because ahead of the game, we're calibrating with each other. So I'm telling you, these are the topics I'm not comfortable covering, for example, personally, for Meghan, me, I will not be involved in a game with child abuse and animal abuse.
There are a host of other things, really edgy topics, I'm like, but not those two things. So and I and I marked that off. And there's a list of questions that people can go through to calibrate with each other.
And we all agree that whatever's marked off on the list of not to be covered or to be covered in only a specific manner, like it's okay to mention it, but not act it out. So so those that calibration moment is ahead of the game, but it's also possible to calibrate in the game, which can help create a sense of control that I can I can control this type of interaction and make it safe, safe for me.
Dave Eng:
I really like this aspect, Meghan, of the fact that you may be role playing, but there's still an opportunity for you to speak, you know, like, I would say, quote, unquote, outside the game to just, you know, like temperature check, like, is this okay with you? Should we keep going? You know, do I need to tone it back down a little bit without really, like, like you said, breaking character, which I think is really important to the immersive aspect of it.
So I appreciate that response. But but I also want to ask, you know, you said you're a data nerd, and you really like seeing, you know, like measuring the behavioral change. So as an aside, besides surveys, like, what other approaches do you take in order to make sure that like, you know, your intervention, the use of the game has had like a prolonged change? Because I think that working with a lot of organizations, they're looking at, you know, the return on investment.
And if this is something that they really want to invest in, how do you, like, what is your what is your philosophy? And how is your approach to determine if the games-based intervention has actually worked and been worth it?
Meghan Gardner:
Well, I'm gonna have to say the only way to ensure it is to actually have the testimonial or the the actual survey response to prove it. I mean, I could tell you all day long, it looked like it was a success, but it's three months, six months later, did that game really felt the the changes that the player talked about in the debrief? Were they sustained? And I don't mean to say that you have to move that needle massively. Most in fact, most transformations are micro needle changes, they're tiny little changes.
But the cool thing is that with repetition, those micro changes add up. So with cultural bridge building, we may not have the two cultures, the two people from different cultures suddenly be best friends. And that's okay.
But if we've moved the needle enough that they're now listening to each other, instead of fighting each other, they're now pushing the pause button on their judgment to hear the other person out, we've made a really big change. And that may come the third time they play the game or the fourth time. But that repetition, going back and revisiting the topic from different angles, but allowing them the opportunity to connect with each other.
And look for those moments where there's a sustained change of at least a small amount of a shift in perspective. And varying people, different people have varying degrees of openness to change. Some people are less open to change and other people are much more open to it.
And so you're going to get more of those micro needle changes on the people who are less open to change. And you're going to get much bigger needle changes movement on the people who are open to change.
Dave Eng:
Right. And I think that from a macro perspective, that's very important to consider and to measure. But my third and last question here, and something that I think would be really impactful for the listeners is that overall breakthroughs and stories. So is there a moment when a participant in one of your programs had a breakthrough experience through a game or story? Because I think it's important to look at the experience from a macro level, but from an individual perspective, is there any individual participant that had that breakthrough experience?
Meghan Gardner:
Well, I'd have to say probably my proudest achievement was I created a game.
I decided for part of my master's degrees in transformative game design. And one of the games I designed, I decided to choose the most difficult topic I could possibly choose for a game to tackle and looking for change of behavior, which was to inspire ages 20 to 30 year olds to talk about end of life directives with their parents, their loved ones. Now, considering that 20 to 30 something year olds don't talk about end of life directives, you know, you take if you if you would take a group of them, put them in the room and ask them how many have done that you might get one person who's raised a hand and it's usually because the parent brought it up.
So I created a game that a nano LARP, a very short live action role playing game, ran it in one hour, ran it for two different groups. And it was there was a little wider demographic, but I was really trying to capture the 20 to 30 year olds. And in the survey responses after the game was very emotional.
I got in fact, at the end, there was one gentleman who said that he got more out of 10 minutes in my game than he did out of three months of therapy, talking about the death of his dad. That was pretty profound. But in the end, I sent out the surveys.
So what I was looking for was did the game actually succeed in getting them to talk to their loved ones about their end of life about end of life directives. And 20 respondents sent back responses, 18 of them had end of life discussions with their loved ones. That's way beyond what I expect.
I was hoping for 25% because it's such a tough time. 18 out of 20. Now here's the coolest thing though, Dave, it wasn't necessarily play the playing the game gave them the sense of urgency.
But what caused them to actually have that discussion was the game itself became the alibi. They went to talk to their loved ones and they said, you're not going to believe this crazy game I played. And they go on to talk about how they had to role play a character who had to make this really difficult decision about unplugging their mom from life support.
And so they went to the left ones and they're talking like, and I had to do this and I had to role play this character. And then inevitably, if they're talking to their parents, the parents go, so what did you decide? And they're like, no, no, no, I was playing a character. But then what that does is it opens the door to a discussion because the parents will often then go, so well, just so you know, this is what I would want.
And they end up having that. So they didn't have to sit down with their parents and go, let's talk about you dying. They were instead able to talk about a game.
They played right. Game becomes the inspiration for the discussion, which ends up causing the transformative impact of yes, they had an end of life. So now there's 18 people and the remaining two said they plan on doing it within three months.
Dave Eng:
Wow. That's a really powerful story, Meghan. It was, I was so pleased with it.
So, and it was just, it's such a clear binary result. Did you have the discussion? Did you not have the discussion?
Meghan Gardner:
18 out of 20 did. And it's very difficult. I mean, you know, talking, especially for you said the target demographic was 20 to 30 year olds or 18 to 20 year olds, 13 to 20 to 30 year olds, because they, they're getting, their parents are beginning to age. And, and it's really good to have this. I mean, I mean, so outside of my day job, I work in a hospice, I volunteer in hospice.
So I sit with people who are actively dying, and I see the toll it takes on the family who have not had this discussion. And in fact, this game was inspired because a year, a year and a half ago, I had to unplug my sister from life support. And I had to sign off on the paperwork to do that.
And thankfully, I had the skill to help talk to her wife and take her through the process and explain the options to her and talk to the medical staff and, and I got and everybody was on board and on the decision. So really was not that difficult. But I think not everybody has somebody who has this amount of years of experience working in what we call the death industry.
And, and to walk them through it. So I was like, you know, this would have all been so much easier if there had been a discussion beforehand. And so this was, this was kind of the inspiration for me to make a game to help ensure that other people don't have to face this situation. And now I've got 18 people out there in the world who won't have to face that situation.
Dave Eng:
Exactly. Wow, powerful and moving story, Meghan, I appreciate that.
I think that when I was reading about this, in the past, just about having these kinds of conversations with your parents and end of life care, one of the quotations that kind of stuck with me was, you know, like you were speaking to a loved one that happens to be on life support, and you're not exactly sure if they have the cognition to see and hear you is just using the phrase, like, you know, like, I love you, I forgive you. And some aspect of like, we'll be okay, or it's okay to go. And I think that that was a really nice summary for me of the fact that like, you know, someone, someone that you love dearly someone who means a lot to you, it's time for them to pass.
And, you know, that transition can be difficult, and you don't really know what it's like from their perspective. But I think being able to articulate it from your perspective is just as important.
Meghan Gardner:
Yeah, yeah, it's it's a tough topic. So of course, my for my second game, I chose shame. Let's go do another tough topic. What was the name of the game, your nano LARP about end of life directives? So that's called dying debate.
Yeah, and if people want it, they can reach out to me, I'll give you my contact information at the end. And I can send it to him. It's like just a few pages long.
The LARP itself is 20 minutes. But I really encourage everyone to go through the proper framing because it is an emotionally challenging game to play. And and the debrief is what makes it work.
Because I explained to people in the debrief. So one thing that's important, a little important tidbit is don't surprise your players with with something, but frame them ahead of time, say, this is what we're going to cover. And this is what may you may feel like, and this is what may happen.
And then the end, we're gonna have a debrief. And we're going to talk about this. And so I lay it all out ahead of time.
So there's no surprises. Trust me, it's going to be emotional enough. They don't need surprises.
In the end, I tell them, okay, the way to talk to your loved ones about end of life experience is to blame the game. So I'm talking about framing the game. Now I'm talking about playing the game.
You're just gonna go and you're gonna talk to them and say, you're not gonna believe this game I played, right? And then describe it to them. And, and, and just nudge it. If it doesn't happen, naturally, just give it a little nudge, and it will open up a discussion.
Right? Thank you. It's amazing games have such an ability to open up discussion where nothing else can.
Dave Eng:
Right? Yeah, I think that overall, they're transformative and powerful experiences specifically for the different, difficult aspects that you shared with us today.
So I appreciate it. So Meghan, thanks for joining us today. Where can people go to find out more about you and your work online?
Meghan Gardner:
Well, they can go over to my website, which is guardup.com. And they can also find me on LinkedIn, linkedin.com/guardup
Dave Eng:
All right. Thank you, Meghan. I will also include all those links in the description or show notes.
So thanks for joining us. Excellent. Thank you.
I hope you found this episode useful. If you'd like to learn more than a great place to start is with my free course on gamification. You can sign up for it at www.universityxp.com/gamification.
You can also get a full transcript of this episode including links to references in the description or show notes. So thanks for joining us. Again, I'm your host Dave Eng from games-based learning by University XP.
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Cite this Episode
Eng, D. (Host). (2026, February 22). Meghan Gardner on Gamification for Emotional Engagement. (No. 158) [Audio podcast episode]. Experience Points. University XP. https://www.universityxp.com/podcast/158
Internal Ref: UXPLSDUNG7GY
References
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