In Tracy Fullerton’s and my new book, The Well-Read Game: On Playing Thoughtfully, part of The MIT Press’ Playful Thinking series, we propose a new framework of interpretive play. This framework is a theory of player response, exploring the ephemeral and emotional responses that occur when people are in a state of play. English professor Laurence Musgrove helped illustrate the concept in the book, shared below. As illustrated, there is a relationship among the player, the game, and the response. In this conversation, players bring along emotional baggage, filled with their unique lived experiences.
Image: “What Happens When We Play.” Image by Laurence Musgrove from concepts by Tracy Fullerton and Matthew Farber. From The Well-Read Game: On Playing Thoughtfully (2025, The MIT Press).
The concept of a “well-read game” emerges from the convergence of literary, media, and play theories, drawing from Brian Upton’s situational game theory, Tracy Fullerton’s playcentric design theory, Bernie DeKoven’s well-played game philosophy, and Louise Rosenblatt’s reader-response theory. Upton and Fullerton shift game analysis away from viewing games as isolated systems and toward understanding the integrated experience between game and player—what Upton calls situational design, where “the nexus of play lies… inside the player’s mind.” Upton’s idea of anticipatory play emphasizes how players reflect on past events, imagine possibilities, and shape intentions beyond immediate gameplay. DeKoven, in his book The Well-Played Game, frames games as co-created experiences, where the joy of play transcends winning or losing. Rosenblatt similarly describes reading as a relationship between the reader and the text, an interpretive exchange grounded in personal response. Together, these theories suggest that games, like literature, are enriched through the player’s interpretive lens, inviting us to become more thoughtful, responsive readers of play.
Well-Read Games in Connected Learning Spaces
Our book includes practical approaches and strategies for cultivating well-read players, as well as spaces to unpack and share with like-minded others. In connected learning spaces, such as libraries and online communities, personal experiences can be discussed in book club-like settings. In schools, games can be paired with novels, then discussed in literature circles, which are student-led Socratic seminars. Henry David Thoreau’s classic book from 1854, Walden, or, Life in the Woods, can be taught alongside Fullerton’s Walden, a game EDU and its free curriculum. Discussing the aesthetic experiences in the game and then the book can help struggling readers make meaning about the 1854 text.
In the book Situational Game Design, game designer Brian Upton observes how mystery books are actually like games, as readers puzzle out clues in their heads. Children’s literature scholar Perry Nodelman goes further, stating that all novels are games, as the authors are the only ones who know the complete story. Readers are presented with smaller bits of narratives that they play with in their minds as stories unfold. When we read, we fill in narrative gaps as well as respond to characters, situations, and story details. This response occurs as we read fiction, watch television and cinema, and also when we play video games.
Player-Response in Practice
As an example, Venba is a narrative cooking puzzle game where you play as Venba, a mother from Tamil Nadu, who immigrated to Toronto with her family in the 1980s. Through cooking traditional South Indian dishes, you solve puzzles by interpreting partially faded recipes, experimenting with ingredients, and following cultural clues. The gameplay intertwines food prep with storytelling, exploring themes of family, identity, love, and generational bonds. Each meal becomes a way to reconnect with heritage and pass down memories.
Image: Screenshot from Venba. From https://venbagame.com/press/
In The Well-Read Game, there are several approaches to capturing, recording, and sometimes sharing experiences of well-read games. One method is to keep a journal, writing emotions and connections as play unfolds. For instance, when I played Venba, I wrote the following:
Between the cooking puzzles, a troubling narrative emerges: your husband, Paavalan, is struggling at work. What’s more, Kavin, your first-generation son, is having issues fitting in at school. In one heartbreaking vignette, I discover that Kavin was embarrassed by the lunch you packed for him. He’s been bringing it back from school each day uneaten. “I wonder if the other kids make fun of him for it, or if he’s embarrassed,” Venba worries. “These things bother me too,” Paavalan replies. “But we chose to bring him up here, not him. We did it because we thought he’d have a better life here.” My thoughts linger, and my mind wanders. I am reminded of the awkwardness I felt as a child when I brought matzah and gefilte fish to school during Passover. My friends ate ham sandwiches. I also remember the box of index cards with recipes from my late grandmother that I now have.
Like Rosenblatt’s reader-response theory, readers often respond differently and personally to how they interpret playable narratives. In response to the play on the screen, thoughts played in my mind, much like how I respond to characters and situations in novels and films. Venba also exemplifies how some video games, like books, poems, and other texts, can function as mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors—a metaphor by Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop used to describe how readers (and also players) may experience diverse narratives. I am not of South Indian descent; to me, the game was more of a window and sliding glass door to the South Asian diaspora. It invited me to witness and empathize with the challenges of assimilation, the preservation of heritage, and the intimate act of storytelling through cooking. But it also caused me to reflect on my childhood and my family dynamic.
How would a literature circle or book club look if the National Book Award-nominated young adult novel You Bring the Distant Near was paired with the narrative and experiences in Venba? Intertwined with similar thematic elements, in the book, a mother is concerned that the daughters she is raising in America are losing their Bengali identity and culture. Both the game and the book can be paired together as multimodal texts to deepen personal aesthetic responses amongst students, providing a mirror to some, a window and a sliding glass door to others.
When playing games, the systems of rules and constraints are learned, and players respond to that. But, like my journaled experience playing Venba, the experience is more than solving puzzles and clicking through interactive dialogue; it is a game that also evokes an aesthetic response.
Imagine how our world might change if our powerful responses to games were shared and celebrated as openly and thoughtfully as with books. The Well-Read Game proposes both a play framework for research and strategies for thoughtful practice. For more, check out the resources shared on the book’s website.
Matthew Farber, Ed.D. is Associate Professor of Educational Technology and Codirector of the Gaming SEL Lab at the University of Northern Colorado. He collaborated with Tracy Fullerton on lessons for Walden, a game EDU and with UNESCO MGIEP on several projects. He was a writer for the official learning companion for Ava DuVernay’s acclaimed film Origin. Most recently, The Well-Read Game: On Playing Thoughtfully, by Tracy Fullerton and Farber, was published in MIT Press’ Playful Thinking series. To learn more, please visit: https://www.thewellreadgame.com/
