Learning from Video Games
Using psychology and neuroscience to improve youth sports
Video games and gamification have renewed popularity among coaches, cycling back to a previous period of interest around 10-15 years ago. This week’s newsletter includes thoughts and ideas from several old blogs and articles I wrote at that time, some of which appeared in Free Play: A Decade of Writing on Youth Sports (2021).
Video games use basic psychology and neuroscience to motivate players to continue playing. In essence, the video-game design drives retention, which should be our primary goal as youth basketball coaches: Nobody wants to be a child’s last coach. The psychological frameworks are not so different from those discussed in coaching clinics and conferences — creating “just-right challenges”, self-determination theory (autonomy, competence, and relatedness), mastery focus, mistake response — but they are baked into video games, whereas we increasingly depend on (often inexperienced) coaches to create these environments in youth sports. Sports organizations and coaches should learn from video games rather than blaming or condemning them.
In a paper titled “Datorspelande som bildning och kultur” (Computer Gaming as Education and Culture), Carin Falkner wrote:
“There is a serious content in games and the person playing must disregard the seriousness of the outside world and enter the seriousness of the game...Playing has no serious or externally determined objectives. Playing entails a time of freedom from decision-making, and the decisions which must be made when playing the game involve no risks outside the game.”
Sport features the same serious content without outside risks. We played basketball so much in high school that we self-policed the student parking lot so we had courts to use during breaks, lunch, and after school, which meant late-arriving students parked out past a field rather than on the basketball courts next to classrooms. We kept score, argued, and occasionally fought, playing seriously to win the games, but once the bell sounded we sprinted to class and forgot the arguments and the final score. We played for the moment; there were no consequences, records kept, statistics compiled, videos recorded and posted to social media, scouting reports, or adult interference. Today, children’s play is predominantly organized, structured, and competitive, and includes the same stress and seriousness of everyday live. Children do not shoot on their own or play pickup games at the park; they work out with a trainer. Parents and coaches yell and demean players, referees, and opposing coaches; records are kept, trophies awarded, and everything is posted to social media. We have minimized play and autonomy in favor of structure, schedules, and coaching. Nobody has time for just playing anymore.
The most common reasons children quit sports reflect an over-seriousness or an inappropriate seriousness for the child’s age and maturity: Performance pressure, not enough playing time, boring drills, and negative coaching. Adult-initiated and controlled activities generally devolve toward these characteristics. Children play sports for the friendships, challenge, learning, and fun. Children turn toward video games to engage in more self-directed play when organized leagues ignore, limit, or eliminate these elements.
Video games are self-initiated and feature autonomy. Children choose when to start and stop. Parents do not stand over their sons or daughters telling them who to shoot or the direction to turn as occurs with parents and coaches in most youth sports leagues. Most games have multiple lives to sustain the game, and include multiple levels to challenge the gamer. The purpose is simple: Fun. Gamers play for the challenge, the diversion, and the social engagement, the same reasons many played or play sports. Organized sports lack autonomy, as many adults see youth sports as an avenue to teach children to follow directions and stay in line, literally and figuratively.
Levels create just-right challenges, as they get progressively harder as the player improves. Players struggle, learn, improve, and accomplish something by reaching the next level. The levels are meant to be hard, but not too hard as to seem impossible. They encourage players to continue playing to complete the level and achieve the goal. They provide both a goal to strive toward and a reward for the accomplishing the goal. Chris Hardwick wrote:
“Video games make you feel like you're actually doing something. Your brain processes the tiered game achievements as real-life achievements. Every time you get to the next level, hot jets of reward chemical coat your brain in a lathery foam, and it seems like you're actually accomplishing stuff" (Wired, November 2011).
Do youth sports provide the same rewards? Does playing or winning a game or a weekend tournament have the same effect? Martial arts use a belt system to create an external reward that fuels internal motivation. Ascending to the next belt classification means learning new skills and refining or perfecting already learned skills. Of course, earning a new belt often takes a year or more, as opposed to the potential immediacy of completing a level in a video game. Other sports lack this type of progression. Coaches progress drills based on time or team needs, not mastery. Players move to the next level based on age, not necessarily skill; players who do not move up with their age group often are cut — there is no new life as in a video game.
I like drills such as two-ball drills because the patterns grow increasingly more challenging, and players can see their improvement. They are not the same as levels in a video game, but provide some of the benefits. They are fun and motivating for a lot of players. They have less value, for me, with mature players or once players have mastered the many variations, and I question their transfer to game ball-handling. However, I utilize them for the fun, motivation, and feelings of accomplishment when a child learns something new.
In basketball, every level is the same. Children as young as five and six play five-vs-five full-court basketball on a court nearly the same size as a high-school court. Often, children as young as eight play on 10’ baskets and use size 6 or 7 basketballs. The game-structure remains largely the same from eight years old through high school; only in college (in most states) is a shot clock added to change the game, and the size of the courts generally increases slightly compared to most high-school courts. We created a tiered or level system in Playmakers League to capture these benefits of learning something in one level and progressing to something new in the next level. Every season should not look and feel exactly the same, especially as children start sports at earlier and earlier ages. There is no novelty, no new challenge, no new motivations.
The martial-arts belt system creates a clear objective for the instructor and the learner. The student must master specific skills to ascend to the next belt. Are there any skills a player must master in basketball to move to the next level? Are there clear objectives for each player and coach? No. Players reach the next level because of age, and after a certain age (high school), players make teams based on subjective evaluations. There is no specific criteria to work toward because every coach differs in his or her opinion of players, important skills, style of play, philosophy, and more. NBA teams draft players who shoot sub-50% from the free-throw line; there is no minimum skill requirement, just subjective evaluations of whether or not players can play.
In his TedX talk, Tom Chatfield described seven ways video game designers engage players through an understanding of psychology and neuroscience:
Experience bars measuring progress
Multiple long and short term aims
Rewards for effort (credit for trying; don’t punish mistakes)
Rapid, frequent clear feedback
An element of uncertainty - 25%
Windows of enhanced attention
Other people
Many of these center around competence. The experience bar is not unlike the belt system in martial arts. The belts signify progress and an ascension to a new level. Few sports leagues have the same type of progressive system. Youth sports should maintain long and short-term aims; the short term could be the immediate game, and the long-term the entire season, or the short-term could be the immediate season, and the long-term could be the player’s career. Instead, attention is largely short term.
Many coaches (and parents) yell and scream or substitute players after mistakes. Do children try to miss shots? Of course not. Do they not want to make their free throws? Of course they do. What's the problem? The problem, generally, is the player is not good enough yet to make the shot consistently. The player is learning, and part of learning is making mistakes. When mistakes lead to harassment (by a coach, player, or parent), players are reluctant to try new things, which stagnates improvement and decreases participation. We should reward the effort.
Sports often provide rapid and clear feedback like video games: A missed shot is clear; a pass out of bounds is clear. Other feedback is not as clear; when the opponent tips in a missed shot at the buzzer to win a playoff game, how do we fix the error? Often, coaches misidentify the cause or their feedback is unclear: Just play harder! How do players fix a mistake when the answer is always “harder” or “more”?
Uncertainty or an element of surprise adds novelty. For example, when I coached in Europe, we played the same teams repeatedly, but then we travelled every other month or so to play in a European competition. Most of the games were known, scheduled in advance, against roughly the same clubs every year (like most youth, high-school, and college leagues/conferences), but the other games added novelty: New opposition, travel, new cities, new gyms, and more.
When I talk to former players about their college experiences, one of the biggest and most consistent criticisms is the boring and repetitive practices: We do the same thing every day! Certain things are important: You probably want to practice shooting and defense in every practice. However, is 15 minutes of noncompetitive four-vs-four shell drill (see Fake Fundamentals: Volume 3) productive? Are players improving? Can you change the drill or add something each day to add a new challenge or some novelty?
In sports, playoffs or important games can provide that sense of enhanced attention. Teams play and practice for a period of time, and then certain games require more, whether playing better opposition or in the postseason.
Certain drills can elicit enhanced attention too whether through the fun or the challenge. I used form shooting to test and evaluate focus and concentration when I trained players. Players made three shots in a row from three or more spots, depending on the player. Better and older shooters made three in a row at five or six spots, with the fifth spot at the top of the key; they made 15 or 18 shots in a row just to begin their workouts. Younger or less experienced players made three in a row and moved to the next spot, but they did not start over after a miss; once they completed a level, they never returned. Coaches and parents complain about children’s lack of attention, but players would sustain concentration and effort to complete this task, even when it took 15-20 minutes. I created a just right challenge for each player that was hard enough to be interesting, but not so hard as to feel impossible.
The social component of gaming should be the easiest to replicate in youth sports, but often is ignored and trivialized by coaches. Sports are a social activity. Many children play sports to be with or make friends. I coached with one woman who gave the team 10 minutes to stretch at the beginning of practice, and she did not care about the stretching. She used the time as a buffer between life and practice for the players to catch up, gossip, and connect before starting practice for real. Is that such a bad thing? Is wasting time always wasting time? Efficiency is not the holy grail; we play sports and coach people; we are not producing parts on an assembly line. If we acknowledge sports are a social activity for many if not most team-sport athletes, why stubbornly attempt to minimize opportunities for children to connect?
The true irony is that as society gamifies, youth sport appears to be one of the last industries to embrace these ideas. Today, video games, social networking, smart phones, texting, and more provide more engaging environments than youth sports. They have used psychology and neuroscience to capture their audience’s attention. Youth sport needs to learn and advance rather than dismissing video games.
Winning rarely determines a child’s enjoyment. Children are used to multiple lives; they know they have another game tomorrow or next week. Most pre-teens want to master something new more than they care about winning or losing. Would different skill challenges provide a mastery challenge to engage players?What if coaches asked players to plan practice or drills? What if children could decide when to end a drill or practice activity? Coaches need to embrace psychology and neuroscience to enhance participation for children in sports and to increase motivation to continue participating, learning, making mistakes, and playing.
To learn more about Playmakers League, please visit: https://www.playmakersleague.com. To arrange a camp or clinic this summer, email me through this newsletter. Below is an old presentation on sports psychology for coaches: