The Flawed Game as a Better Teacher: Serious Games, Disaster Risk, and Critical Play

Abstract

Serious games are typically judged by their realism and engagement, then adopted when they pass. This article challenges that instinct. Drawing on geography teacher trainees' reflections on Stop Disasters, the United Nations disaster-risk-reduction simulation, it argues that a serious game's pedagogical value lies less in its fidelity than in the critical inquiry it provokes, and that its simplifications are often where the most powerful geographical learning begins. Teacher trainees' sharpest insights surfaced precisely where the game broke, as they recovered a central tenet of disaster studies: that hazards become disasters only through exposure and vulnerability. Thus, this paper reframes the teacher's task from adoption to interrogation, and sets out a four-move model (i.e., play—project—interrogate—reposition), in which learning depends on deliberate teacher framing rather than on the software itself. Handled critically, the flawed game could become the better teacher.