What Makes a Video Game “Good”? A Case Study with Secondary Students

Abstract

Video games are a central part of youth culture, yet their educational use often relies on adult assumptions about students’ gaming practices. This study explores lower secondary students’ video game preferences and the criteria they use to define what makes a video game “good”. A questionnaire was administered to 301 students aged 12–16 from two secondary schools in northern Spain. Results show a strong concentration of preferences around mainstream commercial games, especially Fortnite, FIFA and Roblox, as well as clear gender differences in preferred titles. Boys more frequently selected competitive, sports-oriented and action-based multiplayer games, whereas girls showed a broader distribution across social, casual, simulation and sandbox games. Students rated audiovisual and technical quality and gameplay higher than narrative, with boys assigning significantly greater importance to technical quality and gameplay than girls. These findings suggest that students’ video game literacy is shaped by mainstream gaming cultures, gendered forms of participation and unequal exposure to different kinds of games. The study provides a diagnostic basis for designing educational interventions with commercial and independent video games that expand students’ critical, cultural and interpretive understanding of the medium.