People in general are too easily satisfied. We have the temptation to stop short of excellence, and I hate that. I see it in my students and players often.

I teach a class called Evolution of Games where students recreate, modify and play many different games across a time line of civilizations and cultures. They also learn about the people who played the games originally and how gameplay and culture are intertwined, each influencing and reflecting the other. But sometimes students just want to check the box and move on, even in a class where they get to play games!

Recently they were to modify the game tic-tac-toe. Several pairs were convinced that their new version, conceived in 10 minutes, was sufficient to satisfy the the assignment. I tried to challenge them with questions:

• Are you sure it’s different?
• Is it challenging?
• Is it balanced or does the person going first win all the time?
• Is it fun?

I continued to hear back that the new version was good enough. I tried sharing (vaguely to avoid taking away creative options), what had been done in other classes. Finally I told them that the rest of the class period and the next would be spent playing tic-tac-toe. If their game was really ready then they would have a blast playing it and challenging others the entire time. If that didn’t sound like fun, then they had some work to do.

Finally, we turned the corner. I began to hear real play-testing going on. I heard:

• What if…
• That’s too big an advantage…
• Player one has won more than 75% of the games…
• How can we…
• That helps, but we still have…

But then I heard, “Who is the first president of the United States?”

“Come on guys. I said play tic-tac-toe. This isn’t a study hall for other classes.”

“Oh, we’re not studying. We’re playing Trivia Tic-Tac-Toe. We started using Trivia Crack, but we ran out of lives. So now we are making up our own questions. It’s Trivia Crack-Tac-Toe!”

How about you? How do you challenge students to excellence?