Speculative Futures
For this assignment, I chose to analyze an AI response and reflect on that, rather than going off of my own ideas. This is because part of what drew me to Educational Technology as a field is the potential of AI integration and the future of education amid the spike in generative AI. Below is my prompt and the response, and below that, I will analyze the response and expand upon it in the areas that I feel it is lacking.
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Prompt: In approximately 500 words, describe or narrate a scenario about a game found a few years into a future in which order is deliberately coordinated or imposed. Your description should address issues related to education and elicit feelings of happiness.
In the year 2032, a game called Harmony was discovered in schools across the world. It wasn’t a typical video game or board game, but rather a carefully designed educational simulation that blended technology, psychology, and social learning. The premise was simple yet profound: players entered a virtual city where order was deliberately coordinated, not through rigid rules alone, but through collective cooperation.
The city inside Harmony was alive with vibrant colors, bustling streets, and classrooms that floated like glass domes above the skyline. Every player was assigned a role—student, teacher, builder, or organizer—and together they had to maintain balance in the city. The twist was that the city thrived only when players respected the imposed order: schedules were synchronized, resources were shared fairly, and learning tasks were completed collaboratively. If one group neglected their duties, the city dimmed, its lights flickering until harmony was restored.
Education was at the heart of the game. Lessons weren’t delivered as lectures but as challenges woven into the city’s fabric. For example, a math puzzle might appear as a broken bridge that needed repair, requiring students to calculate the correct measurements. A history lesson could emerge as a mural missing key events, which players had to research and restore. Science appeared as gardens that only flourished when players applied principles of biology and chemistry. The imposed order ensured that no one could progress alone—knowledge had to be pooled, discussed, and applied collectively.
What made Harmony extraordinary was the happiness it generated. Students who once struggled with isolation or competition found joy in cooperation. The game rewarded not just correct answers but kindness, patience, and encouragement. A player who helped a teammate understand a concept earned “light tokens,” which illuminated the city’s skyline with dazzling patterns. These tokens weren’t about winning; they were about celebrating shared growth.
Teachers, too, found themselves smiling more often. Instead of enforcing discipline, they became guides within the simulation, watching as students naturally aligned with the city’s rhythm. The deliberate coordination of tasks meant classrooms ran smoothly, with fewer disruptions and more laughter. Even shy students blossomed, their voices amplified by the game’s design, which valued every contribution equally.
Outside the virtual domes, the effects rippled into real life. Schools reported higher attendance, improved grades, and stronger friendships. Parents noticed their children speaking excitedly about teamwork and fairness rather than grades alone. The imposed order of Harmony didn’t feel restrictive; it felt liberating, because it gave structure to creativity and ensured that no one was left behind.
In the evenings, when the city glowed brightest, students often lingered just to watch the skyline sparkle. That sight became a symbol of hope: proof that when order is coordinated with care, education can be both structured and joyful. Harmony wasn’t just a game—it was a vision of a future where learning and happiness were inseparable, and where the deliberate imposition of order created not rigidity, but freedom through unity.
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I found this AI response to be extremely theatrical, yet also quite a lot of nothing at all. I think it fixated more on the “narration” part of my request, and made a short story about the effects of this hypothetical game rather than really elaborating on the game itself. It latches onto the buzzwords of my prompt and tries to integrate them, but does so without any substance. “The twist was that the city thrived only when players respected the imposed order: schedules were synchronized, resources were shared fairly, and learning tasks were completed collaboratively.” I cannot imagine a more boring premise, honestly. That being said, AI is not known to design video games, nor does it have the soul to truly understand what makes a game fun, as it lacks the creative capabilities to do so (Boden, 2010). I find it very interesting that AI consistently phrases things like “it wasn’t only X, it was X and X,” and this comes up multiple times throughout the passage. Large language models often generate prose that is syntactically fluent but semantically shallow due to pattern imitation rather than genuine conceptual reasoning (Bender, Gebru, McMillan-Major & Shmitchell, 2021). I suppose I’m also biased because I think a game meant to create order while also being both educational and inducing happiness should foster that order within the group, rather than imposing it too strongly through game mechanics. I think a part of learning to cooperate with others is understanding what needs to be done rather than just following a set of instructions. Johnson, Johnson & Smith (1998) share that cooperative learning forms the heart of problem-based learning and is closely connected to collaborative learning. Collaborative learning emphasizes the kind of “natural learning” that emerges from students engaging with one another in less structured environments, where they shape their own learning processes rather than being guided by rigid instructional designs. However, they note that simply assigning students to groups and telling them to work together does not in and of itself result in cooperative efforts, hence why I think that the mechanically imposed roles suggested by the AI response would not create any meaningful cooperation among players.
If I were to take the spirit of this hypothetical game and run with it, I would probably make something more like a co-op gardening game or a kid-friendly resource management game. Something like Stardew Valley, but with intentionally combined educational elements. Stardew Valley is a farm management sim that can be played alone or with friends and requires players to manage a farm to the best of their abilities. When you have multiple farming partners, this often entails naturally coordinating roles to optimize efficiency and profit. The game includes various minigames and relationship-building mechanics, and I can imagine it being reimagined to intentionally teach key emotional lessons as well as educational minigames focused on mathematics or science. This would have the same open-world spirit of Harmony without being overly immersive to the point where it almost removes children from reality.
(Above: A screenshot of Stardew Valley’s cooperative farming sim)
I also find that, as a concept, Harmony sounds very overstimulating and would probably be more detrimental to youth than helpful. It reminds me of media in which people get trapped in virtual reality as players, and I find the premise very dystopian. I think Stardew Valley is generally not a visually overstimulating game, and its mechanics, at their core, are very simple. However, the larger your farm gets, the more management it needs. In a solo playthrough, this would likely look like automation or simply restricting the scope of your farm. However, in multiplayer mode, this encourages certain people to take on different responsibilities and also share in particularly demanding responsibilities as well.
Above is a viral tweet about Stardew Valley in which someone asks why the game is making a group of teenage girls scream orders to each other, and another responds that you run your farm like the Navy. It’s a humorous tweet, but I think it exemplifies my point about the nature of the game. It’s incredibly multifaceted, with many characters to interact with, areas to explore, overarching plotlines about capitalism and exploitation and of course, a farm you must manage. Unlike Harmony, however, it’s much simpler and less overwhelming, and the roles players take on are coordinated amongst themselves rather than imposed by the game mechanics. People are free to take on entirely separate roles, work together on the same roles, or neglect certain aspects altogether. Harmony’s mechanic about the city dimming if roles are not properly fulfilled creates high stakes for players to fit into confined social categories. In Stardew Valley, every playthrough simply looks different depending on what roles you and your friends take on. There is no objective failure marked by an obvious consequence.
Harmony could also be reduced to a much simpler city resource management game. Still, I think many games of that kind are typically very adult-focused because of the many variables to consider. Perhaps something like SimCity with more educational integration. I just really don’t like the idea of a virtual reality city imposing order through consequences, when I think that providing a foundation for players to coordinate among themselves offers more learning opportunities. Also the scale of Harmony has very dangerous implications with having strangers communicating on a large scale with school children.
Overall, I’m not very impressed with the AI response. It was a whole lot of nothing, with broad descriptions meant to appeal to the buzzwords in my prompt. While I can try to take it and run with it, the only foundation that it provides is the concept of a city management game, but I think it has to be reduced in scale and scope in order to be kid-friendly and provide positive real-life results. This exercise made me consider what makes an “educational” game as well as the limitations of AI when used to generate creative concepts that are meant to appeal to youth and people. While I think AI can be used as a tool in many cases, I think it lacks soul and a true understanding of what is good for and appeals to people outside of the statistical data it scrapes off the internet.
References
Bender, E. M., Gebru, T., McMillan-Major, A., & Shmitchell, S. (2021). On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? In Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT’21) (pp. 610-623). Association for Computing Machinery.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3442188.3445922
Boden, M. A. (2010, May 11). Can computer models help us to understand human creativity? National Humanities Center—On the Human. https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/on-the-human/2010/05/can-computer-models-help-us-to-understand-human-creativity/
Johnson, David & Johnson, Roger & Smith, Karl. (1998). Cooperative Learning Returns To College: What Evidence Is There That It Works?. Change. 30. 26-35. 10.1080/00091389809602629.