No player left behind: exploring the use of collaborative talk in a playfixing activity

In this study, we describe an activity in which participants play and fix broken games–tabletop games with ambiguous rules or mechanics–through the use of collaborative talk (CT). The playfixing activity provides a useful context for examining how participants think together and collectively build understanding through redesigning an incomplete game. We qualitatively analysed a small group of participants’ talk as they playfixed a broken game, Pollutaplop. We examined their utterances through a framework of CT strands that included participating, understanding, and managing. Findings suggest the majority (54%) of participants’ talk was collaboratively oriented and served mostly to manage game play and redesign. Moreover, participants used different personal pronouns to shift perspectives in collectively understanding the task. This study contributes to the design of future learning experiences that invite the use of CT and foster the development of abilities to co-design on complex tasks.