The central idea of teaching with games, both in and out of the classroom, is to use the time spent in the classroom or doing homework to create a laboratory environment — an environment in which experiments can be made, hypotheses formulated, and new and better experiments planned. Games help to create this laboratory feeling by providing objectives and procedures. They also encourage imaginative freedom to experiment with alternative solutions, while at the same time offering a realistic set of constraints on less practical responses to problems. The students can learn not only by observing the results of games, but also by playing and indeed by designing them.
