From Panic to Partnership: Dr Rachel Kowert on Raising Good Gamers

By Jude Ower

Ahead of the launch of Raising Good Gamers: What Families Need to Know About Video Games and Well-Being at the 2026 Games for Change Festival in New York, I sat down with the report's author, Games for Change Research Director Dr Rachel Kowert. 

The whitepaper marks the next phase of Raising Good Gamers, a Games for Change program supported by Tencent Games. The program provides families with practical tools and resources to help them navigate video gaming at home with more confidence. Workshops will launch across the U.S. and the U.K. this September, with live online webinars also becoming available.

Dr Kowert describes how decades-old fears around addiction, violence and mental health continue to dominate parents’ concerns despite extensive research showing video games can support wellbeing, creativity, social connection and emotional resilience.

The whitepaper includes new sentiment analysis conducted by FTI Consulting across 200,000 media articles and social media posts about video gaming. What they found was parents seeking information online were five times more likely to encounter negative messages about video gaming than positive ones.

This interview was recorded ahead of the public launch of the Raising Good Gamers whitepaper at the Games For Change Festival in New York. It has been edited and condensed from the original Good Game Club podcast for length and clarity.

What led you into researching games and wellbeing?

It was a windy path. It's definitely not one I sought out when I first went to school. I went to school to become a therapist, and I wanted to be one for a long time.

As I was in my schooling doing that, there were a lot of parents coming to me asking about the impact of online games. So, this was peak World of Warcraft era, 2007, 2008. After the third, fourth, fifth set of parents, I was like, "Are these games doing something that my child will not recover from?"

I selfishly thought of all of the hours I was spending playing World of Warcraft and thought maybe someone should look into that and see if that's the case.  So, I pivoted to a research-based career looking at the uses and effects of games.

When you think about gaming today, what's still most misunderstood?

If I had to conceptualise it into a podcast soundbite, it's that games are play, and play is foundational to a life worth living.

Games are often seen as something that's separate, or something that's frivolous. Or as you come out of early childhood, it's no longer important. But it is central to a happy and long life.

Why do you think we've come to see play that way?

There's a great quote that I love from Brian Sutton-Smith, who was a researcher in play studies. He says, "The opposite of play isn't work. The opposite of play is depression."

We see the opposite of play as work. It's like you get to a certain age and now you don't play anymore. That's frivolous and that's for children. And now we work.  Societally we've just all kind of accepted that.

But we know - especially in the research space - that we need to play our entire lives, and we do play our entire lives. But digital games, for some reason, are seen as not central to that conversation.

We've seen similar fears around books, television and music. Do you think we'll eventually move past games too?

I would like to think so.  I often say when we talk about moral panics - which is what you're talking about, these cycles of fear of new technology - we will see this one pass about video games when VR becomes more affordable and ubiquitous, because then we would have moved to a new technology and people would have been like, "Ah, it's that technology. That's the problem."

But what's really unique about where we're stuck with games is that the moral panic about games has been 50 years or more, and we haven't yet quite moved past it.

Why has fear around gaming lasted for so long?

There's a few reasons.  If we start at the very human psychology level, we are wired for worry. Humans have a negativity bias, which is just our psychological tendency to put more importance on, and look for, things that elicit negative emotions - fear, for instance, being one.  So, the way that manifests in games is if you see one bad, scary headline about games, you're going to attune to that and remember that, and not even pay attention to the ten good ones that came before it or after it.

We have that, and you combine that with the fact that humans want a simple solution to a complex problem.  So, you get a headline that says someone who played video games did something horrible, and instead of thinking of anything in between that could have also led to that outcome, you say, "Ah, it's the games."

Has fear-mongering online made that worse?

Yes. The more extreme your view and the more negative your view, the more amplification that gets.  We've seen it in the algorithms across social platforms, and we talk about it actually in the research and the whitepaper that's coming out.

Tell us about that research.

FTI Consulting did some research and they examined around 200,000 media articles and social media posts across 15 countries and seven languages over the period of a year.  What they found was parents seeking information online were five times more likely to encounter negative messages about video gaming than positive ones.

So, no wonder we're afraid of games, right?  We're seeing this being amplified on our feeds. We're seeing it, and we're also attuned to pay attention to it, which in and of itself isn't a bad thing. Evolutionarily, we want to survive. We want to be attuned to threats.

But it is a problem when we think about the 50 years of research we have that are showing us what games are and what they're not.  What people often are afraid of when it comes to games is not what's supported by the research as something we should necessarily be afraid of.

Online and offline is a false dichotomy, and what is happening in these digital playgrounds does impact the way we see and interact with the world around us. And if we have these narratives that are skewed towards fear, we should acknowledge them – [but] we also have to acknowledge the other side, which is the beautiful, positive things that are coming out of these spaces.

The whitepaper is called Raising Good Gamers: What Families Need to Know About Video Games and Well-Being. What are its goals and themes?

The goal of the whitepaper is really to bring people from panic to partnership.  If we sit in the panic stage, that's not productive for anyone. Our kids are in these spaces, and we need to understand them so we can help them navigate them.

We acknowledge the panic [in the whitepaper], we acknowledge it’s very understandable to worry about your children, we should all be worried; but we’re not necessarily worried about the right things.  The research from FTI Consulting is central to it, we talk about what we found and why we amplify news stories that are scary.  And then we talk about their concerns. So, the primary concerns that the research showed that parents are searching for are addiction, violence, and mental health.  If I had given this interview in the nineties, it would have been the same three.  But we know so much more now.

The centre of the paper I call the pivot.  Let’s talk about the concern.  I’m concerned about game addiction. Okay, let’s pivot to what that really means.  I’m concerned about over-use.  How do we address that?  What do we know, what should we be concerned about and how do we address it?  And at the end there are some really practical steps about how to take that information forward into a partnership conversation with your children.

The whitepaper is not just written for parents, why was that important?

Parents are the primary audience but it’s also for industry members and policy makers, because those are the three groups that are decision makers in this space.  

Parents are making decisions at the dinner table.  Industry professionals are making decisions at the design table, and policy makers are making decisions at tables where laws are being drafted and passed. We are in a real era of regulation, where games are on the table of these conversations.

So, it’s really important that we have a shared language and we are on the same page about what we know and what we don’t know.

Why is the time for the research paper now?

Because the conversation has evolved.  It used to only be around the dinner table.  But now we’re seeing these conversations around the design table in studios, we’re seeing them around the table where laws are being drafted, and enacted; so now is the time when we should all get on the same page about what we are talking about, what information do we need to make the most informed decision.

Across the board, if you look at the research, the good outweighs the bad. Without question.  Which is not often the position that lawmakers are coming from, because they see the scary headlines and it’s not their area of expertise.  They don’t necessarily have a deep knowledge of this space.  But seeing the legislation move towards flat out banning really worries me because of all the good that games are bringing into the world, because of all the proactive measures we know studios are making to make their games safer and better.

You say that context matters more than content. What do you mean by that?

Parental concerns are almost always focused on content.  But where the concerns really lie for me as a researcher is in the context. That is a totally different shift in how we are looking at these conversations with our kids and how to address games.

Who are they playing with? What’s the social context?  If they’re playing five hours on a Saturday, and you’re concerned, are they playing with their friends and having fun and it’s a good distraction?  Or are they playing for five hours in a bad mood, and it’s a diversion, and they’re not doing their responsibilities.

It’s looking at what’s driving the behaviour. The behaviour could be the same in two people, two people could be playing five hours a day, but what is it signalling? And these are more nuanced.  Taking that step back is not the natural one.  But that’s why we’re hoping that this paper will help lay out the lay of the land.  To make space for engaged parenting – we have to be part of the conversation.

To go back to the playground analogy – we would have conversations with them about how you behave at school, how you behave in a playground, how you go out into the physical world.  And we have to be having conversations [with them about how to behave] in the digital world. Parents don't necessarily have the tools or the prompts or the information or the time to do that.  I wrote a book for parents a couple of years ago.  But then I became a parent and realised that they don’t necessarily have time to sit and read a book.  I'm hoping this whitepaper will help get those conversations started.

What does healthy engagement with games look like at home?

It’s going to look different for everyone, and it’s such an unsatisfying answer! Just as an example of the nuance of the conversation, The American Academy of Pediatrics used to say two hours of screen time a day, and that’s where we should be.  They just came out with new guidelines in the last couple of months, that actually said we should take an ecosystem approach - because two hours screen time, one size fits all is probably not the most effective way forward. What’s the purpose of the screen time, where are they using it, how are they using it? And I think the same conversation we need to be having about games.

One of the strongest examples you give is around ending a gaming session.

An analogy I like to use is games are fun.  What else is fun? Eating doughnuts is fun.  If I was eating a doughnut and mid-bite, you came and you took it out of my hand, I would be upset. And the same is true of games.  Your child could be playing a game with three of his school friends relying on him to finish this round.  And no, he can’t come to dinner right now, because if he left the game right now the other three friends would lose the match and he would have to hear about it next week.  But if you had a conversation, and you said, ‘Dinner’s going to be ready at six,’ maybe that would increase the chances that they will be mindful – maybe I don’t start a new round at 5.59.

You have kids, how do you game at home and what are your restrictions or guidelines?

I do have restrictions and guidelines.  There are certain games they can’t play. My oldest is eleven, so there’s no social interaction on the games my kids play.

I don't think there’s any reason my eleven-year-old should be interacting with people on the internet, so that’s like the hard line.  Games in terms of age rating, my eleven-year-old is pretty grown-up for her age, I’ll let her play a game that’s made for a thirteen-year-old, it depends, whereas my eight-year-old is in the E for Everyone.  It’s contextual and individual.  We have open conversation all the time, I do let them know when dinner is happening, I do a countdown for the younger ones because they’re not good at time management, and I do my best to mitigate those friction points.  But just like any human, I have them too in my house.

I’ve often heard or seen kids play games that are way older for them

Age ratings are an amazing tool for parents, because you can look at the letter and have a sense of the content.  But I will also say that it’s the invitation to then learn more, because two games that are rated M for Mature might be rated M for Mature for totally different reasons, and if you have a sixteen-year-old, there may be one of those games that you personally feel comfortable with them playing and one that you do not.  So, making the judgment just on the letter is not enough information.  Although it’s a good starting point.

If you could encourage or help parents with one mindset shift, what would that be?

That games are not frivolous, and that play is central to happiness, to mood management, to stress relief and to community building.  It is so much more than it gets credit for.  Games are such a wonderful way for kids to play together. 

When I was a child, I played a lot of video games.  But my dad would never play with us.  I remember just being like, ‘Play Mario, Daddy, play a racing game,’ and never, not once did he ever play.  And I think just because he was scared to fail or scared of the unknown. So, parents, just jump in – it’s funnier if you fail.  Your kids will like it more if you fail, honestly.

What do you hope the research will change in terms of the broader conversation?

I hope it changes the conversation completely.  If I never have to answer a question about violent video games and real-world violence again, I would be a very happy researcher.  We have hundreds of studies looking at that link, and no link has been found. If we can move on to questions that are more nuanced, like children’s right to play in the era of bans and regulation.  Like these trickier, more nuanced questions about what should we really be concerned about - let’s talk about online safety, let’s talk about can our children play in these spaces and we feel they are sufficiently free from harm.  These are where my concerns are, and I want those to be the conversations.

What practical advice would you give parents who feel intimidated by games because they don't play themselves?

I have a plea to open the conversation to parents.  There’s an analogy I use a lot, if you can sit through a five-year-old’s soccer game, if you can do that you can spend five minutes learning about a game your child is playing, talking with your child about a game they’re playing, playing a game that they’re playing.  And it will make a world of difference because most of the fear is fear of the unknown.  And the best way to know is to do.

Watch or listen to the full conversation with Dr Rachel Kowert on the Good Game Club podcast here. The Raising Good Gamers whitepaper, launched at the Games for Change Festival in New York, is available at raisinggoodgamers.com