Lehigh video game smooths transition for first-year students

Throughout August, incoming first-years sit up at night, anticipating move-in day as it gets closer and closer. 

There are unanswered questions about college, and to-do lists anxiously lingering overhead.

A wave of relief can hit when searching online for answers leads to stumbling across an interactive video game that aims to alleviate the pre-college jitters. 

The computer screen lights up. A login screen and an opportunity stare back. 

Press start.

For the class of 2030, transitioning to Lehigh didn’t have to feel like stepping into a completely unknown world. 

The new online game, “Leveling Up to Lehigh Life,” designed by Lehigh students for Lehigh students, recreates potential campus experiences, quests and simulates ways first-years can react to them. 

James Goodwin, ‘29, Sarah Taylor, ‘29, exchange student Anam Ahamed, ‘27 and Theodore Spear, ‘28, are the brains behind the operation. As Impact Fellows enrolled in Lehigh’s Creative Inquiry program, these students are the third team to help develop the online interface as a resource for first-years. 

The game’s development began in spring 2024. After several rounds of testing and troubleshooting, Goodwin said an invite link to the game was emailed to incoming first-years on Aug. 1. The game was also posted as an optional item on the Office of First-Year Experience summer checklist. 

In the game, quests mimic real-life situations to help first-years understand aspects of life at Lehigh. For example, the player may be asked to make an appointment at the health center, take the Goodman-Connector bus to the football games or complete other situations for first-years transitioning to Lehigh. 

Goodwin said this past summer he worked on the game with his team at the Mountaintop Summer Experience, a 10-week program where students focus on an interdisciplinary, impact-focused project. He said during the three weeks leading up to its release, the team was in “cram mode,” trying to get it done by their self-imposed deadline. 

“Seven weeks, just working towards trying to build something for the (first-years) that is actually meaningful, that actually makes a difference, was something we were looking forward to,” Ahamed said. 

Goodwin said the game was live for a two-week span and closed when students started to arrive for Lehigh’s preLUsion program. During this time, approximately one-eighth of incoming first-years logged onto the game. 

Each of these users created their own character, and the team collected data from all 254 users.

However, Goodwin said the team only collected quest data from 161 of those users, meaning about 63% of users completed only one quest in the game, including the tutorial. 

“It could be that the tutorial is too slow and not engaging enough,” Goodwin said. “That’s the main thing that we have to fix overall.”

In addition to being a co-creator for “Leveling Up to Lehigh Life,” Goodwin is a Camp Hawk counselor and works with the Office of First-Year Experience. He said he was able to speak to first-years about the game, and their responses varied.

“Some people (were) like, ‘what’s that?’ because they didn’t read the email. Others (said), ‘Oh, it was really fun. I enjoyed it,’” Goodwin said.

He said one student told him they quit playing the game because it was glitchy.  

Ahamed is still working on the project remotely from India, and said she’d love to see better retention in the game itself.

“We would love to have more students fill out the survey, and that is something we want the next year’s cohort to do,” she said.

Although the team hoped for more participation, Anh Nguyen, ’27, one of the founding members of the project, has worked on and off the project since its start, and said the early results are encouraging. 

Ahamed said that while curating the methodology for the game, there were two directions the team delved into: personal emotional attachment and institutional attachment.

Through the research gathered so far, Ahamed said they’ve seen a significant increase in personal and emotional well-being from the pre-game survey to the post-game survey. 

Ahamed said these results make sense because institutional attachment, being comfortable and familiar with the campus, generally takes time.

Goodwin said they will be hosting a 5×10 in October, where students can share one thing they wish they knew coming into Lehigh, giving the team ideas for potential quests to add.

He said the team will re-release the game next summer and focus on making quests that will further engage students.

“I think the fact that we are impacting any students at all is great,” Nguyen said.