Disinformation Lab
- Written byFrancesca Panetta
- Published date 20 August 2026
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Can games help in the fight against disinformation?
Disinformation is not only a problem of facts. It is also a problem of emotion, identity and trust. It is about the social worlds in which people make sense of information.
Our project On Their Terms explored whether games could help people build resilience to disinformation.
Working in collaboration with More in Common, as part of a wider project funded by the European Media and Information Fund, the project explored how games could build valuable skills in players, particularly amongst the most avid game players who have lost trust in mainstream media and institutions.
The aim was not to set out to build a game about disinformation, but to explore how game design mechanics might be used within a whole range of entertaining games to create space for players to reflect on their own cognitive biases, to learn how we are hugely influenced by our social group in what we believe to be true, and to learn to recognise when we are triggered by emotionally manipulative content.
Bringing research into the room
We began with research:
Many media-literacy interventions designed to tackle disinformation start with a familiar set of instructions. Check the source. Verify the image. Ask who benefits. These are valid questions to be asking but they are not always enough.
People encounter much of their information online, in fast-moving algorithmic feeds, and in community contexts. Most people have a strong sense of what they believe to be true and a confidence in spotting false information.
Preaching how to spot false information can feel moralising. Or patronising. It can shut down curiosity before it begins.
Games offer a different kind of encounter. And as spaces in which a huge number of people spend their time, they offer a valuable platform for subtle learning through repetition and habitual play.
What we aimed to do
Our work took an upstream approach. It recognised the potential of games to reach wide-ranging audiences, including those who have disengaged with mainstream media, and the power of game designers as amplifiers. It focussed on game design itself, offering an approach for designers to experiment with.
Our aim was to support game designers and educators to explore how valuable skills and competencies that make us more resilient to disinformation could be built into compelling player experiences, through mechanics, narrative, character, systems and player choice.
This meant asking several questions:
- How can games encourage critical reflection without becoming didactic?
- How might a game help players notice emotional responses before they harden into certainty?
- How can gameplay make social influence visible?
- What kinds of stories and mechanics invite perspective-taking?
Over time, the project’s language shifted. We began with media literacy. We increasingly spoke about psychological literacy.
Media literacy is often understood as knowing how to judge information. Psychological literacy asks players to notice what is happening inside and around them as they judge it. It brings attention to emotion, cognitive bias, social identity and group influence.
For game designers, this was not a new addition. Understanding player behaviour is already central to their work.
What we did
More in Common carried out audience research into who plays games in the UK, and focussed in particular on the mindsets of audiences that play games the most. Alongside this, the AKO Storytelling Institute spoke with game designers, industry figures, educators, disinformation specialists and psychologists to understand the latest research around inoculation approaches and the potential opportunities and challenges for developing games as tools for building resilience to disinformation.
This gave us two kinds of insight. The first was about audiences. How do people encounter information? What makes them receptive or resistant? What role do trust, emotion and identity play?
The second was about the games sector. What can designers realistically do? Where is there room for experimentation? What are the pressures on studios, educators and independent developers?
We then brought this work together in a two-day Game Design Lab.
The Lab was developed in collaboration with UAL's MA Game Design and convened professional game designers working across a range of formats, psychologists and project partners. It was a space for shared inquiry and for testing initial ideas.
Following the Lab, two game prototypes were developed. They translated the project’s emerging principles into playable ideas. We then tested them with participants from the target audience segment identified as Sceptical Scrollers.
We also brought the project insights into higher education, with a workshop for MA Game Design students and an optional module offered for students to develop prototype games. This created a route for the project learnings to shape future creative practice.
Finally, we produced practical toolkit for designers and educators which included a report and a video. Watch our video on Vimeo: Can games help nurture resilience against misinformation?
These resources bring together the research, audience insight, design principles and learning from the Lab and prototype development.
What we learned
1. Entertainment comes first
A game must first work as a game. It must be enjoyable and entertaining. Players will not stay with an experience because it has a good social purpose.
Prototype testing reinforced this point. Participants could disengage when an experience felt too overtly educational or moralising.
2. Teach less.
We learned that media literacy in games may work best when it is indirect. Games do not need to tell players, “This is misinformation.” For example, a game could encourage a player to notice when fear, urgency or loyalty is influencing their judgement. It could create room for players to reconsider an early assumption. This approach is less about supplying the right answer. It's about design rather than information.
2. Emotion and identity matter
Disinformation often works because it connects with feelings and social ties. It can confirm an identity. It can make audiences feel part of an in-group. A useful game-based approach therefore needs to address more than factual accuracy.
The project identified three connected areas for designers to consider:
These are areas to build into the design of the game. Not to teach as information.
4. Designers are not fact-checkers
Game designers do not need to become arbiters of truth. Nor do they need to turn every game into a public-information campaign.
They can design systems, stories and experiences that support reflection. They can make patterns of influence visible. They can create conditions for players to test assumptions. They can build experiences that encourage perspective-taking.
This seemed to give participants a more useful and realistic sense of agency.
Before the Game Design Lab, 90% of participants described their understanding of disinformation as basic or intermediate. Afterwards, 89% described it as high, while 11% described it as moderate. The sample was small, so these figures should be read as indicative. But they were supported by participants’ accounts of gaining a clearer understanding of how their practice could relate to disinformation and media literacy.
5. Audience insight must shape design
The project did not begin with a preferred game format.
It began with the audience. More in Common's research helped challenge easy assumptions. It showed why a generic media-literacy message would not be enough.
The game designers during the lab returned repeatedly to ask the researchers questions about the audience. They wanted to know more. And the researchers sat in on the ideation sessions, collaborating with the creatives as they ideated.
Limits and next steps
This was a project of exploration and field-building. It did not claim to prove that games can solve disinformation. It did not directly measure long-term changes in players’ beliefs or behaviour. The programme was designed to work indirectly. Its route to impact was through designers, educators and future game experiences.
It found strong evidence of learning among designers and of the project’s contribution to an emerging field.
There were also practical constraints.
The project found it difficult to engage large AAA studios. Commercial priorities, intellectual-property restrictions and caution around socially framed content can all make experimentation difficult. Independent developers, students and educators were more accessible spaces for creative risk-taking.
But new ideas often begin at the edges. They are tested by smaller teams. They are refined in classrooms, studios and communities of practice. Over time, they can influence the mainstream.
The next challenge is to build on this foundation. That means continued testing with players. It means supporting designers to apply the toolkit. It means developing stronger evidence about what different game mechanics can do. It means creating partnerships across game design, psychology, education and media literacy.
Most of all, it means continuing to take players seriously. Games audiences need meaningful experiences. Ones that make complex social and emotional dynamics tangible. That can make reflection active. This is not the whole answer to disinformation. But it's an interesting place to begin from.
Resources
Watch our video on Vimeo: Can games help nurture resilience against misinformation?