Gaming, well-being, and inclusion: playing to grow as more aware citizens, to nurture our emotional development, our social connections, and our value system

Well-being, social connection, sense of inclusion, emotional awareness, self-esteem, problem-solving.
And furthermore, relational skills, civic values, interpersonal closeness and support, dialogue, and a sense of community.
These are the keywords that best describe our project titled Adventures Are Better Shared!, which began in late 2024 and concluded on 31 August 2026.
Video games are not only to be understood, learned, mediated, and managed—treated similarly to many other contemporary audiovisual and media phenomena (social media among them)—but they can also be used as tools, within continuous education, to strengthen certain individuals' tutoring, facilitation, and guidance skills.

Gaming Education is precisely this: a collection of approaches and practical, minimally professionalized tools which, when put in the hands of educators, volunteers, tutors, and social workers (essentially, those who work with others in various ways), can prove incredibly useful for enhancing learners' attention, problem-solving skills, self-expression, and value systems. Fundamentally, these are tools designed to improve the competencies of facilitators, bringing them closer to the world of contemporary digital culture and, why not, even bridging some gaps, especially the generational one.

Adventures are better shared! has drawn significant inspiration from Northern European educational traditions which, for some time now, have fostered a keen interest in the potential of video games, coining terms like "EduGaming" and integrating facilitation and tutoring practices with exercises and activities such as co-gaming, guided play, video game sharing, and storytelling through video games.

It is therefore no coincidence that Adventures Are Better Shared! has also focused on somewhat more transversal and, in a sense, intangible aspects: building networks and fostering connections between European cultural traditions that are often quite different, such as those of the Mediterranean and Nordic regions, as well as encouraging face-to-face dialogue between facilitators and gamers. The project has also explored the use and importance of free knowledge-sharing platforms, which are often not widely known, alongside many other related topics.

The partnership for this project is no coincidence; it included Rafíþróttasamband Íslands (RÍSÍ), an Icelandic eSports federation already part of our network, and Sverok, a Swedish association that has been promoting online inclusion, well-being through gaming culture—from roleplay to shared gaming—and combating hate speech in virtual and gaming spaces (have you ever played a MOBA…?).

This partnership connects three geographically distant points with the specific goal of bringing them closer together, building a network, and fostering mutual learning. It aims to introduce a bit of Scandinavian culture into the deep south of Europe and, conversely, to bring Mediterranean educational methodologies to contexts and countries that, even within Erasmus+, tend to build somewhat more homogeneous networks. These countries often come with a head start in areas such as resilience and everyday digital competence.

Not that the tangible outputs and deliverables of a project are unimportant—quite the opposite. . . . Nor is it the case that Adventures Are Better Shared! has not produced any! A little further down, we have listed everything that we, together with our partners, produced, also with the aim of communicating and disseminating these resources as widely as possible and fully integrating them into our everyday work—in this sense, yes, even beyond the project itself, its timeframe and its deadlines.

However, Adventures Are Better Shared! also pursued objectives that were, so to speak, more intangible and more closely connected to the value of experience: talking with other people, exchanging views on a particular topic and doing so through virtual and online tools that may be more or less familiar to the general public.

First of all, the construction of a European thematic network. Bringing together three organisations, all of them located, in a certain sense, at the edges of Europe—from the far north to the far south—meant a great deal to us. Our objective was to gradually build, primarily through our project, a network genuinely focused on Videogame Education: one capable of continuing to provide this educational service beyond the limits and duration of Adventures Are Better Shared! and, above all, of enabling gaming-based methodologies to circulate in contexts that are somewhat more peripheral in this respect, such as those in which we at Close in the Distance operate.

Then came networking, virtual dialogue and platforms such as SALTO and EPALE. Many project activities were structured as dialogues, conversations and exchanges—for example, through the working-group features offered by the European platforms mentioned above. What mattered most to us was the meaning of the experience itself: bringing together and enabling direct conversations between people working in education, facilitation, youth work and tutoring and European gamers of all ages. In other words, we wanted to propose a workshop model that went beyond traditional training and was instead based more directly on acquiring information, values and ideas from the people concerned.

When trying to demonstrate the value of video games as tools that can also support personal growth, why not speak directly with people who have first-hand experience? With people who may feel that they have grown as individuals precisely through gaming?

And then there was the aim of breaking down barriers. Why did we choose this project, and why did we believe in it so strongly? One point should be made clear: Videogame Education is certainly not something we invented, nor is it exclusive to Scandinavia. The obstacles are language, the genuinely high costs, distance—not only geographical but also cultural—and the fact that many of the competences taught may be limited to the use of one particular title or tool, such as Minecraft Education, which we will also address extensively.

Our objective was to make this methodology more democratic and inclusive, contributing to the dissemination of this area of digital and audiovisual educational culture, which otherwise always risks being treated as something “niche”, highly specialised and available only to people who are already trained and established in the field, who already have a particular interest in video games, possess extensive skills and knowledge—first and foremost linguistic knowledge—and have sufficient time, personal resources and so on.

This is precisely where SALTO and EPALE played an important role: they allowed us to promote resources and initiatives to a broad range of stakeholders in an accessible, open and free manner, and to publish and communicate Videogame Education without filters and, as far as possible, without barriers.

Finally, there was the mobility activity. Adventures Are Better Shared! incorporated one of the most valuable dimensions of Erasmus+: travelling and learning from different traditions and people, including when participants would not otherwise have full access to such opportunities. Our project involved both learners and educators, facilitators, tutors and trainers in a visit to the headquarters of Sverok, our mentoring partner, in Stockholm, Sweden, to learn about its working methods.

The objective was to explore and experience directly what EduGaming looks like once it has become established, consolidated and integrated into “traditional” practice within mature contexts and organisations.

Adventures Are Better Shared! developed:

- Gaming Stories – Narrative Surveys, a multilingual, open-access collection of testimonies, experiences and stories from young and adult gamers from different European countries. The stories were collected through narrative questionnaires inspired by digital storytelling methodology and were subsequently organised into an anthology primarily intended for educators, facilitators, tutors, trainers and social work professionals. The publication explores the relationship between video games, well-being, social relationships, digital participation and personal growth, offering a concrete overview of how gaming, online communities and multiplayer experiences can become part of people’s everyday lives. The resource can be freely downloaded in its different language versions:
Gaming Stories – Narrative Surveys (in English)
Gaming Stories – Narrative Surveys (in Italian)
Gaming Stories – Narrative Surveys (in Icelandic)
Gaming Stories – Narrative Surveys (in Swedish)

- Playing to Connect, a multilingual, open-access methodological manual addressed to educators, facilitators, tutors, trainers and professionals working in adult education and social work. The manual provides theoretical references, practical tools, examples and activities for integrating commercial video games and gaming culture into educational settings, with particular attention to communication, collaboration, participation, transversal competences, well-being and inclusion. The resource is designed to make the activities developed during the project as replicable and transferable as possible:
Playing to Connect (in English)
Playing to Connect (in Italian)
Playing to Connect (in Icelandic)
Playing to Connect (in Swedish)

- An introductory glossary for educators and facilitators, designed as a short and accessible resource for navigating recurring terms, practices and concepts in the worlds of video games, online communities and digital culture. The glossary is primarily intended for people working in education and training who do not yet have in-depth knowledge of the field, offering essential definitions and useful references for better understanding the language, environments and dynamics typical of contemporary gaming. The glossary can be freely downloaded in its different language versions:
Glossary for Educators and Facilitators (in Italian)
Glossary for Educators and Facilitators (in English)
Glossary for Educators and Facilitators (in Icelandic)
Glossary for Educators and Facilitators (in Swedish)

- A workshop cycle dedicated to videogame-based education, digital culture and continuing education methodologies implemented in gaming environments and through gaming tools, carried out in the partner countries and addressed to gamers, educators, facilitators, tutors, trainers and social work professionals. The activities made it possible to directly test some of the themes and tools developed by the project, promoting discussion around gaming experiences, online communities, well-being, participation and transversal competences. The cycle also contributed to collecting and discussing the experiences included in the Narrative Surveys and to the practical testing of the methodological proposals developed in Playing to Connect.

- Dialogue, exchange and networking activities on EPALE, addressed to gamers, educators, trainers, tutors, facilitators and social work professionals. Through discussion groups, thematic contributions and opportunities for exchange, the project promoted reflection on the educational potential of gaming and its relationship with civic, cultural, digital and social competences. These activities also contributed to making EPALE better known among people and communities that are normally less closely connected to adult education networks.

- An educational mobility activity in Stockholm, hosted by Sverok, involving the partnership’s staff and representatives in learning, exchange and direct observation activities. The mobility provided an opportunity to explore Sverok’s work with gaming and association-based communities, Scandinavian models of youth and adult participation, the relationship between gaming, community organisation and non-formal learning, as well as educational practices connected to digital culture.

- Numerous dissemination and communication outputs, including articles on EPALE, publications on SALTO, social media materials and contributions dedicated to digital culture, gaming, online communities and the development of transversal competences through gaming culture.

Download our flyer here!

Adventures Are Better Shared! Flyer (Italian)
Adventures Are Better Shared! Flyer (English)
Adventures Are Better Shared! Flyer (Swedish)
Adventures Are Better Shared! Flyer (Icelandic)

For more information, visit our Instagram page, EPALE, our Blog, or contact us directly via the Contacts page or email us at direttivo@closeinthedistance.com.

The full title of Adventures are better shared! is "Adventures are better shared! A Guide for Educators and Facilitators in Video Game Education," and its acronym is also "Gamingway!". The project identification code is 2024-1-IT02-KA210-ADU-000246576.

Co-funded by the Erasmus+ Program of the European Commission, this is an Erasmus+ KA210 project, a Small-Scale Partnership in the Adult Education sector. The project began on September 1, 2024, and will end on August 31, 2026 (24 months in duration). Close in the Distance, Sverok, and Rafíþróttasamtök Íslands received EUR 48,000.00, representing 80% of the total co-funding, from the Italian Erasmus+ National Agency I.N.D.I.R.E, to launch the various planned activities.

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.