When Farming Becomes Playable: A Qualitative Case Study of Triadic Gameplay Talk and Prompted Reflection on Hay Day in Fifth-Grade Geography

Children increasingly encounter agriculture through mediated images and interfaces rather than sustained contact with farms. This exploratory qualitative case study examined (RQ1) what fifth-grade triads articulated while operating Hay Day, (RQ2) which game–reality comparisons and medium-related evaluations appeared in a prompted debriefing, and (RQ3) which design conjectures can be drawn from the contrast between these non-equivalent data production settings. Twenty-one students worked in seven triads during a four-lesson geography project. The corpus comprised audio-recorded triadic gameplay verbalizations with 14 rotating speaker-players, process notes, and written group responses. Structured qualitative content analysis combined theory-informed categories with inductively refined subcategories. Gameplay discourse centered on actions, resource dependencies, waiting, production, exchange, and progression; timers and level restrictions were salient but rarely interpreted as authored design choices. The debriefing elicited critique-oriented statements about omitted or simplified aspects of farming, but its materials supplied many relevant categories. Accordingly, thematic uptake is distinguished from student elaboration, and the debriefing is treated as prompt-responsive evidence rather than as spontaneous conceptual change. Hay Day is conceptualized as a playable agricultural model linking actionable game relations to agricultural relations, actors, spatialities, and consequences rendered absent or non-actionable. The findings support testable design conjectures, not a causal game effect.