Emerging Adulthood, the Games Industry, & the Economy

It's been a while — I'm somehow making it through this semester only mildly scathed. I’m redeveloping the EGD framework to be more intentional, research-grounded, and future-oriented. Over the years, I’ve seen that the program works, our students consistently grow as leaders, creators, and professionals who enter the workforce with confidence and adaptability. But much of what has made EGD effective evolved intuitively. Fellow ADHD/Gifted folks will understand... I often have to chart back to figure out why I know things.

My brain often jumps straight from A → J without consciously processing the steps in between. I just know J is the right next move. Pattern recognition kicks in, the connections are there subconsciously, and I’m ready to act. But when someone asks how I got there, I have to reverse-engineer the path: “Okay, A led me to C, then F, then J.” Other times I realize that J isn’t isolated. It’s linked to D and P, which both influence and are influenced by A. So instead of a single line, I see a web: A connects to D, which connects to P, which reframes J, which loops back to A. So I might act on J intuitively, then later have to chart backwards or map sideways to understand or explain how I got there and what else it connects to. But when you're creating scalable and sustainable solutions, you have to interrogate it and can't be content with knowing that A → J.

Now that there's proof of impact, this redevelopment is about making those intuitions explicit: articulating the underlying developmental, motivational, and social theories that have been guiding its success all along.

My reading list has been:

• The Cambridge Handbook of Motivation and Learning - K.Ann Renninger

• The Career Game Loop - Jessica Lindl

• Community: The Structure of Belonging - Peter Block

• Creating Contexts for Learning and Self-Authorship: Constructive-Developmental Pedagogy - Marcia B. Baxter Magolda

• Creativity in Large-Scale Contexts: Guiding Creative Engagement and Exploration - Jonathan S. Feinstein

• Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road from the Late Teens through the Twenties (Third Edition) - Jeffrey Arnett.

• Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood - Christian Smith et al.

• Making Their Own Way: Narratives for Transforming Higher Education to Promote Self-Development - Marcia B. Baxter Magolda

• Play: A Basic Pathway to the Self - Thomas S. Henricks

• The Student Leadership Guide (Fourth Edition) - Brendon Burchard

• Transforming Leadership: Focusing on the Outcomes of the New Girl Scout Leadership Experience - GSUSA

The foundation of the rework draws heavy inspiration from the 2008 version of the Girl Scout Leadership Experience model, particularly its developmental outcomes of discovering the self, connecting with others, and taking action. I’ve always been drawn to the girl-led principle and their governance model as a model for EGD’s student-led structure. As I examine the logistics of how our programs function, I’m now also looking closely at scouting badge culture, specifically how it promotes agency, mastery, and flexibility by allowing participants to complete challenges individually, collaboratively, or with adult facilitation. That system offers a strong precedent for how we might scaffold autonomy and reflection within EGD, allowing students to set personalized learning goals while maintaining collective accountability. I believe digital badges and micro-credentials borrowed the surface of scouting badge systems — the idea of chunked learning and visible recognition — but lost the deeper principles that made those systems powerful. What’s missing is the focus on agency and reflection. That’s why I find Girl Scout badges particularly compelling. Unlike Boy Scout merit badges, which are usually a fixed checklist, Girl Scout badges are organized around categories with multiple activity options. That built-in choice gives participants real ownership over how they engage and creates space for reflection on their process, not just their completion. The badge itself was never the point. It was a tool for girls to make choices, try things, and think about what they learned.

This badge is nor a reward for something you have done once for an examination you have passed. Badges are not medals to wear on your sleeve to show what a smart girl you are. A badge is a symbol that you have done the thing it stands for often enough, thoroughly enough, and well enough to be prepared to give service to it. You wear the badge to let people know that you are prepared and willing to be called on because you are a Girl Scout. And Girl Scouting is not just knowing... but doing... not just doing, but being. — Juliette Gordon Low

At the theoretical level, Marcia Baxter Magolda’s work on self-authorship provides the developmental backbone for the redesigned framework. Her research defines the shift from external dependence to internal definition as the hallmark of adult learning. EGD’s model already emphasizes leadership through ownership and reflection, but Magolda’s constructive-developmental approach helps formalize this process: structuring experiences that intentionally move students from externally guided participation to internally motivated, self-directed leadership. Research on emerging adulthood situates students within a life stage characterized by instability, exploration, and identity formation. I’ve long observed how few social programs exist for this age group — as if society collectively assumes that once someone turns 18, they no longer need support, or worse, that they can no longer be helped. The gap becomes even wider after 22, when most institutional safety nets disappear altogether. But we know that significant brain development occurs until 25 (especially in the prefrontal cortex, which governs executive functions like planning, impulse control, and decision-making) and for the neurodiverse crowd this can extend until around 30. Even if the brain began to plateau, neurological maturity does not equate to stability; individuals in this stage are still negotiating their values, identities, and roles within a rapidly changing world. I see direct parallels between the uncertainty of this developmental phase and the volatility of today’s job market. Building adaptive, iterative learners who see their careers not as linear ladders, but as evolving design problems, and helping students navigate emerging adulthood effectively is the best preparation for the workforce they’re entering. The ability to tolerate ambiguity, rebuild after setbacks, and construct meaning amid uncertainty are not just developmental milestones, they are employability skills. If we can equip emerging adults with the skills to navigate instability during this stage, we prepare them to manage the uncertainty and change that will continue to define their careers long after emerging adulthood ends. It is not lost on me that this could be applied on a much broader scale, since these problems do not only affect aspiring game developers. However, I don't wish to decentralize games from this model. Henricks frames play as a primary mode of self-discovery and experimentation, essential for constructing identity and meaning. He also describes play as a domain where humans practice autonomy, test identities, and rehearse alternative futures. I've always viewed EGD as a way to practice adaptability, resilience, and collaboration in low-stakes contexts before applying them in professional or civic ones, but the world our students are entering is defined by rapid change, automation, and global complexity. As AI reshapes the economy, the most valuable contributions humans can make will be those that are distinctively human; creativity, empathy, ethical reasoning, and community building. Developing these capacities requires neuroplasticity, self-authorship, and adaptability; precisely the skills the framework I'm working on is designed to cultivate. We have the opportunity to move toward a society defined not by labor as obligation, but by play as creation. In this sense, play and creativity are inseparable. Both remain distinctly human capacities that resist automation. Henricks argues that play is where people experience “the freedom to be” and to act without predetermined outcomes. Those same qualities are what the future economy will demand: adaptability, experimentation, and the ability to navigate ambiguity. In a world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence, play becomes not only a source of joy but a form of resistance — a deeply human practice of exploration, invention, and meaning-making that machines cannot replicate. And while this vision may contain some unfounded optimism, given the real and unregulated dangers AI poses to our climate, cognitive functioning, and collective trust in information, I find it equally dangerous to subscribe to doomerism or apocalyptic pessimism. Hope, tempered by critical awareness, remains a necessary act of imagination — and imagination, like play itself, is an essential condition for building better futures.