Why don’t I want to know who wrote the most words in 1 minute?

It’s demoralizing to lower students.

Game designers are always interested in what keeps players in the game on the screen – because it’s eyes on the screen that matters. They have found that in a game with a “leaderboard”, it is only an incentive to continue to play if you are within 5% of the top of the board.

Students might tell each other at lunch how many words they wrote, but you pretend to be totally uninterested.