The earliest reacting games all centered around a single, classic text and were played during half or a third of a semester.
Many of these games are designed to replace a single textbook chapter and typically span a week of class.
A grant from the National Science Foundation launched a dozen new game prototypes with a shorter format.
A live action role-playing games (LARP) has participants assuming roles and playing them out in costume.
In addition, while debates focus on a single issue, reacting games feature multiple intellectual collisions, which necessitates shifting coalitions of players.
Both tabletop and electronic forms can be used in classes with the intent to challenge students to work through difficult scenarios and explore possible alternate historical outcomes.
Psychological studies of students participating in reacting games have shown students to gain an "elevated self-esteem and empathy, a more external locus of control, and greater endorsement of the belief that human characteristics are malleable compared with controls.
[18] Studies of reacting games played online (rather than face-to-face) show similar learning gains but lower student satisfaction.
In the past, new methodologies have frequently been met with great enthusiasm initially, only to eventually confront realities of the classroom learning environment.
In September 2019, the Chronicle of Higher Education published a profile of Reacting to the Past, discussing its popularity as well as the debate surrounding the "idiosyncratic" pedagogy.