Gamifying Education? Not Likely Against the Lobbying Curriculum Cartel
Disclaimer:
Everything below is a mix of what I observed and heard during the event. The goal isn’t to pinpoint "who exactly said what," but to share (usually) an outsider's view and overall perspective on these industries. I’m not here to act as a definitive firsthand source—readers should do their own research. I hope this inspires you to attend events, explore new industries, and hear what leaders are presenting. These notes combine my observations with thoughts on how things could run smoother and how ideas connect (IMO). I’m not an expert, you know? Just hanging out in the room with them. Enjoy!Topics: Games, Education, Edutainment, Curriculum Cartel, Lobbying, Business Models, Common Core Standards, Stakeholders, Passion, Gatekeepers
Event Ratings: Venue (3/5), Food (5/5), Speaker Content (3/5), Networking (2/5), Likeliness to Return (4.5/5)… (more below)
It’s the best topics: education and games —- yet, I feel like so much said at these types of events is always “theory” versus actual implementation. Then again, the second-to-last blog I wrote even showed that A LOT of money is pouring into education. It’s the #1 industry for new hires (like six times more than any other) - and of course, people want to make “learning” more fun. I think the trend will finally catch up here soon (and the USA will finally be a bit more like China, where I was living for 4 years, and saw that they had epic learning tools and strategies and classes and norms and everything, and then I was like WHAT THE HECK, AMERICA?! CATCH UP!! We be sleepin’ over here!!) Let’s see what the top industry leaders are saying about the future of games in education.
Why Attend: There couldn’t be a more on-brand event for me… and so I’ve GOTTA get myself to go. I just think that… idk what it is. I’m in this season of strange (and I had a minor scooter accident last Sunday ANDDD it’s been FREEZING here… AND they're practicing a new subway line - opening in a month - which makes a new train arrive every 1-2 minutes at each station, basically, so I can’t busk cause eveyones either rushing to the trains or it’s freezing). So, I’ve just been in “learn/hybernation” mode for most of February. No joke. So… lemme DRESS TO IMPRESS (for the first time all week!), get my sh*t together, and attend this mo-fo. (And, I’ve put my “weekly routine” on hold for a week. If you go back, like, 3 blogs you’ll see it. But, I’ll write a new blog next week once my knees have fully healed from my scooter accident and I’m back in action. I’m just letting myself be in this mood while it’s here). My energy and motivation have been so low lately. I feel like I’m behaving as if I’m in the 3rd term of a pregnancy all over again (I’m not) but I’m just like, learning a mile a minute obsessively about the metaphysical/multidimensional world, working on adding/recruiting/interviewing interns, adding/teaching more classes/students, and a LOT of prep to market like CRAZY on platforms I haven’t used in nearly a decade/ever (facebook, instagram/tiktok). Letttssss gooooo.
Photo Collage and Commentary:
Notes from the Event:
I was happy when I got here cause I saw a woman I get along well with and almost worked with in the past. She’s a game designer and she was so happy to see me, too. She even remembered my name!! (I don’t remember hers…)
Then I got myself some food but halfway through eating they said everyone needs to hurry up cause the event is about to start. So, I ate the rest of my burrito and then went and sat in the center, in the almost back row.
PRESENTATIONS BEGIN:
Now they’ve welcomed a woman on stage to talk. She’s a big deal in the gaming industry. SHe’s worked on a game that was big in the educational sphere.
She says tell us a bit about you, waht you’re passionate about, wha tyou do - and talk a bit about the game.
She started a year ago in this industry. Mostly in design leadership. She’s had a long and winding career. Most famously she did “left for dead”, straight out of digipet (a local school/uni for game design)
She said she loves games and couldn’t imagine doing anything else. Maybe she would work at Twitch. She said its a shooter game where you use a gun and its structured as a series of puzzles . Each in this labrynth controlled by AI is self-contained. You only have one tool to figure out how to get out of that room and into the next one. They wanna talk about how teachers started using that game, we’ll venture into that in a bit.
She’s just telling her life story and expedience - how she went to a unversity where you’d go and make games. Like options included computer graphics with specializations in video game graphics. You have to make a game each year from scratch. No fancy game engine, code it from the ground up. They can end up a little janky. Her and her friends had been workign together 4 years, and thy’d need jobs after graduation, so they came up with an idea of waht eventually became “portal” to solve puzzles, look around, etc.
Every year they have the job fair and then this year, someone came and said they should show off the game to this big corporation. They thought there’d be one person to check them out and it was 20 people from the company. Then the guy there, the main one, asked them if they have plans for after college graduation, and they are offered a job on the spot to take their students project and turn it into something.
I do some research online about her game. This game won game of the year about 20 years ago and then the second version sold millions of copies.
They were able to reuse a lot of assets in the second version of hte game. They were intentional about that.
The best design comes out of constraint. One of the traps is loose sky thinking. Thinking that anything and everything is possible, it’s a trap. You are stuck with nothing cause you spent so much time thinking… perfection is the enemy of good.
She says everyone says think outside a box and I actually like the box. The first thing I do is make a box of constraints to help me make smart decisions.
At the time, they thought maybe 20 people would play their game at most.
Her friend used to work for the federal government and his job was to think about how games can be used for educational purposes
Brooo this makes me think of the government’s budget for movies too, and how they sway the public with movies. Hm. Wonder how they sway games. AND GVERNMENT, LETS MAKE EDUCATION COOL
The structure of the game is important. Everything is there for you, right there, as the problem solver. Everything in the room will help you. It simplifies the problem space for folks.
Is it better to make an educational or entertaining game?
When you are… at the end of the day, design as a space is just problem solving. When you. Are creating a game, ask who the game is for. What is the purpose of it? What is it trying to convey or communicate? The audience and point will be different when it’s education.
Language apps optimize not only education, but for getting you to play over the course of years. You don’t want to break your streak.
It optimizes you for not just learning, but for completion of the uint
They say, yeah, these apps don’t even help them learn languages… yet she wants to reach her 1-year mark. They still are hooked to play every day.
GROSS!!! This is such bad news for society right now but super not-surprising. Like we need to raise expectations and standards as a nation, no joke. I just am always thinking of how epic/educated the average person is/was in China while I lived there. And we are not doing okay here.
What do designers most miss about the classroom?
You don’t know what you don’t know… go talk to teachers.
When you work in the game industry, games are often no longer fun cause you pick at games and analyze it to death.
They have lesson plans online too so you can use the game.
NEXT: A GROUP OF PANELISTS
This emcee guy says, “if you’d like to go to the bathroom, now woudl be an okay time, not a great time. We’re running late, so let’s just do quick intros”
He’s talking super fast hahah.
BRO time isn’t realllll. Chill out, your vibe is stressing everyone out. But, idk, maybe they have a lot planned for this night.
One woman does immersive learning for all ages in Minecraft
Antoher is director of tech for a school district and a director of business development for esports in our state.
Another makes video games and used to run his own studio and now work for another
Another has worked 15 years in this industry and curriculum development.
Next is a teacher from a high school and works on esports.
Classroom readiness means:
Students safety
Easy to adopt by teachers and students (no effort to get the lesson taught)
Ease of selling to stakeholders
How well it connects to standards and the scope of the curriculum (this excludes many games off of the bat)
Control to implement the way you want in your classroom
Needs special admin save controls
Needs to always work and never not work to consider bringing it into your environment.
One audience guy how do game developers know what schools need? He says, “Common Core grade standards.”
If indie game developers figured out and made a curriculum to show how things match common core state standards (CCSS) then you’d ROCK.
Good advice and true. I want to make my stuff more sell-able to schools, though I’ve just heard so much advice and feedback from people who do this that it’s extremely stressful and a waste of time, in some ways. And if they could go back in time, they’d not. So, its why I haven’t pushed this too hard.
THere must be a middle ground.
Kids think that games that are for learning are lame and dumb. Non-educational games are often far better designed. So, instead games will be made and then later come and ask how their games match CCSS. Work with education companies to align them to however it fits.
One audience girl said she used to take a class where certain stations are required to play a certain number of educational shows per Saturday morning, or wahtever
I wonder how those work and what I’d think about that… so much “educational” is fake, I mean even those girls said earlier their “educational” apps don’t even teach them anything, they’re just simply addicting.
Is there anything happening like this with games?
— this is something that is being worked on, in theory and research, but doesn’t exist yet.
Market opportuntiy, for real!!!!!!
Lots of kids find games or have games installed and then just play it the whole time. Google sites and famous games. It is tough cause you can’t easily toggle it on or off and the kids dont’ stop playing it. This game is available nonstop.
Student safety, again:
Data is private
Interaction is limited
Students logins are protected
Not seeing things they should be (she coughs that Roblox isn’t safe)
One guy defends games and he just makes sure none of his games are multiplayer. He doesn’t have a lot of safety concerns cause he doesn’t make anything that could have problems like that.
Some districts love games, some are more “traditionalist” and just bought multimillion dollar curriculums and don’t want that.
OMG this is like a freaking cartel!! This is A HUGE PROBLEM.
It all depends on the specific group of stakeholders. Or else it’d be more standardized across school districts.
This guy is a middle school game designer in the audience and wants to share his thoughts:
For him, if he had a wishlist:
Make a sandbox game
A game that has a level editor
Competitive games, clean, teamwork
With stakeholders, STANDARDS truly matter. F you can show that this lesson lands better as a game with the standards, that’s a win.
Parents are also stakeholder and it can be hard to convince.
You’ll always have at least one unhappy parent.
The game developer says that if you grade all of your students with simply “A’s” then they’ll all be happy with you. (He jokes)
Kids often don’t even realize how much they’re learning as they play games about it.
It can be easier to make wholesome games. Few games get into schools. It’s not a business model. You’re competing against curriculum companies tha are basically lobbyists. It’s hard to compete with this.
RIGHT omgggg this cartel. They take the entire budget and make it the industry norm. people already have so many decisions to make, they just wanna do what raises the least eyebrows and carry on with the school year. We need an education REFORM!!!
Some classrooms ask for console donations from the community so they were able to share one console and game for the whole class but it was a fun shared adventure.
They have so many more questions from the audience but they’re running late so they end the panel.
I remember this same thing happening last year
Now it’s “round table” discussions for the next portion of this event. That’s going on for people to go sit at the tables and talk to each other. After that, networking for an hour or more…
But when I went outside, it turns out the “round table” was just people talking to vendor tables. I thought it’d literally be tables you could go sit at “un-conference” style, and problem-solve with the community. But no, its just people selling to youuuuu
This was not appealing to me.
It was people selling their games or summer camps or clubs you could join and I was not in the mood for that.
I wanted to talk more about the industry or just get out of there. So, I got out of there. This event blew my mind. Just… underwhelming.
On my way home, the PDA on the train was INSANE. Some people were holding flyers for the local indie p*rn film festival. With a provocative name. So there were couples sitting on each other’s laps and kissing so loudly. lol.
Event Ratings Elaborated:
Venue (3/5), this place didn’t work well for their goal. It worked alright for hte panelist (though the stage felt cramped) but hten the “round tables” were spread out and it was dark, the lighting wasn’t welcoming
Food (5/5), Chipotle catering was nice!
Speaker Content (3/5), It just felt like “we have to accept it as it is, and things aren’t idea” - you know. No push back at the industry. It just was frusterating and I wish there was more educational content. We need to fix and solve this. If this group isn’t part of the change, who the heck will be, you know?
Networking (2/5), Yeah, I left early. This was mostly game developers with booths, from what I saw… and just, idk. There was nowhere to sit and talk. The “round tables” wasn’t even talking at round tables. Just not for me.
Likeliness to Return (4.5/5) bahahah you’re like, what? You wanna go back?? Of course I do, last year’s event was AMAZING and this one just felt like, okay, either I’ve changed or THIS changed and didn’t live up to last year. And I think its a mix of both. But, I just believe in the future and in the power of people. So I want to see things get better and I bet they can if we keep speaking up.
Until next time, I wish you the motivation and success to search for opportunities around your area. Search and explore: Who is out there giving talks? There are new things happening all of the time
Find relatable or interesting topics you like and check them out! Maybe even something hosted at a cool venue, if there’s no other reason to go. Let’s see what you can learn and discover not too far from home. 😊
