How to design games (products) that make
sense to schools?
Santeri Koivisto
ceo, co-founder @ TeacherGaming LLC
TG history in a nutshell
TG in numbers- 10 employees (recruitment run happening for two
more)
- 5 co-founders
- 3 teachers
- 1 coder
- 1 lawyer
- 3500 schools, libraries, museums etc as customers
- 330 more joined last month
- $150k monthly licensing revenue from MinecraftEdu
and KerbalEdu
- no debts or VC money
- 2% revenue from de minimis -grants
- annual growth 100%<
‘Don’t make them.’
Rule 1 - “Game has to be a great and fun game before
it can be a good game for education.”
Rule 2 - ‘There’s no revolution.’
Rule 3 - ‘Reconsider the model: proto - money -> univ. pilot -
Rule 2 - ‘Know how you are dealing with!’
10%
1%
29%
1%
58%
1%Business!
Ethos
Make it spread, but how?
Here’s the change we are driving: Democracy.(amongst other things)
And this is how we deliver it.
Community
- Public channel
- in-house teachers
- Google group
- map library + scenario editor
- wiki
- Live
- #tgtour2014
- local events
- TG conference 2015??
Rule 3 - ‘Ctrl - Alt - Del doesn’t make any sense’
(remove noise)
Our design challenges:
- context / situation
- sandbox
- purpose
Rule 4 - ‘Know what you are up against. Do better.’
Insufficiency.
Rule 5 - ‘Think outside the box: are schools really
the target customer?’
Rule 6 - ‘Have different revenue streams.’
Rule 7 - ‘Know your *ucking field.’
Example: ‘How TG products work.’
‘Don’t make games for schools. Make games
for fun and use schools as a potential
marketing channel, but only if that really makes
sense.’