Filament Games Blog

How to Get Hired at a Game Studio: Production Edition 2021

In our How to Get Hired Series, we interview hiring managers all about their departments, their best practices for success at Filament Games, and qualities in applications and applicants that make an impression. For this installment in the 2021 reboot of this series, we interviewed Shaina Peshkov, our Studio Operations Director. Shaina manages the Production,…

December 6, 2021 // Shaina Peshkov

Filament Games | Educational Game Developer

Educational Game Development Best Practices: Animation and Voiceover

Animation Our animation process is significantly different between 2D and 3D art, but today we’re going to focus on our 2D workflow. Animation starts internally with Motion Design. This involves the team sketching a concept of the final piece and creating basic animatics. These are used to identify the level of detail, timing, and the…

July 21, 2021 // Alex Stone

Educational Game Development Best Practices: Data Strategy and Confidentiality

Data Strategy There are two categories of data that we think about when building games. Telemetry is data about how the user experiences the game. This may include timing information, content exposures, correct/vs incorrect responses, and other key interactions that allow stakeholders to make inferences about the user’s skill mastery and app usability. Telemetry is…

July 19, 2021 // Alex Stone

Behind-the-Screens: An Inside Look at our Project Management Approach

Curious about what it’s like to create a learning game alongside our team? Today we’re offering a look into our processes for creating engaging, efficacious learning games – something we’ve been doing exclusively for nearly 15 years! It’s a chance for us to reflect on how we approach the act of making, and an opportunity…

August 14, 2019 // Jennifer Javornik

Remote Collaboration & Telecommunication – Part 3: Achieving Successful Shared Workspaces

Great meeting! Network connection was solid the whole time, video was great, audio was crystal clear, and interruptions were kept to a minimum. Great job everyone, we’ve mastered video conferencing. Now, please review your personal notes and in two weeks we’ll have a follow up meeting to reconcile our wildly different interpretations of the decisions…

June 24, 2019 // Ethan Cayko

Game Spotlight: Race to Ratify (iCivics)

To ratify? Or not to ratify? These questions serve as the core foundation of Race to Ratify, iCivics’ all-new learning game designed to teach players the core concepts of the ratification debate between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists as the United States ratified its Constitution. To celebrate the launch of Race to Ratify, we sat down with…

April 3, 2019 // James LaPierre

It’s a Piece of Cake to Build a Pretty Game

(Yay-uh!) Filament makes a lot of games, which is of course pretty awesome. However, there are many times on our projects where the development timeline is complicated by the need of a client or other stakeholder to be able to evaluate (or show off) the game before it’s done. Clients of course generally understand that the…

March 20, 2019 // Dan Norton

Discovery Phase: A Low-Risk Introduction to Learning Game Development

If you or your organization hopes to create a memorable learning experience with real-world impact, game-based learning may be the medium for you. No matter the subject area, platform, or type of player, there are tons of benefits to using custom learning games including: Creating an active and engaging learning experience. Building up a learner’s…

February 4, 2019 // Jennifer Javornik

Top Takeaways from My First Six Months as a Producer at Filament Games

Prior to joining Filament Games as an Associate Producer, I had produced on teams creating games for the mobile, virtual reality, and desktop computer platforms. A main takeaway I had from these experiences is that game development is inherently chaotic. Every day comes with its own challenges to face and unique problems to be solved,…

January 9, 2019 // Liam Craffey

Resource Roundup: Game Design and Development Colleges in Wisconsin

To those paying attention, it’s no secret that Madison, Wisconsin is home to a growing cluster of video game development studios – a phenomenon that we see occurring throughout the greater state, too. With the number of local community gaming events like M+DEV Conference, Madison FemDev, and Indie Arcade increasing each year, there has never been a…

October 3, 2018 // James LaPierre

A Look Back at our 2023 Releases

What We Mean When We Say AI: Understanding Types of AI

Resource Roundup: 2023 at Filament Games