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How to Conduct Playtests

Making software–any software, whether it’s an app on your phone to help you manage your finances or a game for the Playstation 4–is hard. Making good software that doesn’t drive your users nuts is harder because you have to pay attention to something called usability. People have brains, and brains have limits in how much…

February 24, 2016 // Marshall Behringer

Filament Games | Educational Game Developer

How to Make a Learning Game

It Begins With An Idea Video games typically begin with design, either starting with a great idea or pursuing a creative solution to a tough problem. It is entirely possible to imagine games for which there is no demand, or to identify a space where there is a need but no good game can be…

January 4, 2016 // Stephen Calender

How to Make a Video Game for Learning: Costs and Considerations

Game creation is more complicated than portrayed in Game Dev Story. I’m going to explain just how complicated it can be, but I have a few caveats: I can’t walk through every possible game feature (there are many and we make new ones all the time). I can’t provide a standard menu of features either,…

November 9, 2015 // Stephen Calender

The 4 P’s of Designing Learning Games with Impact

iCivics is a non-profit organization dedicated to reinvigorating civic learning through interactive and engaging learning resources. Their platform has more than 7 million registered students and 100,000 registered teachers in all 50 United States. The article below is written by iCivics Director of Content Carrie Ray-Hill and shares valuable insights into creating mission-driven game-based learning tools.…

January 26, 2017 // Carrie Ray-Hill

Gamification Done Well

Hey friends! It’s been a long time since I’ve rapped at ya, but today I thought I’d revisit the wild, wild world of gamification. I mentioned in my previous blogoblag about gamification that it was a thing that isn’t hard to do badly. But I didn’t really get into much detail. Behold, gentle readers: this post…

June 14, 2017 // Dan Norton

How to Embrace Failure

Dan White wants to talk about failure. Specifically, the way we view failure within the context of education. Many of our educator allies have spoken to us about their sense that sometimes, K-12 education is gripped by a culture of fear that’s driven by standards-based testing regimes and a hierarchy of institutional accountability that can create…

May 17, 2017 // Brandon Pittser

How to Add Value to Your Reader’s Experience with Augmented and Virtual Reality

If you are a traditional educational book publisher, you have most likely asked yourself if adding an Augmented or Virtual Reality component to your books is a wise investment. You’ve seen some impressive demos of characters coming to life in 3D from a page and you think “that’s cool!” But then you ask yourself, “what’s…

May 15, 2017 // Jennifer Javornik

Alpha, Beta, Gold: A Commitment to High-quality Game Development

When I talk to prospective clients, I always try to KIJF (keep it jargon free). That being said, there are a few terms that are just helpful to know. In this post, we’ll look at each of the three release phases that make up a typical game development project with us: Alpha, Beta, and Gold…

May 10, 2017 // Jennifer Javornik

Designing Games for Toys and Young Learners

I recently had the privilege of working with Square Panda to create learning games for youngsters to help teach them letters. They use a physical tray and a series of plastic letters that players can manipulate in real life to interact with the digital game on a tablet. It looks like this: Photo credit: Square Panda…

April 26, 2017 // Abby Friesen

Sennett Middle School’s Gaming Club – Creating Game Art!

At a recent game development club we hosted at Sennett Middle School, the Filament Games team introduced students to video game art, which is an important component of any video game’s development. There are many different artistic styles developers can choose from, but we chose a style that’s both iconic and easy to learn: pixel…

April 27, 2017 // Elle Jacobson

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