Dan Norton - Filament Games

Dan Norton

Dan Norton loves approaching each new project at Filament as an opportunity to find authentic passion and engagement around learning new things. Dan blends his love for game design with his love of collaborative creativity to support Filament’s design and artistic teams.

Selected articles by the author

Depth vs. Breadth in Learning Games

One of the best things about making digital learning stuff is that we get to have a constant dialogue about the nature of knowledge.

January 17, 2018

How to Get Hired at a Game Studio: Game Designer Edition

Let’s talk about design as a job! People like to think that designers are a job defined by having neat ideas.

Abstraction in Learning Games

I was asked to write about abstraction in games for the Filament blog, which is a topic near and dear to my heart.

November 9, 2016

4 Tips for Creating Successful Client Relationships

We’ve had a lot of amazing clients over the years here at Filament. When your day-to-day job is to design creative projects that help people, you wind up meeting a ton of incredible people.

December 7, 2016

Moving From Learning Objectives to Game Mechanics

Whenever we start a project, it’s pretty common for us to not have a formal finished pitch.

Gamification vs. Game-Based Learning

When we talk to people about the work we do, the topic of “gamification” comes up quite a bit.

Real-Time vs. Turn-Based Mechanics in Learning Games

Hello there! Recently here at Filament Games I was working on a game pitch and the question of “real-time” versus “turn-based” was raised.

My Time at the iCivics ELL Convening

I had the distinct pleasure of meeting with a special ELL convening hosted by iCivics in DC to talk about some new things coming down the pike for Do I Have a Right?.

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.

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.

Educational Game Design: A Three-Pronged Approach

At Filament Games, we’ve developed a strategy for mapping educational content into gameplay mechanics, effectively using the design process to align how people have fun when playing games with the way they learn.

Balancing Fun and Learning in Educational Game Design

Creating an educational game that is both engaging and educational is a challenge that requires careful consideration and craftsmanship.

Game Design with AI

Welcome to the inaugural post of our new series where we discuss artificial intelligence and its impact on game development at large and at our studio!

Game Design Best Practices: Games for Adult Learning

This month on the blog, we’re featuring a variety of topics related to educational video games and adult learners.

Game Spotlight: Convene the Council (iCivics)

Hey there, I’m Dan Norton, Chief Creative Officer at Filament Games. Once again we’ve had the privilege of teaming up with the fine folks at iCivics to create another great civics game, this time called Convene the Council.

November 24, 2021

How to Get Hired at a Game Studio: Game Designer 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.

February 10, 2020

Prototyping, Clients, and ‘The Fidelity Rainbow’

As I’ve mentioned before, one of the core assumptions we have at Filament is that when a Client hires us to make a positive impact game, it’s because they can’t do it themselves.

October 7, 2019

Making Great Learning Games Pt. 2 – Designing Game Mechanics

Hello again! Welcome to part 2 of Making Great Learning Games!

September 30, 2019

Making Great Learning Games Pt. 1 – Defining Learning Objectives

Recently I was asked to make an article about making great learning games, a textual companion to my 10 minute video ramble on the same topic.

Sea of Thieves and Real Emergent Gameplay

Hey. Have you tried Sea of Thieves?