I recently saw a post on LinkedIn claiming that only 20% of the requirements for a design position are hard skills such as ability to build in Figma or design in a game engine. The other 80? Soft skills, like communication, organization, and client management. This article will focus on…

In the late 20-teens, my business partner and I were faced with a problem. We were design consultants looking for the contract(s) that would fill our next year of work. We had many leads, but there were only two of us, and each one could take considerable time to…

When people think “brainstorming,” they often picture their team locked away in a room batting around ideas with a white board. Or opening up a blank Figma canvas and banging away at your monitor until the ideas come. The truth is, this is often the least productive way to…

When it comes to digital health apps, the two groups I typically hear talked about the most are Boomers (They’re aging! They need health care!) and Millennials, the first digital natives who expect there to be an app for everything — by the way, we’re now in our 40s. But…

A lesson in gamified subtraction — When we discuss gamification, we usually think about it in terms of addition. Add systems, add points, add rewards, add a leaderboard, and these things will boost retention. Here’s a secret: While gamification does boost retention when done correctly, it’s as much about subtraction as it is about addition. Removing…

Finding The Right Story For Your Audience Is A Winning Play — Before I was a full time serious game designer, I was a actually a game writer. This transition was natural for me, since I started my game design career making tabletop roleplaying games for fun. As a game writer and an RPG designer before that, I understood well the power…

First, a confession. I do not know how to ride a bike. I struggled mightily with coordination when I was a kid, and never got the hang of balancing it. Being empathetic parents, my mom and dad did not force the issue. So, here I am, an adult who can’t…

An election is the ultimate serious game: a contest between one or more people where the winner gets to make the rules for everyone else for years to come. In the USA, Presidential elections have always been the weirdest version of this, with their extensive primaries (which favors marathon runners…

Why play is the ideal pathway to behavior modification that lasts — There are many theories as to why games are good vectors for learning and behavior modification. They let us fail safely, experiment with novel and unusual roles, and mimic the ways we learn naturally. They are complex systems that excel at modeling hard-to-understand events and making rhetorical points through their…