Casual Connect USA is about matching the creativity of the games industry with new media innovation and investment. There will be many talented speakers at Casual Connect USA 2016, and today we are giving you a glimpse of some of the Kids & Family track speakers.
Children are our future, and they’re also digital natives that are consuming apps and games from a very young age. Join experts as they discuss successful strategies to engage and teach this younger generation. The panels and sessions will take place on Tuesday, July 19 and Wednesday, July 20.
Lipa is based on the idea that children and families can benefit from the technology in their lives. Creating learning apps for preschoolers, they want kids to gain skills they can use in the real world while enjoying fun adventures alongside their parents. As a product manager at Lipa, Zdenek Klůc’s job is to help transform sparks of ideas into something meaningful, and pave the way through every stage of development. Sometimes the way is smooth. Sometimes it’s a roller-coaster. And sometimes, the best ideas come from unexpected places.
Taras Leskiv shares his experience with creating games for children during Casual Connect Eastern Europe 2014. And one of the lessons he has learned is, he says,”Children are the best QA!”
As lead programmer at Nravo Kids, Taras Leskiv loves an intellectual challenge. As an English Language enthusiast, he spends his free time translating technical articles into his native language, and he is also a member of Coursera Global Translator Community. His other interests are startups, analytics, board games, and puzzles, balanced with the physical activity of table tennis.
His enjoyment in using his mind is equally apparent in his gaming. He is currently playing Dota 2 for the challenging mind games it is famous for. He also plays Skyrim because he enjoys the RPG experience and, as he says, “It’s great to have some rest.” He rarely plays any free-to-play games, preferring to buy full games from Steam and using a PC for his gaming.
A Focus on Children
Taras sees a lack of high-quality digital educational content for children in Eastern Europe and Nravo Kids is focused on filling the void by building a company that can provide this content with superior educational games for Ukrainian children. Taras notes that the number of mobile devices in Ukraine has been growing dramatically in the last several years, so the company is working actively with the community to understand what they would like to have on the market and how to monetize it.
Prior to working in the games industry, Taras worked for a company that provided English language courses. He has found the English he mastered there very valuable in his present work. He also spent a great deal of his time working with children, teaching English classes and conducting English master classes. This experience is critical in allowing him to understand the specifics of developing games for children. It also helped him with ideas for useful features and game improvements.
His time working with children has been critical in allowing him to understand the specifics of developing games for children.
“My the most memorable teaching experience is from a summer English-speaking camp where I conducted master-classes about 7 Wonders of the Ancient World in English for Ukrainian children,” Taras says. “I had to gamify my classes to get children interested in the subject of ancient history and to teach them English at the same time.”
Working Hard
Currently, Taras is the only developer at Nravo Kids, handling all the development using the Unity 3D game engine. He is also responsible for the publishing process. “We are a really small and compact startup team that consists of six people for now,” Taras says. “So every team member has to be quite universal.” Since he had always wanted a career in game development, when the opportunity at Nravo Kids arose, he immediately joined the company.
The most gratifying time in his career came with the publishing of the first Nravo Kids game, Who’s in the Mountains?
The most gratifying time in his career came with the publishing of the first Nravo Kids game, Who’s in the Mountains?, on all major mobile platforms. With the initial idea of having a simple game, it soon became clear that the game would need to have more to it than planned. “The development was driven by the main goal - every aspect in the game has to be not only fun but also have educational value,” says Taras. As the only developer on this project, he successfully handled all the development as well as the publishing process to Android, iOS, and Windows Phone. Taras mentioned there were a few challenges when it came to wearing two hats, saying “it sometimes gets hard to switch between development and publishing contexts of the production process. Multitasking can’t get you focused at times.” But he looks at the bright side. “It’s a wonderful experience to develop a project from scratch to a final published title.”
Although Taras admits he is not particularly good at predicting trends in the games industry, he is expecting to see a major impact in the future from porting AAA titles like Bioshock and GTA from PC to mobile.
Nancy MacIntyre spoke about the power of partnerships during her session at Casual Connect USA 2014. “Partnerships build bridges between brands, consumers, and developers,” she said.
Nancy MacIntyre, the founder and CEO of Fingerprint, became interested in the games industry while working at Lotus Development in a sales and marketing role. One day, she stumbled into Electronics Boutique thinking they might be a good distribution partner for them. She remembers thinking then that games might become as big as video tapes. She went on the get a job at Broderbund Software, followed by Atari and LucasArts.
Nancy MacIntyre, Founder and CEO, Fingerprint
Founding Fingerprint and receiving Series B funding from DreamWorks brought the most satisfying time of her career. It came through having a wonderful initial group of investors, employees, developers, and customers who all bought into the dream. MacIntyre finds the games industry to be an interesting mix of magic, rocket science, fun factor, and business, so it attracts people who are magicians, rocket scientists, fun, and suits, and she likes the mix. Today, she is getting a lot of enjoyment from working with developers to bring their games to life on mobile.
She continues to appreciate the ever-changing nature of the industry. “There’s always a new platform, new business model, new innovation. The intellectual challenge keeps me hopping, and I love games. But if I weren’t in the industry, obviously I’d be a host on The View.”
Combining Innovation with Fun
The mission at Fingerprint is to create fun mobile content and to provide an innovative platform where family and friends can connect together to learn and play. She insists, “The family market always evolves, from books and board games to tablets and smartphones, but the human experience will always remain social.” So Fingerprint has designed a way to transition this parent/child engagement into the digital world. In addition to finding and partnering with great developers, they have established a platform the enables other brands to deliver their own mobile kid-friendly app networks. So far, they have done this with a number of brands, including Sylvan (SylvanPlay), Astro, and Samsung (Kids Time). The technology they are implementing is scalable for broader content with brand partners in other categories, so the potential for expansion and growth is tremendous.
The mission at Fingerprint is to create fun mobile content and to provide an innovative platform where family and friends can connect together to learn and play.
Obsessing Over the Possibilities
While MacIntyre was working at LeapFrog Enterprises, she and her colleagues often worried about kids getting older, leaving toys, and being more interested in buying video games. She relates, “One day at a coffee shop about a month after the iPhone came out, I saw a mother hand her expensive smartphone to her toddler. I knew then that the real competition would be every mom with an iPhone in her purse, giving instant access to play everywhere.” She noticed the sticky fingerprints on the screen and became obsessed with the possibilities of touch screen devices. She left the company to create Fingerprint, and the brand was born. From there, she brought on board a number of other talented people with similar visions, including two with experience at PlayFirst, Disney, and Frog Design.”
She has learned that to succeed, you must be nimble and smart, and surround yourself with smart people. She emphasizes, “Know if something is working or needs revising. Stay close to your best counselors who are as invested as you are.” She has also learned to only do things that move the ball up the field with partners, consumers, investors, and the team. If the activity doesn’t check off one of those boxes, don’t do it.
The Fingerprint Team
Choosing A Different Path
Finally, she learned that to succeed as an entrepreneur, you must create something no one has or do it better than anyone else. You must recognize when things need to morph and do it, and make sure the team understands why. She feels being nimble is one of the most underrated skills.
She notes that today, children everywhere are immersed in their devices, and parents are becoming increasingly aware of how much screen time is consuming their lives. There is a growing trend of parents trying to make that screen time more productive through apps that educate as well as entertain. Educators are also embracing mobile apps for learning. For this reason, greater numbers of developers are shifting to edutainment apps to meet these consumer needs. MacIntyre believes the industry will continue to evolve to meet the needs of both parents and educators, while finding even more ways to keep children engaged and entertained.
For her personal gaming, she focuses on mobile, since there are so many great games. She loves to have her games and everything else on iTunes in one account and playable on all her devices. She has played while getting a root canal and while on a ski lift, proving games can be played with either a numb mouth or numb fingers. Currently, she is playing Sonic Jump for iPhone; she has a soft spot for Sonic because it was the first game she played all the way through. She also has the original Wii and Xbox 360. She finds the party games on Wii are still great fun and excellent for friends who aren’t really gamers. But she hasn’t yet found any reason to upgrade.
When not involved with games, MacIntyre is an avid consumer of media, especially books and movies. She also loves playing tennis, skiing, and going to the beach.
Amy Smith Muise participated in a session about user testing during Casual Connect USA 2014. “Testing is not something we do at the end of the day after everything has been completed,” she said. “Testing is part of our design process.”
Amy Smith Muise, Partnerships Manager, NMSU Learning Games Lab
Amy Smith Muise manages partnerships for education, distribution, and educational use of the products of the Learning Games Lab at New Mexico State University. The Learning Games Lab, part of Media Productions, specializes in designing and testing educational tools. Their products are research-based and developed for a variety of audiences, including youth, college students, the research community, policy makers, and workers in particular industries.
Appreciating User Needs
Muise has worked in college level teaching and curriculum development in a number of fields. As a result, she appreciates the needs of educational users. She also loves the opportunities her job gives her to learn about various subjects. Past topics include astronomy, animal science, biology, English, food science, and mathematics.
At the Learning Games Lab, they believe parents and schools are becoming increasingly savvy consumers of educational games. Ninja Kitchen, a food safety game, is one example of how games can help kids learn.
At the Learning Games Lab, they believe parents and schools are becoming increasingly savvy consumers of educational games. Muise maintains, “Demand will soar for games that support conceptual learning and engage users in exploration, not just drill and practice, and not just surrounding traditional ways of presenting information with nice graphics and animation.”
Muise began her career creating more traditional educational media and online learning modules. But she feels these materials cannot compare to game-based learning, and insists, “It’s incredible how games can support leaps in conceptual understanding.”
The most interesting place Muise has played a game herself is probably out in the middle of rugged country, since she lives on a working ranch in New Mexico. She gives her children mobile devices with strategically loaded games to keep them safely occupied while she and her husband are working to accomplish something tricky like roping and branding a calf or scrambling up a cliff to mend a broken fence. But she does point out that she has to be careful what games she gives them, or they will come wandering over asking for help solving a puzzle just as she is tied up with something.
The most interesting place Muise has played a game herself is probably out in the middle of rugged country, since she lives on a working ranch in New Mexico.
These days, Muise and her children are playing Jacob Jones and the Bigfoot Mystery on iPad and the educational history game, Time Tribe, in browser. They are eagerly waiting for its release to iPad. For herself, she is playing the narrative game TheORPHEUS Ruse from Choice of Games, on iPad.
Other than gaming, her hobbies include playing old-time fiddle and cello in a string band.
Barbara Chamberlin shared her views on user testing during Casual Connect USA 2014. “The personal epiphany I had was not to resent user testing every time I had to do it, but to find a way to make it easy,” she said.
Barbara Chamberlin is the director of the New Mexico State University Learning Games Lab. For almost 20 years, she has been developing games for learning. Because she has always hated user testing, she has focused her research on finding more efficient and enjoyable ways to get the kind of feedback from kids that will make learning games better.
Barbara Chamberlin and Michelle Garza work with some of the youth consultants who test products at the NMSU Learning Games Lab. (photo by Darren Phillips)
As a parent of two children, Chamberlin naturally spends considerable time involved with their activities, such as 4H meetings and swimming practice. She also downloads many children’s apps and finds it exciting to review, play, and discuss them with her children. She brings to her work the advantage of constantly being reminded of how children learn and how things that are mundane to adults are exciting new discoveries for kids.
Learning and Experience
Chamberlin describes herself as insatiable, constantly wanting to learn more, see more, and experience more. In her work, the results of her research immediately spark new questions. When a new construct is implemented, she enjoys thinking of other ways it could be used, and hearing about something new carries with it the desire to learn more.
As part of her work developing games, Chamberlin speaks regularly to different audiences about the uses of technology, and how to best integrate games and apps with learning.
The best part of working in this industry for Chamberlin is the opportunity to learn about a wide variety of different things. She sees her work as education rather than gaming; everything they create is based on research and has education or behavior change as the end goal. She insists that, although the concepts their games teach may sound boring, the content is vital to a student’s success, so it is equally necessary to do a good job helping kids learn it. “When you really understand how essential this is, it is exciting to realize how much potential you have as a designer,” she claims. “That’s the best part. We’re changing lives here, in small, incremental, but incredibly important ways.”
In the “Video Closet” at NMSU’s Learning Games Lab, youth consultants give feedback on games they’ve played… avoiding the ‘group think’ that often happens in focus groups, and giving kids more of a chance to reflect.
The Power Of Interactivity
When it comes to developing apps and games for kids, NMSU’s Learning Games Lab believes in testing frequently: sometimes that is on the device, and sometimes it is giving input in more open-ended and creative ways.
Twenty years ago, when she was creating interactive touch screen kiosks for public environment, she realized the power of interactivity for learning, and thought, “It should all be like this.” So she has spent her career at NMSU figuring out educational gaming and seeing it evolve and grow. Recently, she has seen an increase in great educational games and public acceptance of educational game play. She maintains, “Just as every game developer should be a game player, so should every learning games developer be a learning researcher. We can do so much more than make quiz games for learning; we can change behavior, alter mindsets, influence emotions and really empower inquiry. I’m excited to see the industry moving in those directions.”
The Monetization Challenge
The most serious challenge Chamberlin sees facing the games industry today is the monetization of casual games. While she realizes game development is a business, she also recognizes that we now know so much about human behavior that we can tweak every impulse and scientifically manipulate each person to spend, contribute, and buy. Unfortunately, it also makes the game less fun, and, she says, “It doesn’t do much for society either.” These games may distract the user and tickle the part of the brain that responds to incentives, but players’ lives are not made richer from the experience. She would much prefer to see people make money by crafting beautiful, engaging, and enriching experiences.
In Gate, learners free imprisoned shadows while building number groups, developing crucial skill for algebra. Chamberlin prefers to see people crafting beautiful, engaging, and enriching experiences such as this.
Chamberlin does not face the issue of monetization directly, since most of her work is grant-funded and does not have to show a profit, yet they — like many developers of educational games — are still looking for a viable model for disseminating, promoting and maintaining their apps, once developed.
In this competitive space, many educational developers still face the challenge of promoting and disseminating their games into classrooms and to learners. One of biggest questions in the educational gaming right now, according to Chamberlin, is the school-based dissemination of learning software. Everyone in the industry is trying to anticipate how teachers and parents find and buy apps, how schools decide what systems to use, and how children engage in the apps most specific to their needs. She says, “We are still trying to predict the best way to get effective learning tools the hands of the learner.”
Jenna Hoffstein shared her views on designing educational games during Casual Connect USA 2014. “Educational games need to be awesome,” she said. “They need to be fun, engaging, and exciting. We don’t get a pass just because this is a hard design problem.”
Jenna Hoffstein, Founder, Little Worlds Interactive
Jenna Hoffstein founded Little Worlds Interactive in the summer of 2013 with the goal to make amazing educational games. For the past year, she has been developing The Counting Kingdom, and will be releasing it in late summer 2014. She does all the design and development, with talented contractors doing the art, audio, and marketing.
A Curious Tale
She describes herself as a curious person who loves learning new things and always wants to know “why?” She looks for the patterns in events or information, always searching below the surface of things to the underlying mechanics.
Throughout her career, she has worked across a number of different genres and platforms and has learned to always question her assumptions in order to craft the type of gameplay experience that is right for a particular project.
She maintains that every project has joyous moments. Right now, she is very proud of how tightly designed the mechanics are in The Counting Kingdom, as well as the level of polish that such a small team has been able to reach. She says, “I’m proud every time someone plays the game and enjoys it.”
Right now, she is very proud of how tightly designed the mechanics are in The Counting Kingdom, as well as the level of polish that such a small team has been able to reach.
Accessible Learning
Hoffstein expects the educational games market to continue growing in size partly because of the accessibility of learning apps on mobile devices. She plans to take advantage of this growth by being a leader with high-quality and engaging gameplay. And she will release games across a number of platforms in order to reach players in many places.
A trend which she has been following with great interest is VR, but she believes it will be some years before it has any possibility of becoming mass market. She admits, “I don’t know how big the impact will be, but I’m excited to see what kinds of new experiences we can create with it.”
Hoffstein enjoys playing games on her computer, iPad, and phone.
Hoffstein enjoys playing games on her computer, iPad, and phone. She describes Monument Valley as her game of the year so far and Threes as her go-to when she has a few minutes to spare. When she has a longer time to sit down and play, she goes to her computer to play Banished, a city building strategy game, claiming, “It’s brutal, but I love it.” She rarely plays console games but does own Xbox 360 and a Wii. Her research into Facebook games has led her to make small F2P purchases, but never more than $20.
She loves making things. If she is not involved in developing a game, she is usually baking something or trying out a new craft. Her most recent explorations include laser cutting and Arduino.
Night & Day Studios is a mobile app company based in Portland, Oregon with over 70 apps produced. Founded in 2008 by Nat Sims and Erin Rackelman, their first app, Peekaboo Barn, was released at the dawn of the App Store. These friendly farm animals have gone on to be played over 50 million times. Their main focus has been children’s educational apps, developing new proprietary content, and also working with licensors to bring many childhood classics to the mobile world for the first time, such as Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Richard Scarry’s Busytown. Yummiloo Rainbow Power is a collaborative project between Night & Day and yummico, a new children’s media company. Kate Kiehl from Night & Day Studios tells the story.
Initial meetings between our team at Night & Day Studios and our partners at yummico started in February 2012. It was immediately clear that our two companies were a wonderfully complimentary match. At Night & Day, with over five years of app development under our belts, we have talented creatives and programers who have a wealth of knowledge about development and game concepting. yummico is a new children’s media company with TV and film industry veterans, including Traci Paige Johnson, creator of the beloved, groundbreaking preschool television series Blue’s Clues and co-creator of SuperWhy, and Caroline Baron, award-winning producer of acclaimed feature films, including the Oscar-nominated Capote and Monsoon Wedding. United by the common goal of delivering delightful and educational media with a home-grown aesthetic, the collaborative project of the Yummiloo Rainbow Power app was a natural partnership.
Playing Smart, Eating Smart
An initial pre-production period between Night & Day Creative Director Brianne Baker, Senior Programmer Justin Hawkwood and the yummico team formed the direction the project would take. First and foremost, Yummiloo Rainbow Power was to be focused on nutrition education and the theme of healthy eating for children ages 2-7 with a target focus of 3-5 year-olds. For parents, often getting little ones to eat their fruits and veggies can be nothing short of a miracle. Our hope was that by creating adorable characters known as the Yum Yums and their world of Yummiloo, we would assist in cultivating young, adventurous, healthy eaters.
Our hope was that by creating adorable characters known as the Yum Yums and their world of Yummiloo, we would assist in cultivating young, adventurous, healthy eaters.
In designing the Yummiloo Rainbow Power game play, the goal was to provide a fun and engaging experience while also helping kids develop food identification skills and healthy eating habits. The game play was envisioned as follows: after being introduced to the Yum Yums, users would be instructed to gather fruits and vegetables by dragging them into the corresponding colored bucket to help fuel the Rainbow Machine. Children would also be provided with a compost bin for spoiled foods, making room for more fresh foods to grow once the rotten ones are removed. Once all five colored carts were filled with food, the Rainbow Machine would begin to run on full power, unleashing the carnival rides and a Yum Yum party. The celebratory end of the game would reinforce the importance of ‘eating a rainbow,’ educating kids about how eating a mix of bright, vibrant colored foods helps their bodies grow. In addition, the app would encourage fine motor skills development, color recognition, and recognition of different fruits and vegetables.
Jumping the Hurdles
Production began in earnest in June 2012 ,as we embarked on the challenge of bringing the Yum Yums and the world of Yummiloo to life. Given the complexity of what we were aiming to accomplish, we were weary of getting tied into Corona as the language, so we chose to build the app in native iOS. To maximize user experience and the ability to interact with the app, we began development right from the beginning in Xcode. One thing that quickly became clear was that the initial conception of having additional games at the carnival was more ambitious than what was realistic for the scope of the project. Scaling back to a fun animated video celebration at the game’s end allowed us to stay within budget and launch in the time-frame we were aiming for.
Scaling back to a fun animated video celebration at the game’s end allowed us to stay within budget and launch in the time-frame we were aiming for.
The biggest hurdle that our developers overcame was switching back and forth frequently between video and interactive app content. Throughout the course of launching the app and reaching the final carnival celebration, the switches occur over ten times. The most common issues we faced when switching back and forth were the appearance of a black screen, the video speeding up and issues with the coloration not matching between the video files and the images used for interactive play.
We found solutions to each of our issues. To solve the problem of the black screen and rapid video play, the developer started the video play earlier, but essentially made it invisible with a very quick fade in. The issues with color shifts between the compressed video and image files required a different approach. Our lead developer built a simple application in which you could run a test of the compressed video and interactive image file to check the color consistency. After a significant amount of trial and error and manually color shifting individual files, we had developed a formula that worked consistently each time to produce color matches between the two files.
As the development process continued, the complexities of all moving parts with the in app grew as well, namely: the growth and rotting of fruits and vegetables, rain falling, clouds forming and parting, compost, food buckets, and the Rainbow Machine filling, as well as different Yum Yum characters movements. Out of these many layers, Yummiloo Rainbow Power emerged as a beautiful blend of video, programmatic animation, animation utilizing sprite sheets and frame animation.
Learning from Children
As adults designing apps for end users who are much smaller and younger than ourselves, one of the most fascinating aspects of our process is when the time comes to dive into user testing. Upon getting the app into the hands of little ones, several important pieces of feedback emerged. Having the two different play modes (tap vs. drag) made the app accessible to a more broad age range of users. Based upon user testing, it was decided that drag mode would be the default setting, as that fit best with our main target ages’ motor abilities. Including tap mode as an alternate option also allowed younger children to enjoy the game. There was a significant amount of testing conducted to determine the right amount of sound that should be included in the app. With the potential for a great deal of voice over, we approached testing this in an additive fashion where we slowly incorporated more sound layers to see how children reacted. As a result, we were able to see what they understood without instruction, as well as the aspects that benefited from more verbal explanation.
As a result of testing with kids, we ended up adding a button to the home screen so the video can be played again without restarting the app.
One surprise we encountered when testing beta versions of the app was how kids reacted to the introductory video. Many of them wanted to watch it over and over again — and as a result, we ended up adding a button to the home screen so the video can be played again without restarting the app. Because of the learning element that results from filling the Rainbow Machine and its function as a metaphor for healthy eating, we did not add an option to play the ending carnival video unless the game is played all the way through. As a result, the child’s focus and effort to fill the buckets with each color of fruits and vegetables is rewarded at the end, while also reinforcing the overarching idea of the importance of eating healthy foods from all colors of the rainbow.
Unleash the Yum Yums!
Yummiloo Rainbow Power was submitted to Apple in February 2013 and launched on March 20th, 2013 in celebration of the first day of spring. Within the first day, it was ranked in the top 50 US App Store Education app downloads and was selected by Apple as a New & Noteworthy or Hot Pick for seven consecutive weeks upon launch. The reception from educators, parents, bloggers, and children themselves has been equally positive. The experience of collaborating with the yummico team on this project was an honor and the process of creating the app was a rainbow-filled joy!
Yummiloo Rainbow Power is available on the App Store for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Night & Day Studios has several new app releases planned for this fall.
When Jesse Schell presented his foward-looking lecture, The Power of Touch, at Casual Connect USA in San Francisco, it was obvious to the audience that he passionately believes touch UI is changing, and would continue to change, the way people interact with digital content. He intrigued the audience with concrete examples and far-fetched ideas of how touch interfaces make digital content both more accessible and more immersive. After all, Jesse says, “We have been touching things for 300,000,000 years.”
Jesse Schell is CEO of Schell Games, a company focused developing Transformational Games (games that change people for the better). He is also author of the book The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses and Distinguished Professor of the Practice of Entertainment Technology at Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center. At Casual Connect USA, Jesse announced their new iPad app for Lionel called Battle Trains, and their online, collaborative game design community, GameSprout.
GameSprout is a new game design community recently launched in beta by Schell Games
Jesse tells us his work consists of keeping their developers happy, healthy and doing incredible work. He believes that each game he has worked on has taught him something; he uses every previous experience to guide how to best tackle the next game. His greatest satisfaction comes from seeing his students at the Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center go on to create incredible games and experiences such as World of Goo, the Uncharted series and new rides at Disney World.
Jesse Schell
We asked Jesse what he enjoyed doing in his free time; his answer was, “What is this Free Time of which you speak?” but then admitted he juggles and plays the hulusi, and that his favorite music genre is skiffle. He describes himself as “unique, just like everybody else,” although if you see him playing skiffle music on the hulusi, you might think him unique in his very own way!
Growing Schell Games from a ragtag band to a team of over 100 developers has been the greatest challenge Jesse has faced during his career. “To do so” he says, “has required a lot of patience, and willingness to change how we do things without letting go of our core values.” The critical things he has learned as he worked through these challenges are, “Communication is everything in game development, and communication structures must be designed, built and maintained, just like games.”
“Communication is everything in game development, and communication structures must be designed, built and maintained, just like games.”
The latest trend Jesse sees affecting Schell Games is the deployment of tablets into schools. They are dealing with this trend by working to create world-class educational games that can be part of traditional education, as well as augmenting the gaps that still exist in education. But the trend he sees affecting the game industry as a whole is the development of artificially intelligent characters.
