Bobbie shares her experience as a games designer and developer working on small educational games at Mangahigh. Bobbie introduces the talk by analysing the role of educational games within the games industry, considering the importance of this sub genre. She then looks at the role of games within education, particularly how and why schools are using games within the classroom.

After introducing the relevance of games for learning, Bobbie expands upon her own design process. How designing for learning focuses on three main criteria: who you are designing for, what outcome do you want to achieve and how you are going to measure it. Bobbie includes practical examples to bring the design process to life. She then goes on to look at different types of learners and how you can design systems that engage all people.

Finally Bobbie illustrates the development process involved with making small educational games using titles she has worked on. Bobbie shares her journey from design, prototype, testing into MVPs and then the continued development of these games after release, as part of a small team.

Bobbie concludes by summarising the role of games within the education sector, how you can design for meaningful play and an overview of the development process when making small games.

Takeaway:

• How games play a part in education.
• How the process for creating educational games is a lot like creating indie games.
• How educational games fit into the games industry.
• How learning in the classroom relate to how players learn to play games
• How learning types influence game design.