How to Commission an Educational Game
Plan a curriculum-aligned game or gamified app. Agree stakeholders, curriculum input, discovery outputs, pilot testing, acceptance criteria and ongoing ownership before commissioning development.
From a first brief to launch
Use this checklist with your curriculum lead, subject-matter experts, IT team and chosen developer. Start before writing a brief, revisit it at prototype review, and agree the acceptance worksheet before full production.
Advice on educational commissioning is often spread across several sources. This page brings the stakeholder responsibilities, curriculum input, discovery outputs, pilot testing, acceptance criteria and ongoing ownership decisions into one place. If you are commissioning a museum touchscreen or gallery interactive rather than a classroom or app-based game, use the museum interactive commissioning checklist instead.
Your commissioning checklist
Tick a decision once it is agreed, or record why it does not apply. Add unresolved questions, owners and next actions in the notes. This is a planning aid, not a guarantee of learning outcomes.
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0 of 37 decisions recorded
1. Purpose, audience and learning objectives
Start with what learners should be able to do afterwards, not the game mechanic. A vocabulary app for adult literacy and a curriculum-aligned classroom game need different briefs.
2. Stakeholders and responsibilities
Name one person for each responsibility before the brief goes out. A shared responsibility with no named owner is how content approval or IT sign-off stalls the schedule.
3. Curriculum input and content
Content readiness affects the schedule as much as engineering does. A developer cannot finish an activity while the curriculum mapping behind it is still being agreed.
4. Discovery and prototype outputs
Agree what a discovery phase produces before it starts. Without a defined output, discovery can run indefinitely or skip straight to production on an unvalidated idea.
5. Scope, budget and platform
Ask every supplier to price the same scope. Compare complete costs, including content creation and ongoing hosting, not development alone.
6. Pilot testing and evaluation
Test with the people who will actually use the game, in conditions close to the real setting, not only in a studio.
7. Acceptance criteria and ongoing ownership
Write acceptance criteria before production starts. Use the worksheet below to record the required behaviour, evidence and sign-off owner.
Acceptance criteria worksheet
Adapt these examples to your project before agreeing them with your supplier. Replace unspecified thresholds and requirements with your agreed values, then record who will test and approve each item.
Learning outcome achieved
Suggested evidence: Pre and post assessment results, or teacher-observed evidence from the pilot group.
Classroom usability
Suggested evidence: A witnessed classroom walkthrough with an educator who has not seen the game before.
Device and network reliability
Suggested evidence: A test session on representative school hardware and network conditions.
Accessible interaction
Suggested evidence: Results from access checks and testing with representative learners.
Learner data handling
Suggested evidence: A review of data flows against the agreed data protection requirements.
Content handover
Suggested evidence: A witnessed content-editing walkthrough using the final content tool or handover documentation.
A lesson from Vocab Builder
Building Vocab Builder for The Language Conservancy meant designing one shared Unity system that loads a different language's content into the same nine mini-games through an API key, rather than rebuilding gameplay for each app.
For a new commission, turn that lesson into a discovery question: will you need one game, or the same learning mechanic serving several subjects, languages or cohorts? Agree it before production, because it changes the content pipeline and the ongoing ownership plan. Read the Vocab Builder case study or explore our educational games service.
Supporting your brief
For web-based games, W3C's accessibility planning resources explain how to assign responsibilities and involve users throughout a project. Agree data protection requirements for learner data with your institution's data protection lead before committing to a platform.
Our education industry page covers how we can help. Use the development cost guide for wider budget context and the brief builder to organise your project requirements.
Planning an educational game?
Use your completed checklist to shape the conversation. Tell us about the learning objective, curriculum, audience and decisions you need help making.
Discuss your project brief