Educational Game Development

For clients who have a subject, a learning objective, a body of content or an idea, and need the game designed and built around it. How much of this we take on depends on the project and on who else is involved. Some clients want us to own the whole thing; others already have educators, writers, illustrators or researchers in place and need the game design and engineering around them. Where a project needs disciplines we do not hold permanently, such as art, audio or specialist pedagogical input, we bring in trusted specialists or work with yours.

A lot of educational work starts with material that already exists: a curriculum, a research database, a set of stories, subject-matter expertise held by your team, artwork, or the findings of a funded programme. The question is not what to teach, but what the game should be. This is where we do some of our most useful work. You hold the subject knowledge; we design the gameplay and build the systems and technical structure around it, then keep checking the result back against what the material is meant to achieve. Vocab Builder for The Language Conservancy began as an extensive database of vocabulary research for endangered indigenous languages, and became nine mini-games in a single app, built so new languages could be added over time. Navigo, delivered for the EU Horizon 2020 iRead consortium during our team’s time at fish in a bottle, turned pedagogical research from more than a dozen European institutions into 15 mini-games across four languages.

Plenty of educational software is still doing its job pedagogically while the technology underneath it has aged out. Walking away from that investment is rarely the right answer. We work on existing educational games and interactives that need new platforms, a move off Flash or another dead runtime, a Unity version upgrade, accessibility improvements, performance work, localisation, additional content, usability changes, or simply someone to keep developing them. Our team rebuilt The Great Fire of London for the Museum of London from a published Flash file with no source code, recreating the full experience in HTML5. Where the original learning design still holds up, modernising is usually cheaper and less risky than starting again; where the pedagogy or the audience has moved on, we will say so. Our Legacy Modernisation service covers the technical process in more detail, and Signs Your Legacy Educational Game Needs an Update is a useful first read.

Educational games tend to work best when the learning objective has a say in how the game plays, rather than being layered on top of a finished game shell. There is no single formula for that, and the right answer depends on the subject, the audience and where the game will be used. These are the ideas we come back to most often.

Educational projects arrive from very different kinds of organisation, and what each one needs from a development partner varies more than the subject matter does.

Educational projects often carry requirements a purely commercial game does not. Very few projects need all of these, and adding them where they are not needed only costs money. Depending on the audience, the organisation and where the game will run, we can support:

Educational projects often begin before anyone knows exactly what the product is. That is normal, and it does not stop us giving you a straight answer about scope and cost.

Our permanent team is small and technically focused. David and Adam stay close to the engineering work and keep responsibility for the technical direction, which means you are talking to the people building the game rather than to an account manager relaying messages. When a project needs more capacity or disciplines we do not hold permanently, we bring in trusted contractors and specialists we have already worked with. Depending on the project that can include additional engineering, backend, art, UI/UX, audio and QA. Where you already have educators, researchers, illustrators or an internal digital team, we work alongside them instead of duplicating what you have. Meet the team.