We’re feeling electrified about 2023! One of the main reasons for our excitement? All of the cool learning games that are coming out this year, of course!  via Giphy As leaders in the educational games space, we have a finger on the pulse of all the latest game-based learning news and technology trends. We don’t stop there, though. Every new year, we keep an eye out for high-quality learning games set to release in the upcoming months. Since we just rang in 2023, it’s only natural that we provide our dear readers with a list of our most highly anticipated releases! Before we get into the ..read more

The Filament Games Podcast is back!  That’s right, after a, ahem, brief four-year hiatus, season four of your favorite game-based learning podcast is here. The original hosts of the podcast, VP of Marketing Brandon Pittser and CCO Dan Norton, are back with even more game-based learning insights, incredible guest interviews, and enough antics to keep you informed and entertained all at once. Keep up with trending game industry news and all things Filament with the Filament Games podcast!  Without further delay, here’s your reintroduction to the Filament Games Podcast. We proudly prese ..read more

Recently, our CEO Dan White had the pleasure of joining Elecia White and Christopher White (no relation!) on their engineering podcast, Embedded.fm. This podcast features insights from engineers, artists, educators, and makers with a passion for science, technology, engineering, art, and math. In this episode, Dan discusses Filament’s approach to game design, our upcoming sandbox robotics game, RoboCo, and much more! Tune in below to learn how Dan defines “fun,” why STEM and learning games are a natural pairing, and everything else you want to know about Filament Games.  Episode outline ..read more

You remember the metaverse, right? Of course you do, it’s one of 2022’s buzziest words! In our post from a little while back called The Metaverse: What It Is, Who’s Making It, and Why It Matters, we noted that The Washington Post defined the term as, “a shared, virtual space that’s persistently online and active, even without people logging in,” – but the quote continues, “It will have its own economy, complete with jobs, shopping areas and media to consume.” The metaverse is abuzz in the K-12 sphere for a good reason, but its influence goes beyond the classroom and into the workplace, too! In ..read more

Hey there, I’m Dan Norton, Chief Creative Officer at Filament Games. Once again we’ve had the privilege of teaming up with the fine folks at iCivics to create another great civics game, this time called Convene the Council.  Convene the Council? What’s it about? In Convene the Council, you step into the constrictive, but nice-looking shoes of the President of the United States. You’ll work with your National Security Council to make critical foreign policy decisions that affect the country, and the world. Your council provides strategic insight, but it’s up to you to make the call and gu ..read more

Quality matters. Your audience does not care about the technology you used to develop your game. The big questions for consumers are: how do I get it, will it run on my device, and is it as good as any other experience I could have on this device. The tough problem for HTML5 is meeting the quality expectations compared to its competitors, and it has taken time for the technology to evolve. Filament Games has heavily invested into HTML5; the following is our vision, strategy, and process for creating high-end HTML5 games. A Checkered Past There were two prominent statements made in November 201 ..read more

If you could create any game, what would you make? Would it be a chaotic universe where anyone can be a superhero, an epic intergalactic adventure, or a medieval fantasy world with wizards and dragons? After several years in the games industry, my answer is creating learning games. Though it may not seem obvious at first, there are significant differences between creating learning games and entertainment games. Not only must developers add in specific learning objectives, the business models are fundamentally different. Most companies in the game industry are focused on making the next big hit ..read more

Designers, we are not the only ones with ideas and solutions. There is a careful balance we must maintain between designing features by ourselves and gathering the developer’s ideas and feedback. A game is a bajillion times better when it’s the combination of everyone’s creativity. It’s the kind of thing that’s obvious in theory but is sometimes forgotten in practice. I would argue that this is a skill, not just something that happens naturally when a team comes together. Scratch that, I know it’s a skill because I used to be bad at it, back when I was a wee designer. Nowadays, I’m proud to sa ..read more

One of the challenges the QA team at Filament faces is that our players are often children and our team is made up of adults. That isn’t a problem when testing a crash or a missing art asset, but it can be when we test the user experience. Here are three things I try to keep in mind when looking at a game from a child’s perspective: Children have small hands. A phone is a tablet to a child, and a tablet is a TV. What’s comfortable to me may not be comfortable to a kid sitting at a desk. At the first school playtest I attended, I watched a child lay her test phone down on her desk and ..read more

Together with physical classroom activities, learning games afford students a more comprehensive view of classroom materials and a more dynamic classroom experience. Learning games can teach students about dynamic content in ways textbooks cannot. Using Filament Games, students can explore organ systems, travel through the body as a cell, and watch plants grow and bloom in a matter of minutes. Learning games provide a safe environment for students to explore these environments and experiment with these systems. Good learning games aren’t designed just for fun; they are designed to teach studen ..read more