I'm meeting a lot of cool people at conferences, who ask me if I've done <cool thing> or how I handled <challenging situation>, and I'm kicking myself because I keep forgetting things I did a few years ago, things that would make perfect examples for the questions I'm asked.

If you want people to really engage with your material, make a game, just know that you'll have some dropoff from folks who can't or won't create the space your game needs.

At the very least, being forced to input actions into a game means that you can't fully "tune out" like you could with a video.

Interestingly, I wonder if that very inaccessibility is what gives games their educational power. You value something more if you invest in it, so if you set aside time and space to play a game, you're more likely to listen to its educational goals.

**Games as a pasttime**: Games can provide something for a player to do while they're learning.

I have more discussion and reading on my website: kksgandhi.github.io/personal_sit...

**Games as introductions**: Games can bring up topics to be followed up on later, all while making players think they are just playing a silly game. Think "embedded design"

**Gamification**: Using points, badges and leaderboards to motivate users in a non-game setting.

**Games as social platforms**: Games encourage social interaction, where players may learn social skills or discuss concepts.

**Games as alibis**: Rather than directly bringing up a difficult topic, play a game that touches on those topics as a way to spark conversation.

**Games as experience anchors**: The game may not provide that much content, but it's memorable, and used as a touchstone when content is later provided, or when a player is trying to recall something.

**Games as reflective spaces**: Games can provide time and a mental space to think about certain topics, even if they aren't providing much content. Games can help us imagine a world that doesn't yet exist.

**Games as learning challenges**: In order to complete the game, players must learn. This can range from "do division to defeat zombies" up to "learn about Aristotle so you can accurately roleplay as him in a LARP".

It got me thinking about the myriad of ways games are used. These are the ones I can think of, can you help me add more?

**Games as playful systems**: A game can simulate a real world system, allowing players a safe space to modify things and see what happens.

Meghan Gardner had a brilliant roleplay experience about end-of-life directives. It's a tough topic, but it helped me wrestle with it, and playing it can be a great way to bring it up to a loved one.

Genuinely a life changing game.

Download the proceedings here (playstorypress.org/books/meanin...), or, if you're in a rush, I've written up a summary of the paper here (kksgandhi.github.io/personal_sit...).

One of the biggest challenges was having the learning goals emerge diegetically. Instead of spoon feeding learning outcomes, there were a ton of subtle tricks to get players to connect their in-game actions to effects within the in-game city, and then to further connect that system to the real world

Physical Hard Drives and crashplan (www.crashplan.com)

I would like to move to stuff I control entirely though.