Empowering Creativity: Creating inclusion, community and confidence in game design classes.
Summary:
Everyone brings something to the table and everyone is welcome. Fostering personal creativity and student voice through the intentional design of a welcoming classroom environment.
Description:
Making games can be intimidating, especially for students who have never made games before. From technical challenges, to writers block or imposter syndrome, there are many reasons why someone might not start, or follow through with making games.
Intentionally building a classroom community where students engage, support and celebrate each other can make a tremendous impact on student success. From prototype to playtest, when students lean into their backgrounds, experiences and interests student games are more fun to make and more fun to play!
Having taught hundreds of K-12, undergraduate and graduate students to make games, University at Albany Professor of Practice Michael Leczinsky will present a framework any educator can use to help students uncover the joy of making the games they want to make, while making the argument that everyone should be making games!
Epic Success Or Critical Fail: Which Is Your Financial Plan?
Summary:
These are more advanced financial topics, for those with more financial savvy. Come pick the brain and get some financial education!
Description:
Roll a d20: Pick a topic (Or we can do a roll off, if folks have something in particular they want to discuss) 1: Long Term Care – Asset-Based vs Traditional; 2: Passive Income Generators; 3: Personal Pensions; 4: Downside Protection; 5: Legacy Plays; 6: Incorporating Trusts; 7: Roth Conversions; 8: Mega-Back Door Roth; 9: 529 vs IUL; 10: Infinite Banking; 11: Buy/Sell Agreements (Business Owners); 12: Golden Handcuffs (Business Owners); 13: Cash Balance Pension Plans (Business Owners); 14: Business Owner Executive Services (Business Owners); 15: Socially Responsible Investing (SRI/ESG); 16: RILAs ;17: Gap DI; 18: 72(t)/72(q) SEPP (2022-6); 19: QCDs; 20: CRITs/CRATs. This is intended to be a open forum for discussion, with more advanced financial topics. Normally this would cost big bucks, but I've been coming to GenCon for decades, and I might as well educate folks.
Escape the Escape Room: Scalable Puzzle Play for Libraries & Large Spaces
Summary:
Escape the escape room! Learn how to create engaging, scalable puzzle hunts that use escape room mechanics without the headaches.
Description:
Escape the escape room! Traditional escape rooms are exciting, but they can be difficult to build, hard to scale, and frustrating to reset, especially in shared or public spaces. This session, designed for librarians and educators, explores a more flexible alternative: scavenger hunts that use escape-room-style mechanics without locking players into a single room.
Learn how to adapt familiar puzzle elements such as codes, logic puzzles, ciphers, hidden clues, and light narrative into experiences that can span an entire building or event space. Take a look at real-world examples, discuss design strategies that work for large groups, and share tips for keeping puzzle play engaging, accessible, and easy to manage. Participants will also receive instructions and digital materials for three ready-to-use puzzles that can be adapted for their own spaces.
Escape the Ordinary: Engage Your Learners with Physical Lockbox Activities
Summary:
Well designed lockbox activities can help students learn logic and reasoning skills, teamwork, and master content. We will go through premade lockbox activities you can adapt for your own purposes.
Description:
Educator & Librarian Track: We will solve clues together as a large group, as examples of different types of activities that work for a lockbox style activity to teach different contents. Our team will provide various clues from science based lockbox activities that we have created and used in classrooms and in informal educational environments with students. All resources to do these premade activities or adapt for your own will be provided.
Failing is Good! How Failing in Game Design Taught Me to Succeed
Summary:
Over his 20 years of experience as a game designer and now publisher, he has failed...a lot! Jay Cormier goes into detail about all the lessons he learned throughout his failures.
Description:
Want to fast track your game design journey? Instead of making mistakes, listen to all the mistakes I made so you don't have to repeat them! I review mistakes I've made from every aspect of the game design journey - from prototyping and playtesting, to balancing and pitching.
Numbers matter - the longest standing seminar from Witten Financial. We talk you through the basics of financial statements to help you manage your business.
Description:
We will use actual game industry financial statements (names withheld :-)) to walk you through how financial statements work. this seminar will give you the basics to help you look closer at your business performance so you can better identify your strengths and areas of opportunity.
Our sales are up, so how come we can't pay the bills?!? Our experienced team will demystify the topic of cash flow planning to help you manage your business more effectively!
Description:
Our sales are up, so how come we can't pay the bills?!? Our experienced team will demystify the topic of cash flow planning to help you manage your business more effectively! Real-time Q & A, giving guidance on your burning issues while at the show, along with real-world examples of cash flow projectioning tools.
Forum on Games and Gamification in University Courses
Summary:
Interactive large and small group discussions on using games and gamification to improve student engagement, learning, and satisfaction in the university setting.
Description:
This forum event brings together participants’ experiences with our own in an interactive discussion on using games and gamification to improve student engagement, learning, and satisfaction. Examples include using board games, simulations, interactive activities, course design, and more. We will have both large group discussion and breakout groups to discuss implementation in your specific circumstances. While our experience and focus are at the university level, participants from other settings are welcome.
From Campaign to Community: Scaling Your Gaming Club for the Long Haul
Summary:
We will discuss sustaining a gaming group, and working with the community to support its growth. It will look at different options of RPG, board games, and integrating art into the group.
Description:
The session will focus on strategies to start and sustain a gaming club. We will look at ways to advertise club to increase participation. We will examine at cost effective ways to get the club going. This will include strategies of working with local gaming stores for support. The presentation will be an hour long, followed by a 30 minute breakout session to focus on specific topics that interest those in attendance.
From Idea to Shelf — The Publishing Path for Accessible Games
Summary:
Helaina will help demystify the publishing process, sharing publishing-specific decisions that shape the publication of a game, and illustrate how to design for broad appeal without sacrificing depth.
Description:
Game design comes down to finding the right balance between making a game accessible for your intended audience, creating a thoughtful structure that audience, and ensuring it can hold up over time. Drawing on over a decade of publishing experience, this session blends storytelling, practical frameworks, and interactive moments to guide participants through the full lifecycle of a game—from initial concept to playtesting, production, and community building. Each segment emphasizes actionable takeaways, while highlighting inclusive design principles that ensure games resonate across ages and abilities.