It was an enormous pleasure to co-host this session of the Pizza Game – a continuous improvement game developed by improvement experts Jonathan Grellier and Ed Jepson – with the help of Focus Games.

Andy Yeoman (of Focus Games) joined the fun and ably managed the pizza cooking part of the process. I (wo)manned the toppings station, while Eileen George and Ray Kimball took on the tasks of dough mixing (and rolling), and order taking. Ed took (in the opinion of the rest of us) the easy option of cutting and dispatching.

Jonathan and Ed shared the task of facilitating us through the process.

The game is a great approach to getting your team talking about improvements such as reducing complexity, team communication and resource arrangement and allocation – and much, much more.

You can find out more at the Pizza Game website, or by contacting Andy at andy@focusgames.com

The post The Pizza Game – Continuous Improvement Game first appeared on Ludogogy.

This particular instance of the game was based in the oil and gas sector, which caused some level of controversy in the group, but the game is fully customisable to your own needs to provide a tailored experience – including translation into English. You can contact Youssef at youssefk.jbel@gmail.com or connect with him on LinkedIn

If you would like more of a ‘demo’ and spoken intro to the game, you can just watch the first third or so of the video. In the middle, you will be able to see a team playing the game, while the end shows debrief and the group’s  feedback on the game experience.

If you would like to run your own live play session for your game with Ludogogy, get in touch at info@ludogogy.co.uk . The Ludogogy community is composed of keen and knowledgable people who really know their games-based learning, so you can look forward to getting some useful and actionable feedback, as well as having a recording of your game in action which you can refer to. See recordings of other live play sessions through the Live Sessions category link.

The post StratEdge Strategy Simulation – Live Play Session first appeared on Ludogogy.

The game is available on Leslie’s site, where you can access a one week free trial of the online version (the one we are playing in this video) and order the board game.

The Loss and Remembrance game, also mentioned in the video is free to play, and you can find out more about Leslie’s other games at the Trance4Mation website.

The post Keep It Real Game – Live Play Session first appeared on Ludogogy.

MyCelium started with a simple idea – prompted by a report on some research which shows that fungi can communicate using up to 50 ‘words’. I knew I wanted to work it up into a game – but didn’t have any expectations that it would be a learning game or have any applications beyond just being a bit of fun.

What has been really fascinating has been the way that emergent complexity has come out of the process of design. While trying to solve a design problem – how to organise it so the game ‘knows’ things that the the players do not – the various solutions explored revealed that the seemingly simple idea had a complex ‘Culture’ inherent in it.

* Unequal access to information means an unequal potential to gain power
* Being in the right place at the right time (luck) can influence your success
* Those who have the power (food) can dictate the culture
* Relationship building can pay dividends in access to information

That’s just a small fraction of the mechanic/strategy ‘pairings’ that have emerged as I’ve worked.

I do not feel that I have designed the mechanics of the game so much as discovered them, while exploring the way that these fungi might work.

The MyCelium game – once the feedback from this session has been incorporated and some rough edges have been thoroughly smoother, will be suitable for coaches and facilitators to use for learning outcomes around:

• Organisational Culture
• Communication
• Mitigating problems and enhancing opportunities
• Teamworking
• Etc.

The post MyCelium Playtest – June 8th first appeared on Ludogogy.

This session was designed to explore the potential of 1000 Blank White Cards as a game for ideation. There are two particular things about the game which made me think it could be used in learning settings. First, it encourages spontaneity and divergent (even silly) thinking. Second, each game will produce a ‘stockpile’ of cards to pass into future games – and this got me thinking about the potential of using this game to produce an organisation knowledgebase of sorts.

When you watch this video, you will see that these ideas are not yet fully formed, and you will further see that there are definite challenges with using Miro, and that your hapless facilitator manages to muck up the screen-sharing so that you miss all of the action anyway. Never mind – I have shared a link to the Miro board below (as well as screen shots), and you can listen along to the conversations. And if that contigency doesn’t do enough to alleviate my embarrasment, I can always console myself that it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things because the eventual heat-death of the universe is only a few billion years off.

If you want to run a play session of your own – a demo, playtest, prototyping or ideation session, or just playing for fun – please get in touch at info@ludogogy.co.uk

Games design is all about experimentation, and part of that is not only becoming comfortable with setbacks and failure. Please browse the Miro board as you watch/listen to this recording, and if this idea suggests new ideas to you – get in touch. Maybe we can work on them together – or just work on it on your own – I’d love to see a ‘learning’ version of 1000 BWC, wherever it comes from

The post 1000 Blank White Cards – Ideation Session first appeared on Ludogogy.

Deckible allows you to purchase, and interact with your decks in a vast number of ways, while leaving your precious physical decks safe at home. You can journal with them, spend meditation time with them, share them with others, and curate your own superdecks, create custom spreads for interacting with them and much more.

And if you’re a deck creator Deckible offers you the opportunity to make your decks available to users of the app in a no-cost, no-risk, revenue sharing model.

If you want to run a play session of your own – a demo, playtest, prototyping or ideation session, or just playing for fun – please get in touch at info@ludogogy.co.uk

The post Deckible App – 100 Decks in your Pocket – Demo first appeared on Ludogogy.

If you want to run a play session of your own – a demo, playtest, prototyping or ideation session, or just playing for fun – please get in touch at info@ludogogy.co.uk

Questico Gamified Learning Platform

Honey Khanduja and Deepthi Boddupally of Blue Sky Learning co-hosted this session from Blue Sky Learning. Bhaskar Thyagarajan, who has already written an article about the games design process was unfortunately unable to attend.

Questico is a gamified learning platform. Blue Sky can configure it to meet all sorts of learning needs. This might use activities the team have already created, or leverage your own existing learning content.

We hope that you enjoy this demo of two teams competing against each other to be the first to complete a series of typical challenges (picked by the Blue Sky team to demonstrate the variety available, rather than representing a co-ordinated programme). Although there are small teams competing here, Questico can equally well be used with many more teams of higher numbers, accommodating between 5 and 500 participants in one simultaneous session.

The Agile Mind Play Session

A serious game designed to bring to life the Agile Mindset, helping teams understand how mindset is different from practice. This game is ‘The Agile Mind’ – a card game designed by Corrado de Sanctis – Agile Coach, Games and convener for the Lean, Agile Delivery and Coaching Network and Digital Transformation in London meetup groups – which between them have around 4000 members.

Corrado is also a regular writer for Ludogogy and has an impressive archive of content about designing Agile games.

The post Live Play Sessions – March 2022 first appeared on Ludogogy.

To that end, we’re hosting live play sessions. These could be demos, playtests, prototyping sessions – anything really.

This month, we sadly had to postpone one session, but Corrado de Sanctis will be rescheduling his demo of The Agile Mindset as soon as possible.

The other two sessions went ahead as planned though, and are presented here for you:

Project 911 Project Recovery Simulation

A session co-hosted by Terry Pearce and Bruce Gay, the creator of the game.

Come and play “Project 911” and help its designers refine the game mechanics and game scoring. How will you react to the challenges? What will you decide? Your decisions and leadership will determine the project’s ultimate destiny!

The Working Dead

A session co-hosted by Sarah Le-Fevre and Darren Sweet, the creator of the Ipsodeckso platform, on which this game rus (still under development at time of writing).

The Working Dead takes place at a fictional team building offsite in the midst of a zombie outbreak.

Slaudervale Manor employees become infected and turn into frenzied, flesh hungry zombies, hellbent on munching on the guests (that would be you!).

To survive, players must work as a team to battle zombies, share tools and strategic information, crack escape room style puzzles and acquire codes which unlock critical objects to aid them in their plight and lead them to safety.

Failure to work together and players will quickly join the ranks of the zombie horde and develop a ravenous appetite for the other participants!

Effective teams strive towards a common goal, possess great communication skills and share an ‘in it together’ attitude. The Working Dead with its combination of cooperative gameplay and escape room problem-solving, challenges players to collaborate effectively and drive towards the ultimate common goal – SURVIVAL.

The post Game Playtest Sessions – February 2022 first appeared on Ludogogy.