From Concept to Community
What should be different about the player when the game is over?
That’s the first question we ask. Not “what should this game include,” not “how fun can we make it” — what should be different about the person on the other side of the screen once they put it down.
Everything else follows from the answer.
A mechanic gets cut, an art style gets reworked, a deadline gets pushed — and the reason traces back to the same place every time. Most studios start with a feature list or a budget and hope the learning fits in around it. We hold the outcome steady and let everything else bend toward it instead.
We call this the MADE Games process. We’ve spent years refining it, we even wrote an academic paper on it — because we think it’s worth sharing with the rest of the field, not just keeping to ourselves.
You don’t need funding to start.
Finding the funding is part of what we do with you, not something you have to solve before you reach out.
Wherever you’re starting from, we’ll help you find what comes next — grants, internal funding, the right contacts. We’ve done it before, and we’ll match our budget and timeline to whatever you bring to the table.
We run the loop until
we get it right.
Most people who come to us expect our process to flow in a straight line. But finding the right answer unfolds more like a maze.
Design and development don’t happen in a strict sequence — they happen in parallel, and they loop back on each other as often as they need to. We put the game in front of real users early, not just at the end, because that’s the only way to know if it’s actually landing the way we meant it to — and if it isn’t, we revisit it instead of pushing forward just to stay on schedule.
Our developers, artists, and designers all stay in the same conversation throughout a project, because the outcome we defined on day one doesn’t belong to any single role — it belongs to the whole team. And we put the game in front of real users early, not just at the end, because that’s the only way to know if it’s actually landing the way we meant it to.
How our games unfold – start to finish.
Consultation & Planning
No funding required — just tell us what you’re trying to solve.
Together, we draft a rough scenario — a first sketch of what the experience could look like — so you have something concrete
We talk through how a game might solve your specific challenge — and we’re honest about where games can help and where they can’t
Scope, complexity, timeline, and a realistic cost estimate come next, based on what the project actually needs
Prototype & Validation
This isn’t a polished product yet — it’s proof the idea holds up.
We help you find seed funding — sometimes through internal grants, sometimes through our own resources — enough to build a working prototype and get it in front of real users
We concept the look and feel of the game and define the specific learning objectives it needs to hit
From there, we brainstorm gameplay mechanics and develop them into an interactive prototype
Once that proof exists, the next stop is securing the larger funding it takes to build the whole thing — and we’ll help you pursue that too
Real users test it, and what we learn from them tells us whether the idea is actually working
Finalization & Distribution
This is where it becomes real.
Infrastructure gets built to make the game stable and scalable, including the data and dashboards your team will need down the line
Polish goes where it’s needed — voice, sound, the details that make an experience feel finished instead of just functional
We test it in actual classrooms, not just in a lab — and when real classroom conditions turn up something that doesn’t work, we optimize for better outcomes
Then we deploy — onboarding your team, troubleshooting as real use turns up real questions, and staying in the relationship as the game moves from finished to in use
Research closes the loop, proving whether the learning outcome we set out to hit on day one actually landed
Backed by research, built by people who test their work.
We don’t just build and hope.
We want to know it worked, not just believe it did.
Real users — students, teachers — are part of the process from early on, not just brought in at the end to react to something finished. That’s the testing that happens while we build.
Once the game is deployed, a second kind of testing begins: mixed-methods research comparing classrooms that played the game against ones that didn’t, using standardized tests, learning analytics, and randomized control trials to find out whether it actually worked.
Built with: Unreal Engine, Unity, Perforce, Sine Nomine Associates, MoreNet
Whatever’s stopping you,
tell us anyway.
The idea you haven’t let yourself say out loud yet, because it sounds too big, or too strange, or like something you’re not qualified to ask for.
Tell us about it, and let us worry about whether it’s possible.
We’ve got the ideas, the technology, and the team to build almost anything you can imagine. What we need is someone who wants to solve a real problem with a game. If that’s you, the roadblock in your head is the least interesting part of this conversation — so skip it, and call us anyway.
Work With Us