AnnMaria De Mars

7 Gen Blocks Game Builder Splash block screen
TL; DR; To survive long-term, your company needs to make a profit. The work you are doing that pays money today is not developing a new product you aren't selling yet. So, there is a trade-off and innovation takes longer but your company is more likely to survive. I have a lot more to say but I need to get back to development. If you want to meet me in person, check out the bottom of this post.

A no-code educational game builder using YOUR intelligence: Why it ...

 in 7Gen Blocks / 7GenGames / Game Design by
Do multiplication word problems hurt your brain?
Problem-solving strategies give students a mechanism for identifying elements of a problem, determining a course of action, and checking the answer. However, sometimes students don’t have a wide enough array of strategies and we can't assume they'll discover these on their own. Fortunately, we have videos, games and lessons to help you teach a variety of strategies.

Problem-solving strategies have to be taught

 in Educational Games / Mathematics / multiplication by
Two young girls in a bedroom, one looks angry 1
I stick by what I said in my last post that I am skeptical of claims that AI is making hordes of people 5x developers. If that is the case, you probably sucked in the first place. Actually, that might be exactly it, because as I think of the areas that AI has helped me immensely, these are mostly in which I am not very good or knowledgable.

How AI makes me a 1.15x developer

 in Educational Games by
Create Studio app on two monitors and lunch on my messy desk
"If you could be profitable, even if it’s just barely profitable, then it allows you to live forever.  And then it allows you to grow and crescendo upon something very real." Matt Dalio Since 7 Generation Games is now profitable, hearing this just made my day, and it is totally true. So much of what is broadcast by founders is having that $1 million contract or raising that $500,000 seed round. We have been there and that is very cool to be able to tell people. The fact is, though, no matter how much revenue you have or the size of your Series A, if at some point your income doesn't exceed your expenses, your company is going to die.

Paying technical (and other) debt: Non-sexy but happy times

 in AnnMaria / Educational Games / Founders Corner / Start-up Diaries by
Page from a wiki showing a game path
Before I started my first company, before I earned a Ph.D. , I was a judo champion. I competed for 14 years - and I was pretty good at it. I won international competitions on every continent except for Antartica and Australia, and culminated by winning the world championships. Then I went off and did something completely different - was a professor teaching statistics, then a consultant doing statistical programming. Now I'm running a company, making educational games and, more importantly, creating a platform so anyone can make educational games.

3 Ways Becoming a World Champion is Like Making a ...

 in AnnMaria / Educational Games / Founders Corner / Start-up Diaries by
What can you make with blocks? Screenshot showing icons for 8 games
Are you an educator who wants to replace boring worksheets and workbooks with games you can make yourself, as easy as writing a blog post? Sign up for a workshop for our no-code builder. Do you teach a coding class and would like an easy way for your high school students to make games with JavaScript? Sign up for our low-code game builder workshop. Do you just want to make educational games? If you answered, "Yes", sign up for our free workshop.

Get Free Professional Development on Making Educational Games

 in Educational Games by
Game screen: Two children in front of a star quilt
Starting with the happy news. Our 7 Gen Blocks platform has made it possible for us to create games at a far faster pace and lower cost. Check out six educational games we made in the past year thanks to a grant from the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources program. All of these were made with 7 Gen Blocks. And those aren’t all of the games we’ve made this year.

Housecleaning, Unity Bugs and Speed Development

 in 7Gen Blocks / Educational Games by