Games That Make You Smarter

AnnMaria

This category is for posts written by Dr. AnnMaria De Mars.

bad jockey on slow horse — One of the questions that came up during our Kickstarter campaign was whether it was wise to release “sneak peeks” of our game under development, whether that would, in fact, discourage people from backing us because it was less than perfect. My answer was that I believe there are several […]

Why You Shouldn’t Wait for Perfect

April 16, 2015 in AnnMaria / Dog food by AnnMaria De Mars

cup cake — Think of all of the time people spend playing games on their phones, computers, Xbox. Yes, everyone. Even you. Now just imagine if all of that time added to what you knew about history, vocabulary and math. How awesome would that be? It would be this awesome. The games we […]

Why I Do What I Do

April 11, 2015 in AnnMaria by AnnMaria De Mars

We’re feeling very grateful lately, given the over $30,000 pledged already on Kickstarter, the over 100 classroom licenses that have been sponsored, the thousands of people playing Fish Lake and Spirit Lake – I could go on. This post is about YOU, though. What can we give you to show […]

Freebie Friday: What Else Can We Do For You?

April 10, 2015 in AnnMaria / Freebie Friday tagged Freebie Friday / Kickstarter by AnnMaria De Mars

brain doing push-ups — We all know that person who was a great athlete in high school or college that we run into ten years later and think, “Dude, what happened to you?” What happened is that he or she got a desk job, quit working out, got fat and out of shape. One of […]

Why I Make Games to Make You Smarter

April 5, 2015 in AnnMaria by AnnMaria De Mars

Going through our archives, we came across this great post from March 29, 2013,“Leave the ladder down” that we wanted to share with you in case you missed it the first time around. In her dissertation on African-American leaders, Dr. Shanetta Robinson has a couple of memorable quotes on this topic. One […]

Throwback Thursday: Leave the ladder down: #41 of 55 things ...

April 2, 2015 in AnnMaria / Throwback Thursday tagged Leave the Ladder Down / Throwback Thursday by AnnMaria De Mars

grandfather with deer in background — Make new friends, but keep the old, One is silver and the other gold. I really like that song they sing on New Year’s Eve because I think there is a lot of good advice to it. Lately, we have been working on both our newest game, Forgotten Trail, […]

We Haven’t Forgotten Our Old Friends

March 31, 2015 in 7GenGames / AnnMaria / Game Progress by AnnMaria De Mars

Artwork in rest stop — Sometimes, you need to get out of your office and meet with people. The past three days, I have been in central California – Turlock, Livingston, Merced and Fresno. During that time, I met at least 100 people. Some of them I had long conversations with. Some just said, “Hello”. […]

Central California: First Stops on the 7 Generation Games Amazing ...

March 29, 2015 in AnnMaria by AnnMaria De Mars

Fish Lake — We get this question a lot and it is actually not a simple answer. One character we plan on using in Forgotten Trail was intended for Fish Lake but we were told by some administrators in no uncertain terms that physical violence between characters in a game for children was […]

How Do You Create Your Characters?

March 26, 2015 in AnnMaria / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

Going through our archives, we came across this great post from March 1, 2013,“My Two Answers to Everything” that we wanted to share with you in case you missed it the first time around. When our Kickstarter campaign first started, I questioned the impact of social media. Despite being tweeted out by […]

A second look at social media and Kickstarter statistics

March 26, 2015 in AnnMaria / Throwback Thursday tagged friendship / Kickstarter by AnnMaria De Mars

dog — Each game we make is aimed at an older and wider audience than the one before. That is cool for a whole bunch of reasons. However, sometimes it’s good to loop back and see what you were working on years ago. Even six months ago can be a long time […]

Back to Square One Can Be a Good Thing

March 23, 2015 in AnnMaria / Educational Games / Game Progress by AnnMaria De Mars

Help wanted — You Can’t Be Excellent in Your Spare Time Dr. AnnMaria De Mars Help. Thanks. Wow. Author Anne Lamott says that all prayers boil down to one of those three words. I know my life certainly does. So, first, thanks. Thanks to everyone who has backed us on Kickstarter, […]

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a newsletter from ...

March 23, 2015 in 7GenGames / AnnMaria / Educational Games / Game Progress / Women in Tech tagged Indian Country Today Media Network / Kickstarter / newsletter by AnnMaria De Mars

Going through our archives, we came across this great post from September 10, 2013,“My Two Answers to Everything” that we wanted to share with you in case you missed it the first time around. I was going to write about item analysis today but all of the tweets and posts on […]

Throwback Thursday: My Two Answers to Everything

March 19, 2015 in AnnMaria / Math / Throwback Thursday / Women in Tech tagged bullying / cowardice / sexism / Success is the best revenge by AnnMaria De Mars