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What kinds of organizations do you make games for?
What audiences do you make games for?
How much does it cost to make a game?
Where have organizations gotten funding for games?
How long does it take to make a game?
What devices do the games run on? Does it run on Chromebooks? iPads? Androids? Phones?
We’ve never made a game. Do we have to design it ourselves?
What about data reporting and user privacy?
How is the game distributed and/or hosted?
Who owns the games 7 Generation Games develops?
What about maintenance and bug testing?
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What kinds of organizations do you make games for?
Our typical game client/collaborator is a small to mid-size organization with educational curriculum or informational content that they are looking to get out to a broader audience and/or better engage their existing audience around. However, they either do not have the in-house technical staff to create an educational game or in-house technical staff do not have the bandwidth to take on a game project given their current workloads. That’s where we come in, bringing expertise in creating customized educational games for a fraction of what it would cost to make one from scratch.
Our clients and collaboration partners are as diverse as the games we make. Some of the types of organizations we have worked with include: language preservation and revitalization organizations; community nonprofits; financial institutions; board game publishers; substance abuse prevention organizations; agricultural organizations; career and technical training organizations; government entities and agencies (in the U.S. and Latin America); curriculum publishers; tribal nations; healthcare organizations; for-profit companies and more.
What audiences do you make games for?
Learning has no age limit. That said, roughly 75% of our games target K12 users, primarily Grades 3-9 or youth from ages 8-14. The additional 25% of users break down between: families, to be used by parents and/or children (10%); adolescents, youth up to age 21 (10%); and targeted at adult learners (5%).
However, we have seen that even for our games that are targeted at the K12 market, between 5-10% of users for those games are adults. You’re never too old to learn new things or brush up on things you previously learned.
How much does it cost to make a game?
Our game projects start at $5,000 and run upwards of $250,000. That’s a big pricing range, but there’s a huge range when it comes to what a game can include. The typical game we make is in the $10,000 – $50,000 range. The price is mostly due to the number of levels desired. Cost varies depending on the scope of the game you have in mind and how many different platforms (web, iOS, Android, Windows) you want it to run on. We work with you to create the best game possible within your budget. You can learn more about cost as well as see examples of games at various price points on this page
Where have organizations gotten funding for games?
We’ve worked with a variety of organizations with a variety of budgets that have received money from a variety of places.
In many cases, the funds have come from federal, nonprofit or industry-specific grant awards. While we do not write grants for organizations, if you are putting in a grant to fund a game and you are looking for technology partner, please feel free to reach out to us. In many cases, we have provided resumes and/or capability statements as well as letters of support for clients to submit as part of their applications.
Other times, organizations have been able to fund games projects through various internal funding “buckets.” This could include marketing, content development, software development, bilingual outreach, research funding (around data collection) and more.
For several tribal projects, funding has come from tribal departments of education with tribal council support.
Some projects have been funded solely by individuals.
In situations where clients have funds that need to be spent by the end of a fiscal or calendar year or within specific timeline, we have the ability to quickly turn around proposals and projects.
We regularly work with prospective clients to build out proposals that work within their budgets, funding thresholds and with the necessary language that may be required to secure project funding.
What topics do you cover?
Approaching 30 games created to date, we can make a game about almost anything. Just some of the topics we’ve covered so far include: K12 mathematics standards, social studies, cultural history, improving literacy, environmental science, substance abuse prevention, workforce development skills, financial literacy, healthy decision-making, language learning, music history and more. Clients come to us with all sorts of project needs and goals.
We have deep expertise in working with content covering topics that are culturally sensitive (e.g. forced relocation of Indigenous people) or subject sensitive (e.g. substance abuse) and transforming it into interactive digital media that is engaging and educational without trivializing the subject matter.
Many of our games can be viewed through our website or the Growing Math Project; however, we have also done white-label games (that is games for clients that they host, sell and market exclusively to their own audiences/users).
How long does it take to make a game?
Production time varies based on game length (which largely depends on game budget). We’ve turned around smaller projects (around $10k) in as fast as a few weeks with larger projects ($250K+) taking as long as year from our first design meeting until release. On average, a typical project takes between 2-3 months (8-12 weeks) from start to finish. This timeframe includes design, development and testing. Projects where the content/scripts have the be written from scratch as opposed to being adapted from existing materials take longer.
With all projects, we build in mandatory client sign-offs checkpoints to make sure that we’re all on the same page throughout the process. 7 Generation Games ability to meet timeline milestones is contingent upon timely receipt of these approval where noted in the project timeline.
What devices do the games run on? Does it run on Chromebooks? iPads? Androids? Phones?
In short, we can make games that run on almost any device. By default, all games run in a web browser (e.g. Chrome, Safari, Edge, Firefox). These games run on any desktop, laptop and Chromebook. We also have expertise is developing games that can be played on iPad or Android tablets and as mobile phone applications for Android and iOS (Apple). We have also done games that can be downloaded to a desktop or laptop devices in settings with low connectivity. The one exception is that we don’t develop games for gaming or virtual reality systems, such as Nintendo Switch, Xbox, PlayStation or Oculus/Meta Quest.
Prices reflect the cost to develop games playable on the web. Android and/or iOS applications are available as an add-on rate of 10% additional cost for one operating system, 15% for both.
We’ve never made a game. Do we have to design it ourselves?
You’ve never made a game? Not a problem! Lucky for you, we’ve made a bunch. Clients come to us with content in all forms, ranging from fully formed, story-boarded scripts to “we’ve got an idea…”
Our team is experts taking existing content in almost imaginable format, from existing text (books, articles, PDFs, website content) to academic and archival research to oral histories to board games, transforming it into engaging digital learning games. Similarly, we’ve built games with no more direction than “We’re looking for something that covers this specific academic standard.” Most of the projects we do fall somewhere in between.
We work to make the process as easy as possible for you, enabling you to be as hands-on or hands-off as you want to be.
As part of our pricing, we offer (optional) virtual game design workshop sessions where we work collaboratively with your and/or your team to co-design your game project. In these meetings, we work closely and in dialogue with you to make sure the game is aligned with your vision to best serve your audience. On-site workshops are also available for additional cost.
That said, we’ve also done projects where the guidance was, “We want a game about X. Please build that out for us.” Those games are awesome too.
We pride ourselves on taking content that might come across as — dare we say — boring and turning it into a learning game that kids ask to play.
We have deep expertise in working with content covering topics that are culturally sensitive (e.g. forced relocation of Indigenous people) or subject sensitive (e.g. substance abuse) and transforming it into interactive digital media that is engaging and educational without trivializing the subject matter.
What about data reporting and user privacy?
Games can be built to include or not include data reporting. About 70% of our games do have data collection integrated with-in the game. Data can include everything from number of registered users, number of sign-ins, time of engagement, performance on in-game assessment and more. One of our founder’s Ph.D. is in applied statistics, so she is happy to discuss data needs in depth.
But for the other 30%, in-game data collection is not necessary. For example, if the primary goal of your game is to expand your content to a broader audience, site-level or basic app store data such as number of page visits or downloads can provide that information.
To comply with privacy regulations, 7 Generation Games does not collect PII (personally identifying information). We find this to be a best practice to maintain compliance user privacy protections and regulations, including FERPA and COPPA. While we can and have developed games for clients that do collect PII, 7 Generation Games will not host games that collect this kind of data.
Who owns the games 7 Generation Games develops?
You – the client – own all rights to game itself, including the game content, language, original audio recordings, any original artwork developed for the project and assessment data. Once the game is delivered to you, you can sell the game and/or scale to unlimited users without incurring any additional costs.
7 Generation Games does retain the rights to the underlying game code and all aspects of our development platform, including existing artwork and sound effects from our libraries that may be used. In other words, you can’t take the game we’ve developed for you and reverse engineer it and sell it to someone else. (Yes, we’re aware that if you had the time and technical skills to reverse engineer a game we built for you, you’d probably have just built the game out for yourself in the first place.)
How is the game distributed and/or hosted?
There are two options for distributing and hosting customized games.
Option 1: You Host.
For the browser version of the game, we develop the game and provide it to you as a file that can be uploaded to your web server. We can work with your I.T. person to integrate the game within your website in a support role, but you need to have someone your end who manages/runs your site.
For mobile applications, we can provide a build of the app that you can upload to your own app store (App or Google Play). We do not manage other parties’ app stores, so it is the client’s responsibility to relay any app store communications to our staff. If you are looking to sell/monetize your app, we do recommend hosting through your own store and can coordinate with your further to ensure you have the app in the build formats needed from us.
Option 2: We Host.
For the browser version of the game, there is two ways we partner to host.
In the first scenario, the game is fully accessed through our site. We create a 7 Generation Games URL specific to your game, e.g. www.7generationgames.com/yourgame. We ensure that your branding is clear throughout the game.
Another option is that the game lives on our site, but it accessed directly from your webpage. In this case, we can work with you to create a landing page for the game on your site. This is the page where users will access your game. Once they click play, the next page links them to the game that is hosted on our site. When they finish the game, the last page directs them back to an end game page on your site. From a user experience, it seems like they never left your page. However, this allows us to host the game on our server.
For mobile and tablet applications, we host the games in our 7 Generation Games app store with your game and company name clearly in the title, game summary and in-game.
The option of 7 Generation Games hosting is one that 90% of our clients have selected. This option makes it easier for us and you when it comes to fixing any bugs should they occur, do routine updates and make adjustments in response to app store policy changes.
For games hosted by 7 Generation Games, we charge an annual hosting fee that is typically around $250 per year, based on game length. If a game receives significant traffic (i.e. tens of thousands of users per month), we will reach out to discuss increase in cost or shifting to a self-hosted option.
Based on current app store structures, there would be no additional cost for app hosting based on number of downloads.
What about maintenance and bug testing?
All maintenance and bug fixes are included from one year of launch. That means 365 days (366 in a leap year) from the day your game goes live.
We also provide an extended maintenance option for a period of up to three years or you can opt to add maintenance after Year 1. Depending on game length and platform, maintenance/annual update costs can be as little as $100 per year.
Web-hosted games are built so that they have a maximum shelf-life with minimal updating required. Browsers games built today can be expected to still be playable in that form for 7-10 years with standard annual maintenance.
On average, mobile applications can be supported and maintained for at least five years with minimal updates required. After five-years, apps may require an upgrade to be compatible with advances to mobile device operating software over time. This is typically priced at 10% of the initial game cost.
Additionally, 7 Generation Games develops all games so that projects can be expanded at a later date (e.g. more educational modules, adding a bilingual functionality, etc.) for just the cost of creating new content with no underlying additional software architecture costs.
Can you make bilingual games?
Yes! Roughly one third of our games are bilingual and we have the ability to create games in multiple languages. We can do in-house English/Spanish translations. For any other language, we can make a game as long as vetted text (and optional audio) translation are provided. In all of our bilingual games, the language of instruction can be user controlled for text, audio and video on every in-game screen. The primary language of instruction can be set as a default like in this game or user selected at the start of play like in this game. We can also do multiple versions of a game in the different languages (such as this project where you can choose an English or a Spanish version).