The end of an era

Hi Everyone,

If you are a follower of our blog or just an occasional passer-by you may have noticed we’ve not been posting very much lately. Well there’s a good reason for that… in October 2012 PIXELearning became a victim of the recession and our offices closed for business.

Fortunately the team weren’t quite prepared to pack up and go home and agreed to join forces once more to launch a new venture. Totem Learning, or Team Totem as we like to call ourselves, opened for business on 1^st November 2012.  Our vision puts learners at the centre of a blended, joined-up, just in time and dynamic ecosystem. We’re still making serious games but we’re much more focused on using the right tools, at the right time, for the right user, ensuring our solutions meet the needs of the learners when it matters most!

If you would like to check out what we’re doing now please come along to  www.totemlearning.com and join up to our new community where we’ll be sharing and posting just like before but with a slightly wider remit including social learning, mlearning and elearning.

Hope to you see you all there!

 

 

 

PIXELearning’s Top Ten Birthday Lists

As some will know it’s our 10^th Birthday today, don’t we feel old? It feels like yesterday that we in our strollers building our PIXEL cubes.

It’s been a great decade of working on some fantastic projects, designing epic games and working with great colleagues and customers…you know who you are.

So to celebrate we are sticking with the theme of 10 and so we decided to provide you with our very own top tens:

• Top 10 Serious Games
• Top 10 Blogs for Serious Games and Simulations
• Our Top 10 Competitors in the industry
• Our birthday Number 1 singles
• Out Top 10 Twitterers

Here we go….

I can haz badge now?

Ready for the big news…? I’m officially qualified in Gamification, I’ve done the course! But wait I don’t have a badge…. does that still count? Do my achievements in life mean anything without a collection of pixels displayed in a visually appealing way?

OK, on a serious note, yes I did the recent Gamification course on Coursera with about a million billion other people from across our tiny planet, but now it’s over I wanted to take some time to reflect on the experience.

Overall I

Pass it on!

This month, PIXELearning will be celebrating our ten year anniversary, and we have the vision of the entrepreneurs who first set up our company to thank for eight people’s happy careers and the contribution that we, as a company and individuals can make to society.

 As a team we’re always keen to do what we can to spread the love!  So we’ve decided to

Understanding Games: Getting the most Bang for your Buck!

Hi! In a continuing effort to clarify some grey areas and demistify our practice and procedures, we’ve created a new infographic.  This one helps to give you a very high level view of some of the different

Gamification, Simulations and Serious Games: They are different

We have recently come across this blog piece by Linda King, Head of Communications at G2G3, focusing on the differences of gamification, simulations and Serious Games.

Now as I’m sure you are aware, our blog views haven’t been the kindest to the term Gamification, and Linda shares some of our concerns particularly around differentiating between the three. However we both understand it is a hot topic and we need to help share the understanding of what Gamification isn’t and how best to use it.

In this post, Linda indicates the main differences between the terms which provides great clarity  of what each one really is. An extract of what Gamification, Simulations and Serious Games are can be found below. To view the full blog post, by Linda, please click here:

Gamification:

Leverages ‘game mechanics’ such as points, levels and badges to non-game activities

Simulations

Place people in a risk free environment which supports their engagement in an authentic experience which contextually demonstrates benefits and consequences.

Serious games

Use traditional gamecraft techniques around serious concepts such as business, education, environmental or social issues.

The full definitions provide great clarity and ones that really help provide insight into how and when to use gamification, simulations or serious games

50 sheep, lots of caffeine and the number 68; some fun facts about PIXELearning!

What do 50 sheep, lots of caffeine and the number 68 have in common? Take a look at the infographic about PIXEL and find out!

Some fun facts about PIXELearning.

Pick n’ Mix Learning

I’ve always said that games are not the silver bullet, they are not the solution to all your training needs, however they are an important piece of the puzzle. This ‘sweet’ little infographic from team PIXEL highlights how games are just part of the overall training ecosystem.

Why are games good for learning?

Ever wondered what all the fuss is about around serious games? Take a look at the infographic below for an overview of why games are good for learning.

The Gaming Landscape

A critical component of my job is to be able to see my designs from another person’s point of view; someone who doesn’t play games and who doesn’t necessarily understand the rules and expected behaviours of games. It’s important I don’t fall into the trap of believing everyone see’s the world as I do. It’s also part of my job to explain games to non gamers and therefore promote the benefits of serious games. Often the first level of challenge I come across is a belief that a game is a game. Of course those of us in the industry know there are many genres of games, each with its own