Games That Make You Smarter

Monthly Archives: July 2015

We here at 7 Generation Games want to extend our sincere congratulations to our very first game tester, Ronda Rousey, who picked up two wins at last night’s ESPY Awards on ESPN. Long before she was earning the distinction of “Best Fighter” and “Best Female Athlete,” Ronda was giving us […]

7 Generation Games Game Tester Ronda Rousey Wins 2 ESPYs!

July 16, 2015 in 7GenGames by Maria Burns Ortiz

Certain parts of a job can get done with less effort or in less time after you’ve done them a dozen times. Case in point, the image above is from the canoeing scene in Fish Lake. The first time I played that part, I thought I’d never make it down the river […]

When Running a Startup, You Never Slow Down

July 15, 2015 in Start-up Diaries by Maria Burns Ortiz

We have data to show that kids who play our games improve their math skills substantially. We have anecdotal data (that sounds so much more scientific than “email from players”! ) that tells us adults who play our games improve their math skills. Seriously, if you are over 13 years […]

Podcasts that make you smarter

July 13, 2015 in AnnMaria / Educational Games by AnnMaria De Mars

AnnMaria and her daughter as crabs — In case you missed it, here is what I was thinking about a couple of years ago …. There have been days, especially when I started my first two businesses, when I was seriously stressed. What if I could not make the payroll? What about cash flow when the business […]

TBT: Advice to Entrepreneurs – Chill. Seriously, chill.

July 9, 2015 in AnnMaria / Throwback Thursday by AnnMaria De Mars

Teacher with students — I often feel as if people have forgotten the social part of social media. When I see people who are following some ridiculous number of people on twitter, like 200,000 I know it is impossible that they are reading what all those people have to say. I asked someone about […]

My Day of Blog Reading

July 6, 2015 in AnnMaria by AnnMaria De Mars

Mayan codex — I was going to title this “How not to be stupid in game design” but then I realized the points apply to just about everything. Hello, people in industry, non-profits, government – in short, just about everybody – if you are going to design something for a group of people, […]

How NOT to Be Stupid

July 5, 2015 in AnnMaria / Education: Innovation and STEM / Educational Games by AnnMaria De Mars

In his autobiography, Lee Iacocca said something along the lines of: ‘Is not a people person’ is the kiss of death on a performance evaluation, because people is all we have working here at Chrysler. I have known some brilliant programmers who never achieved their potential because they could not […]

Works Well With Others: Key to Start-up Success

July 1, 2015 in AnnMaria / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars