Games That Make You Smarter

AnnMaria De Mars

Aunt Jean from forgotten trail looking at map — It’s that time again when my cofounder and I travel far and wide to tell the world what we are doing with 7 Generation Games. Tuesday through Thursday of this week we are in San Jose, as part of the Innovate and Celebrate Conference sponsored by the Consumer Technology Association and […]

Maria and AnnMaria: the traveling gnomes

September 20, 2016 in 7GenGames / AnnMaria by AnnMaria De Mars

Eva eats a Lollipop — A better person than me probably would not feel a certain sense of self-satisfaction when an organization closes down. Good for them! Maria and I have been told many times over the years that “There is no money in education” or “All of the money comes from yuppie parents of […]

Why I’m not giving up on middle school kids

September 13, 2016 in AnnMaria / Educational Games by AnnMaria De Mars

family — Previously, I blogged about why being a entrepreneur can be depressing. I promised that I would write later about how not to be depressed. So, now it’s later. There are two things that can make a HUGE difference in handling the difficulties that running a startup throws at you. The […]

How not to be depressed as an entrepreneur

September 3, 2016 in AnnMaria by AnnMaria De Mars

This may be the only post you read this week, where someone asks you to send in pictures of your refrigerator magnets. This only goes to show you that the tasks one is required to do as a startup founder are unpredictable. Many of our games include mini games as […]

Friends, countrymen lend me your refrigerator magnets

August 27, 2016 in AnnMaria / Game Progress by AnnMaria De Mars

woods by Devils Tower — This past month, I’ve been in North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming and Montana, not necessarily in that order, meeting with educators, social services and home school families interested in playing our games. On the way, I stopped a few times to go hiking. You can figure out a lot just […]

Start-up lessons from Devils Tower

August 27, 2016 in AnnMaria / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

flying chicken — Do a startup they said. It will be fun they said. Meanwhile over here, I’m doing my mad scientist laugh. It goes like this moo ha ha ha. There are some fun parts but look for another post on that as well as how to keep from going insane as […]

The depressing life of founders

August 21, 2016 in AnnMaria / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

Brissa — Meet Xitlali – I mean, Brissa – from Aztech Games. She’s the 17-year-old character behind the character.

Character behind the characters: Xitlali from Aztech Games

August 21, 2016 in 7GenGames by AnnMaria De Mars

My Darth Vader arm — Brief update on my personal life – after returning from my trip to North Dakota and Wyoming, I had surgery to reconstruct my thumb. You can see what my splint looks like below. I got the black one to look like Darth Vader because my granddaughter thinks he’s cool. I […]

Learning from everyone: software and disabilities

August 20, 2016 in AnnMaria / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

potato — Last month, we gave away our games at 90% off because we wanted to get more users before the beginning of school and get more feedback to make those games better. Why not free? I attended a talk at the Entertainment Finance Forum (see, learning from everyone) and the speaker, […]

Why not free?

August 15, 2016 in AnnMaria / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

We thought readers of this blog might be interested in startups besides us. So, over the next few weeks, we’ll be featuring “Awesome startups who are not us”. To kick it off, we could think of no startup more appropriate than a new look at princesses. (This week’s judge of […]

Awesome Startup : Guardian Princesses

August 4, 2016 in Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

House on fire — Start-up life can be a little crazy. No, make that a lot crazy. We incorporated as a business in 2013, making us middle-aged in start-up years. When start-ups die, they often just fade away. You see people at fewer meet-ups, get fewer emails or social media posts trying to entice […]

Well, THAT was some serious crazy business

August 1, 2016 in AnnMaria / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

Gonzalo hard at work — A little background – we have been building our games to run on the web and school computer labs (Mac and Windows) so that we can easily have the educational and game content tested by hundreds, sometimes thousands, of teachers and students. You can buy any of those games here. […]

TECH TIPS : Changing from Web Game to Android

July 24, 2016 in Code Talk / Educational Games / Start-up Diaries / Tech Tips by AnnMaria De Mars