Games That Make You Smarter

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

Let’s cut to the chase. Now through the end of July, we’re offering all individual licenses for 7 Generation Games at an amazing deal of 90% off. Just use discount code: JULY90 The code applies to all individual user single or multi-game purchases of Forgotten Trail, Spirit Lake and Fish […]

We Want Your Ideas. We REALLY want your ideas!

July 20, 2016 in 7GenGames / AnnMaria / Educational Games by AnnMaria De Mars

seal of North Dakota — Professors, conference presenters and speakers at professional development often complain that teachers don’t want to discuss the deeper issues. They say, Teachers only worry about what they can do with their class on Monday. Of course, not worrying about that is a luxury if you don’t have to teach a […]

Lessons Learned This Week: North Dakota Indian Education Summit

July 14, 2016 in AnnMaria by AnnMaria De Mars

Screen when recording — In our last (which also happened to be our first) Tech Tips newsletter I talked about the hardware we used for podcasting. What about the software? Glad you asked! You could use GarageBand, but I wouldn’t. Although it comes free with a Mac, I had found the sound quality using […]

Tech Tips: Software for Podcast Recording

July 11, 2016 in Start-up Diaries / Tech Tips by AnnMaria De Mars

menu for simulator showing movement options as if it was an actual phone — The new game we are developing is for iPhones, which presents a very slight problem or two. First, I have very bad eyesight so it is a hardship for me to test on the phone. Second, there are a lot of activities that would be so much simpler if I had […]

Quick Tech Tip: Your iPhone Simulator

July 10, 2016 in Start-up Diaries / Tech Tips by AnnMaria De Mars

very large, brown pig — Often when I say things like, “I’m going back to the reservation to get input from people who will use these games.” or “This game should be able to run on whatever bandwidth you can get next to a corn field.” people think I am speaking metaphorically. No. Picture of […]

Who Does Game Testing in a Corn Field?

July 9, 2016 in AnnMaria / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars

Podcast setup with mikes and headsets and audio boxes — Trying to decide what would be the best topics for our newsletters and blog posts, we surveyed our mailing list (I am a statistician, after all), asking people to pick from one of four choices why they follow 7 Generation Games on social media, read our newsletters, etc. Education Start-up/tech […]

Tech Tips: Podcasting 101

July 3, 2016 in Start-up Diaries / Tech Tips by AnnMaria De Mars

buildings — When I was a kid, I always wondered what people did in those big office buildings. How did they learn how to do those jobs, whatever they were? How did they get those jobs? What do they wear? I knew what teachers did, since I went to school, and doctors, […]

How We Can Help Your Kids Become Successful Entrepreneurs

June 29, 2016 in AnnMaria / Start-up Diaries by AnnMaria De Mars