Note: the following was originally posted on my Patreon, in two parts. Part I: (posted Aug 12) Hi all! Sorry I didn't update in a while – I forgot to mention I was going on "vacation". I say "vacation" because I ended up working on stuff anyway.…
For the past few years, I made games that teach ideas – but, I wondered, can I make games that teach skills? Apparently, I don't have the skill of making my own decisions, so last week I sent out a poll asking you to help me decide what to make next!…
Four years ago (wow, already four?), we had the first-ever Explorable Explanations meetup, to talk about teaching through play. We had no idea what we were doing. Still don't. But, four years later – after 100+ Explorables made by educators, journalists, and curious laypeople like yours truly – I think we figured…
A lot of people – on all ends of the political spectrum – believe it's the environment versus the economy. Climate versus capitalism. Mother Nature versus markets. I've run out of alliterations, but my point is: what if this isn't a zero-sum game? What if we could find win-win solutions – ways to…
Loops changed my life. Three years ago, I picked up a copy of Donella Meadows' Thinking In Systems. The core idea of her book is this: we humans tend to think of the world in linear cause-and-effect – X causes Y, Y causes Z, and so on. But the world is…
Here's the text version of a talk I gave a few days ago! My talk was about systems and simulations – and how they can make us more empathetic, more empowered, or at least, give us a deeper understanding of the world... or something like that. For some reason, I never…
When most people hear the word “simulation”, they probably think about The Matrix, and whether we're all living in a simulation or something. But real simulations are made for a purpose. They're created to figure out the past, improve the present, or explore possible futures. So the good news is,…
Back when I was a Computer Science student, stuck in my stress & sadness... I just wished I could kill my emotions, represented here as a fat gecko named Sticky. Why couldn't I be more like Spock or Sherlock? I'd be so much more efficient without all these darn emotions…
The following is the very first draft of Parable of the Polygons, originally posted to a semi-secret Github Gist. I sketched it up shortly after meeting Vi Hart at the Explorable Explanations workshop. Compared to the final thing, a lot was removed: most notably, the shapist cartoons, and background information…
Okay, wow. The Explorable Explanations movement has been gaining a lot of traction in the last few months. Between my & Vi's Parable of the Polygons becoming a Games For Change finalist, the launch of Earth: A Primer, the Now I Get It! Jam, this Explorables round-up, and my launch…