Studio

There is a whole field known as serious games — titles built for education, psychology, social issues or vocational training rather than for entertainment. They offer real, valuable learning, but they often run into the same dilemma: when the purpose leads, the pull of the game itself gets weaker. Plenty of them are played once in a training room or a classroom and rarely opened again at home. Excellent as teaching material — yet never quite designed to make anyone want to play another round.

Board games made purely as entertainment tend to have the opposite problem. They are wonderful fun, but deep thinking and real conversation are not something they set out to design.

Aqoocan Games stands between the two.

What we care about is translating the essence of a serious theme into the pleasure of play. Rather than putting the learning up front, we design so that while players are genuinely enjoying themselves, their thinking and their conversation quietly grow.

Logical reasoning, testing a hypothesis, an intuition for probability, self-awareness, understanding other people, cooperation and negotiation. Listed as “learning objectives” they sound stiff. Inside a good game, they simply happen. Our job is to design for that on purpose, instead of leaving it to chance.