Memorabilia from across sixteen years

Today, MANTIS is sixteen years old.

It’s been a wonderful journey, with pitfalls, hiccups, stumbles, blunders, hurrah moments, and exciting revelations. Often, it was difficult to tell one from another, till much time later. But getting any one of them goaded us into smarter action.

Across the years, we made jumps in discovery, both exponential and experiential. Some discoveries tested what we knew (of course, we don’t know everything). That made us doubtful, and we rushed to question our conclusions, judgements and opinions, even more than before.

Memorabilia from the last 16 years? These three issues stand out ….

Persistence versus surrender. We must persist (or so, the Gurus tell us), no matter what. In hindsight, we gave up whenever we had better options, or when the effort was too much (no, that’s not right, because sometimes, we persevered even when the effort was too much. We are human and fallible; definitely, not always rational).

Innovation versus consistency. Did we change what’s not yet broken? We often did, e.g. we burnt two games to the ground (it’s all right, they were made up of pixels and zeros and ones; no harm done), because they were too complex. We now begin everything, including games, with ‘simple’.

Conformance versus defiance. Sticking to others’ routine has benefits: you annoy no one, you can get comfortably lost in the crowd, and no one tells you that you are wrong. But then, we ask: is the majority right, and if so, why? We found that it was the difference that defied expectations and produced exponential value. Take our word for it: it’s fun to be an outlier.

You made us happen. Thank you for being with us, fellow game designers and facilitators, game players, learners, and students, teachers, researchers and publishers, deans, principals, and directors, L&D planners and other pros, experts in education and learning, and so many others who believed in us. We promise to do more…

#learning #discovery #simulations