Games are really great at one of the most difficult and vital things you can do.

They’re a fantastic way to play. And by “play”, what I mean is that you can try out things in an environment where you get very rich feedback, and there’s almost no genuine risk.

Why does play matter? It’s how we learn. And I don’t mean “how we learn a few select things.” It’s how we learn *everything*. How to move. How to think. How to perceive the world. We learn *everything* through experimentation and feedback, and being able to do that and minimize risk… that’s play. Think of two lion cubs wrestling with each other. Think of monkeys chasing each other through trees. Think of children playing tag, or “store”, or… anything.

Which is why games are *great* for education. Or therapy. Or rehabilitation.

But why are SO many educational games, or medical games, or therapeutic games *so awful*?

It’s because most of them are developed by people with experience in education, medicine, or therapy, but no experience in games.

Gamification “consultants” come in and preach simple, easy-to-understand solutions. But if a medical professional preached a simple, easy-to-understand solution to Parkinson’s Disease, you’d understand they’re a quack, and their opinion isn’t worth anything.

Games are hard to make. Creating games that provide the right kinds of interaction, and the right kinds of feedback? That expertise has to be there from day 1 during the development process. It absolutely *cannot* be effectively “applied later”. It is not a layer of points and awards.

Games are about meaningful, engaging actions with rich, emotionally-resonant feedback that helps you continuously improve. Doing this requires it to be a fundamental expertise your team has when developing any game-centric project.

If you do not have that expertise, you will fail. I see it over, and over, and over again. And it sucks, because inexperienced people can’t even vet the purported experts that are trying to sell them game-based solutions.

So if you’re in this situation, and you need an expert in the field to help you understand what you need and how to build it, and who you might engage to help you with the game side of things, let me know. I’m happy to help.

An early injection of this kind of experience can save you literal millions of dollars even on relatively small projects, and will often be the difference between success and failure.