Boss Mode for Learning: Play Games, Build Games, End of Transcript

Skills matter, not transcripts. A list of courses and grades tells you almost nothing about what someone can actually do, and the world is catching on. Meanwhile, games have been doing what education keeps promising: real engagement, genuine agency, and assessment so natural it's invisible because it's baked into the experience itself.

The panelists bring deep experience across game-based learning and the games industry, including large-scale classroom platforms such as Minecraft Education and iCivics, AAA commercial game development, and the design and facilitation of game jams and game development courses. Drawing on this combined perspective, they explore how play and creation help learners develop real skills, agency, and demonstrate learning beyond static transcripts, including portfolios, mastery, and evidence-based outcomes.

The session looks ahead to emerging AI-driven approaches that can surface, interpret, and validate learning as it happens inside games, not as tutors bolted onto textbooks, but as engines that observe learning in the act of play and creation. In this framing, games are not a supplement to the learning ecosystem; they are increasingly the environment where learning, assessment, and growth naturally occur in an AI-enabled world.