You have game design instincts, even if you’ve never thought of yourself that way.

You know that moment when you’re running a workshop, and you can feel the energy dipping?

People are nodding along, maybe even taking notes… but something’s missing. They’re there, but not there.

Phones start coming out.
If you’re online, cameras turn off.

You might start wondering:
🖐🏽 Should I call for a five-minute break?
Do a quick movement exercise?
Plow ahead and hope the engagement picks up?

I’ve been there.
(Side note: Gold star for awareness. And questioning yourself means you’re open to experimentation and improvement. Both good things.)

For years, I “perfected” agendas, slides, and activities—but I’d still catch that glazed-over look. The one that says: “This is fine…but I’m not fully in it.”

Maybe not so perfect.

(I’m also embarrassed to say I wrote up a bunch of adult students for using their phones – not something I’d do now!)

It wasn’t until I embraced games — not as a side activity, but as my entire foundation — that everything changed.

Yes, I know how dramatic that sounds.

But the difference between “using the occasional game” and “using game design” is huuuuge. I think it’s worth considering for yourself.

After 15 years of teaching, facilitating, and speaking, I realized that the moments people remember (and weren’t checking emails during!) always had one thing in common: games or experiential elements.

I’d used games almost non-stop when I was working with kids to keep their attention. The deeper benefits of games became clear to me when I used them with adults.

I was working with a group of newcomers to Canada that were learning English. When they couldn’t find the exact words they wanted to say, many would freeze up. Long, awkward silences. I realized it would benefit them greatly if they could get comfortable talking around the gap in their vocabulary – say “the white thing that comes from cows” if they couldn’t remember the word ‘milk’. (It’s a fancy skill called ‘circumlocution’).

After one of my game nights with friends, I realized the classic game Taboo would be perfectly suited to support my students. We played, they LOVED it, and it did exactly what I suspected it would do.

Once they unlocked the ability to keep talking, even without the perfect words, their conversations with native speakers went a lot more smoothly. People weren’t jumping in, trying to finish their sentences for them to move things along.

Games are just as appropriate for adults as they are for kids.

(Took me a while, but I got there.)

Now, games are a key consideration in the workshops I design because of the transformations they make possible.

This is your invitation to embrace the game designer in you, too.

Here are some clues that might let you know you’re already on the path:

game design instinct

clue 1:

You’re constantly tweaking workshop activities

If you’re always modifying activities based on energy, time, or attention span, or adjusting exercises to fit the room, this isn’t perfectionism (although it can go down that road if you don’t have boundaries)…

This is a design instinct.

If you deeply crave feedback from participants, this could be a game design thing too.
The key distinction: why you crave it. If the purpose of gathering this feedback is not to stroke your ego, but to make things better – that’s part of game design.

Even noticing cool elements in someone else’s training and thinking, “What if they did XYZ?” is a game design instinct!

game design instinct

hint 2:

You always center consent.

It’s important to you to make sure people are only engaging in exercises because they *want* to.

How does this connect to games?

As the game philosopher Bernard Suits put it:
“Games are a voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.”

Voluntary.

Meaning, people choose to play. They do it because it seems like it’ll be interesting or fun. If they didn’t enthusiastically consent to it, it’s a task, not a game!

P.S. This non-task-ness is what separates ☺️games☺️ from… 😒gamification😒!

If you’re focused on helping people overcome obstacles, and want to do it in a way that’s not coercive or required, that’s halfway to game designing.

The other half is creating interesting goals with *unnecessary* obstacles… we’ll get to that later.

game design instinct

hint 3:

You’ve modified a prompt with an “other than” clause (or similar).

“To make a game is to imagine the person playing it.” – Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow.

You imagine what people might say, do, or feel, as they work through exercises.

If you start writing out a prompt, eg. “Name a Pulitzer Prize winner” and realize that KDot is currently very much top of mind for your people and eeeveryone will pick him, so you add “..other than Kendrick Lamar”.

Congratulations, my friend. You were thinking like a game designer.

If you’re planning your workshop and realize to yourself “Oh, they’ll probably get bored here. I should add something more dynamic and active after all that journalling.”

Congratulations, my friend. Again, you were thinking like a game designer.

Game designers have to anticipate how people will respond in a variety of circumstances, and plan accordingly. They shape behaviour with constraints that keep things interesting. They rule out anything too obvious or boring.

If you’re already doing this, that’s one less game design skill to learn.

game design instinct

hint 4:

You are a game sommelier.

You love recommending games to people.

But not based on what you like – your suggestions are based on what you know they’d like, or the experience they’re trying to have.

Your sibling who works in animation?
They’d love Telestration.

Your friend who is always asking questions to get to know people better?
Fun Facts is perfect for them.

Your neighbour who’s always playing Euchre, but doesn’t really care about winning? You bought them a copy of The Crew, a co-operative trick-taking game.

Knowing exactly which game fits which person? That’s game design!

game design instinct

hint 5:

You want people to be *different* after your time together.

You want the work they do with you to be transformative.

Games are more than just a frivolous break from other “real work” to be done. They are the work.

They create new forms of agency, perspectives, and decision-making skills. They teach values in ways words alone can’t. They shift how people move through the world, even after the game is over.

(The philosopher C. Thi Nguyen has written an incredible book on this – ‘Games: Agency as Art’. And Jane McGonigal has some great theoretical and practical work about games that’s written for the general population!)

Games create transformation. They help players see things differently so they can make different decisions and take different actions when they stop playing the game and go back to “real life”.

If you want people to be changed by the experience you create (ie. your workshops) then you share the same goal as game designers.

You don't need credentials, or permission.

You don’t need to be creating card decks sold in stores, or making tabletop games with a million pieces to use game design thinking.

Making modifications to an existing game counts.

Writers edit.
Chefs refine recipes.
Game designers playtest.

If you’re trying to create engaging experiences for folks, and are willing to keep tinkering with it in order to make it better and better… that’s a game design skill.

Let me break down the rest of the definition of what games are from earlier.

Games are a voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.

Voluntary:
They can choose to opt out with no pressure, hard feelings, or negative consequences.

It’s gotta be fun and consensual.

Attempt to overcome:
There should be a goal to achieve. Games focus your attention and motivate us to keep trying to do something. There is a purpose.

It’s gotta have an interesting goal.

Unnecessary obstacles:
Games have constraints that make the goal even harder to accomplish. The rules are what make the experience challenging (and often, aggravating ). They create growth.

It’s gotta have *unnecessary* constraints.

You are likely using the first two elements regularly (consent-based, striving toward a goal). Now, let’s layer all three together. Time to add some game rules or unnecessary constraints!

Here’s a path forward…

Ready to dive deeper and incorporate more games? You’ve got options!

Each section will show a different way you could use the game Taboo for language practice.

newbie

You can play a game related to your topic (goal), play it and discuss. Note down your impressions, and groups’ feedback. Use these notes to modify a rule or two the next time around.

Playing Taboo: After your first playthrough, students complained there wasn’t enough time. You noticed most only got through one card per round.

Next time, you bump the round length to two minutes instead of one.

Beginner

Choose a game, and use the same rules but change the content to fit your theme.

Playing Taboo: For a lesson on locations around town, each student makes two of their own cards with vocabulary words from that lesson, and words or phrases to avoid. Then, they play!

Sure, you could make the cards for them, but I like this more collaborative way better. Also, saves prep time.

intermediate

Change some of the mechanics to shape the behaviour you want.

Playing Taboo: Maybe you notice players aren’t using the squeaker when describers break a rule. So, you modify scoring to give a point for each valid ‘squeak’.

Or the opposite – they’re squeaking when no rule has been broken and disrupting the describer’s concentration, and you subtract a point for each invalid ‘squeak’.

advanced

Make a variation on the game, changing both content and rules.

Playing Taboo: Every time students introduce themselves to a new arrival or guest speaker, you’ve noticed they say the same things. Their name. What country they’re from. Their job. How long they’ve been in Canada.

For your lesson on introductions, you have them secretly pair up, and interview each other. Then, they re-introduce each other to the class this way. The other students have to guess who they’re talking about. You also encourage them to remember the Taboo version, and add some of those details into their self-introductions.

expert

Create your own game! Take inspiration from life, your clients, other games, and make something that doesn’t lean too heavily on any one particular reference.

Playing Taboo: You don’t. Or, ‘not saying particular words’ is one small part of a new game you’ve made up. You’ve added so much that’s your own that Taboo is unrecognizable.

Having fun is a way to inoculate ourselves from grind culture.

In a very practical sense, games make our workshops more enjoyable and memorable.

But anyone who thinks games are just a frivolous break from “real work” is missing the bigger picture.

When I stopped seeing games as an add-on, and embraced them as my foundation, everything shifted.

Once I took on the identity of a game designer:
👉🏽 I didn’t have to obsess over perfecting a script for presentations. Because I wasn’t delivering information anymore, I was designing experiences.

👉🏽 I didn’t have to worry about boring people with a wall of slides (or worse: boring myself).

👉🏽 I didn’t have to stress about crafting a slick sales pitch that didn’t feel like me.

Instead of all those things, I got to focus on my people.
On how they were engaging.
What they were discovering.
The moments of surprise and delight that made learning stick.

Once I saw the true power of games, I couldn’t unsee it.

Games became my go-to when workshops needed a way in. When a topic was painful, people felt stuck, or when they thought they’d already tried everything.

For example, a client of mine does relationship coaching for couples:
One person often struggles to communicate, while the other has a history of partners who shut down. The conversation is loaded.

Rather than diving straight into that emotional minefield, the coach has them play a game where communication is intentionally limited: one partner can’t speak, or the stronger communicator is blindfolded.

Afterward, they talk about the game first. The coach reflects back the strategies they saw their clients use to get things done. And suddenly, the real, deeper conversation can begin.

Games diffuse the emotional charge.

The psychological distance that comes from using a game makes easier to tackle what’s really going on.

I love how games create a shared experience, where everyone gets to be part of the conversation with more equal footing. (I’ve got two essays alllll about activating equity and belonging in workshops on my site if that’s your thing!)

I’ve also seen games showcase the beauty of diverse thinking. A good game has many possible solutions, and I like to design experiences with that in mind. People start noticing how their perspective isn’t the only one — there’s no single *right* answer.

I see so many hidden benefits in games (can you tell?🤓)

and I could go on and on…

And I only wish I had embraced my game designer identity even sooner.

If you’ve been feeling like your workshops are missing something, or like you’re putting in so much effort but not getting the engagement you want… I get it. I’ve been there.

It’s not too late. Never too late.

And you’ve already got a lot of the skills!

Inside my course, Workshops as Worldbuilding, every month I have a few events that relate directly to games.

You can attend Step Into The Story, a character-based storytelling game that’s set in the world of The Prismatics.

Or, you can attend our Worldbuilding Brainstorm for troubleshooting, brainstorming, and swapping ideas. No matter whether you’re a newbie trying to pick a game that suits your theme, or an expert wanting feedback on elements of what you’ve created, we can help you out. Think of it as a workshop support group and idea emporium.

Once enrollment in the course exceeds 30 people, I’ll open up a dedicated playtesting session specifically for trying out each other’s games!

Click here to check out the course and its events.

You’ve got game designer energy in spades. With a little support and structure, that potential energy can be released.

✨✨✨

Workshops as Worldbuilding

Explore the ‘Workshops as Worldbuilding’ course- where your workshops become a portal into a new, more equitable world, and a tool for transformation.

Head to this link to join and take the next step toward co-creating a better future in your sessions.

Currently a $250 CAD investment.