The term “educational video game” is somewhat of an oxymoron. Video games are meant to be fun. Education, on the other hand, is often not. For decades, cut-and-dried combinations of these two seemingly incompatible things has left students with humdrum homework assignments that merely masquerade as video games.
But Lindsey Tropf, founder and CEO of Immersed Games, challenges the assumption that video games can’t be fun, engaging and educational to boot. Her company, which participated in the Tampa Bay Wave accelerator program last year, creates gaming platforms designed to empower students to learn through hands-on digital experiences.
Inspired by massively multiplayer online role-playing games, Immersed Games lets students create their own characters within a game world, where they’re tasked with exploring the environment, collecting evidence and solving problems in scientific ways. The hope is that, by enticing students with fun, Immersed Games can make them want to learn.
“We offer hands-on science learning through video games,” Tropf said. “Right now, we're starting with an explicit focus on middle school science, but our long-term goal is to open this up as a more experiential learning platform, so that students can learn across many areas in the game.”
It may come as no surprise that Tropf is a gamer. A big gamer, actually. She recalls learning thousands of different spells and strategies during countless hours playing World of Warcraft. She decided to pursue a PhD, studying school psychology with an eventual focus on educational video games at the University of Florida, but found the available video game options short, shallow or frustratingly fragmented.
“I wanted to build something that had deep learning experiences all in a single game platform,” she said. “That makes it a lot easier for students and teachers to use it throughout their curriculum.”
Tropf and her co-founders launched a Kickstarter campaign to help fund Immersed Games’ first platform, Tyto Online, in 2014. It was a narrow success—raising $617 above the $50,000 goal—but enough to keep the dream alive.
In Tyto Online, students play as a future Earth evacuee, who has just woken up from cryosleep. The student joins the Tyto Academy on a far-off, fictional planet, where they help scientists study the new environment, and relate that research to real-world issues on Earth. For example, they’re taught ecology by recreating Earth-like biodomes and genetics by breeding a dragon-like exterritorial species. The Immersed Games team is currently developing a module on weather and climate designed to inform students about the science behind climate change.
After a few years developing and refining the Tyto Online platform, including pilot programs in Tampa and Jacksonville, Immersed Games participated in the Tampa Bay Wave accelerator program in 2018.
“Tampa probably has the most going on right now in Florida when it comes to startup ecosystem growth,” Tropf said. Immersed Games considered relocating to Tampa from its initial headquarters in Gainesville, but it ultimately followed a $500,000 investment that required them to move to Buffalo, N.Y. for one year.
Immersed Games has raised $1.6 million in grants and investments from angel investors, an institutional accelerator, the Department of Education and the National Science Foundation. The company currently has 13 full-time employees.
There’s still plenty of work to be done, not least of which entails getting schools and districts to sign up and pay the $10 per student annual fee to use the platform. The company just recently started ramping up commercialization and hopes to have Tyto Online in 100 schools by 2020.
Tropf is optimistic. During a recent pilot test in Jacksonville, she was offered some words of encouragement from one of the quieter students in the classroom.
“On her way out, she said that the game made her feel ‘really smart,’” Tropf said. “The teacher was just blown away because this was not a student who generally engaged in the classroom. It’s been great to see some of the pieces come together—to see students solving problems and having this empowering learning experience.”
