ClassMaster Gameful Design Platform

Hi Craig, I think this venture has great potential, but this is not something that I would invest in. I think gasification of teaching is great, but not necessarily translated easily into many subject areas. I can see games working in the maths/sciences but not necessarily so in the english/humanities. While there is a strong idea here, it does not become specific or tailored enough for me. The use of games in teaching is not new and has been a popular for quite awhile.

I really like the digital magazine program you used - I will definitely look into it for my personal use. I thought you did a good job outlining the paint point. Gamification and a focus on increased student motivation are hot topics right now as outlined in the Horizon Report and various other ed tech trend reports (including Ambient Insight as your report mentions). In addition the providing the amount being ask of investors, your report also outlines the expenses of the company, which is helpful for me as an investor. Also, I appreciate the tagline “Gameful Design Platform” as it succinctly summarises the product. However, I am hesitant about ClassCraft as a direct competitor to your company. You have differentiated yourself from ClassCraft by providing a wider arrange of tools and a more teacher-friendly platform. However, with ClassCraft regularly improving their platform, I feel they would have a head start over your company for making these improvements. They also have the first to market advantage and have established a strong following over the past few years. 3D Hive may be another direct competitor of your company as a software that immerses students in a 3D digital world in which they complete quests and tasks set up by the teacher. My second concern is the price of the software for users. Even with the inflated budgets of international schools, 150US per class is a high cost, especially if teachers teach multiple sections. A ClassCraft subscription is 96USD per year so the interface would need to be well-designed to persuade teachers and school to shell out the money. Have you considered a Freemium business model? This may entice users to try the product. I do believe teachers are looking for accessible ways to gamify learning and would be interested in investing in this product if I had a clearer picture of what makes this software different from those already on the market.

Hi Craig,

Your presentations are well done and show a good level of knowledge of your market. I especially liked your insight when you disagreed with the NMC Horizons Report - in order for gamification to be used more widely, it must be easy for teachers to implement. I feel this is true of many innovations in education.

Overall, I liked your level of market research and appreciated the detail of your pricing model as well as the expected revenues. However, while I appreciated the fact that you want to make gamification easier for teachers to apply in their classrooms, I'm not sure that your venture is sufficiently differentiated from Classcraft - the ability for teachers to use existing teaching materials is one of the features made apparent in their webinar.

Also, I'm not convinced that the avatar-building, RPG form of gamification is really the right way to approach gamification - if a student is not sufficiently motivated by grades, why would s/he be motivated by "experience points" or "attributes" of an avatar?

While gamification is a hot topic for the future of education, as an EVA, I would not invest. Education games have not done well to date and I think that part of it is because students are very conscious of the fact that the game is trying to get them to do something, where as the motivation in playing games for fun is much more subconscious. I'm also trying to understand how this would work for a classroom where not all the work may be computer-base. I really liked your character sheet though and can see students enjoying having a character and attributes, items, and badges.

Hello Craig, I agree 100% that teaching via a Victorian model is creating tremendous amounts of problems in education today. Our students are not the same as students of the 19th century. Keeping our students motivated is a tremendous challenge and I believe that gaming is one way to do it. One question I have is about students who are not into gaming. As a high school teacher, I see many students who have zero interest in gaming or games cannot hold their attention for very long before they lose interest. The design of your venture pitch is outstanding and as a potential investor it is encouraging to see this level of work being put forward. Before I invested I would want to know more details about the games themselves and to see them in action. Very well done.

Review: The gamification concept is very intriguing since many of us grew up with a Nintendo or Sega (depending on what your parents decided for the pivotal Christmas gift selection). Creating the framework of which feedback of lessons can be channelled through quests and experience points is a huge shift of philosophy in an educational system. What I suggest is that ClassMaster would have to gear itself in terms of marketing towards administrators or heads of schools. Since the implementation of such a system requires that the whole schools buys into the program. This would represent a very novel way of thinking and the challenge is to find a school willing to go way out in left field. Some things to think about to get the school over the hump or jump into ClassMaster (or Gamification) is more than just the engagement of students but how does it make things easier for teachers to do their job? How do you account for those who are not into gaming? Other than engagement of students, what else would be a pain point for an administrator? Also to be considered since ClassMaster will be used by Junior High School and High Schools: How do these gamification status translate to marks that will allow a student to compare herself to other students in other schools not using ClassMaster? How does parents know how students are doing if this is a totally new way of providing feedback? How do students under ClassMaster apply to University or any post secondary education? How does students get weaned from such a high rate of reinforcement which does not match real world situations? I can see you are not trying to see a Educational Game, but the framework to provide feedback for work students are already doing. Its interesting but with these questions unanswered, I would invest.

I would not invest in this venture. The idea of a platform that teachers can customize to their teaching is great, but I struggle to see how the software would work. There is such a wide range of lessons that teachers deliver that I fear to make the platform truly user friendly for teachers, it would be an enormous undertaking from a software engineering standpoint. Another thought, should you choose to consider pitching this in the future: the venture pitch (magazine) was very text-dense, and needed some POP...I wanted to be sold on the idea by a passionate, visionary CEO.

Hi Craig, CLASSMASTER – Gameful Design Platform is a nice idea of packaging lessons as game quests and advancing characters in the gameworld to help motivate students to learn. The target market of ELL is a high potential starting point and staying focused on this area is a good strategy. If you achieve success you can build on it. You have a well thought out marketing strategy, your projections and targets quite aggressive. The selling point of allowing teachers to use their own lessons in CLASSMASTER is attractive but it is not clear to me how they do that. I would like to have a look at the product before making a decision to use it. As an investor I don’t have the teaching background or the experience with ELL to be able to make a proper investment. Great work though.

This is an interesting proposal but I would not invest. One major issue is that educational games do not sell. There have been very few educational games that have made profit and those that do are usually very low budget. None have been RPGs. The problem with this is that RPG gaming is cumulative. If I'm playing a game, I get an object to generally help me (in terms of stats) do better in the game. But with educational question based games, you really can't do that. So getting kids engaged will be very tough. The competition is also quite tricky. There's lots of LMS companies trying their hand at it. D2L / Brightspace in particular has something that they are working with (https://www.d2l.com/services/game-based-learning/). In terms of the development, finances and marketing with the staff projections, it seems problematic. Development of games is a lot more expensive and you'll need a much bigger development staff. I'm also unsure about the timeline to get to market as a result. That all said, I like how you laid out the magazine. It looks great and is quite interesting. It definitely gets my attention and hooks me in as a reader. You're also quite detailed in your explanation and have a very clearly laid out plan. You've done your homework. That I really respect but it just doesn't connect for me.

I would invest in this venture. There is no doubt on the popularity and rise of game-based learning in schools. The key deciding factor in opting to invest in Classmaster is the ease of using the teaching material already has to 'quests' in the classmaster game. That is a great idea! The business plan was also really well laid out in the venture pitch. The team is also credible. All the best Craig!