Caitlin Feeley

Collaborators: Commonwealth, Fablevision

Role: Game Designer

Play Now: Online

When you're a vampire, planning for retirement is a grave matter. The award winning Bite Club combines a vampire night club setting with fast-paced  business sim gameplay and financial planning strategy to teach players about retirement savings.

Awards:  2013 EIFLE Award, 2012 Eddy Award; 2012 New England Employee Benefit Council Best Practices Award; 2012 MarCom Award 

Press: Boston Globe, Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Fortune

Collaborators: Commonwealth, Fablevision

Role: Game Designer

Play Now: Online  App Store  Google Play

Money doesn't grow on trees...except in Farm Blitz.  Using rapidly multiplying bunnies as a teaching metaphor for high-interest debt, Farm Blitz combines match-three gameplay with important lessons about interest rates, savings, and financial management. 

Awards:  2011 EIFLE Award, 2010 Games for Change Direct Impact Nominee

Press: Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Common Sense Media

Collaborators: Commonwealth, Fablevision

Role: Game Designer

Play Now: Online  App Store  Google Play

In Con 'Em If You Can, a retro-styled strategy caper, you learn about common social strategies used to lure people into fraudulent investment schemes by assuming the role of the con artist yourself.  Made in partnership with FINRA, players learn to identify vulnerabilities in game characters and the schemes that are used to exploit them in order to build their own understanding of how to avoid fraud.

Learn More:  Con 'Em If You Can

Press: MIT Age Lab. CNBC.com

Collaborators: MIT Education Arcade, Smithsonian Center for Learning and Digital Access

Role: Project Lead, Game Designer

"We're contacting you from the future, and we need your help."  This call to action was players' first glimpse into the world of Vanished, an unprecedented foray into creating a live, alternate reality gaming style event to engage middle school students across the country in scientific thinking through a mystery narrative.  Following a trail of clues, puzzles, minigames, and citizen science challenges distributed online and at Smithsonian affiliate museums nationwide, 6500 players between the ages of 10 and 14 came together over two months to save the world from a climate disaster.  Players from across the country and abroad worked together on online forums and collaborated with Smithsonian scientists to hypothesize, investigate, collect and organize data to solve a compelling mystery.  

Awards:  Best Poster, Games Learning and Society 2011

Press: Fast Company, USA Today, Wired.com, ARGNet; featured in Resonant Games

MIDDLEGALAXY

Collaborators: Texas OnCourse, Robots and Pencils

Role: Game Designer

Play Now: Online , iOS, Android

Visualize your future! This strategy game, designed to help Texas middle schoolers learn about career paths, casts the player as the commander of an off-world space mission. By assigning cadets with particular skillsets to appropriate tasks, and training and mentoring cadets to broaden their skills, players learn about a range of promising real-world career paths and how training can build a range of job skills.

Learn More: MiddleGalaxy

Many of my projects have included live-action elements, including improv/immersive theater style dramatic interaction, location-based design, and physical puzzles and engineering challenges. I got my start in designing these features as a participant and designer of live action roleplaying games (or LARPs). As audiences look for more unplugged activities, such as escape rooms and analog games, I’ve advocated for educational designers drawing more inspiration from these “Actual Reality” spaces. My five minute Ignite Talk from the Connected Learning Summit at MIT gives a quick overview of some of these design elements and gives examples of how they can be used to boost learners’ engagement and motivation.