Developing a Game Production Pipeline for University Educators

In this paper, we describe the initial process of developing what we call the Game Production Pipeline (GPP), an effort to assist and guide educators in making educational games within higher education. Noting the need to push the boundaries of engaging virtual learning principles in the wake of the pandemic, the GPP seeks to address the epistemic gap between game design, virtual education, and game production. We set out to investigate educator wants, needs, and challenges in this area. We also created a probing survey to collect juxtaposing feedback on the GPP from commercial game developers. We found that educators were more concerned with implementation than design, and that developers had notes on time and production management, and epistemic clashes in making educational games.