Relevance, Communication, Collaboration, and Community — four takeaways from the European Conference on Games Based Learning
What did we learn from attending the 20th European Conference on Games Based Learning (ECGBL 2026) in Darmstadt, Germany? That game-based learning is about much more than playing games. It is about making important subjects relevant, communicating complex ideas, encouraging collaboration, and building communities of people who learn from one another.
We attended ECGBL 2026 to present our paper, “Extending The Project Win Game™: Teaching Real Options and Moral AI Project Decision-Making.” As we explained in our previous blog post, our work explores how serious games can help participants experience difficult project management decisions and their consequences. But presenting our research was only part of the experience. We also attended presentations, explored other games, met researchers and game designers from around the world, and exchanged ideas about how games support learning.
Four themes stood out.
1. Relevance: Games Help Us Explore Issues That Matter
One of the most striking aspects of ECGBL was the range of subjects addressed through serious games. These were not simply games designed to make learning more entertaining. Many dealt with complex issues that affect society, organizations, and individuals. For example, one of the game competition winners was Circular Economy Simulator (CES) by Theodora Gkika and Aneta Chola of Dora’s Designs, Greece. The board game explores the environmental and societal impacts of the circular economy.
Other presentations addressed topics as diverse as war simulations, human trafficking, and neonatal intensive care. In other examples presentations such as What Makes a Video Game ‘Good’? A Case Study with Secondary Students and Unlocking Convergent Thinking and Insight: Brain Games as Tools for Lifelong Learning of Creativity prompted reflection on how games have evolved in their visualization, design, and validation, and how creativity can be applied both to game development and to everyday situations. The societal importance of some of these subjects was remarkable.
What connected them was the opportunity for participants to explore challenging situations, make decisions, and learn from the outcomes in a simulated environment without facing the real-world consequences of those decisions. This is also central to The Project Win Game™. Whether players are managing a project using Agile or Waterfall approaches, considering investment flexibility through Real Options, or addressing ethical questions in AI projects, the objective is to make difficult decisions tangible through experience.
The relevance of the subject gives the game its purpose. The experience makes the learning meaningful.
2. Communication: Making Complex Ideas Understandable
Communication emerged as another recurring theme.
There is communication between game designers and players as the game introduces a subject. There is communication among players as they discuss choices, explain their reasoning, and negotiate decisions. And there is communication between educators and participants during briefing, gameplay, and debriefing.
A particularly interesting example came from Simona De Luca and Antigone Marino of the National Research Council, who presented Quantum Taboo: A Game-Based Approach to Exploring Quantum Concepts. Quantum physics is a complex subject, yet the game encourages participants to explain quantum concepts using familiar words. Players do not need prior knowledge of quantum physics to participate. In fact, the presenters observed that participants with more specialized knowledge could sometimes make gameplay more complicated by choosing overly technical language.
This illustrates an important principle: understanding a concept and communicating it effectively are not necessarily the same thing.
A well-designed game can encourage players to find language that others understand. In doing so, they develop their own understanding as well. For us, the broader lesson was that a game must do more than present information. It must create opportunities for participants to express ideas, question assumptions, and develop a shared understanding.
3. Collaboration: Learning Is Also a Social Experience
A third takeaway was the importance of collaboration.
Martin Guttormsen and Jørn Weines from UiT The Arctic University of Norway presented Tiers of Engagement III: The Psychological Learning Engine in Online Business Simulators. Their presentation drew on a multi-year study examining what drives learning in online business simulations. A central finding was that internal psychological factors (e.g., intrinsic motivation, active engagement, and depth of reflection) form the primary engine of learning. But collaboration also played an important role. The researchers described it as a “social buffer” that helped students overcome technical and academic frustrations. This distinction was particularly interesting.
Learning depends on what happens within the individual, but collaboration can help sustain engagement when participants encounter difficulties. We heard similar observations about collaboration and negotiation in several other presentations.
In project management, this is especially relevant. Decisions are rarely made in isolation. Project teams must communicate across disciplines, negotiate priorities, address conflicting stakeholder interests, and reach decisions despite uncertainty. Serious games can create opportunities to practice these interactions.
The learning comes not only from making a decision, but also from explaining, challenging, and reflecting on it with others.
4. Community: Learning from the People Behind the Games
Our final takeaway was about community.
ECGBL brought together researchers, educators, game designers, and practitioners from around the world, with participants from countries including Brazil, Mexico, Japan, and the the United States, as well as numerous European countries such as Germany, Italy, Norway, Turkey, Greece, Spain and Scotland, to just name a few. Many participants were also presenters, actively involved in designing, developing, testing, and researching serious games.
The enthusiasm for game-based learning was evident throughout the conference. Even the informal exchanges were memorable, including the Mexican participants who arrived bearing gifts!
Some of our most interesting conversations happened outside the presentation rooms, over lunch and dinner. We discussed game design, research findings, educational challenges, and the practical experience of developing games. We also learned about one another’s professional and personal experiences.
These conversations reinforced something that can be easy to overlook when focusing on game mechanics and learning outcomes: the people who develop and use serious games are themselves part of a learning community. They share ideas, challenge assumptions, learn from one another’s experiences, and continually improve their approaches. That community is an important part of what makes conferences such as ECGBL valuable.
Bringing These Lessons Back to The Project Win Game™
We went to ECGBL to share how The Project Win Game™ is evolving to address increasingly complex project decisions, including Real Options and Moral AI. We returned with a broader appreciation of what makes game-based learning effective. And perhaps the most important lesson from ECGBL 2026 is that learning through games is as much about the people and their interactions as it is about the games themselves.
Thank You, ECGBL 2026!
We congratulate all the participants on their creativity, research, and ingenuity in designing and developing serious games.
A special thank you to Academic Conferences & Publishing International, Sue Nugus, Louise Remenyi-Gjelstenli, and everyone who helped organize and deliver ECGBL 2026. We appreciated the opportunity to present our work, discover new approaches to game-based learning, and become part of the conversations that make this community so valuable.
The electronic conference proceedings are available through the ECGBL open-access proceedings website.
We look forward to continuing the conversations—and applying what we learned to the future development of The Project Win Game™.