ONE TOUGH GAME TO CRACK: We tend to go a little gaga whenever the fine fellas at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center releases one of its colorful reports. The latest, "Games for a Digital Age: K-12 Market Map and Investment Analysis," had the button-masher in us a bit giddy. Because in spite of all the interest in gaming from practically everyone across the board, it's been hard to figure out how that enthusiasm translates to dollars and cents. Unfortunately, the report offered no golden ticket. (Hey, the mainstream gaming industry's been trying to crack the school market for decades.) But it takes what we currently know about the dynamics of the K-12 market, including demographics, sales channels and cycles, barriers to adoption, and hardware purchasing trends, to identify opportunities and recommendations for game developers. "Market games as supplemental materials...[and] consider using a third party to complete the sales of learning games," it suggests. What we found most helpful were the appendices, which include an extensive literature review on everything game-based learning.
