The past 6 months I’ve been developing my own webshop. It’s my big “website project” for this year, and will hopefully remain my big and sustainable project for many years to come.
I haven’t been developing it non-stop, of course. My main job is still to write books, make games, actually create the things to sell. I worked on it on and off, taking a step back when I stumbled upon problems, then jumping back in when my mind had found a solution.
For example, I always try to be very minimalist and efficient. That’s why this webshop is absolutely as tiny, fast, and streamlined as possible. To accomplish that, though, I always have to figure out some creative solutions. A webshop needs easy ways for customers to search the exact thing they want. But the kinds of websites I make are so-called “static websites”, which means it’s really hard to do a “dynamic search” on the content.
But the biggest hurdle of all was the core question: What am I actually going to sell? What should be the main “product categories” in this shop?
A few things were obvious to me. I own dozens of works I can already sell, such as the many games and books I created. Those should have a prominent place.
But other things were more fuzzy. What else? What should be most important? What should I monetize, and which things should I keep free (as I’ve done in the past for everything)?
The handful of product categories on that website basically changed every darn week. I just couldn’t find the right fit, but I knew I was getting closer to the truth with every iteration.
Why?
After all these years, I’ve realized that games are hard to get played. Video games and board games alike. Many people have assumptions about them that make it really hard to convince them to give a game a try. Many people dislike learning rules in general, and even if the rules are only 5 minutes, I can’t really blame them for looking elsewhere when they need an activity for the night.
And so, over the years, I changed tactics. Whenever the family was together (for a birthday or holiday), instead of asking them to test one of my new board games, I asked them something else. Want to do … a pub quiz? Want to do … a little escape room?
I broadened my perspective from just “games” to “activities” or “shared experiences”.
Quite quickly, I realized other activities were more accessible. A pub quiz, for example, requires no “teaching” beforehand. It can be played by any number of people at the same time. It’s competitive—you’re trying to get more questions correct than the other teams—without being mean-spirited.
Similarly, despite board games being an amazing learning tool, I have to admit that “smaller” learning tools are easier to jump into. Giving a child a set of coloring pages is far easier to do than printing and teaching them a board game about recognizing colors.
Especially because many people just cannot fathom games being educational or “useful”. No matter how many arguments I give, no matter how often I show it, most people are set in their ways. They truly believe the educational system is great and how you learn, and games are just frivolous wastes of time, and that’s that.
You can’t change such opinions in one fell swoop. You just can’t. Humans aren’t able to drastically change their entire system of views and opinions just because you present overwhelming evidence they’re wrong. No, if you want humans to broaden their mind, it will usually have to happen through gradual change. A nudge here, a nudge there, making them walk the path to enlightenment ;)
And so, after putting the finishing touches on my core webshop structure, I suddenly had an epiphany.
The categories of my webshop are basically a gentle pushing from “educational system” to “games as education”.
The first category of the webshop is simply “educational material”. Worksheets, exercises, simple puzzles, cheatsheets, anything that I felt provided some additional value when learning. Sometimes these are more “activities”.
It’s a very low hurdle for people to overcome. Most people do accept that these kinds of “extra materials” hold value and do regularly present their children/pupils with them. And so … they might try one or two.
When that happens, it’s now only a small step to the next category: trivia and (pub) quizzes. A quiz is nothing more than a collection of “exercises” or “worksheets”. But instead of one paper with questions about, I don’t know, algebra, you get several papers worth of questions about a variety of topics.
Now it’s a very low hurdle to plan a quiz afternoon/night. To try one of these packs, especially when themed after something that interests your child.
When that happens, you guessed it, it’s now only a small step to the next category: escape rooms (and similar style activities). These have puzzles again, challenges, quizzes, but wrapped in something slightly bigger. There’s more creativity here. It’s a larger, longer experience, that also draws on a few new skills. It’s even more collaborative, even more creative, even more “gamified” learning.
Several people who tried a quiz will now try an escape room. They’ll discover how much fun it is, how much you learn, how it’s not as daunting as they first believed.
And so we move up the chain again! Once you’ve done one or two escape rooms with your kids/family/class … it’s only a small step to the final category: full-on games. Just explain a few more rules, introduce the concept of taking turns or a single winner, and now you can play a breadth of educational and really fun (board) games.
Such a small step that some people who tried escape rooms will now try it. Even though they would never have even considered it before. In fact, most people still believe that Monopoly and Risk are the only board games to exist and that’s that ;)
Hopefully you can see how powerful this is. The categories create a clear path that gentle nudges people towards trying more of these activities. Towards ascribing them more value and understanding how fun and instructive games are. How an escape room themed around dinosaurs teaches kids a whole lot more about that time period and archeology than a dry text book. How a fun quiz about movies teaches them a lot more than forcing them to do the same rote exercises again and again.
I guess most people would now show some fake humility and state that they don’t “want to change people’s minds” or “want to force their opinions on others”. I’m not one of those ;)
I truly believe that our current systems of education are not just useless, but actively extremely harmful to everyone involved. The faster we can make people open up to alternatives, the faster we can switch to something far better, the happier I’d be. If I can earn an income for the first time in my life at the same time, well, that’d just be a nice bonus if you ask me.
That doesn’t mean, though, that the webshop is extremely political or in-your-face. Nothing of the sort. I don’t “explain” this track anywhere, or tell people to take these steps in any way. It’s always better to show than to tell. To put your money where your mouth is. Actions speak louder than words.
The webshop exists so I can show the kinds of experiences I’m talking about. I put in the work, I make the darn things, and now others can experience for themselves what I could never properly express in words. The magic of playing together. The magic of sharing an experience, and growing and learning as you go. The magic of a world where children are not treated as slaves, to be penalized for not obeying random rules all day, but actually allowed to develop in a natural and effective way. And, most of all, in freedom.
All my experience tells me that this is the way to go. All my previous articles with the actual arguments, research, and proposed solutions for education never seemed to do much. People either already agreed, or they called me an imbecile after the first line and left. People need gentle nudging, a long-term track towards change, if they are to get rid of some deeply-held belief.
With that structure in place, the webshop’s setup and content became clearer. Not entirely clear, mind you. There are still some categories that are not really related to this. Some categories that were also renamed a bunch of times, and shuffled around, as I wondered how often I’d actually need them.
For example, I used to have a category for “bonus material” for my existing projects. The idea was nice. Maybe I’d released a book, but had to cut a few chapters I liked. Now you can buy those chapters and read them anyway!
In practice, however, this would be the kind of thing that feels more natural to give away for free. To share. To make accessible to all, because it’s so instructive, because it’s so small, and because I don’t want to get into the mind-set of “monetize every single fucking thing you do”.
Instead, that category was dissolved over time. The idea was taken over by something more valuable: “Sneakpeeks”. Instead of merely sharing some tiny unreleased thing, actually share the entire source code/assets/history of a project. Give people a sneak peek behind the curtain, with full transparency, full “use this however you wish”. That’s far more valuable. That’s something for which I dare ask a little money in return.
Anyway, these were my thoughts about the core structure of the webshop and how it came to be. I essentially looked at things I could sell, then divided them into roughly even categories, which mostly create a nice track from “this is just an activity” to “hey, play board games as education”.
It wasn’t perfect at launch. It probably never will be. But it’s something I can stand behind.
Until next time,
Tiamo