Charlie Mackin

Game Designer

Encouraging Emergent Narratives with Puzzle Design in Décorum

Game Developers Conference


Ranked 9th out of 204 GDC Summits talks!

How do developers encourage players to see moving pieces around a board as a relationship argument? In this session, game designer Charlie Mackin breaks down how her team injected narrative into their puzzle designs, while still allowing each player's group dynamics to lead the interaction.

The Development of a Cooperative Family Science App

Connected Learning Summit


In this symposium authors will each present an aspect of the creation and development of Operation Investigation. The presentation will focus on the co-development process, formative testing with diverse families, and the use of player generated content in the game.

Adapting PBS Kids' Hero Elementary to Educational Games

Connected Learning Summit


Creating educational digital games that complement a television property presents a number of interesting challenges. Especially when they’re supposed to be teaching science, while talking about superpowers. In this session, discover how Twin Cities PBS and Filament Games teamed up to co-develop a suite of educational games that integrate and align to pre-existing characters and world-building from PBS KIDS’ Hero Elementary animated series. We’ll begin our presentation with a discussion of transmedia educational game design strategies, before sharing relevant examples of how our teams successfully adapted themes from the STEM-focused superhero series into meaningful game mechanics.

Scientific Practices Content as Game Mechanics

Play Make Learn


If the core mechanics and the the educational content are tightly integrated, you can more reasonably attribute player success to learning. By mastering the mechanics, they are mastering the content.