The Serious Games Podcast

Julian Kea

The Serious Games Podcast explores interactive methods and serious games for workshops, meetings, trainings, and conferences, with a sharp focus on facilitation craft, debriefing, and real world impact.

  1. Jul 9

    The Glorious 2030s

    Eli Godde and Gaëlle Shearn facilitate The Glorious 2030s, a French-born conversational workshop that drops participants into a utopian future through guided meditation, three personal questions on a pocket-sized blue card, and oracle cards featuring real initiatives already underway today. The reframe: utopia is not a destination but a muscle, and training it with strangers in a room for three hours produces much more agency than years of reading about what is going wrong.

    The Glorious 2030s

  2. Jun 18

    Playposium

    Adam Lusby and Maarten Koeners explain why Playposium has no published minute-by-minute schedule, how a vegan vampire dinner replaces awkward conference networking, and what happens when you stop teaching the dance moves and start DJing the room.

    Playposium

  3. May 31

    Drake's Dice

    Are we alone in the universe? For decades, that question has been tackled with complex formulas. Drake’s Dice flips the experience: you explore the Drake Equation through dice, risk, peer review, and discovery cards, without doing any math. Game designer Daniel Larose shares how he and Alissa Pott built a science outreach board game designed to stand on its own at home, while staying grounded through expert review.

    Drake's Dice

  4. May 28

    Serious Play Conference Europe

    The Serious Play Conference comes to Europe for the first time. Dr. Philipp Busch, co-organizer of the first European edition in Mainz, unpacks what it takes to move game-based learning from niche enthusiasm to cross-sector cultural change — and what happens when the right people finally share a room.

    Serious Play Conference Europe

  5. May 20

    The Climate Business Challenge

    The Climate Business Challenge helps organizations link climate ambition with real business constraints instead of feel‑good wishful thinking. Creator Tim Riedel and facilitator Jan Störkel explain how their 4‑hour workshop moves from systemic awareness (how our economic system drives growth at all costs) to redesigning business models and generating concrete, organizations‑specific ideas.

    The Climate Business Challenge

  6. May 4

    CounterPlay Festival

    CounterPlay is a playful festival and global community that invites adults to reclaim play as a way of living, learning, and being together. In this episode, founder Mathias Poulsen shares how building a “play commons” gives us the courage to unhide play in everyday life – from libraries and design schools to horses, soap bubbles, and serious work.

    CounterPlay Festival

  7. Apr 2

    Finding the Top Topic with Topaasia®

    Jussi Galla and Wiro Kuipers join Julian to unpack Topaasia® – a card-based gamified dialogue tool that gets any group to the one thing that actually matters, in just 75 minutes. No dominant voices. No endless stickies. Just one rule, one topic, and the "alibi" as built-in design feature, which gives people permission to raise the topics they have always been too cautious to name. If you've ever left a meeting wondering why nothing got decided, this episode is for you.

    Finding the Top Topic with Topaasia®

  8. Jan 29

    Jargon Busting with Poetry for Neanderthals

    Lucy Chambers joins Julian to explore how playful word games like Poetry for Neanderthals can help teams break down jargon, foster empathy, and create more inclusive communication. Drawing on her journey from “word nerd” outsider in tech to facilitation expert, Lucy shares practical ways to make language accessible, fun, and meaningful for everyone at work.

    Jargon Busting with Poetry for Neanderthals
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The Serious Games Podcast explores interactive methods and serious games for workshops, meetings, trainings, and conferences, with a sharp focus on facilitation craft, debriefing, and real world impact.

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