Santeri Koivisto 'Education in Games'

Welcome back to Industry week, this is day two and we were greeted by the early arrival of Santeri Koivisto, the Minecraft Superstar.

I would like to start off by saying Santeri held a very enjoyable session, and the whole group enjoyed working with Minecraft EDU. A student sat near me acquired admin rights, we messed with a few people and spawned a lot of creepers.

Santeri is educated to a high level, he obtained his M.ED in 2012, and also has the qualification to teach in Finnish schools, at comprehensive level, having gained these qualifications, he saw that during the classic version of Minecraft, that he could do something special with the game. During Minecrafts classic days, Santeri spoke early to the leader of Mojang, and gained an almost partnership like relationship with Mojang, and here it began.

Along with having these qualifications, he was an avid gamer and a fan of the Fallout series among others, he obviously thought he could make something out of Minecraft to help gamers and learners alike.

The head of Mojang gave permission for the game to be packaged by Santeri and his team for teachers and schools, although this never really happened, it was still amazing that he got that far, he had very few customers at this time, but still carried on.

Since 2011, Santeri has been the CEO of massively successful Teacher Gaming LLC, and is now listed as one of the best EDU designers out there, along with this, he also spoke of the space in the market for a ‘GOOD’ educational game, as most of the games in the market are saturated rubbish!

I spoke to a few of my peers during this session, and they were amazed, their mind had been open by the power of pixelated blocks, and how powerful Minecraft can be to education. Although Minecraft was strictly limited in the training level that we were greeted with when we opened up MinecraftEDU for the first time.

Along with letting us try this product, Santeri gave us some much sought after advice for start-ups and when the good time is to start, the answer is, whenever you really have the money or surplus time to do such a thing. Have a valid idea on what you want to do, and continue. An important quote that he gave was “You don’t need a company to have an Idea” this was great and he suggested that a group of friends or future colleges should build an alpha version of the game idea before taking it out to perspective studios/publishers, Santeri was also very clear on stating that everything done should be contracted, just to cover your own back and so that the game doesn’t crumble if something goes horribly wrong and a team member leaves. If you are sound legally, publishers and other people along that line will more than likely throw money into the project because it has less chance of failing.

When we were given the option of PVP’ing in MinecraftEDU, our session got very vocal, this is where I and a few friends started messing around with a few players, but we also played, and for my first encounter with Minecraft, I really enjoyed it!

Santeri also graced us with a mini pitch, which really covered MinecraftEDU as a product, it was very nice to hear this and the audience reacted well and asked some really positive questions and even proposed some ideas to Santeri, which we could see in the future!

I think both me and the rest of the students in the session would like to thank Santeri for this talk as it was really informative to our future needs.