Not Every Game We Love Is a GEE! Game

What is the most common reason for game submissions not qualify as Finalists every year? 

Not all good learning games are GEE!-style games.  The particular kinds of games we are here to celebrate are based on Professor James Paul Gee's principles.  Games that enhance player agency, invite them to explore systems and new roles, and craft meaning (more on these in this short and excellent YouTube series).  

The most common game types that do not qualify as finalists are functionally a set of fancy flashcards, a creative quiz, or an interactive worksheet.  Nothing wrong with those.  They just are not the type of games we're about.  But rarely, we see a game that we need to highlight despite being outside of our usual scope.  Last year brought us two.

Which brings us to the games in question.  Pivot and Primes are a great way to play with math by rapidly puzzling out the connections between numbers.  They aren't GEE! Style games so they weren't finalists.  But they're worth highlighting on the blog.  

Pivot - a game of quick mental math

In Pivot, players compete to find matching calculations across cards.  In Primes, players are given the solution and race to find ways of getting there with the four other numbers provided.  If you've ever played Set, you'll be familiar with the intense concentration of hunting for patterns before your opponents can find them.  There's real value in tinkering with numbers in these ways.  

Passion for games and learning is wonderfully widespread in our community, but the game creators still stand out.  Aria and Oma might be the youngest game designers yet to submit for GEE!, making the elegance of the games all the more striking.  We hope they'll keep making games and encourage you to check them out at primesgame.com.  

Our rubric will always steer us toward a certain kind of game, and that's a deliberate focus for our awards.  But every so often something arrives that's simply worth sharing on its own terms. This is the first of those times.  Rumor has it, we'll see another from the 2026 submissions...