GamiCon48V 2027 | The Portal Is Open
For 48 continuous hours, you will travel through six destinations: Gamification, LXD, Play, AI, Game-Based Learning, and Career + Design Agency.
There is no prescribed path. No required starting point.
Follow your curiosity, discover unfamiliar ideas, experiment with new tools, play, create, and connect with people from around the world. What you experience and what you carry forward is entirely up to you.
Enter curious. Return different.
Super Early Bird Registration • $147
Who Is GamiCon48V For?
For people ready to explore what learning can become.
GamiCon48V is a 48-hour global experience for L&D professionals, eLearning developers, training managers, CLOs, instructional designers, facilitators, educators, game designers, learning technologists, project managers, and curious creators.
You don't need to be a gamer, an AI expert, or online for all 48 hours. With six destinations to discover and experiences happening around the clock, you decide when to enter, where to go, and what to explore.
Play, experiment, question, build, and connect with people from around the world. Follow your curiosity, challenge your assumptions, discover new possibilities, and decide what is worth carrying forward into your work.
This is not a conference you simply watch. It is a world you enter.
Enter Anywhere.
At Any Time.
Choose Your Adventure.
Throughout all 48 hours, you can play, explore, learn, practice, build, question, reflect, and connect. There's no required starting point and no prescribed order. Your journey is yours to create, based on when you enter, what you need, and what sparks your curiosity.
Meet Sevo, our first intrepid adventurer. Sevo has already stepped through the portal, but you don't have to follow the same path. When you cross the threshold, you choose where to go, what to discover, and what you'll carry forward.
48 hours. Six destinations. Twice around the world. No single path through.
Gamification
Explore how motivation, choice, challenge, feedback, and consequences can shape learning and behavior. Examine what makes gamification meaningful, where it can go wrong, and how to design experiences that move far beyond points, badges, and leaderboards.
Inside This Destination:
- Ethics and Responsible Gamification
- Beyond Points, Badges, and Leaderboards
- Understanding Player Motivation
- Choosing Mechanics with Purpose
- Meaningful Choices and Consequences
- When Gamification Fails
Learning Experience Design
Explore what changes when we design the entire learner experience rather than beginning and ending with content. Consider the people, environments, choices, interactions, emotions, and moments that shape whether learning becomes useful.
Inside This Destination:
- LXD versus Instructional Design
- Starting with the Learner
- Journey Mapping
- Designing Beyond Content
- Practice, Feedback, and Reflection
- Evidence of Experience
PLAY
The PLAY destination lives in the Arcade. Participants will experience games as players first, then examine what happened, why it mattered, and what the experience can teach us about learning design.
Featured Arcade experiences can include 30–60 minutes of gameplay followed by a 30-minute structured debrief.
Inside This Destination:
- Competition vs Cooperation
- Flow, Challenge, and Curiosity
- Safe Failure
- Rules and Constraint
- Connection Through Play
- The Art of the Debrief
AI
AI is changing how learning is researched, designed, built, delivered, and experienced. The question is not simply what AI can do, but where it belongs. This destination invites participants to work directly with AI as a research partner, creative collaborator, practice partner, and production tool. You will examine what AI makes possible, where it falls short, and how learning professionals can use it without surrendering accuracy, ethics, creativity, or responsibility.
Inside This Destination:
- Prompting for Learning Designers
- AI-Assisted Research and Analysis
- Rapid Prototyping with AI
- AI-Powered Practice and Feedback
- AI Agents, Coaches, and Characters
- Accuracy, Bias, Privacy, and Responsible Use
Game-Based Learning
Game-based learning uses games as the learning experience, not simply as decoration or motivation. This destination examines how digital, tabletop, role-playing, and low-tech games can help learners test ideas, practice skills, receive feedback, and discover what happens when they make different choices. Game-based learning does not begin with a game. It begins with a reason to use one.
Inside This Destination:
- When a Game Is the Right Choice
- From Objective to Game
- Simulations and Scenarios
- Digital, Tabletop, and Low-Tech Games
- Using Existing Games
- Facilitation and Debriefing
Career + Design Agency
Good design skills do not automatically create a sustainable career. Learning professionals must also decide how they want to work, what their expertise is worth, who they want to serve, and what they want to build next. This destination is for employees, contractors, consultants, freelancers, and people considering a change. It focuses on the practical decisions behind building a career or independent design practice, from contracts and pricing to résumés, portfolios, community, and choosing the path that fits.
Inside This Destination:
- Contracting Without Guesswork
- Pricing Courses and Offerings
- AI Résumé and Career Building
- Building a Portfolio
- Client Conversations and Proposals
- Designing a Sustainable Practice
We're Not Looking for Speakers. We're Looking for Experience Leaders.
Have an idea that gets people thinking, experimenting, creating, or playing? Bring it to GamiCon48V 2027.
We're inviting Experience Leaders from around the world to facilitate interactive experiences across our six destinations. You don't need to be a professional speaker. You need something worth sharing and a willingness to invite others into the experience.
Applications close November 14, 2026.
APPLY TO BE AN EXPERIENCE LEADER
Built something worth sharing? Bring it through the portal.
The 8th Annual GamiCon Throwdown celebrates creative, effective applications of gamification and game-based learning. Submit your completed experience for consideration, and you could be among the finalists invited to showcase your work during GamiCon48V, March 22–24, 2027.
Applications open October 12, 2026. Deadline: December 15, 2026. All applicants will be notified by December 31.
Your $100 Throwdown registration includes full GamiCon48V participant access, conference recordings, and one year of Game Garage membership, whether or not you're selected as a finalist.
Explore Past Winners
2026 GamiCon48V Throwdown Winners:
The Best in Play
BEST Overall Use of Gamification
Dr. Ana Garner
Michala Liavaag
Cybility Consulting Ltd
UK
Cyber Security Incident Response Team Experience
A blended, gamified program that turns static incident response plans into live practice. It combines short e learning, an immersive cyber drill, and a structured debrief so leaders rehearse real crisis decisions in a safe space.
BEST Game-Based Learning
Moe Ash
The Catalyst
Egypt
PENTA: It Takes 5 to Ideate a Learning Game
A design thinking tool and framework for ideating serious learning games that drive real behavior change without needless points, badges, or fake fun.
BEST High Tech Use of Gamification
Thiago Barrionuevo
Cuboo
Brazil/Portugal
Survivors – Digital Game
An online, cooperative decision-making game. Each player accesses a different screen with unique and partial information. To succeed, players must collaborate, share insights, connect clues and make collective decisions under time pressure.
BEST Low Tech Use of Gamification
Jak & Jolina Kahn
Management Strategies
Philippines
Monsters and Heroes
A reflective card game that helps individuals and teams surface unproductive “Monster” behaviors, activate their inner “Hero” strengths, and build stronger relationships through courageous, collaborative conversations.
BEST Use of Narrative
Paula Yaovamal Uebunkul
Senior HR Learning Designer
Thailand
BLACK HOLE: Mission Through the Unknown
A strategy-driven leadership simulation that immerses executives in high-stakes decision making under uncertainty, revealing the real consequences of people's choices on trust, sustainability, and organizational survival.
PEOPLE'S CHOICE: BEST High Tech Use of Gamification
Tom Zacharski
Brian Slattery
Teamwork Unlocked
Singapore
Submerged - Escape Room
A high-stakes submarine escape room experience that uses immersive puzzles and structured debriefs to reveal team roles, strengths, and performance gaps, transforming how teams collaborate under pressure
Powering the Journey Through the Portal
Our sponsors help make 48 hours, six destinations, and one worldwide learning journey possible.
Sententia Gamification
A global leader in gamification and game-based learning for adult education and corporate Learning & Development, Sententia is the only company to codify the gamification of corporate training and adult education. Through certifications, consulting, and immersive learning experiences, Sententia helps organizations design engaging programs that motivate learners, strengthen capability, and improve performance.
Training Magazine
Training magazine advocates training and workforce development as a business tool. They are the industry standard for professional development and news for training, human resources and business management professionals in all industries.
BLUERABBIT
BLUERABBIT is a gamification platform designed to support engaging learning experiences for Learning & Development professionals. The platform enables organizations to design interactive journeys, challenges, and social learning experiences that motivate participation and reinforce learning outcomes.
Rippily
Rippily is a collaborative learning platform designed to support interactive workshops, training sessions, and learning experiences. Built for facilitators and Learning & Development professionals, the platform helps teams create engaging activities, capture ideas visually, and support collaborative learning design in real time.
Acorn Training
A Singapore-based Learning & Development provider focused on professional skills, leadership development, and workforce capability building.
PAST SPONSORS
The organizations below have sponsored or partnered with GamiCon in previous years. Interested in joining them? Sponsorship opportunities for GamiCon48V 2027 are now available.
innoGREAT
If you want to teach innovation, you have to be innovative. This interactive workshop-in-a-box that unlocks your unconscious thinking; enabling deep and fast breakthrough change of any scope and scale!
Thinking Cap
Built for training teams who expect more from their LMS
Whether you're managing compliance, selling courses, or rolling out internal training across departments, Thinking Cap helps you do it your way. You get real flexibility, clear control, and support that sticks with you.
Koru Consulting
Koru Consulting partners with organizations to design meaningful learning experiences that strengthen leadership, collaboration, and performance. Their work focuses on learning design and Learning & Development strategies that help teams build practical skills, improve communication, and create more engaging learning environments.
The Catalyst
A learning design consultancy focused on creating & designing compelling learning experiences and high-impact learning programs that help organizations strengthen leadership, collaboration, and performance. Their work blends experiential learning, thoughtful learning design, and practical Learning & Development strategies to create programs that build real capability and drive measurable results.
Knowledge Force Consulting
Strategically-planned learning and development that improves performance and helps organizations strengthen capability through strategic Learning & Development, performance consulting, and learning design. Their work focuses on aligning training with real business outcomes, creating learning experiences that build practical skills, improve performance, and support continuous professional growth.
RINGORANG
Ringorang helps turn learning into action. Using short, game-based interactions delivered over time, the platform reinforces key concepts, strengthens retention, and supports real behavior change on the job.
