Jesse Schell's 2016 Serious Play talk on VR in education
Jesse Schell of Schell Games was announced in June 2016 as a speaker at the Serious Play Conference, with a talk on how virtual reality could change educational and transformational games over the next decade.
Updated
The 2016 talk
Jesse Schell leads Schell Games, a game development studio that takes on projects for clients. For the 2016 Serious Play Conference he was announced to speak about the hype around virtual reality and how the technology could translate into meaningful advances in educational and transformational games over the following ten years.
The conference ran July 26 to 28, 2016, at the Kenan-Flagler Business School of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A Master Class on Monday, July 25, led by Phaedra Boinodiris of IBM, was open to professionals who wanted to get up to speed on serious games and gamification quickly.
The announcement came on June 2, 2016, from Los Angeles, and the speaker line-up around Schell was described as consisting of heads of large game-based developers and publishers, faculty and researchers. Schell Games describes itself with the tagline Turning Impossible Into Reality.
Who goes to Serious Play
Serious Play describes itself as the one serious games conference that covers the whole market for game-based learning: education, healthcare, corporate, government and museums among others. Its speakers head some of the largest game-based developers and publishers, or they are faculty, researchers and leaders of serious game training programs. Attendees range from master teachers to corporate heads of training who evaluate or contract games for their organizations.
A session on where virtual reality is heading therefore speaks to both groups in the room, the people who build learning games and the people who buy them.
What is true today
The Serious Play Conference is still running. Its landing page in November 2026 links to two sites, one at seriousplayconf.com and one for a European edition. The main site lists an edition on August 3 to 5 at the University of Washington in Seattle and carries a 2026 speakers section. The European site announces dates of June 23 and 24, 2027, in Mainz, Germany.
Schell Games has a website online as well. It calls the studio a full-service game development studio for hire, lists Jesse Schell as CEO and Carnegie Mellon professor, links to his book The Art of Game Design, and groups its work under pillars that include virtual and augmented reality and health and education.
Questions and answers
Who spoke about virtual reality at Serious Play in 2016?
Jesse Schell of Schell Games. His session covered the hype around virtual reality and its likely effect on educational and transformational games over the next decade.
Is the Serious Play Conference still held?
Yes. The main site lists an edition on August 3 to 5 at the University of Washington in Seattle, and a European edition is announced for June 2027 in Mainz.
Where was the 2016 Serious Play Conference?
At the Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, from July 26 to 28, 2016, with a Master Class on July 25.