The 2025 GEE! Learning Game Award Finalists have been announced and Toma el Paso (Make a Move) is a finalist in the analog game category (i.e. board games, card games, or other non-digital games).
The GEE! award recognizes excellence in educational game design. The award is judged by international leaders in the field. It is an honor to be among these esteemed nominees. Please see the full list and consider casting a vote for the People’s Choice Award by August 21, 2025, 11:59PM CST.
2025 Analog Game Finalists
- Toma el Paso (Make a Move) (Lien Tran)
- That’s Just Wrong! (Speke Wilson)
- Publish or Perish (Max Bai)
- Field Cut (Zachary London)
- Reel Trouble (Adina Weiss)
- GAMA de Mesa (Hifa Educação)
- PowerCell (Ryan Merkley)
- So You Want to Be an American? (CreatED Consulting, LLC)
Judges
Peter McDonald (UW-Madison) and Gyeongri Kim (UW-Madison)
Project Backstory
Toma el Paso was my MFA in Design and Technology thesis at Parsons School of Design. I shared the origin story at the 2025 Games for Change festival a couple of weeks ago: it all started in late 2011 with a pro bono immigration lawyer messaging the G4C Google listserv sharing a belief that games could help guide and empower immigrant youth, like her clients, on their challenging and uncertain journeys through the U.S. immigration system. I didn’t know anything about immigration at the time.
I did the ‘literature review’ step of the tandem transformational game design process and realized that the shelter/detention release process was very confusing and of immediate concern for these youth: it was their present circumstance. I didn’t know then that pursuing this topic would lead to: being the inaugural winner of The New School’s New Challenge, working with Dr. Etiony Aldarondo and his ICAN team to integrate the game into their Book of Life curriculum for unaccompanied immigrant minors (UIM), it being played by thousands of UIMs from 2014-18 during their time living/detained at a Miami shelter, and then being played in a new context: American Studies and U.S. History college courses Saint Louis University and then honors course on immigration at DePaul University. (And more, those are just the highlights.)
Interested to learn more about Toma el Paso (Make a Move)? Visit: https://immigrationgames.com/make-a-move/
What started as a graduate thesis project turned out to be the launch pad for so many transformational game design projects and immigration projects, including my latest Keys to a DREAM. Play the beta and please share your feedback with me!
To the next generation: don’t be afraid to take the first step, you never know where it might lead you and what kind of an impact it can sustain!