# 7 Generation Games Making it possible for any organization to make its own educational video games. ## Elevator pitch 7 Generation Games makes educational video games and the tools to develop them. Our 7 Gen Blocks platform is like a game developer version of "Legos," that can be customized and virtually “snapped” together to create an infinite number of educational games. By streamlining a traditionally expensive and time-consuming process, we enable companies and non-profits for which cost and technical expertise has previously been a barrier to easily build and distribute their own educational games. - Canonical URL: https://wefunder.com/7.generation.games - Entity ID: wefunder:company:114448 - Last updated: 2026-06-10T05:00:48Z - Generated at: 2026-06-10T10:46:01Z ## Quick facts - 💵 On track to exceed $1M in revenue by 2023, up from $585K in 2021 and $200K in 2020. - 🏛️ Built with over $2.3M in non-dilutive federal grant funding from US and Chilean governments. - 🎓 Improved learning outcomes by 30% in peer-reviewed and published efficacy studies. - 🎮 Commercialized 20+ games to date using our 7 Gen Blocks technology. - ⬆️ $1.1 B US market ($3B global). CAGR 31%. Ed games dev tools market up 10x from 2018. - 💰 Raised $380K in pre-seed investment round, led by Ronda Rousey. - ✅ Selected for Google's Start on Android, Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses and Start-Up Chile ## Active fundraises - wefunder:fundraise:62394: 4(a)(6) successful (USD) - wefunder:fundraise:62414: 4(a)(6) successful (USD) ## Story At 7 Generation Games, we make educational video games and the tools to create them. With a platform that allows for faster, cheaper development, we make it possible to create educational games around any topic people are passionate about - not just those themes with the largest mass market.(If you're more a "show-me-the-highlights" type, you can scroll to the bottom for a 5-minute video version of this pitch.)Our Vision: Empower game creators. Educate learners.  Engage communities. Expand possibilities. With 7 Gen Blocks, we are changing how educational video games are made and who is able to make them - for the better. Our 7 Gen Blocks platform is like a game developer version of Legos, that can be customized and virtually “snapped” together to create an infinite number of educational games. We take a process that is currently expensive, time consuming and requires significant technical expertise - and streamline it.With 7 Gen Blocks, we've demonstrated how games can be developed in a fraction of the time, compressing what used to take up to year into 12 weeks. Moreover,  we've built the platform so that this work can be done by entry level developers. Requiring less production time and less technical expertise means less development costs. Using 7 Gen Blocks to develop educational games reduces cost by up to 75% versus developing a comparable product with current solutions.  With classroom needs and effective learning practices in mind, we've integrated the ability to easily do all of the things we talk about needing in education – from culturally reflective curriculum to multilingual content to formative assessment.7 Gen Blocks makes it cost-effective and educationally effective to make games customized by culture, language of instruction, learning content and more.Demand for customized educational games and the tools to make them is BOOMING. The US customized educational games market is booming, growing 5x in the last 3 years. With a 31% CAGR, that growth in expected to continue. Educational games are unique within the gaming industry due to a focus on specialized tools and platforms to develop learning games. Based on our success to date, we have identified the K12 educational gaming segment as the clearest beachhead that allows us to leverage our current market position. However, as we scale, we have the ability to both expand within this market as well as into adjacent markets - such as game-based workforce development training or K12 digital assessment.The underserved global market is expanding even faster.While the market for educational game-specific development platforms and authoring tools has expanded 10x since 2018, no platform has yet to emerge as an established leader in this specific gaming market. Currently the market has two sets of solutions: 🎓 Educational game tools that easily allow the creation of game or game-like learning resources, but that can only be distributed through those platforms.🎮  Game engines developed to make entertainment – i.e. non-educational games – that ed games creators are currently forced to rely if they want to create and distribute their own proprietary games, requiring more time and technical expertise. With 7 Gen Blocks 🎓 +🎮 , we combine the ease and analytics of educational games tools with the control and customization provided by mainstream gaming engines.If you think about how WordPress revolutionized web design and development, 7 Gen Blocks does that for educational game development by providing modularized, yet easily editable code built around best practices in education, game design and software development. Kids who played games developed using our technology saw learning outcomes improve 30% in 10 weeks - a 3x improvement over the control group - in multiyear, peer-reviewed, federally-funded efficacy studies.Enabling the creation of more educational games is only a solution if the games actually educate those who play them. If you're into academic journal articles and federal agency reports, you can read more about our research and outcomes here.   The 7 Gen Blocks platform evolved from technology funded by $2.3 million in non-dilutive government grants.Grant funding agencies include: the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, California Small Business Export Program and Start-Up Chile.7 Gen Blocks was developed as an in-house platform to create our own games more efficiently. This federal funding allowing us to build out software architecture, study efficacy, conduct customer discovery and iterate product. We are now expanding as a licensable technology for the industry.As a company, 7 Generation Games has been recognized as an innovator and leader. Some of these honors include: selected for Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program (2022), invited into Google's Start on Android accelerator (2021), won Minne Inno's Blazer Award for EdTech as one of Minnesota's top early-stage tech companies (2021), awarded "Best Learning Game Artwork" at the Department of Education's ED Games Expo (2019),  recognized as one of the "Top 50 Apps for Kids" by Educents (2017), named one of Tech.Co's Top 50 Startups of the Year (2016) and accepted into BoomStartup's EdTech Accelerator cohort (2015). Our founding team brings the expertise and drive to make this happen.Maria Burns Ortiz, CEO: Over the last six-plus years, as CEO and Creative Director, Maria has help lead 7 Generation Games from concept to commercialization. She has been named one of Forbes Next 1000, Minneapolis St Paul Business Journals 40 Under 40, one of the National Latina Business Women’s Association's Rising Stars and an invited speaker at the Obama White House State of Women Summit. Prior to 7 Generation Games, she wrote a New York Times bestseller, taught digital media at Tufts University and Emerson College, was an award-winning columnist for ESPN.com and was named one of Newspapers in Education’s Latinos Who Will Change the World.Dr. AnnMaria De Mars, President:  A driving force behind 7 Generation Games, AnnMaria brings over 30 years experience in the education and technology sectors. As an educator, she has taught from middle school to graduate school courses. She has an MBA and a Ph.D. in educational psychology with a specialization in psychometrics and applied statistics. She was the 2022 National University Faculty of the Year for the Masters in Public Health program. She has been recognized as a national AARP Purpose Prize fellow and International Game Developers Association Foundation NextGen Leader. In addition to leading the educational content integration, she oversees our backend development, including databases, analytics automation and application of artificial intelligence. If you want to talk about intangibles like backing founders who know what it takes to succeed, she was also the first American to win the world judo championships. Dennis De Mars, CTO: Dennis is one of the top programmers in the industry, with more than three decades experience as a software developer. He leads our front-end development efforts and our technical team. Previous to 7 Generation Games, he was a senior programmer working on high-level defense projects at Raytheon. His prior software developed includes flight simulator software for the military, and, Fractal Domains, a fractal generation program – which was the top-selling fractal application for Mac for nearly a decade and was used for everything from teaching high school mathematics to creating custom art. He holds dual degrees from UCLA in math and physics as well as a M.S. in physics, specifically particle physics because nuclear physics was too easy.From design to development, every element of everything we do is done in-house. We have a 11-person core team, including a 8 full-time and one part-time staff and two long-term contractors.Many companies talk about the value of diversity, equity and inclusion, but at 7 Generation Games, we embody it. Over 90% of our team is Latino or BIPOC, and more than ½ of our team is female. This team makeup is almost unprecedented in the tech ecosystem. We made a conscious decision when we started this company to create an inclusive corporate culture and to provide job opportunities for those, who like ourselves, have been historically marginalized and excluded from this industry for far too long because they lack the social network connections or fail to fit the pattern matching criteria. We have tested, validated and tested our platform again. We are approaching two dozen games developed using 7 Gen Blocks technology, comprising over 125,000 downloads. You can see those games here.And people are actually playing our games. 85% of downloads convert to registered users, i.e. open the game, create an account and play at least 1 level. 56% of users are active users, used within the 2021-2022 academic year. 7 Gen Blocks is a B2B solution.Leveraging our expertise in building games for the K12 market, we are targeting publishers, classroom learning materials creators and organizations we’ve identified as early adopters of customized educational games - to meet their technical needs. Through streamlining and simplifying the development process while generating cost savings, 7 Gen Blocks will allow small to mid-size enterprises and non-profits which previously did not create customized learning or training games because of price or technical barriers to develop and distribute their own games. For organizations already creating educational games, the platform will reduce production time and costs. As a company, we’re generating revenue. We doubled our revenue from 2020 to 2021 - and are on track to break revenue records again.This slide contains forward-looking projections that cannot be guaranteed.2020 Revenue: $200,0002021 Revenue: $585,0002022 Projected Revenue: $850,0002022 Booked Revenue in Q1: $430,000These revenue numbers are on top of the aforementioned $2.3 million in non-dilutive grant funding. This slide contains forward-looking projections that cannot be guaranteed.For 2022, in addition to over $400,000 already in booked revenue, we are approaching $1.4 million in our pipeline. This is defined as either a.) proposals have been presented to prospective customers by us, or b.) we have been written into to submitted grants proposals as the technology partner. We project a 40% close rate for these deals within the next 12 months – and have seen greater success as we’ve gained momentum.This pipeline deal value represents a combination of us using Blocks to make educational games for clients as well as licensing the 7 Gen Blocks Platform to customers to create their own educational games.7 Generation Games has a dual revenue stream business model that centers around employing the Blocks platform through customized development and enterprise licensing. Customized Development - "We use Blocks to make games for you." Customized development income makes up approximately 85% of 7 Generation Games current revenue. (As we shift our focus on Blocks commercialization, we are phasing out K12 and B2C sales, which account for 12% and 3% of current income respectively.) Pricing: $10K-$250K+Average Project Budget: $35K-50KAverage # of Games per Client: 3Enterprise Licensing - "You make your own games using Blocks." Enterprise licensing centers around licensing our platform technology to organizations to enable them to create their own educational games with their own developers and curriculum. We view this aspect of our business model to be highly scalable. The funding we are raising will accelerate the commercialization of the 7 Gen Blocks platform as a licensable technology. Project-Based Initial Project-Based License: $30K (including onboarding, support and server set up)Repeat Project License: $20KAnnual Subscription (Unlimited Projects)Enterprise Subscription: $60KCustom Enterprise Template: Starting at $100K + SubscriptionOur success using the platform in-house to meet the demand for customized games – enables us to generate revenue while building and scaling 7 Gen Blocks for wider market use. Financial projections reflect our shift from K12 sales to an enterprise model. [Legal note: Financial history is based on verified financial data. However, financial projections - while based on real-world data and modeling - are forecasts and not a guarantee of future revenue, profits and/or returns.]Having taken just $380,000 in investment in pre-seed funding, we are now raising $1 million, including $500,000 of that through WeFunder. We are raising at a pre-money valuation of $7 million.Half of these funds will be for development, both expanding the 7 Gen Blocks library and creating an enterprise interface. The other half will go toward business development and customer support. At 7 Generation Games, we know better educational outcomes open doors to better futures. We’re building a better way to make better educational games. We’d love to have you join us.If you are interested in investing, but have questions, please feel free to reach out, via email: maria@7generationgames.com or phone: (612) 470-8458. More information about 7 Generation Games can also be found on our website: www.7generationgames.com Or you can read more about us via media coverage we've received here. [All numbers as of May 31, 2022.]7 Generation Games Pitch: The 5-minute video version ## FAQ 1. **Hi. Could these products available in other language versions? What exit strategy in next few years? What share class do you offer?** - Great questions! Products can be and are available in different languages. One of the features of the platform is that it enables the creation of games in multiple languages as well as allows for development of bilingual games in multiple languages. Currently, we have products in English, Spanish, Dakota and Lakota - and are working on games in three other languages. We believe that 7 Generation Games will be preparing for acquisition or have been acquired within 5 years, specifically by a st... 2. **My wife and I are interested in investing in this company. Have concerns about your revenue projections also will like to have more information on your past year financials, interested in investing with significant amount. Thank you in advance for this information.** - Thanks for the interest - and questions! Re: past years’ financials, if you haven't already seen our independent GAAP financial review, you can view it here: https://tinyurl.com/4kn6mjr5 (It's also under the DETAILS tab as a PDF about 10% of the way down. You may have already seen those, but I know some folks have missed seeing that there initially.) One of the biggest shifts for us, especially in the last year, has been focusing on diversifying our revenue streams, the results of which we ar... 3. **Congratulations on the strong YoY revenue growth. It appears a majority of the revenue comes from custom game development. But future projections assume that the game engine can be licensed to help other organizations build their own games in an enterprise sales model. What ev...** - You are correct that the proprietary engine is not built on existing engines like Unreal or Unity. It could be combined with Unity and we have done that in the past internally but we anticipate the major use case being stand alone. With the majority of educational games in the US being played on Chromebooks our focus is on software that can provide a good user experience even on low end devices running over school wi-fi. We have built games with Unity, as well as our own blocks, and their suc... 4. **Your nearly $1M in '22 revenue came primarily from custom game development income. I see many wonderful games listed on your website. Was the $1M in revenue used to build those games or did it fund game development for other organizations for which you might not own the IP?** - The list of games on our site spans games developed over several years, not just 2022, but in the case of those games/anything under the 7 Generation Games, we own all IP (with the exception of claiming any rights over culturally reflective content - narrative or artwork - or Indigenous language elements). Specific to 2022 revenue, all of that revenue was used to fund development - including a combination on games under the 7 Generation Games brand as well as co-branded or white-label games w... ## Team - Maria Burns Ortiz (CEO & Co-Founder) - Ann Maria De Mars (President & Co-Founder) ## Recent posts - It's a merry Christmas and happier new year (2025-12-23T05:57:44Z) - 7 Generation Games CEO received Fellowship from DigitalUndivided (2022-11-19T01:55:48Z) - Wharton Impact Venture Associates Announces 7 Generation Games as Its Latest Deal (2022-09-20T13:08:44Z) - Finalizing Your Investment in 7 Generation Games (If You Haven't Already) (2022-09-01T04:23:07Z) - Surpassing 100 Investors, Making the National News and Demoing In Front of 20K (2022-08-16T01:56:35Z) - 🎉Celebrating Our 1st Major WeFunder Milestone - $62K+, 90+ investors and counting! 🎉 (2022-07-30T18:22:22Z) - Make an Investment in a Company Making Headlines (2022-07-20T21:37:04Z) - Our WeFunder Campaign Has Publicly Launched! (2022-07-01T06:02:55Z) ## Q&A - Q: Your nearly $1M in '22 revenue came primarily from custom game development income. I see many wonderful games listed on your website. Was the $1M in revenue used to build those games or did it fund game development for other organizations for which you might not own the IP? - A: The list of games on our site spans games developed over several years, not just 2022, but in the case of those games/anything under the 7 Generation Games, we own all IP (with the exception of claiming any rights over culturally reflective content - narrative or artwork - or Indigenous language elements). Specific to 2022 revenue, all of that revenue was used to fund development - including a combination on games under the 7 Generation Games brand as well as co-branded or white-label games with other organizations. In all cases, 7 Generation Games owns and retains all IP related the games' underlying code and retains IP of any elements that draw from 7 Generation Games existing art and sound libraries. In cases of partnerships or white-label products, typically any original artwork and narrative copyright are assigned to the other organization. - Q: Congratulations on the strong YoY revenue growth. It appears a majority of the revenue comes from custom game development. But future projections assume that the game engine can be licensed to help other organizations build their own games in an enterprise sales model. What evidence is there that your engine can easily be licensed? Also, are you able to provide more information about your proprietary engine? I presume it is not built on existing engines like Unreal or Unity? Thank you. - A: You are correct that the proprietary engine is not built on existing engines like Unreal or Unity. It could be combined with Unity and we have done that in the past internally but we anticipate the major use case being stand alone. With the majority of educational games in the US being played on Chromebooks our focus is on software that can provide a good user experience even on low end devices running over school wi-fi. We have built games with Unity, as well as our own blocks, and their success in licensing software to developers, including ourselves, is one reason we believe there is a market for this model. Our customized software sales continue to grow and as we make the engine easier to use and some of our repeat customers are spending more money with us, they will cross the threshold where it is cheaper for them to license the platform and build the games internally. We have some clients who are rapidly approaching that point. The WeFunder funding and additional funds we have received are being used to make the platform easier to license in providing extensive documentation and testing where 'naive users' would make errors or be confused and remedying those. - Q: My wife and I are interested in investing in this company. Have concerns about your revenue projections also will like to have more information on your past year financials, interested in investing with significant amount. Thank you in advance for this information. - A: Thanks for the interest - and questions! Re: past years’ financials, if you haven't already seen our independent GAAP financial review, you can view it here: https://tinyurl.com/4kn6mjr5 (It's also under the DETAILS tab as a PDF about 10% of the way down. You may have already seen those, but I know some folks have missed seeing that there initially.) One of the biggest shifts for us, especially in the last year, has been focusing on diversifying our revenue streams, the results of which we are seeing payoff the second half of 2022. We also have been improving Blocks as an in-house platform in that same span, which has enabled us to take on more projects and provide quicker turnaround times in delivering those games. Re: projections. As we head into the second half of 2022, we feel increasingly confident that those projections are realistic, certainly within a 10%. If I had to give a range, I would say we would project to finish this year between $900K-750K in revenue. In fact, in assessing our pipeline year-to-date success rate, we project closing deals at a rate of 40%, but our win-loss rate is actually hovering at 50%, so even better than expected. (And this is while our primary business development founder is having to split time between biz dev and fundraising.) The $1.4 M in our pipeline is based on deals that we see winning/losing in the next 12 months (spilling into 2023 as far as financial projections) - so we project (in August 2022) that about 1/4 to 1/3 of revenue for 2023 is already in our pipeline. And we calculate our pipeline based on either us having submitted a proposal to a client or a grant having been submitted with us written in specifically as the technology developer - so that number is notably larger (although less reliable) at the top of funnel. Also in 2022, we have been seeing a higher rate of new prospective customers who are coming from organic marketing efforts vs. via direct word-of-mouth, which is seeing our pipeline grow faster than initially anticipated. Our projections do account for having the licensing piece ready by Q4 of 2023, and that timeline is somewhat dependent on raising funds to accelerate that aspect of the 7 Gen Blocks platform’s development. In raising the full $1 M (across community round and/or more traditional funds), we can have that technical development complete within 8 months plus expand to business development and sales support. In raising $500K, we can still have the licensing development timeline compressed from 24 months (current rate bootstrapping) to 12 months. As we view the licensing stream to be the most scalable and profitable long term, we are prioritizing any elements of the platform that support that focus to achieve those projections. I am happy to discuss further in depth as far as pro forma financials and/or provide deeper context on our previous financials. Please don't hesitate to reach out to maria@7generationgames.com - Q: Hi. Could these products available in other language versions? What exit strategy in next few years? What share class do you offer? - A: Great questions! Products can be and are available in different languages. One of the features of the platform is that it enables the creation of games in multiple languages as well as allows for development of bilingual games in multiple languages. Currently, we have products in English, Spanish, Dakota and Lakota - and are working on games in three other languages. We believe that 7 Generation Games will be preparing for acquisition or have been acquired within 5 years, specifically by a strategic buyer. This is the most common exit for a company in our space. You can read more detail on our exit strategy here: https://tinyurl.com/2cnuy2y4 We are using a SAFE as outlined here: https://help.wefunder.com/contract/295248-safe