Our Mission

The Pericles Group wants to transform education at every level by answering the eternal question “Why are we learning this?” in a completely new and completely engaging way–a way that paradoxically comes from the ancient world. The Pericles Group’s practomimetic courses give students the chance to explore learning as a narrative and as a game. When students explore that way, their attitudes and behaviors change along with their level of knowledge, and they become active learners, on their own mission to use their learning to make the world a better place. The metaphor of a practomimetic course–that by learning the material the student will save the universe–becomes a reality through the power of imagination.

What We Do

Founded in 2010, The Pericles Group, LLC, provides game-based (in our terms, practomimetic) learning solutions for learners, teachers, and administrators in a wide range of situations and a variety of disciplines.

TPG partners with teachers, providing resources to develop and deliver materials for game-based courses and curricula. Our role in the process is similar to that of a traditional textbook publisher, but the services we provide make old-fashioned textbooks seem not just old-fashioned but also entirely inadequate to the challenges and enormous opportunities of teaching as a digitally-enhanced practice. TPG practomimes don’t look like video games as you’re used to thinking of video games, but they play like video games and they teach even better than video games can: while video games can only teach players to play video games, practomimetic courses teach their students to play the curriculum–that is, to reach the learning objectives of the curriculum and to master the skills and content the TPG practomime is designed to foster.

The Origins of Practomime

In this TEDxUConn talk, listen to co-founder Roger Travis discuss the ancient origins of modern game-based learning.