2024…
2024 was a year of tremendous and yet difficult year for me. One of huge change and equal success. Here are some of the things I’d like to acknowledge and celebrate, as I reflect on it all.
Endless Opportunity
At the very tail end of 2023, I left Microsoft to become VP of Learning at a truly incredible, philanthropic organisation called the Endless Foundation. An organisation which is changing not only the lives of individual learners, but the shape of entire communities across the world. Doing good, meaningful work in places that is hard to do, for and with people so often overlooked. Work that has set my soul alight anew and throughout 2024. Giving me new purpose, passion. autonomy, and aligning with the reason I chose to make all of this my career from day one!
My first year at Endless has been one full of love, laughter and learning. I was able to hire an incredible team (more on that below), establish a curriculum framework, a set of defining principles, a pedagogical practice, and a brand that has defined our work. That work has been deployed with huge impact in countries as diverse as Peru, the Seychelles, and the United States. I have travelled to four continents, visited some of the most amazing countries on Earth, and spent time with the most humble and incredible people on the planet – from the children in the homeless camps of South Africa, to the aspiring young learners in the Arab world, to the kids of New York City. Our mission to support the most underserved learners in the world in gaining access to digital economy through game development has formed the next natural step for both my career, and my soul journey. ‘Creation Not Consumption’ remains my personal and professional focus, as it has always been…and it feels good to have spent 2024 focussed on making that wholly and meaningfully real. Thank you, Endless. Thank you, Matt. Thank you, Rob.
All That Glitters
As part of my appointment at the Endless Foundation, I was given the opportunity and budget to create a team of incredible people. A group of the most talented in their fields, from design to education, community, operations, and more. We formed a ‘Glitter of Unicorns’ that hit the ground running on sparks and stars and has achieved incredible things this year. It has been one of the highlights and privileges of my career to bring this team together and lead them. I’m so incredibly lucky to work with them all, and proud of all that they do for the learners we serve – our hearts and minds aligned in our mission. Thank you Heather, Jess, Joana, Justin, Andrea and Ale.
Sunsets and Sunrises
In 2020 my incredibly talented wife was offered a job in Doha, Qatar. Microsoft allowed me to work from anywhere and so we left to live in the Gulf. A truly remarkable country in a wonderful part of the world. After four hugely enjoyable years immersed in a completely different culture and climate, it was time to move on and so we set our sights set on living in one of a range of countries, including Norway, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, and the US. It seems the Gulf region isn’t done with me yet and we opted to remain in the region with a short hop over the sea to the United Arab Emirates. My new life begins there on the 6th January 2025.
Of course I am sad to leave Doha, and will forever be grateful for the wonderful experiences in my time spent living there. Among kind and wholesome people, I found hope for a kinder, safer, better world. Thank you, Qatar.
I am excited to explore Abu Dhabi in the same way. Having already made new friends there, found an apartment we love, and watched the Formula One Grand Prix from a yacht in the circuit Marina. New adventures await.
Golden Gate
I was invited to apply for, and was awarded a Golden Visa for the United Arab Emirates on the basis of my life’s work in game-based learning. This allows me to reside in the country for up to 10 years and work in my chosen field. I see this arrangement as a partnership – the UAE benefit from having my skillsets in country, while for my part Abu Dhabi allows me and my organisation to reach a huge number of the countries our work is aimed at. Projects with learners in Jordan as well as many countries on the continent of Africa are just the beginning.
Kindness and Kamamuta
I was blessed to meet a truly amazing and pioneering game developer from Norway and was invited to join her in her journey to create something beautiful. Jeanette Luytkis welcomed me in to her life, her home, and her game studio, as a board member and advisor. I feel I am really part of something that transcends the art of game development. More on this as the year unfolds, but for now, it is enough to say that Kamamuta Games added a dimension to my 2024 even I had not imagined was possible. Thank you, Jeanette for your faith and your friendship.
Kilt and Kin
While I have always taken great pride in my Scottish ancestry and culture, 2024 marked a year of truly embracing it in the public arena. I had several kilts designed and made to order, and wore them almost entirely through summertime in Scotland. Casual, formal, and work kilts are now a core part of my wardrobe that I enjoy and will continue to embrace. It feels good, and right to wear my kilt. It helps me connect with my home when so detached and distant from it.
Highland Highlight
One of the biggest highlights of my year was my ability to fly my entire team from across the world in to Scotland for a work retreat in early 2024. Hiring beautiful lodges in the highlands, on the banks of a small body of water that housed a myriad of birds and mammals even I was surprised to see in such close proximity (including a pine martin hunting ducks), we settled in for a week of work and play. Between working sessions we got out and explored the countryside and small towns around us. Food, drink, music, and lots of laughter. It was like Scotland was aware of our presence and the rarity of such a trip and bloomed for us. Or maybe I just saw it all afresh through the eyes of my team. Experiencing four seasons in one day as rain turned to sunshine to snow to warm wind. Rainbows over pink and purple heathered hills. Live, impromptu folk music after dinner which ended with the artists playing Hector on the border pipes just for us. A wild stag, mere feet from us, eating grass like we weren’t even there. Heavy snowfall on Schiehallion as we climbed the falls to pay tribute to the Fae-folk, coating the mountain in a white blanket so it seemed only we had ever stepped foot there before, or at least we were the first humans…
Thank you, Scotland.
Travel and Talk
Travel is one of my greatest joys. Moving to and through foreign places, immersing myself in lore and landscapes that seem alien to my own, even if only slightly. Attempting new languages, trying new foods, finding new music and art. Making new friends. 2024 saw me travel a lot and to some of the most incredible places. Most notably South Africa where I presented at an Esports Indaba on a University campus, before retreating to safari to view cheetah hunting prey, watch the Milky Way pass overhead to the sound of rhino rumbling in the dark, and watch the sun rise across the oh so big sky. Then in complete contrast, I spent heart time in a homeless camp under a highway in Johannesburg, engaging the children born in the camp with nothing more than a book, coloured balls and stickers. Then on to the Seychelles, where I worked in schools teaching game design through Makecode with locally relevant environmental themes, before a swim in the warm sea at night, and quiet time with the native giant tortoise. My cup full, for a while at least.
I attended and spoke at multiple education and gaming events, including an event, dinner and dance at the National Library of Congress in Washington DC, the Serious Play Conference in Toronto, and the Games and SDG Summit at the UN HQ, New York. All of which I wore my kilt for.
Building Blocks
On the 1st January 2024, after more than a decade of passion and commitment, I made the conscious and decisive decision to uninstall Minecraft and Minecraft Education from all my devices and quietly withdraw from the community. This was one of the hardest and yet most healthy decisions of my life. One I couldn’t open up and talk about publicly, for many reasons. One that deeply hurt but is ultimately healing my mental health. I first started playing Minecraft in early 2010, and MinecraftEdu (E-Line Media) in 2011. I threw a huge chunk of my life and career at pioneering Minecraft in education spaces worldwide – ideating, creating, deploying, and celebrating the power of the platform in every kind of learning environment. But as 2024 dawned, I felt it was time to put down my pickaxe and build a very different kind of wall. Despite the overwhelming love and support from the community at large, I’m sad to say that I felt that I no longer felt I belonged in the Minecraft space. I’m only now beginning to come out the other side of that realisation, what it meant for me, for the wider communit, and for products like Minecraft…and I’m finally letting go.
To all the truly amazing friends and colleagues I made along the way (you know who you are), thank you, for everything. In particular, those treasured members of the Play Matters community – group of truly remarkable educators from all across the world who believed in me. I hope to return to you someday, and honour that faith in me, in a different digital space we can share together.
Suits and Socks
For the last six months I’ve been living out of a suitcase. In the interim period between moving from Qatar to Doha, I have been effectively homeless, or at least propertyless. I leaned into travel as a coping mechanism. Easier to be working away than sleeping on a camp bed at my mums house. My wife and I have spent a lot of that time apart. Never sure how long we’d be in this nomadic state. It takes its toll, both physically and mentally. No sense of belonging, no connectivity, no routine, no privacy. I can never guarantee I have a suit to wear where I’m staying, and don’t think I’ve worn a matching pair of socks in all that time. Of course, I am forever grateful to my loving and long-suffering mum who looked after me like I was back at home in 1995.
Thank you mum, for everything. I love you.
Nana
I lost my nana. A wonderful woman who raised me alongside my mum in the absence of my father. Strong, funny, kind. She shaped me in ways I’m only now beginning to realise in her absence. My love of King Monkey – Sun Wukong, Laurel and Hardy and Buster Keaton. Badly dubbed Kung Fu movies she would cry with laughter all the way through, or eye-roll at the ridiculousness of 1980’s action scenes as 20 soldiers took on Jean Claude Van Damme one at a time. An approving wink when the world put me down. A whispered belief that I was always capable. She was a safe place. A soft space in often hard times. I miss you, Nana.
2025…
So what does a new year ahead look like? I never know what my life will look like, from one day to the next, but here are some things I’m going to focus on in 2025:
Reid All About It
Every year I tell myself I’m going to write more. Social posts, blogs, maybe even articles or a book. 2024 gave rise to a wealth of reasons to write. I was able to think more openly around game and play theory, explore new spaces to invest my time and energy in. I played more games that I wanted to play. Single player, creative experiences. Deep dives into worlds I could escape into that left me eager to write about them. I even had several strong encouragements and requests for forewords, articles, and books. However, when I sat down to try, I found myself mentally shackled, doubting myself, unable to process and express in writing all the things in my head and my heart. Nullified. This year, I want to break free. To treat writing as I do art and gaming – a joy and a pleasure. Therapy. Escapism. Catharsis. It feels good just to write this.
The Artful Dodger
Art is in my blood. It’s a part of who I’ve always been, since I was old enough to scribble on the walls with a crayon. Pencil, paint, clay, digital, anything. My head filled with a million and one ideas for a sketch, a painting, a model, a 3D print design, a Minecraft world, a video game, eternal. Yet I’ve let it slip year-on-year for way too long. Blurring the lines between artwork and art for work. Sure, my work is a huge part of my artistic expression, I excersise it almost daily in my work, and there’s such joy in being approached by an intermediate esports team and asked how the Lost Library Minecraft esports world was made, then watching their faces light up as I reveal all the creative secrets, rom sketch to screen. This year I must do both. Exclusive of each other. Personal and professional expression through art. I commit to making time for art of every kind!
Play Matters
People often say to me “you’re lucky that you get to play games for a living”. They’re not wrong, but wow are they not right either. Like art, playing games has become such an entrenched part of my working life that year-on-year it has become less about the simple act of play, and more about purposeful, educational play. I rarely engage with a video game without immediately beginning to assess its educational value. to process thanks to a greater freedom to do so in 2024. One such side effect is that when I do burn out and my brain demands pure play time, I turn to games that it would be difficult to justify in my work. Call of Duty is one such indulgence, which in truth is largely a pit of toxic masculinity, racism and nationalism, cheating and hacking, and generally high risk – low reward, and high-stress escapism. A time-eater on a scale only matched by the TVA’s pruning technique. Save for my in-game clan community, there is little merit in spending my time there at all. Yet I do because it is so far from my work. My borderline obsession with Deathloop is similar in that the game, themed around killing hedonistic hippies over and over again in a time loop is a similar form of such escapism, though to be fair, Deathloop goes so much deeper than that, so watch out for more writing on that this year!
This year I commit to finding healthy play spaces that are separate from my work, that I can play, process and write about for my own joy and wellbeing.
Health and Heart
Finally, based on many of the points above, I have let my health over all run low. Physically, mentally, and emotionally. I am of a happy disposition overall and maintain a general level of physical fitness for which I am lucky and grateful. But even immortal minds can’t hold back the ticking clock of real time. Between trips my life is largely sedentary, spent in digital worlds where I’d hit my fitness rings ten times over in a day. This year I commit to a much healthier lifestyle. Fitness first. Bone density, a healthy heart, muscle strength, healthy lungs, nutrition, mental wellbeing, etc. Might even take as many steps in the real world as I do in game!
Conclusion
2024 proved to a be a year of massive change. Almost all for the better. I went from floating to flying. Throttling to thriving. Clambering to climbing – I do love alliteration. I couldn’t have achieved my successes, or coped with my failures without the love, patience and stoic belief of my wife. Thank you Catherine, for taking this journey with me. Love you.
I’m sure there’s more, but if you’re still reading I’ll spare you. That’s all for my 2024 reflection.
If you walked any of it with me, no matter how short, played a part in it, no matter how small, thank you. I took this journey with so many wonderful people who got me through it. Beautiful and Kind. Thank you, for All The Things! Let’s do more of it this year!