Materials
Everything you need to run Churn & Burn in your classroom — free for educational use.
What's included
The downloads on this page are the same materials Ivan Kako uses when teaching mobile-publishing economics to university courses, bootcamps, and studio onboarding sessions. They are intentionally compact: one presentation to introduce the simulation, one card reference for printable play, and pointers to the live in-browser tools for instructors who would rather skip the printer entirely. Everything here is free for classroom use; please credit the original source if you adapt the slides.
Downloads
Introductory slide deck covering the three pillars (Acquisition, Retention, Monetization), round structure, and a pre-game briefing for students.
Looking for printable strategy cards? The full 12-card reference lives at /cards with both Classic and Advanced modes.
How to run a session
A standard session takes about 60 to 90 minutes end-to-end. Open with the presentation deck (10–15 minutes) to set up the publisher fantasy, then split students into teams of 2–4. Decide between Classic mode (clean fundamentals, 6 rounds) and Advanced mode (event cards and action cards layered on top, 8–12 rounds). Smaller groups finish faster but produce less variance; larger cohorts of 20–50 players are where the leaderboard gets interesting.
You can run the game on paper using the printed cards, or use the in-browser instructor dashboard for automatic round resolution, persistent leaderboards, and async play across multiple sittings. See Settings for the full list of session knobs.
Tips for instructors
- Resist the urge to explain the math up front — students remember it better after going bankrupt.
- Pause after round 3 for a quick "what's your strategy" round-the-room; it surfaces hidden tradeoffs.
- Use the late-round acquisition cost spike as a teaching moment about CPI inflation in real markets.
- Debrief with the prompts on Discussion — they map cleanly to LTV/CAC, retention curves, and monetization ethics.