Gaming executive Mark Ollila named director of ASU’s Endless Games and Learning Lab
The Endless Lab will be part of the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts and, physically, will be within the Media and Immersive eXperience (MIX) Center in Mesa, Arizona. Courtesy photo
Mark Ollila, the new director of the Endless Games and Learning Lab at ASU, says everyone is a gamer — including Arizona State University President Michael Crow.
“I think he’d be a perfect character in ‘Stranger Things,’ as one of those kids playing Dungeons & Dragons,” Ollila said.
In a public conversation in April about gaming and education at the ASU+GSV Summit, Crow and Endless founder Matt Dalio announced the creation of the Endless Games and Learning Lab, a new era in education that merges cutting-edge technology, engaging game environments and universally accessible high-intensity learning experiences. The Endless Lab will be part of the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts and physically will be within the Media and Immersive eXperience (MIX) Center in Mesa, Arizona.
“That’s what (President Crow) talked about, playing D&D for three days straight and how gaming impacted him,” Ollila said.
As a seasoned executive with a career spanning over two decades in the computer gaming, nanotechnology, internet, software and media technology industries, Ollila understands the power of games and is excited to return to academia to harness that power for education.
“My whole career has been around commercialization of R & D and new research in the media entertainment gaming fields,” Ollila said, “and I love seeing that rolled out into the real world.”
“We are excited Mark has decided to join us,” said Sandy Stauffer, interim dean for the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts. “His creative thinking, expertise, experience and energy will help us achieve our ambitious agenda, and we look forward to his contributions as he catalyzes the vision for the Endless Lab as well as ASU’s pursuit of Realm 5, which will ultimately improve learning outcomes and build authentic learning communities at a global scale.”
Ollila has held pivotal roles in the media technology, gaming and entertainment industries, including CEO of Live Current Media Inc. and Evasyst, and chief of staff and VP of new product innovation at Verve Wireless Inc. At Nokia, he drove forward-thinking strategies as director of games strategy and industry marketing and senior director of long-term technology roadmap and innovation portfolio. Ollila also spearheaded the award-winning project Conspiracy for Good, an alternate reality game that combined digital media and real-world social action, leading to significant societal contributions, such as building libraries in Zambia and providing scholarships for girls.
In the realm of industry innovation, Ollila was the founding chairman of Meqon Research AB, a physics middleware provider acquired by Ageia, and later NVidia, whose technology is now part of every NVidia graphics card. His strategic vision has been instrumental in scaling companies and technologies globally. He holds a PhD in computer science and an MBA from London Business School.
“The games industry in general is the most innovative industry out there,” Ollila said, “pushing the limits in what can be done in terms of graphics, what can be done with AI, interactive experiences, even monetization; a lot of monetization mechanisms that you see today on mobile have been developed through the games industry. It is always pushing the limits of innovation, and I always want to be at the forefront of innovation.”
'Endless' learners
But Ollila says the Endless Lab is not just about the games — it’s about helping people become better learners.
“This is about what we can do to create superior learners, and we’re using games as a medium to do that,” he said.
The Endless Lab, which was made possible by a $5 million gift from Endless, draws inspiration from John Dewey’s philosophy that education should be organized around a learner’s everyday experiences, rather than being imposed “from above and from outside.”
“Games are popular because of one thing — fun,” Ollila said. “What we want to look at is how, through the act of making games, playing games and creating games, we actually produce better learners, and how we continually evolve a person in what they’re trying to achieve with their career and life.”
Ollila said games allow creators and players to engage in a wide variety of skill sets, from arts and music, to project management and collaboration, to engineering and programming, to design and 3D.
“There's ‘SimCity,’ which a lot of people have played. It’s a simulation of how you create a city, how you manage a city and keep people happy,” Ollila said. “There’s a lot of planning in there, project management, budgeting. So how do we actually utilize what was learned in that game and map it to something that is tied to the real world?”
It’s very rare that you see a university so unified around educating as many as possible. ... We cannot afford to leave the most talented minds of the nation without great education because they cannot afford it or do not otherwise have access to it. I’m a strong believer that the solution to the world’s problems lies in getting more and more educated people.
Mark OllilaDirector, Endless Games and Learning Lab
For instance, Ollila said, maybe a city planning office looking to fill a junior position that requires a degree plus so many years of experience would also accept hours of playing "SimCity" to fulfill a portion of those requirements.
“Education games typically fail because they’re education games — they’re boring. Kids don’t want to play that. They want to play ‘Fortnite,’” Ollila said. “Those games they’re playing like ‘SimCity,’ ‘Civilization,’ ‘Assassin’s Creed,’ they’re learning things about the Renaissance. They’re learning about the Reformation. They’re learning about city planning.
“So short term, what I’m looking to do is be courageous and say, ‘OK, out of the games that exist, is there a learning component that could be mapped to courses and credits in a university system?’”
Maybe, for example, 300 hours of playing "SimCity" earns a student 30% credit in a course.
The Endless Lab also advances ASU's pursuit of what it terms Realm 5 learning — massively distributed, universally accessible, high-intensity and personalized learning solutions for all people. Having spent 15 years in the Nordic countries, where education is much more accessible than in the U.S., Ollila said he sees a huge potential of Realm 5.
“It’s very rare that you see a university so unified around educating as many as possible,” Ollila said. “For me, it was important to see that commitment existing here. We cannot afford to leave the most talented minds of the nation without great education because they cannot afford it or do not otherwise have access to it.
“I’m a strong believer that the solution to the world’s problems lies in getting more and more educated people.”
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