The game takes 75 minutes to play on average, including showing the video and having a discussion. We recommend 90 minutes so there is time for discussion after finishing. Skilled moderators with smaller teams of up to 30 people can complete in approximately 60 minutes. If you really need to shorten the game, you can try pre-building the brain bases and pre-selecting social support – that may save you 10 more minutes.

YES! People are using the game in very creative ways. By all means, spread the word, credit us appropriately and just don’t violate the terms and conditions of your license by reselling the game and competing with us commercially. Here is a summary of what you can and cannot do:

You can make or buy copies and give them away for free.

You can charge for the events you host, which may help you offset costs of making or buying the game.

You cannot give the digital PDF files of the DIY version away to anyone, for free or otherwise.

You cannot sell the game or its components in person or online.

Proper attribution for the game is as follows:

The Brain Architecture Game’s intellectual property belongs to a not-for-profit partnership between:

• Creative Media & Behavioral Health Center @ University of Southern California
• Center on the Developing Child @ Harvard University
• Clinical & Translational Science Institute @ the University of Pittsburgh
• FrameWorks Institute

Yes, on a case-by-case basis. If you need some pre/post surveys, email us. We’re working on a strategy for collecting systematic evaluation data, but we don’t know when that will be ready.

Feel free to share images or video of people playing if you have permission from them to do so. We love to see people having fun and learning on our Facebook page.

Yes you can! Email us your needs (dates, location, size of group, goals, audience type) and we can give you a cost estimate. Georgia Early Years Facilitates sessions locally. Many other state programs and not-for-profits also do. Do Google search for “brain architecture game” and your city, or state, or country and you may find more.

We do not have separate official training for the game. It is part of training programs, such as Working for Kids:Building Skills(tm). Relevant programs include Brain Story Certification (online). Edmonton Early Years Coalition in Canada holds facilitator workshops. A Google search of “brain architecture game” and your state or country may yield other nearby upcoming sessions.

The DIY license is issued to the buyer of the game who will receive personalized (name-stamped) PDF files of the Life Experiences Cards. The person who is named on the PDF files is responsible for maintaining the terms of the game agreement. This means that you cannot distribute the PDF files other than to transmit them securely to a professional printing facility for production or share them with a person who is assisting you with printing internally. You are allowed to distribute as many assembled and printed kits of the games as you wish to make, which enables the large-scale rollout of the game to organizations and regions.

We understand that it may not be possible for each game moderator to own their own DIY license and in fact, many organizations purchase, make and gift assembled DIY kits. This helps promotes the mission of the game and its impact. We, therefore, ask that DIY buyers do their part to protect the future of the game by safeguarding the PDF files. If the buyer is not the primary game moderator, let us know and we can change the name in the order for proper card name-stamping to designate the responsible party of your organization.

Your download links for the PDF files will be available on-screen immediately, and by email very soon after making payment. If you do not receive your links in your email inbox, check your email spam filter first. If you don’t receive an email within 30 minutes of your purchase, email us and we will retrieve your links.

Purchasing the DIY version will not result in anything mailed to your home or business address. If you are interested in the packaged version of the game, order our READY-MADE KITS.

We have added a section in the DIY Guide entitled “How do I print these at home?” under the Life Experience Cards section. This section includes advice on the easiest way to print at home or a place like Fedex-Kinko’s. If you print at home on your color printer, you can print one deck of 56 cards for under $5.

If you purchase the DIY version, you will be able to receive free updates within the language you have purchased (e.g., English). Translations must be purchased separately.

Our videos, Game Rule Book, Life Journal will always be available for free, including their updates.

If you purchase the Ready-Mades, you could refresh your kits by making your own Life Experience Cards through the purchase of a DIY license.

Information more relevant to the Ready-Mades can be found here and on the main product page.

To keep our costs low, we are only using one payment processor at the moment and PayPal offers us a non-profit discount for transactions. You don’t need to have a PayPal account to pay in most cases.

The downside is that we don’t use an integrated cart that keeps you on our website because it limits the number of countries we can receive payments from.

30% for Canadian Users; use coupon PALIX at checkout;  15% for beta version subscribers; use the coupon that was emailed to you. The PALIX coupon is available on an honor basis. If you use it and you are not a Canadian customer, your order will be canceled and you will have to reorder. Why? It costs a monthly fee for us to have a plugin for geolocating customers, which at the moment is not worth it since “cheating” happens very rarely. This is a not-for-profit operation and we try to keep costs as low as possible 🙂

We cannot offer extra discounts to educators or not-for-profits because most of our buyers are from this sector.

Unfortunately, we cannot accept purchase orders at this moment, but we do accept Paypal eChecks. We can provide you with an invoice prior to payment if that will help you receive payment authorization. We must receive payment in full prior to sending you the game(s). To get an invoice, email us what you need and the name and address of the recipient and we will email it to you.

We are a university and at the moment cannot accept purchase orders. If you just need to add us to your system, please keep in mind that we do not have the capacity to process paperwork and sign vendor agreements. If you just need basic information to put an order forward with a credit card, use the following tax information:  Interactive Media & Games Division, University of Southern California (USC), School of Cinematic Arts, 3470 McClintock Ave, SCI 201U, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA, Tel. 213 740 3159, sales@thebrainarchitecturegame.com. USC’s federal tax I.D. number is 95-1642394. Our tax forms, including W9 can be found here:

There is no single reason why this happens, but it happens in 1% of our transactions. Some of the reasons for this may be:

– The transaction is being blocked by your credit card: Call the number in the back of your card and make sure they are not blocking it, or that it hasn’t been flagged for fraud.

– The card is associated with a Paypal account already. Login with your Paypal account, recover access to your account if you haven’t used it in some time, or use another card.

– Paypal has flagged the transaction as high risk: This may happen to some corporate cards. You will have to setup a Paypal account and link your card with it to pay us.

In general, we haven’t found a specific pattern of problems related to making payments. Sometimes, people mistype their information or it doesn’t match exactly and the payment processor likes precision to prevent fraud.

If you completed payment successfully, your payment confirmation and download links will show up almost immediately by email and on the browser screen. Sometimes, if your network connection isn’t stable, there may be a lag between our website and PayPal and that can disconnect payment.

If you get double-billed, we will reverse the second payment if you email us.