Game Over (GO!): A Transformative Model for Entrepreneurship Education through Game-Based Experiential Learning

The Game Over (GO!) model is an entrepreneurship education approach developed at a Colombian higher education institution that uses gamification and experiential learning to have students design physical games addressing real-world and Sustainable Development Goal (SDG)-aligned challenges. Its central argument is that traditional entrepreneurship education often lacks interdisciplinary collaboration and the development of interpersonal and creative competencies, and that GO! responds to these gaps by pairing game prototyping with wildcard challenges, real entrepreneur case studies, and iterative user feedback.

The study draws on five course editions held between 2023 and 2025, involving 652 students who produced 117 prototypes. Roughly 80 percent of prototypes aligned with one or more SDGs, most frequently SDG 4 (Quality Education), SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-being), and SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production). In addition, about 80 percent of student teams revised their designs after receiving user feedback, which the authors present as evidence of iterative thinking. Qualitative interviews with eleven jurors and consistently positive student evaluations supported the model's perceived effectiveness in building resilience, creativity, and social value orientation.

Methodologically, the work is a single-institution case study rather than a comparative or longitudinal evaluation, and its conclusions rest largely on program output metrics and stakeholder perceptions. The authors acknowledge this scope, recommending that future research test the model across other universities, incorporate pitch rehearsal, strengthen industry partnerships, and conduct longitudinal assessments of impact.

The broader contribution lies in positioning GO! as a Southern-led, context-sensitive innovation in a field historically shaped by Global North frameworks. By bridging academic creativity and real-world problem-solving, the model offers a transferable template for entrepreneurship educators seeking to align teaching with the SDGs while cultivating the collaborative and creative competencies that conventional curricula often underdevelop.