LionsHeart Studios
- Open roles
- 0
- Founded
- 2014
- Employees
- 1-10
- Offices
- 1
About LionsHeart Studios
LionsHeart Studios is an Australian educational game studio and EdTech developer founded in 2014 as a staff-led spinout from UNSW Sydney. Based in Sydney, the company develops serious games and interactive simulations that turn academic concepts into practical decision-making experiences. Its work spans economics, business, medical education and sustainability, serving university and secondary-school learning environments.
The studio combines game development with courseware delivery. Its platforms bring together simulated environments, learning materials, tutorial activities, assessment and analytics, giving educators ways to integrate interactive learning into their courses. The emphasis is on experiential education: students explore concepts by making decisions within a simulation rather than relying solely on textbooks and lectures.
Games built around learning
Playconomics, the studio’s flagship product, is a microeconomics video game platform accompanied by a dynamic eBook, tutorial exercises and real-time performance analytics. It connects economic models with interactive situations in which students can explore choices and their consequences. The platform has been adopted by institutions including UNSW Sydney, the University of Queensland and the University of Adelaide, and serves both university and high-school learners.
Beyond economics, the studio developed UniPlay, a framework for applying gamified learning across different disciplines. Its broader work includes virtual clinical training, taxation and business decision simulations, macroeconomics courseware, and renewable-energy education. These projects extend the same approach into subjects with different learning objectives and practical contexts.
PlayMed applies this model to medical education through a virtual 3D emergency department and pediatric clinical rotation simulation. It gives learners an interactive setting for clinical decision-making, extending the studio’s work from economic systems into healthcare training.
Across its products, LionsHeart Studios combines serious game design, simulation software development, courseware integration and hosting, adaptive tutorials, automated assessment and academic learning analytics. Its educational platforms are designed to connect the learner’s activity within a game with the surrounding course and its assessment needs.
More about LionsHeart Studios
Founders and research methods
- Professors Alberto Motta and Isabella Dobrescu of UNSW Business School’s School of Economics co-founded the studio. The report does not establish their current executive roles.
- The studio’s development methodology incorporates continuous randomized controlled trials evaluating learning retention and student engagement.
- PlayMed was developed alongside clinical researchers at Sydney Children’s Hospital Randwick, connecting simulation development with clinical education research.
Educational outreach and adoption
- The STEP UP: Playconomics Outreach Program operates in partnership with UNSW and philanthropic support. It enables Year 9–12 students across hundreds of schools to complete gamified economics modules for microeconomics course credit recognized by UNSW.
- The supplied research reports that Playconomics has served more than 70,000 university and high-school students, with over 3.5 million cumulative game hours.
Notable credits
6 creditsOffices
Where LionsHeart Studios is based
- Playconomics @ School of Economics, UNSW Business School, UNSW Sydney, Kensington 2052 NSW, AustraliaSydney, New South Wales, Australia
Sydney office
HeadquartersCompany headquarters and physical and mailing operations at UNSW Sydney’s Kensington campus.
Open roles
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