Our story

Christopher's story

Christopher Balmford
Throughout my 30-year career as a plain language practitioner, trainer, and advocate, I have been striving to encourage and enable people to write in plain language. Since the invention of the internet, I have been thinking about how best to put my plain language training course online.
In 2024, inspiration struck. In a conversation with my son William, I had the idea to turn my course into a game. By the way, William has a PhD in video games. (Thanks, Will.)  
Thankfully, my co-founder, Cinzia Theobald, was happy to listen. After several conversations, we met in a room at The State Library of Victoria to formalize our discussions. A few minutes into the meeting, we shook hands and agreed we’d make the game a reality.
Christopher Balmford
Cinzia Theobald

Cinzia's story

Cinzia Theobald
During the Covid-19 pandemic, I worked with migrants, people seeking asylum, and refugees to help them empower their communities to best navigate the confusing and ever-changing public health orders. Plain language was pivotal to keeping these communities safe.
At the same time, my plain language work became very personal. Helping my mum grapple with the healthcare system showed me again how crucial plain language communication is. We both grappled and I had expertise in the field. How do others cope?
In 2021, my organization's work with multicultural communities won it an international award, which is how I met my co-founder, Christopher Balmford. He soon asked me to join the project to develop an international plain language standard. There, I found my people. Now, I’m on the board of PLAIN, helping to shape the plain language world’s future.
In 2024, Christopher and I shook hands on working together to help deliver the benefits of plain language to people and communities everywhere.

Why we are committed to plain language

For decades, organizations have relied on documents written in unnecessarily complicated ways.
The result? Confusion and frustration for the people who need to use them: customers, clients, members, patients, citizens, staff...  everyone.
Plain language changes that.
When documents are written clearly, people can understand them quickly and make informed, confident decisions about their lives, their health, their work, their organisations. Everything that matters.
But this raises a question: How do you train thousands of people across business and government to write in plain language?
You could create an online training course.  But most online learning is… well, dull.
You could rely on AI. But AI still needs humans to guide it properly: people who know how to brief it, review the output, and ensure the document’s meaning and tone are right.
So, we asked a different question: How do you make workplace learning engaging?
The answer was simple.
You turn it into a game. An online game where players learn how to write plain language documents while solving challenges, making decisions, and competing with others.
Learning by doing. Learning by playing.
That idea became The Plain Game, the first game by In-Game Learning.
Plain language documents help readers to make informed, confident decisions about their lives, their health, their work, their organizations. Their everything.

Are you game?