How to Create a Game-Based Learning Strategy

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I was speaking with a client the other day. She said only 10% of her workforce completes the training they are supposed to take. In her mind, training completion is low because the content isn’t engaging, and she wanted to know if a learning game could fix it. I told her that there is no “easy button,” and games are not a cure-all for for boring content or bad learning design.

Game-based learning can improve learner engagement, but only if you start with a strategy. Years of research shows that game-based learning can increase not only learner engagement, but drive both higher retention and completion rates. Industry professionals are now spending less time debating what the research says about games, but many organizations still struggle to correctly implement games that drive meaningful results. Adding a learning game to the mix just to ‘jazz things up’ could be like putting a Band-Aid on the problem when surgery is really needed.

How do you implement a true game-based learning strategy that will actually work? A strategy where learners actually learn and retain at higher levels? A strategy that drives measurable results?

Here are some key points to keep in mind when creating your strategy:

1. Know your audience

Key stakeholders often get this wrong. I had a seasoned training director tell me that since his audience was mostly women, games just wouldn’t work. Really? According to the Entertainment Software Association, of the 155 million gamers out there, 44% are women. There are marketing games that tout a player demographic of 52% women.

2. Make it relevant

This is where many game-based learning strategies fail. First, learners want activities that are relevant to the learning material and their job. If the game is relevant to helping them retain material or gives them time to practice with material they will use often, then it’s worthwhile. But if it’s not, learners will reject it. If you’ve tried a game before and it wasn’t adopted well by your learners, this might be the culprit. Avoid drawing the conclusion that games won’t work with your learners if this is the case.

3. Make learning the focus

Many folks want serious games to be, well, less “serious.” They want more action, more sound, more addictive qualities to the game. The problem is that the more complex the game design or game-play is, the less cognitive space is left to learn the knowledge and skills you designed the game to teach in the first place.

4. Timing is everything

Learning games work best when implemented as part of a blended learning approach. At Bottom-Line Performance, we’ve implemented games as pre-work to a larger training event or instructor-led training as well as post-work for multi-module eLearning curriculums to help learners reinforce what they learned—particularly material they really need to know from memory.

5. Measure the outcomes

To drive measurable results, you have to know what you want the desired learning outcomes to be and have a way to access the data you need to measure those outcomes. If your LMS reports only completion, choose a platform that can deliver reports detailing how players performed.

Of course, implementing a strategy at your company will involve many more steps than what I have shared here.  It will also include testing to gauge the response a game-based learning approach has with your learners. Whatever your desired business outcomes are, make sure your game-based approach is based on sound instructional design.

5 Keys to Success with Legend and Quest

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Want to make your first Knowledge Guru game roll-out a success? While the platform itself is easy to use, a bit of planning and preparation goes a long way. The following “keys to success” will help you make the right decisions before you start designing your Legend or Quest game… and help you make your game content instructionally sound.

1) Choose the right game “type” for your endeavor.

Knowledge Guru offers you three options: Drive, Quest or Legend. Each one can a give you an impactful learning experience, but this article focuses on Quest and Legend. Sometimes either option is equally good. Here’s a few of the major things to consider:

  • Do you HAVE to support IE8? If so, use Legend. Quest will not work within Internet Explorer 8.
  • Do you want people to play as part of a live event? Either game type can be used. Legend is the optimal choice if you want to break up game play throughout the day and have players focus on a single topic per play session. Quest is a strong option if you want the game to serve as an overall review of the day. You can have players complete a single world within the game, which would include all the day’s topics. They can then finish their games on their own – getting two additional repetitions of your content following your live event.
  • Do you have a theme? Legend gives you 8 different themes to select from; Quest gives you three. Some customers even opt for a custom-made theme. Which one is right for your event/learning experience?
  • Do you want to incorporate video? Use Quest. Legend does not support video within the questions.
  • Do you want to include “performance challenges” as well as the question/answer format? If so, choose Quest.

For more detailed comparisons, you can check out these Knowledge Base articles that do a detailed comparison of Legend and Quest.

2) Make your game smaller as opposed to bigger.

Both Legend and Quest are designed to maximize learner retention of content. However, if you overload your game with too much content, you will hurt your players’ ability to remember.  Novice authors can go a bit crazy on crafting questions and suddenly find themselves with 8, 9, 10 or even 11 question sets within a single topic. The result is player fatigue and overload on their brains. They end up remembering very little.

If you truly have lots and lots of content to cover, consider crafting several “mini-games” that can be spaced out. The Legend game type is particularly good for designing this type of solution. You can have a highly effective Legend game that has only three topics with three question sets in each topic.

3) Get good at writing question “sets”

The single biggest challenge novice game creators have is recognizing when they are not writing iterative questions. Our Knowledge Base has a great article on how to write iterative questions. We encourage you to read it before you create a game, or to evaluate a game you’ve already created. Here’s a terrific formula to think about when you craft a question iteration:

  • Make the  question on the “A” path (Legend) or “A” world (Quest) a recall of the fact. This can be done as a true/false or a multiple choice option.
    • Widget A has three benefits. Two of these are durability and low cost of operation. What’s the third?
  • Make the question on the “B” path or world a bit more difficult by crafting a fill-in-the-blank or having them reference.
    • When you sell Widget A to customers, you need to share three benefits: ______ , ___ _____ of operation, and _____ease of________.
  • Make the question on the “C” path or world scenario based. Have them incorporate the fact into a job situation they would typically encounter.
    • You are meeting with Joe at ACME construction. He is concerned about replacement costs of Widget A. Which of the three benefits below is the one you should communicate to Joe? (NOTE: The answer would be durability. The distractors would be the other two benefits.)

4) Make your questions contextual to the players’ jobs and personal to them.

We all care about what matters most to us. So make sure your questions place your players in their jobs whenever possible. Here’s a terrific “formula” to think about when you craft a question iteration:

  • You are in a lab….
  • Your manager wants you to….
  • Your customer asks….

5) Incorporate visuals and video.

People respond well to images and they like watching short videos—just think about the popularity of YouTube. If you can show them instead of tell them, do it! Here are things you can do with an image, even one made in PowerPoint:

  • Give the player a context or “setting” for a scenario or a visual of what a customer might look like.
  • Present data that a player needs to analyze before responding to a question.
  • Show the flow of a process or the steps in a process.
  • Present a vignette of a selling situation, a feedback session, a customer inquiry, etc.

7 Steps to an Effective Serious Game or Gamification Implementation

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Are you a do-it-yourselfer? When it comes to serious games, ATD says you probably are.

In an ATD survey conducted for its 2014 research report, Playing to Win: Gamification and Serious Games in Organizational Learning (link), 71% of organizations reported that they prefer to develop serious games in-house. 83% said they planned to develop gamification in-house.  I’d say that’s a confident group! In the same survey, only 20% of organizations were already using serious games for learning, while 25% were using gamification. That means most organizations have never used games for learning before and plan to do it without help from a vendor.

The challenge of in-house game design

One of the reasons serious games are hard to create successfully in-house is the lack of game design skill most organizations have on their teams. Your instructional designers may be good, but have they played lots of games? Have they designed games before? Many instructional designers continue their education and earn masters degrees in instructional design. Can you master game design by taking a one-day workshop?

Getting Around Game Design

Organizations often get around the lack of in-house game design expertise by using game templates or a full fledged gaming platform. When the platform you use already has gaming built in, all you have to do is think about your content. A platform can make life much easier for your team… but creating the game itself is less than half the battle.

You still have to implement your game. And that’s where things really get interesting.

If You Build It, They Won’t Come… Unless You Have a Plan

No matter how fun your game-based solution is supposed to be, you will still need a plan for launching it, promoting it, and measuring it. How will you communicate about the game? Will you require players to play? How will you incentivize play… or do you need to incentivize? These are all questions you must answer as you implement a serious game or gamification initiative.

In my role, I get to collect stories from organizations who wish to submit for industry awards. These are typically the “best of the best.” They planned for success, either partnered with us to build a solution or created their own game with Knowledge Guru, and drove meaningful business results from their efforts.

What’s interesting about these award-winning implementations is just how similar they are. I find that the companies that are most successful with games and gamification in their organizations take many similar approaches when it comes to implementation.

So whether you are preparing to launch your first-ever serious game, or are looking to make your next initiative more successful than your last one, consider these tips for a successful implementation:

1. “Required” works best.

Let’s face it: employee time is limited, and most of us only have the energy to focus on the activities that are truly essential to our jobs. Even if your serious game is fun, is it equal or greater than the myriad of entertainment options available to us around the clock? Our experience shows us that the organizations that are most successful with serious games require play. For example, Johnson & Johnson has integrated Knowledge Guru into employee goals & objectives for the year.

2. Blend into a curriculum: use as part of a learning solution.

You probably have lots of training initiatives happening in a calendar year. Games might be a great addition to the mix, but you should not plan to replace all of these existing training events with games. The case studies I have gathered all show organizations having the most success when games are part of a larger blended curriculum or strategy. This allows you to narrow the focus of your game to cover a specific skill or set of knowledge.

3. Use the game as a reinforcement (most of the time).

Games and gamification make great reinforcement tools. In fact, most organizations we have worked with position games as either a reinforcement, or a motivating first exposure to content that will be covered in greater detail later. It is also easier to launch a game as a reinforcement when you are attempting your first go-around with serious games.

4. Offer incentives and/or provide sufficient motivation.

No matter how you dress it up, completing a serious game is still training that is part of a job. Unless your learners are highly intrinsically motivated, we recommend providing prizes and rewards. Encouragement from senior leadership can be even more effective. The grand prize winner of a Knowledge Guru game hosted by one of our Financial Services clients specifically cited how meaningful it was to be recognized by company leaders as part of winning the game.

5. Create a communications strategy around the game.

Learning and Development leaders need to think more like marketers when implementing all types of training. Every single case study I have seen of a successful Knowledge Guru implementation incorporates some sort of multi-part communications strategy to get the word out about the game. This could include many things, from advertisements in a call center to a series of emails or even a collection of advertisements placed throughout a company intranet site.

6. Use reporting and adapt the training.

Most organizations first get interested in games because they want to motivate or engage their employees. This is only part of why games are powerful organizational learning tools, though. For example, Johnson & Johnson was able to identify a specific learning objective that learners were missing as a group, then adjust their overall training to better focus on the weak process step. The organizations that are successful with serious games and gamification take advantage of the data they gather on learners and act quickly to adapt their training and processes.

7. Gather insights via surveys.

It is not uncommon to survey learners after a training initiative is completed… especially after a pilot. Games are no different. The surveys conducted by Knowledge Guru customers have revealed many valuable insights that impact future games. In one survey, a player commented that they learned a more effective way to do their job through the game that had not been covered in company-wide training. Our client was able to take this information and launch new training to teach the effective process to the rest of the department.

See Four Case Studies In Our Recorded Webinar

Want to learn more about how to implement effective serious games? I cover these implementation tips in the recorded webinar below, adapted from my ATD International 2015 presentation. You’ll also see four case studies from organizations that have implemented a serious game that drove real results.

Access "Serious Games + Learning Science = Win"

5 Ways Serious Games Can “Level Up” Your Sales Reps

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Sales people live in the moment. They need to hit this month’s numbers. They have a demo in 10 minutes. Their manager wants an update on their biggest account. They are paid on commission and they probably do not feel they have time to take your training! Sales people probably have the most single-minded focus of any role in your organization: activities that are directly linked to making a sale are top priority and everything else is just details.

As an L&D professional, you know that knowledge and skills are vital to building a successful sales organization. But a sales rep is not paid to worry about the entire sales organization. They are paid when, and only when, they produce results. So reps will be reluctant to invest time and energy into training if it is not directly helping them do their job better. They are eager to learn, but only when the knowledge will directly help them on their next sales call. Wouldn’t it be great if training could be a positive part of that, and not seen as a time waster?

Want to learn more about sales enablement? Access our webinar: Sales Enablement & Beyond: Using Games and Smart Implementation to Drive Performance.

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Serious Games and Sales Reps: A Perfect Fit

There is a reason so many of the Bottom-Line Performance clients who ask us to design a custom serious game wish to use it with sales reps. Customers who use our Knowledge Guru platform often create their games for sales professionals, too. Our experience has shown that games are often the perfect addition to a sales training program or set of reinforcement and reference tools.

There are many ways games can be leveraged as a tool to help sales reps perform better on the job. Here are five ideas to jumpstart your thinking:

1. Games can prevent the need to “cram” new product knowledge

Product launches are stressful, complicated events for everyone involved. Sales reps are often bombarded with new product and technical knowledge they must assimilate quickly before their next customer conversation. Reps might find themselves studying PDFs, Googling information they can’t find or learning about the new product via a PowerPoint deck. Before long, learning about ACME corporation’s new product release feels like studying for a college exam. And there is a very good chance reps will forget more than they remember without proper reinforcement.

Our research and client work shows us that serious games provide a much better way to learn product and industry knowledge. With the right instructional design know-how, learning principles such as spaced repetition and feedback loops can be linked to the mechanics of a game that reps can play for just minutes a day as time allows. Therefore, games linked to learning science become real time savers for a sales rep, since the gameplay is designed to help them learn and retain the necessary knowledge. And when the product and technical knowledge is especially complex, sales associates will appreciate games that truly help them learn and remember.

Example: Cisco uses Knowledge Guru games as part of their year-long Cisco Sales Associate Training Program. Sales associates average over 3.5 hours of Knowledge Guru gameplay because the games helped them study for their Cisco Sales Certification. Cisco’s game also earned a 2014 Brandon Hall gold award for best advance in sales training online application.

2. Games can create a little healthy competition… and camaraderie

Not everyone thinks that competition at work is a fun experience, but your sales team probably does. Most sales reps would probably describe themselves as “competitive.” That’s why they got into the profession in the first place. Games with leaderboards can fuel this competitive drive. They can also create a sense of competition between various locations, territories, or even individuals. Meanwhile, the scores that reps rack up can become informative to managers, showing which individuals or locations have the best grasp of key product knowledge, procedures, and selling skills.

Example: Competition through gameplay usually will not end up feeling cutthroat. After playing a Knowledge Guru game tied to a product launch, the ExactTarget (now Salesforce Marketing Cloud) employee from Australia who won “MobileConnectGuru” shared that he had never felt more a part of the team than while playing the game.

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3. Games can help reps retain and apply new product info

Games can be as simple as a jeopardy clone with handheld remotes or as complex as a 3D world. Most of the time, business needs call for an experience that is somewhere in the middle of these two extremes. For sales reps, the ideal game-based solution will do more than motivate. Sales reps’ have very limited time… and they will likely want to limit the time they spend on training as much as possible. (Unless that training is directly helping them sell—and earn more commission.) Gaming that can be done in short bursts that helps them learn, study, and retain product features and benefits is ideal.

4. Games can provide meaningful reporting and analytics

Most serious games offer far more data points than a standard eLearning course. For example, a report that shows learning objective success rate for sales reps in different territories provides far more visibility into what sales reps actually know than a raw completion percentage. You can use this information to provide additional training on the weaker topics to the regions that need it.

With relevant, accurate data in hand, you can deploy just-in-time learning bites that help sales reps shore up the key information they need to learn instead of wasting their time with a full-blown course.

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5. Games can provide highly contextual scenarios to practice consultative selling

Of course, sales reps need to do more than simply memorize product information to be successful. In more complex selling situations, sales training is probably a full-fledged curriculum. But it would be rare to use game platforms and templates as the only solution used in a curriculum like this. And they may not provide the necessary context to help sales professionals with higher-level skills. Thus, these situations are an ideal place for custom serious games.

Example: In Formulation Type Matters, a serious game we created for Dow AgroSciences, sales reps enter a fictional territory with five different unhappy customers they must try to place. Players gain and lose sales and increase or decrease customer satisfaction based on their answers to customer questions. As they play, the reps also access a variety of resources and consult their manager, a learning agent in the game, for help. The resources used in the game are the same PDFs they will find and locate on the job.

Six Truths About Implementing a Learning Game that Gets Results

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I love games—but that does not mean I think a game is the appropriate option for every learning situation. I do not think it will always equal the most effective or efficient means of helping people learn. In fact, I wrote a post recently clarifying how games differ from learning games because a lot of people are thinking about commercial video games when they contemplate incorporating games into their learning strategies.

If you are a chief learning officer or training manager/director who is trying to figure out whether games should be part of your learning mix—or how best to use them—here are six truths for you to consider:

1) Games and simulations require expertise to design well; you have to understand game design as well as instructional design. They require several rounds of play testing and iterative design to produce a game that fully engages your target audience AND achieves the desired learning and performance outcomes. They do not fit well into a “let’s draft it, pilot it, and finalize it,” three-step process. You may need to go through 5-8 iterations to get a custom game right. If you attempt to implement a game that you have not thoroughly tested, you are likely to be disappointed by the results you get.

2) Games are not a panacea. They do not spark crazed excitement in learners just because you say the word “game.” You have to market a game and plan its implementation just as carefully as you would any other type of learning solution. A game is not a cure-all for everything that might ail your training initiatives. Ideally, you have defined a clear purpose for the game and carefully integrated it into your learning solution—rather than inserting it as an afterthought to try to incorporate a “fun” activity in the learning experience. Make the game meaningful and tightly linked to your desired knowledge and skill outcomes. Learners are smart people. They will figure out if a game lacks relevance pretty quickly, and they will reject the experience.

3) A game is best suited as PART of a learning solution rather than as the entire learning solution. For optimal learning, games need to be set up and debriefed in some fashion. They can be a great reinforcement for learning, a great opportunity to practice a skill, or a great opportunity to create a shared experience that then transitions into something else. If your implementation does not include integration with other learning components, the game will be less effective as a learning solution than it otherwise could be.

Example 1:  Several years ago I designed a daylong workshop for a pharma company on single-payer systems (the rest of the world vs. a multi-payer system, which is the U.S. model). The day began with a 45-minute game/simulation called Access Challenge. The game objective was to get your drug onto a customer’s formulary. What made the simulation unique was that the pharma teams were selling to government agencies on different planets, who each had a different type of payer system and different population issues/concerns. The simulation was a level-setting experience for participants so everyone had a shared experience of working with single-payer systems before we got into the details of the day. After learners completed the simulation, we had an excellent foundation for the remainder of the workshop, which was not game-based.

Example 2: We recently were fortunate to earn a Brandon Hall Award in the games/simulation category, along with our client partner, ExactTarget. ExactTarget used Knowledge Guru to create a game called MobileConnect Guru, which was part of a training initiative designed to prep employees, resellers, and distributors on the launch of a new product. The game provided multiple repetitions of key content and was the last component learners completed prior to the product’s launch. ExactTarget’s results were impressive, but the game alone would not have gotten them these results. They designed a highly effective multi-method approach to helping people learn and remember. We describe this “recipe” for learning and remembering in a Bottom-Line Performance blog you can find here. 

4) Your stakeholders are often poor judges of what the target audience will like and find useful. Do not trust the stakeholder group to deem what should and should not be implemented. Your stakeholders are not your target. What they themselves are intrigued by might be deadly dull to your target learners. Conversely (in our company) what the product dev team likes might be way, way too game-y for anyone else in the company. Match the game to the audience, not the people paying for it. This is a tricky business, but it can be done.

5) Recognize the power of games in helping people learn AND remember. A well-designed game incorporates many elements that foster long-term retention. A well-designed game has high replayability, which means learners will naturally get numerous repetitions and practice sessions—which is essential to remembering. They provide frequent and voluminous feedback, which is essential to learning something correctly in the first place. They will incorporate a variety of game elements that foster a desire to play. Some games will even leverage a strong story or narrative, which has a high correlation to long-term memory. (Stories engage our entire brain; the brain literally “lights up” when a story engages it.)

Example: Cisco uses the Knowledge Guru game engine as part of its new sales association program (CSAP). Players consistently rate the games extremely high in terms of their value in learning AND remembering (4.93 on a scale of 1 to 5). A game can combine knowledge recall with scenarios that allow the player to apply the knowledge in a job context, which is a powerful memory-builder.

6) The more effort required to learn to play the game, the less cognitive space available to learn the content. If you feel strongly that you only have 30 minutes available for learners to play a game, then do not implement a game that easily requires 30 minutes just to figure out the rules of play.  Unless you are designing an immersive simulation, keep your game’s objective and rules pretty simple.  The game’s complexity needs to match the amount of time you believe learners will spend playing the game. If you are planning a complex, immersive simulation, then your implementation strategy needs to allow time for players to fully engage in (and learn from) the experience. This probably means 3 hours, not 30 minutes.

If you want a deep dive into learning game design, I wrote an entire white paper on designing learning games. You can download it here.

If you want more info on learning and remembering, check out my white paper titled When Remembering Really Matters. It talks about games and much, much more.

 

Three ways learning games (aka serious games) differ from just “games”

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ForbiddenIslandLast weekend, I was with friends and I introduced them to the game Forbidden Island. I figured they would enjoy it as much as me. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

The game is a cooperative one rather than a competitive one. Players have to work together to locate hidden treasure and fly off the island before it sinks. The focus is on problem solving, strategy, and cooperation as you work together to figure out the best moves for each player to make. To me, the game is a lot of fun to play. To two of my four friends playing, the game was torture. It was “too complicated.” It had “confusing rules.” (The game is designed for players 10 and up so it cannot be THAT complicated, but you DO have to pay attention. The game has won a ton of awards and millions have played it. It’s been play-tested extensively.)

Learning games can be a terrific learning tool. They can also be a major source of shut-down in a target audience. My friends are intelligent people, but they have both told themselves stories about how they view games. That story is, “I don’t like games. I am not good at games.” Or worse, “I only like certain kinds of games…ones that do not require strategy or too much thinking.” In my experience, I run across a lot of learners who are like my friends. A game becomes fraught with risk rather than something fun that engages them.

Here are three things you really need to do when you create a learning game:

1. Make the game’s design and play experience consistent with your learning goals.

One of the decisions we made early on with Knowledge Guru was to make the game very, very easy to learn to play. You do not risk looking “stupid” because you cannot figure out the rules. You answer questions. The strategy is limited to recognizing that feedback screens are your friend. Paying attention to them helps you on subsequent paths or levels in the game. Why did we limit the strategy? Because Guru is designed as a knowledge acquisition or application game – not as a strategy or problem-solving game. Its focus is on getting players to have a pleasurable way to reinforce knowledge or to focus on how knowledge gets used in their jobs.

Competition is used as a game element, but because the game is largely played online, the competition is more abstract. We don’t have Susan trying to thump Peter in the game. We have people focusing on having the highest score or specific achievements they can celebrate. With a Legends game type – the one we recommend for live play experience –  you can also set up competitions to be team-based, which is typically better than pitting one person against another person.

2. Consider the characteristics of YOUR players  – not the general population.

If someone were designing a game for people like ME, they would create a high-strategy game, possibly with role-playing elements. This would NOT be the game designed for my two friends, who are distrustful of games…worried that those games will magnify their perceived intellectual flaws or personal shortcomings. For these gals – or people like them – I needed a game with very few rules, a very narrow focus, and a short playing period. Learning the game needed to take minimal time and energy.

You want to design a game that will appeal to as many members of your target population as you can. Be aware that probably NO game will appeal to every single member of your target learning group. This does not mean the player will learn nothing from playing, but he or she may not “love” the experience.

3. Recognize that set up is crucial.

A lot of novices in the learning game design arena assume that the game takes care of itself. If you say the word “game,” your learners will automatically be excited and ready to play. This is so NOT true. A certain percentage may enthused, but others will be resistant for a variety of reasons. Your set up of the game experience is crucial to successful implementation and maximum  learning from the game. A few things:

  • Clarify how the game play will fit into everything else they need to do in their jobs. A learning game differs from a recreational game in that players are not CHOOSING to play; they are expected to play. They view the game as a job requirement in most instances. The hope is that once they begin playing, they find the experience pleasurable…but they are not going to assume it’s pleasurable just because you use the word “game.”
  • Help players understand how it benefits them; be clear about how it will help them. Examples could include a game’s ability to reduce job stress, make customer interactions easier, make a process quicker/safer/easier to do, etc.
  • Acknowledge people’s efforts and performance. In Guru, we have a variety of leader boards as well as a Standings tab. It is very, very easy and transparent to see how people are doing. As an implementer, you can acknowledge effort via broadcast emails, Intranet banners, closed-circuit TV, a personal VM message, a team meeting, or a variety of other ways. This acknowledgement goes a long way toward incentivizing continued play or emphasizing the value of play.
  • Consider tangible incentives – but keep them small. Handing out large prizes for game play is probably NOT a good idea because those who are lower on the score board quickly become discouraged. However, small incentives for being the first to play on a given day, for the first to hit a specific milestone, or for achieving mastery or a given topic by a specified time point can be useful acknowledgements and incentives.

Chance vs Strategy: Which Works Best in Serious Games?

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If you are creating a serious game to help your employees improve their performance, the type of game you create depends greatly on the type of job your employees have. Are either of the following statements true?

  • Day-to-day work is highly reactive in an “anything can happen” environment. Employees complete tasks such as responding to varying customer needs or emergency situations.
  • Work is based on organization, planning and foresight. This might be the case for sales managers, executive leadership or even individual contributors who must carefully plan and execute project work.

Depending on your situation, you should include an appropriate amount of chance or strategy in your serious game that reflects the work environment. As always in game design, you’ll want to avoid game elements that are irrelevant to learners. Gadgets and gimmicks within a game serve as more of a distraction than an engagement tool.

Sharon Boller talks about this at length in her learning game design blog series. With so many different game elements and game mechanics to potentially include in a game design, instructional designers new to game design often struggle to find focus and direction. We think about the “fun” of commercial games we have all played and enjoyed and try to incorporate all of this into games for our learners.

The result? Games that are distracting, out of focus and ultimately ineffective for learning.

The two game elements most commonly misused are chance and strategy. The usual mistake? too much chance. Would-be designers add lots of “surprises” to their games thinking it will make the experience more fun. The other mistake is to include strategy or chance in a game when the real answer is to use neither. Sometimes, the best corporate learning games focus on just a few game mechanics and game elements so mastery of the content can be brought front and center.

Consider the following examples Sharon gives in her blog post on game elements:

  • Is my game unintentionally creating win states that are largely achieved by chance or a specific sequence of events? (This can happen more easily than you think. We recently played a board game where it became clear over several game plays that the person who got to go first—which was determined by age—had a much greater chance of winning than the person who went last.)
  • Do I blend strategy and chance in a way that mirrors the skill I want my player to learn, or the context in which they will have to apply the skill?
  • What control do players have  in the real world over decisions? How do I design that into the game?

Don’t forget that chance and strategy, while seemingly very important, are only two of the many game elements available to you. A game does not need chance or strategy to be fun or effective for learning.

game elements chart

 

Case In Point

Knowledge Guru’s game play is essentially simple and straightforward. Why? Each game is really a template of sorts for whatever content you put into it. If the game had too much chance, it would undermine scenario questions where learners must formulate a strategy. And if the game had a strategic focus, it would distract learners who need to learn how to respond to seemingly random situations in real time.

Instead, Knowledge Guru includes the following game elements:

  • Story
  • Aesthetics
  • Rewards/achievements
  • Levels
  • Theme
  • Competition

So, what about strategy and chance?

You probably already know if your learners’ jobs involve more chance or strategy. Whichever is more true for them, be sure to include the appropriate game element in the game they will play.

The bottom line: When designing a game, you should never include a game element or game mechanic if you do not understand how it is linked to the desired learning outcome.

How Johnson & Johnson Uses Knowledge Guru to Drive Efficiency

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“Should I use games for learning?”

 “If the answer is yes, how do I integrate them into my training program?”

 “Oh, and what about buy-in from leadership?”

While research and case studies both demonstrate how effective serious games are when integrated into a blended curriculum, organizations need concrete examples that show what “success” looks like when using serious games.

One such example comes from the Talent Acquisition Organization at Johnson & Johnson. I interviewed Kristen Pela, Manager, Training & Communications, Talent Acquisition to learn more about their use of Knowledge Guru.

johnsonandjohnsonlogo2

Who is the Talent Guru game for?

All Johnson & Johnson US associates within the Talent Acquisition organization.

How it is part of a learning solution? What other pieces are involved in the training?

The talent GURU game was one piece of a larger training program. The training program is a 5-week series of formal and informal training that includes:

  • Outcomes of Project Camelot
  • Outcomes of Project Prism
  • TA Fundamentals Refresher
  • Technology Refresher

Each week consisted of a 20 minute online module, Talent Guru competition, and a Topic Forum.

What results do you hope to produce from Knowledge Guru? What do you want the learners to know or do after playing? 

The goal of our training program is to drive consistency and efficiencies across Talent Acquisition not only with our processes but also in our recruiter and sourcer partnerships.

What initial feedback and results have you received so far?

The feedback for Knowledge Guru has been amazing and folks have really enjoyed the fun and interactive training.

What have been the keys to successful implementation for you? (I’m guessing the weekly emails are part of it)

We’ve driven success with:

  • Clear goals & objectives
  • Leadership involvement
  • Game play tied to each person’s G&Os (Goals and Objectives)
  • Daily & weekly winners, which creates a competitive framework
  • Use of Twitter to talk about the training and create some fun banter

 

What advice would you give to others on creating their first Knowledge Guru game?

Don’t rush game play or development. Getting folks engaged has been the key to our success.

Serious Game Evaluation Worksheet (Free Download)

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A lot of people want to design learning games—also known as “serious games.” However, many of us in L&D have gotten very enthusiastic about the gamification and game-based learning trend without actually being game players themselves.

If you do not play games, you will find it very difficult to design a great game.

In the learning game design workshop that Karl Kapp and I offer, that’s exactly what we have you do—play some games. Game play helps you learn game design. It also helps you become evaluative about what game elements and game mechanics will optimize the game play experience. The lessons you learn from playing a lot of different commercial games will translate into good game design decisions for serious games.

Playing games helps you experience game elements such as chance, strategy, aesthetics, levels, rewards, achievements, scoring, competition, cooperation, and resources. You can observe how other game designers have used these elements with great (or poor) effect and consider how well the elements might translate into a game that also is specifically intended for learning. You can also experience different core dynamics and decide how fun they are.

Evaluation through play needs to be a deliberate experience. It is more than a matter of simply playing a lot of games. It involves analyzing the games you play—sometimes in great depth.

We’ve put together a template for you to download so you can do your own game evaluations. It includes a quick sample analysis of Knowledge Guru as well as a blank sheet for you to copy and use as you evaluate many different games. Here’s a few games to consider analyzing:

Board games:

iPad games

Download the Game Evaluation Worksheet

Download the Worksheet

The Importance of Aesthetics in Serious Games

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First impressions matter in almost every situation – including game play.

Aesthetics are a huge part of the game play experience. If the game doesn’t LOOK appealing, then players won’t want to play even if the game has a great game goal and rules. Conversely, a game that may be “just okay” from a game play perspective can be elevated by strong aesthetics. This fact can be a plus in learning games where content might be a bit dry but a great theme and aesthetics can help create an enjoyable experience.

Compare these two game boards. Which one makes you more curious about playing the game?

FirstProtoypeAPAGameBoard copy

FinalGameBoard_APA

What about these game characters and images? Do they make you curious and want to play? What other information is being shared via the aesthetics in the game? (Answer: Progression, topic, what to do next, theme, overarching mood, etc.)

BizTheme_PathSelection

Racing_PathSelection

Fairytale_PathSelection

Retro_PathSelection

Aesthetics do several things for you in a game (any game – including serious games).

For example:

  • Set a mood and reinforce a theme or a concept
  • Immerse the player into the game experience and help them suspend reality so they can play the game.
  • Offer cues that can guide performance and communicate a player’s status and progress.
  • Facilitate understanding of game play, making it easier for a player to figure out what to do.

Are you in the position of hiring out game design and development? Terrific! Our team would love to chat with you.

If, however, you are NOT in this position and are instead a team of one, here are some resources for you. If your skill set doesn’t reside in the graphic design arena, my first vote is for you to hire a graphic designer to help you. The hourly rate for a solo freelancer is typically around $75/hour. Ten to 20 hours of a graphic designer’s time can probably get you all the art assets you need for a basic game.

If you have no budget for a graphic designer, here are a couple of other options to check out for digital art assets:

http://opengameart.org — has some nice graphics bundles you can download and use in your digital games.

http://elearningtemplates.com/elearning-activities/ — has cutout people and graphics as well as some “game” templates (they aren’t really games, but are gamified activities.)

You can also check out this site to purchase game components for board games or card games at a reasonable price. Available items include tokens, dice, game boards, cards, chips, money, etc: https://www.thegamecrafter.com/parts