How Much Story Does a Serious Game Need?

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In serious games, story is a narrative that either weaves through an entire game or sets up the reason you are playing the game and elaborates on the theme. The type of story and level of detail you need will depend on your learning goal.

Some in the corporate learning field get nervous about using “too much” story for obvious reasons. Will the story be too “out there” for some learners? Will a story that is too detailed exclude certain learners or make them feel the game does not apply to them?

Should I use a story?

Sharon Boller wrote extensively on this subject in her Learning Game Design Blog Series. When deciding whether to use story, or how much story to use, it’s important to ask two questions:

  • Would story add to this game? Include story when you need to evoke emotion in players and motivate them to play.
  • Can story be used as a learning tool? Research shows that incorporating story and even fantasy elements into games can help embed memories. You also might be able to make the story mirror a real-life situation for learners, either literally or metaphorically.

 

Should I combine my story with a theme?

When we think of story, we often think of theme at the same time. A game’s theme is essentially a backdrop or collection of aesthetic elements. In the board game Smallworld, the theme is a beautifully illustrated fantasy island with many topographies. The story connects to the theme: you are one of many races vying for control of a small island that is not big enough for all of you. The game’s story is simple and intentionally vague, but it is effective because it is combined with a lovely theme and well-done aesthetics.

Smallworld board game, ® Days of Wonder

Smallworld board game, ® Days of Wonder

How much story do I need?

The level of story will depend on how immersive your game needs to be. For a complex game teaching high-level skills, you might require a level of story bordering on simulation-worthy realism. For a game teaching foundational knowledge and simple skills, a complex story might be unnecessary.

Each time we develop a new theme pack for Knowledge Guru, we try carefully to develop a story that is simple yet fun… and does not distract from whatever content users put into the game. We also carefully link the game’s story to the aesthetic elements of the theme.

Knowledge Guru theme pack

In the new fairytale-themed “Knowledge Hero,” players learn about a Dark Wizard who has locked up all the knowledge in the land.

These simple stories create a feeling of interest and novelty, yet have nothing to do with the actual content or “knowledge” the user has inputted into their game.

New Knowledge Guru theme packs

Even when the theme is pretty “out there” (like our new Space Aliens theme), the story is always fairly straightforward.

You should also consider how a simple story can be more business-centric, which will be more suited to certain players.

Knowledge Guru business theme

We created three different “business” themes that combine a corporate feel with fun and whimsy.

The truth? The type of story and amount of story you need completely depends on your learning goal. Make sure story is being used as learning tool and not a distraction.

How to Connect Games to a Corporate Learning Curriculum

connect-games

Thinking about using games for learning? You might want to question your motivations, first.

Using a serious game or gamification platform in corporate learning can be a great option, but it’s not the the right solution for every situation. We often ask our customers and clients some simple questions to determine if a game fits their needs:

  • Are your current learning solutions presenting challenges to people?
  • Do your solutions provide strong feedback?
  • Do your solutions motivate people to engage?

Challenges, motivation, and feedback are all characteristics of games that make them ideal in a corporate learning curriculum. And while other types of learning solutions can also provide challenge, motivation and feedback… games often do them best.

Behavior Change… or Check the Box?

So much “training” organizations create is really just a “check the box” exercise in company communication. In these situations, are games and gamification really needed? If we really are just complying with a procedure and are not attached to the outcome, it might actually make better business sense to not use an innovative learning solution.

On the other hand, if routine communication is important, we might seek a way to gamify the process and make people more engaged in the communication we are sending out.

Bottom line: if you don’t really care what people learn or remember, games are not the right choice. When job performance and retention do matter, you should consider game-based solutions. Let’s look at some scenarios:

When to Use Games in Corporate Learning

Here are four situations that take advantages of the innate strengths games have as engagement tools. They represent either use of a game or a gamification of the learning experience:

  • People need to know something “cold” (e.g. from memory, sort of like multiplication tables) and it’s not information that is enjoyable or easy – on its own – to learn.
  • People’s hearts and emotions need to be affected in order to open them up to new ways of viewing something or understanding something.
  • People need a safe way to evaluate their skills and behaviors – and to improve them. People who think they are stellar at project management can play a project management game and get an entirely new insight into how they ACTUALLY behave when faced with constraints or pressures.
  • People need ongoing motivation in order to stay engaged in a long-term endeavor (a certification process, a long-term company initiative).

Example: We worked with a global company this year to prepare sales reps for the launch of a new product AND their first-ever Android Smartphones. We created a mobile game that helped them build their product knowledge as well as build skills in navigating the phone and accessing information. They loved competing, achieving new levels, and seeing their scores go up. The game’s challenges and feedback kept them highly engaged, and by the end of the game, they were adept at linking product features and benefits to specific customer questions and objections AND in using their phones.

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Review of Karl Kapp’s newest book on learning games aka serious games

urlI first met Karl Kapp in late 2012. I was a fan of one of his early books, Gadgets, Games, and Gizmos for Learning, which he published in 2007, and I’d also read and enjoyed his recently published The Gamification of Learning and Instruction.. Consequently, I was pretty thrilled when he visited the Knowledge Guru booth at DevLearn 2012 to learn about our newly-launched game engine. He was intrigued enough by its design to check out a session I co-presented with Scott Thomas of ExactTarget on the use of a Knowledge Guru-created game within ExactTarget.

Based on what Karl heard about ExactTarget’s business results, he asked me to contribute a case study to a forthcoming book he was writing with two other main co-authors, Rich Mesch and Lucas Blair. The book, titled The Gamification of Learning and Instruction Fieldbook, was going to pick up where its predecessor left off. It would offer more in-depth “how-to’s” and include numerous examples of games or gamification being successfully used as a learning strategy.

I contributed my chapter about a year ago. A few weeks ago I was rewarded with a copy of the finished book.  I read the entire book (not just my chapter), and I was impressed by the wealth of knowledge it contains. It offers detailed explanations of the terminology of games as well as solid definitions of what a learning game is and how a learning game differs from gamification of a learning solution. Here are several highlights or nuggets from various chapters. If you are serious about wanting to implement learning games or creating a gamification strategy, get the book.

Chapter 4 – Critical Questions for Creating an Interactive Learning Event (aka game)

The section on scoring will be hugely helpful to any new learning game designer.  In my own experience, scoring is one of the most difficult aspects of game design to get right. This chapter offers  excellent guidance.  Karl helps the reader think through the measurement criteria that could be used within a game – and how to decide which ones are relevant for a particular learning game. He specifically speaks to being able to articulate the rationale for the scoring – and keeping it simple enough that the learner/player can understand how a game is scored. He also points out that optimal scoring matches the desired learning outcomes. There are questions and guidelines galore to help the designer figure out how to create a good scoring system within a game.

Chapter 5 – Foundational Elements

First, it’s helpful to a novice game designer to even know what constitutes a “foundational element:”  things such as  constructs, game mechanics, feedback, challenge, story. Secondly, there’s some key tips here that I’ve learned from experience are absolutely worth listening to:

  • Never add things to a serious game or simulation because you think they are cool.” This is a rookie mistake, and you don’t have to make it if you pay attention to this book. In a  game, complexity can be fun to design – but complexity can be deadly to the learning process. Your learners/players get so consumed with trying to understand the rules that they have no brain space left for actually learning anything you intended. Yes, I’ve learned this the hard way! (I’ll speak to this at my upcoming session, “Lessons from the Trenches of Digital Game Design” at ASTD TechKnowledge 2014 and Training 2014.)
  • You have to play games – lots of games – before you can realistically design a good game. Playing games exposes you to the array of game mechanics you can use. As the author notes, “Often when creating a game or simulation, you will…repurpose, recombine, or modify game mechanics from other games that already exist.”  You can’t do this if you don’t have experience playing – and evaluating – a ton of games. I’m constantly amazed to find people in our learning game design workshops who don’t play games. It’s tough to design a game if you don’t play them frequently yourself.
  • Feedback is one of the reasons games are such a powerful learning tool. As players play a game, they constantly get feedback on how well or poorly they are doing, and they get cues on what they can do to adjust their performance. The Fieldbook talks about the impact of feedback on the player and identifies a variety of feedback types that a designer can incorporate into a game. This section is going to be very helpful to the novice designer.

Chapter 6 – The Importance of Narrative/Context/Story

Story helps immerse a player into the game experience AND a story can also help a learner remember the key take-aways from a game experience long after play ends. The author reminds readers that good stories have a beginning, middle, and end and they chart a logical progression of conflict, resolution, and conclusion. This chapter includes a simple template for creating a story, a useful tool for novice and experienced designers alike.

Chapter 7 – Make the Case

This chapter summarizes the research on the efficacy of games as a learning solution. If you want details on a large array of studies you can find them within Chapter 7. For a brief summary,  check out this infographic created by our team at Bottom-Line Performance, Inc.

Chapter 13 – Technology Tools

This is a useful chapter for organizations looking to discover what development tools are out there for creating serious games. The delineation between template-based authoring tools, game engines, and gamification platforms is particularly useful.

Chapters 15 – 22

Here you’ll find EIGHT (!) different stories of organizations who implemented a learning game or a gamification strategy related to a business initiative. Readers get the background on the business situation that led to a decision to create a game or gamified strategy, a description of the solution, a summary of the business results achieved, and lessons learned. For folks who need examples to help support their efforts to convince their own organizations to adopt the use of games these chapters will be very helpful.

Summary

I recommend you get the original book (Gamification of Learning and Instruction) and the Fieldbook if you want to have a robust package on your shelf re: learning game design and gamification of learning. You’ll use them again and again in either of these scenarios:

  • You manage a learning function that wants to implement a game-based solution and you want to sell stakeholders on the idea of using a game or gamification.
  • You are a designer and you want to build skill in creating learning games.

 

 

4 Ways Serious Games Link to Learning (Free Download)

4 Ways Serious Games Link to Learning

A growing body of research supports the use of serious games in the workplace. And thanks to a year of successful implementations in corporate settings, some great case studies now point the way for organizations ready to use games for learning.

Whether you want to use a true serious game, a gamified solution, or a combination of the two… it’s a great time to do so.

While research shows that people learn more from games than other learning solutions, many L&D practicioners still do not know why games work… so they avoid using games entirely.

If you think you want to use a game for learning, you first must become familiar with the types of “fun” in games, what’s required for real learning to happen, and the ways games can link the two.

We’ve created a new guide to help you accomplish this. The content, researched and written by Knowledge Guru creator (and BLP president) Sharon Boller, takes the mystery out of using serious games in the enterprise. It’s a simple thing, really: become familiar with the ways people have fun in games, identify the common principles all effective learning solutions share, and then carefully map the two together.

And once  you map the “fun” elements of your serious game to the elements needed for learning, you’ll also want to employ some research-based learning principles to actually help people remember the content after they’ve learned it. Are your game mechanics and game elements actually mapped to the cognitive tasks learners need to perform on the job? Are you taking advantage of the latest research on how the human brain best commits knowledge to long-term memory?

The guide, titled 4 Ways Serious Games Link to Learning, is available as a free download.

4 Ways Serious Games Link to Learning

The 12 Corporate Learning Content Areas… and Where Games Fit

Corporate Learning Content Areas

When it comes to game-based learning, 2014 is the year of theory moving into practice. An increasing number of organizations are planning initiatives to include games in their learning solutions. The research has been validated and plans are being set.

But if you’ve never designed a game before, or tried to include a game in your training, where do you begin?

The answer, of course, depends on the type of training you are developing. The 2013 ASTD State of the Industry report includes a wonderful table with the twelve most common content areas found in corporate training. Some of these content areas are rather broad, but they are a great starting point for visualizing the types of training we frequently develop. The content areas are shown below:

12 corporate learning content areas

The type of game you might create will vary widely for each content area. I’ve included a general suggestion or two for each content area below, but the list is not exhaustive! Use the suggestions as a starting point.

Managerial and Supervisory:

Soft-skills training often (but not always) works best in face-to-face situations. Why not use a role playing game to give learners situational practice? Rote Q&A, points, and badges will be of less value.

Mandatory and Compliance:

This is the sort of information we need to know, or our organization needs us to know. Since it often requires memorization, compliance training can be tedious. Consider a game that puts the content in a fun setting and employs some research-based learning principles to help people memorize the information faster.

Processes, Procedures, and Business Practices:

Processes and procedures are often foundational knowledge, just like compliance. Gamifying the process of basic memorization will work well here, but make sure you add context when possible. Even a game centered around Q&A can have context if you add highly relevant scenario questions.

Profession or Industry-Specific:
This topic is admittedly broad, so our suggestion for a game should really be “it depends.” Assuming the subject matter is applied, your game must be a realistic simulation of the work environment, or at least of the cognitive task being performed.
Sales:
Sales training is often face to face because of the interpersonal element. Why not try a tabletop board game? If you need to train virtually, some vendors offer highly immersive digital games where players hone their negotiation and persuasion skills. These approaches can also be helpful, as long as they are not overly simplistic. Since you are designing a game for sales reps, why not make it competitive?
IT and Systems:
The subject is highly technical, and the information often must be memorized. Give learners a game that rewards them for being thorough and helps them reinforce their knowledge through the game’s mechanics.
New Employee Orientation:
New hire training is often basic and foundational. Elements like badges and leaderboards are helpful here because new employees can see how they stack up with others and even form some social connections.
Interpersonal Skills:
A tabletop board game is ideal for soft skills training… especially one that involves scenarios and active communication with other players.
Executive Development:
So many things go into executive development. Resource management and territory acquisition games are excellent for developing strategic thinking.
Customer Service:
A simple card game with customer scenarios can work well here. If the customer service environment is often rushed (such as for food service workers), consider adding a timed element to the game.
Basic Skills:
Basic skills are another type of training that often falls under “foundational knowledge.” Points, badges, and leaderboards are a good start, as you are trying to keep people motivated to learn what they need while knowing that the content itself is not so exciting.
Other (Quality, Product Knowledge):
People need to know it… and this type of training often involves either memorization or knowing where to locate the right information when needed. The game should either employ learning principles that help people memorize quickly (spaced learning, repetition, feedback), or reinforce where they should go to locate the information.
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Top 5 Game-Based Learning Posts on Our Blog in 2013

Top5GamePosts

What a year it has been for the Knowledge Guru product! We first launched the game engine in October 2012, added the Game Creation Wizard in 2013, and are now humming along with happy customers and a wide range of feature enhancements planned for the coming year.

Besides product enhancements, a big focus of ours is educating the community on how serious games and gamification can be used for learning. We’ve published many articles on our blog, as well as on the Bottom-Line Performance blog, on the topic. Since BLP President and Knowledge Guru creator Sharon Boller is passionate about using games for learning, it comes as no surprise that some of the best posts were written by her.

These five articles were the most-visited on our Knowledge Guru website in 2013. We will be back with more great content this January.

1. Linking Games to the Learning Experience: Learning Game Design White Paper: Sharon Boller wrote nearly a dozen blog posts on the topic of learning game design in 2013, each covering a separate step of the process. She later took those posts, edited and re-worked them, and turned them into a comprehensive white paper on learning game design. Collectively, this was the “hot topic” on our blog in 2013. Read it

2. 100 Great Game-Based Learning and Gamification Resources: One of the best way to share the game-based learning love is simply connecting readers with all of the great content available on the web. We compiled a list of 100 of our favorite articles, each one offering a unique insight on using games (or game mechanics) for learning. See them

3. Game-Based Learning Infographic: There’s a reason this infographic has been shared far and wide and even made it on to Edudemic: it’s a one-stop overview for valuable game-based learning research and case studies. See it

4. 5 Great Serious Games and Gamification Blogs to Follow: This post continued on our theme of finding valuable content shared by other experts in the game-based learning space. See some of our go-to blogs in a more concise format than the large list of resources mentioned above. Read it

5. Getting Started in Learning Game Design: Need a roadmap for kicking off the learning game design process? This post has it. Sharon Boller lists the five overarching steps to learning game design, and even includes a graphic for staying on track. Read it

How to Promote a Serious Game to Learners

If you’re about to launch a serious game in your organization, you’re probably pretty excited about it… and rightfully so. Games are often more engaging and effective than many other learning solutions, so learners should be in for a treat. You might even think that because your game is fun, or at least more fun than the webinars and instructor-led sessions learners are used to, that people will flock to it and start playing.

If you build it, they should come, right? Wrong… unless you promote it.

Yes, the L&D department has to also double as an internal marketing team when it comes time to roll out a new learning solution. Even if learners will benefit from playing a serious game, or even genuinely enjoy it once they start playing, it’s still a new task or set of behaviors you are trying to encourage.

We share the example of Knowledge Guru user ExactTarget frequently because of the bang-up job they did when they first launched their MobileConnect Guru game company-wide. ExactTarget (now a SalesForce.com company) specializes in digital marketing, so they know what they are doing when it comes time to get the word out and get players involved.

ExactTarget did many things right when they launched MobileConnect Guru, which is a big reason why hundreds of players logged significant time in the game… and drove real business results for the company. Let’s take a look at some of the methods they used to promote the game to learners. Consider using some or all of these methods within your own organization to get a serious game off the ground.

Make a Scene

Do you have TV monitors around your office that display company news? What about a bulletin board? Whatever you have, use it! ExactTarget displayed advertisements like the one below all over their offices during the first round of gameplay to turn the game into a big event. They also furnished prizes to the top scores, investing a few hundred dollars in providing incentives people would actually want. Use whatever resources you have available to make your serious game a big deal.

ExactTargetBanner2

Integrate it into the workflow

ExactTarget has its very own internal social network called 3sixty that’s used for training and communications. Instead of just sticking a hyperlink to the game somewhere deep within 3sixty, you can see how ExactTarget placed the game front and center, integrating it with the rest of the product training. ExactTarget even added a cute “Meet MobileConnectGuru” section and added the weekly leaderboard to the home screen. Nice!

ExactTargetgameintranet

Keep it Consistent

Like a well-planned curriculum, a marketing campaign has to have a long tail with plenty of reinforcement. Rather than posting a banner ad or sending out a single message promoting the game, ExactTarget created multiple banners and internal advertisements to promote MobileConnect Guru for the duration of the game play experience. You’ll see that the advertisement below, while similar to the first image we showed, is different. Think of ways you can get creative and do more than the bare minimum when rolling out your game.

ExactTargetpromobanner

Don’t Forget About Email

Most professionals still live and die by the inbox. That’s a good thing for ExactTarget (they do email marketing!), and also a good thing for you when you want to promote a serious game. Another tactic ExactTarget employed to get players to register for the game and start playing was email messages. The email below is a simple HTML message, reminding people about the game and the prizes available. It’s simple and to the point.

ExactTargetpromoemail

 

If you don’t have an email client available for use internally, consider setting one up with a free provider like MailChimp. MailChimp is free to use for up to 2,000 email addresses, so chances are you can use it to send some mass messages to your team. If you are using Knowledge Guru to create your serious game, the internal email tool lets you email players once they have created an account.

Reinforcement is key

No matter what serious game you are launching, or what resources you have available to market it internally, think through how you will remind players consistently that the game is available to play. Try to plan at last 3 or 4 different emails spaced out over time, and consider using other internal tools and communications platforms to get the word out. Get managers and supervisors involved early and remember to focus on the fun.

Introducing the Knowledge Guru Tutorial Library

Knowledge Guru Tutorials

With more people using Knowledge Guru today than ever before, we’ve been hard at work creating resources to make the game creation process faster and easier.

That’s why I’m pleased to announce the new Knowledge Guru Tutorial Library. We’ve taken every how-to resource we offer and consolidated them in one location. You’ll find the admin user guide, a sample design document, and even a Powerpoint template you can use to run a design meeting.

You’ll also find a series of step by step tutorials, complete with screencasts that show you how to use the tool.

Use the library in conjunction with our free instructional webinars, held every two weeks. I’ve seen some organizations take full advantage of these webinars by sending designers to almost every session. That’s what they’re here for, folks!

Our mission is to a) show you how games and gamification can help people learn and b) make it fast and simple to deploy a game-based learning solution in your organization. We’re constantly improving Knowledge Guru, and the tutorials we offer, to accomplish that mission. If you’d like a tutorial on a specific topic, let us know.

Topics covered in the Tutorial Library

  • Designing a game and creating measurable learning objectives.
  • Using the basic features and functionality of the Game Creation Wizard.
  • Writing iterative questions, or three questions that all teach the same thing.
  • Writing effective distractors, or incorrect answers, for your questions.
  • Creating realistic and engaging scenario questions
  • Incorporating image questions in your game.
  • Launching a game to players
  • Registering new players
  • Tracking progress by learning objective, question, and individual user.

Go to Tutorial Library

DevLearn Post-Conference Resources

We had a great deal of fun talking games and gamification at DevLearn 2013. Whether you attended Sharon Boller and Karl Kapp’s learning game design workshop, visited the Knowledge Guru® booth in the Expo, or attended our learning stage session on ways you can build your own games, we are grateful for the opportunity to connect and share with you.

In the learning stage session I gave with Leanne Batchelder, Powerful Learning Games You Can Build Yourself, I called out some specific resources we would send to you after the conference. Here they are:

Scroll of Knowledge: Game-Based Learning: Why Does it Work?

This downloadable PDF outlines the four requirements needed for learning, then maps them to game elements and mechanics that match. The scroll is a great introduction to the world of games. If you’d like to see the sources and research studies associated with the scroll, contact us.

View Game Based Learning Scroll

Event Slides: Powerful Learning Games You Can Build Yourself

Our learning stage session summarized the recent research and case studies surrounding the use of games for learning, then showed you how you can use Knowledge Guru to build your own learning games. See the slides below.

Business Cases for Serious Games

5 Business Cases that Call for Serious Games

No matter what learning solution you think you want to produce, it’s important to identify the learning need (and business need) before starting a project. Do you really need a new gamification platform, or are you trying to follow the latest trends? Is mobile learning a must-have in your organization, is it just another upper management whim?

Serious games are worth a look when you want to improve performance in an organization, but one size does not fit all. In a recent blog post on GamaSutra, Andrzej Marcewski points out that “serious games” is too broad of a term to actually be useful. Saying you need a “serious game” can mean so many things, from a simulator to a teaching game to a “meaningful game” as Marcewski puts it.

Our definition of serious games is the same as what you’ll find on Wikipedia: “games with a purpose beyond pure entertainment.” This definition is indeed broad, and means a wide variety of games, with various levels of immersion, can all share the name serious game.

It’s easy to imagine how simulating an operating room or a cockpit can be used to help people practice, but what about situations where games and simulations don’t seem as obvious? We find that many organizations are faced with a problem more fundamental than helping people practice complex skills: helping employees acquire basic knowledge. For employees, it’s usually not fun to do this.

Business Cases for Serious Games

Here are five common business situations where a serious game can help:

  1. Your product launch cycles are too fast, with little time to train sales and support teams: A well-designed serious game that helps people learn product facts and features can save significant time and money over traditional training methods. Instead of emailing a series of PDFs and Powerpoints, or making people sit through a boring webinar, design a fun game that allows players to learn and memorize the material as they play.
  2. Your new hire training is boring and ineffective: Most people dread the obligatory courses and presentations they must endure when starting a new job. Other companies don’t have much of a system for training new people at all. If the onboarding process is not standardized, employees will end up with major knowledge gaps later in their jobs. Consider incorporating a serious game into new hire training to make learning company facts, policies and procedures more palatable.
  3. Customer-facing roles in your organization must know (and easily recite) large amounts of complex information: It’s important to help people acquire an in-depth knowledge base in a field, but it is also extremely helpful to show people any go-to “talking points” they need to help them perform better right away. Once again, a serious game focused on the memorization of facts can help ease this challenge.
  4. You are switching over to a new IT system that no one knows how to use: IT rollouts are a huge headache for basically everyone. Most of the time, we learn the ropes of a new system by muddling through lots of trial and error. A serious game can make the experience of learning a new system much more efficient.
  5. You must comply with a new safety certification that no one knows anything about: Once again, a serious game designed to help people memorize and retain information can help you here. Even when employees understand the importance of regulatory compliance, they rarely want to take the time to learn the ins and outs of a set of procedures. A serious game makes a ton of sense when dealing with OSHA, HIPAA and other compliance situations.

Simulations and complex games are often top of mind when people talk about serious games. There are plenty of places on the web to learn more about these types of games, while the more painstaking task of helping people acquire basic information often gets overlooked. Use the five business cases described above to inspire you as you look to find ways to apply serious games in your organization.

Our own Knowledge Guru game engine is designed to help people acquire knowledge. You can learn exactly how it works by scheduling a demo.