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.