Ammo for Serious Games

As children, we are encouraged to play. Famed educator Maria Montessori had said of children that “play is their work”. In childhood, play is perceived as an essential learning and growth experience, but at what point does play become no longer a beneficial learning experience? Or does it continue to be an effective means of self improvement? As we “mature” and spend time in the grown-up world, playing becomes less important and something that is of little to no value from a professional growth perspective… or is it?

Recently, the Tandem team has been fortunate to engage with several clients who are not only open to the idea of serious games, but who believe in the potential of such games and are enthusiastic about implementing them to tackle organizational learning needs. However, for every one of those clients, there are many others (mostly in decision-making upper management roles) who cringe at the idea of a “game” and put the kibosh on the idea instantly for fear of employees obsessively playing Ms. Pac Man in favor of actual revenue-generating work.

One of the ways in which we can educate our clients on the value of serious games is by sharing research and published articles that support this learning strategy. In reality, play theory is a well-established concept that has been around for many years, not just in relation to childhood education, but related to adult education as well. There has also been recent research that shows the relevance of games for learning.

The following resources (mostly from Lloyd Rieber, a favorite from my grad school reading) provide validation for serious games used as learning tools, and can help educate our clients in support of the strategy in their organizations. I hope they help you in your efforts as well.

· Seriously Considering Play (Lloyd Rieber)
· The Value of Serious Play (Lloyd Rieber)
· Designing Learning Environments that Excite Serious Play (Lloyd Rieber)
· Serious Games Institute (a wealth of info; I’d suggest starting in the Research section)
· How are Games Educational? Learning Theories Embodied in Games (Katrin Becker) (love the parallels drawn to Gagne’s Nine Events)

If none of these resources are sufficiently convincing, try reiterating the words of one of our clients: “Having employees spending too much time on training efforts would be a great problem to have to address.”

What other tools and resources do YOU use to support the use of serious games to meet learning goals? I’d love to hear from you!