What do you think about educational learning games?

"Enhance your Employee Training with Games - learn from success".  What do you think? Applying Informal Learning Using a Social Gaming Platform by Eran Gal & Irad Eichler : Learning Solutions Magazine

• Answer:

  Hi, gamedev here with a prior career in enterprise level management. Putting game mechanics into other fields is a topic I'm passionate about. Specifically, passionate that it should NOT be considered "games". Yes, you will get some metic boost. Yes, your employees will learn a bit faster. But--- the application of doing so has been wrapped into a consultant driven circle-jerk media hype process. "Improving your employee training with games" is simply saying "improve your employee training with incentives". Consultants have simply found a way to rebrand and market an age-old business process. It's really nothing different than what most stable businesses are already doing. People are incentivized in many ways. Reward Kinship Achievement Recognition Social status Pay These are psychological attunements which some individuals gravitate towards. Some will work extremely diligently when placed in a team environment. Some will work very hard in a competitive environment. Some employees will bandwagon together when you highlight your competing enemies. People are psychologically attuned for this stuff. Some love war, conflict, repression of others --- it's not all healthy. Some love being in a team, focusing on perfection, or getting recognition. Games are similar, but shouldn't be considered the holy grail, some magical solution. Consultants will want you to think its a magical solution. Because some, not all consultants, hope that you stay uneducated so they can take your money (and make a living with it). Games are similar because it allows people to live these psychological attunements through activities of collection, fantasy narratives, clearly labeling the bad guys, or creating a scenario which picks up on your genetic demand for vengeance. Bottomline, it's not games --- but psychology. If a consultant walks through the door the doesn't de-label games into psychology within a few moments, I'd kick them out. Because at that point they might be abusing the marketing hype but not really know what they are talking about. Psychological incentives are different for everyone. They might be filling the same job tasks, but the psychology of what makes them diligent could be opposite alignments. When you apply psychological incentives you need to read and understand your employees' mind-scape. What makes them tick? You then need to evaluate if specific policy changes will have a counter-productive affect on the work workforce as a whole. Take for example: Setting up a weekly reward for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place for getting the greatest sales numbers. This creates a competitive environment. Your immediately using psychology to produce greater results. Take a counter example; Setting up a weekly reward for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place for artists under a creative job position. This would pull down the team morale. It doesn't make sense for a creative workforce. You may have a mixed-bag of employees with varing psychological attunements. Perhaps you have a sales team, but within it you have 5 individuals. 3 are competitive. 1 is aligned with kinship. 1 wants recognition. If you setup a competitive environment you will have 3 good employees and 2 that are depressed about their performance over and over again. You can't make someone that isn't competitive into a competitive person. You need to find ways of pushing greater work by rotating events, planning thank you lunch meetings, or establishing a common enemy for the team. Some people are psychologically attuned to 2-4 types of psychological incentives. The key is to engage and know your employees at a personal level. I stand firm, if the consultant demystifies "games" as "psychology", then they might be cool to work with. If they don't, I'd kick them out.