Enter the Game
The socio-cultural phenomenon of digital gaming has become pervasive. It is no longer just the preserve of slightly awkward and pimply teenagers.
According to Fast Company it is estimated that 97% of 12-17 year olds play computer games. That fact should hardly surprise you, especially if you have children.
What is, however, more interesting, is the fact that so do almost 70% of the heads of American households.
The age of the average gamer? Not 12 to 17, but 34.
One survey found that 35% of C-level executives are video game players and 47% of gamers are woman.
According to Jane McGonical, the director of game research and development at Palo Alto–based Institute for the Future, globally 350 million people spend a combined 3 billion hours per week playing computer games.
The computer gaming sub-culture is about forty years old. This has, however, been a very busy forty years. It is estimated that gamers have spent the equivalent of 5.7 billion years gaming. McGonical puts this in some perspective by pointing out that this is how many years have elapsed since the first primate began walking upright!
The virality and stickiness of social networks is fueling this growth. DoubleClick estimates that Facebook receives 33 billion visits from its user base per month. Those users click on 31 pages per visit and stay for more than 23 minutes, generating a stunning 1.4 million user‐years per month. According to App Data, the top five social app/gaming companies on Facebook now reach a combined 430 million monthly active users.
Cityville, a popular Facebook game by Zynga went from zero users to 100 million users in 41 days!
Many business leaders are asking themselves how they could leverage this trend. More and more businesses are using game-based learning very successfully. One of the primary workplace benefits of gaming is that it can teach players effectively about complex systems through cause-and-effect realizations.
Compliance and Serious Games
Game-based learning presents various opportunities for compliance professionals. The primary barrier to succesful compliance training is learner engagement. Without engaged learners, training efforts will not yield positive results and transfer of competencies to the workplace will not take place.
Case Study: Agent Surefire
In the award-winning Information Security training game, Agent SureFire, your skills and awareness are deepened through a fun and engaging online game:
In the game you become Agent Surefire, a highly skilled cybersecurity inspector sent out to a company in distress. Your mission is to prevent a costly data security breach. You must locate and tag vulnerabilities, search for evidence and any signs of on-going activity in order to find, identify and catch the villains. Your hands-on, non-scripted experience inside the realistic environment depends on your situational awareness, complex decision making and attention to details.
This training method is easily accessible by any size organization, mapped to the most current threat vectors, designed to develop skills by way of experience, easy to play, scenario-based and engaging. It is immersive, multi-sensory, easy to absorb and customized to map to specific compliance needs.
Other compliance applications
Game-based learning is primarily used for four purposes in Compliance and Risk Training:
- Assessment Games
- Developing risk assessment skills, i.e. Hazardous Waste Classifier
- Awareness Games
- End-user awareness games, Fraud and Risk Awareness
- Simulation
- Simulating real-life scenarios, such as Disaster Response and BCP
- Simulations can show systems impact very effectively and can be very valuable for cross-silo awareness and training.
- Behavioral Competencies
- Communication, Leadership etc.
Implementation
According to Prof Andy Bytheway it is relatively easy to formulate business strategy that aims to exploit the opportunities potentially offered by information technology. In this same vain, it is also easy to spend money on perceived information technology opportunities. It is however, in between these two factors that the real challenge lays.
Ensuring that information technology adds value though in terms of strategy realisation implies a myriad of challenges (Bytheway, 2003).
“The problem lies in the space between these two, in the uncertain world of project management, systems implementation, business change management, benefits delivery, and performance management.”
A key to achieving success in the ultimate execution of business strategy is ensuring leaders introducing these initiatives remain credible and authentic.
Conclusion:
Game-based learning may be an interesting option for compliance professionals wanting to better connect with Generation X and Y learners in their organisations. It can build better learner engagement through utilising proven game mechanics.
It does however need very careful design and implementation to ensure the learning objectives are reached effectively.
References:
Bytheway, A. (2003). Exploring Information Management. Management, (August).
Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Governance; Compliance
