CHANGING THE GAME

How Video Games are Transforming the Future of Business

By David Edery and Ethan Mollick.

Book. 219 pages. FT Press, 2008.

Changing the Game not only gives you fun stories to retell at the water cooler. With a little endnote browsing, you can find the academic research, journal articles, and popular magazine stories that substantiate claims you can use for a business case to create a serious game. The point of the game isn't just to have fun; it's to have fun and help your business initiative succeed.

In a nutshell, Changing the Game:

• Offers case studies of online games used for business purposes,
• Is a rare blend of academic research and information for practitioners
• Could be a game-changer for T&D (training and development).

Using games to drive home facts and broad concepts has been a favorite technique of teachers since the time of Socrates. Now the Internet has business executives intrigued by the potential of video game-like learning activities to accomplish tactical and strategic corporate objectives.

The current “craze for online game-based learning” has altered the risk-reward ratio of sponsoring a game. The serious attention game aficionados and professional groups such as the eLearning Guild have given to the issue has slowly tilted training executive opinion in favor of experimenting with Internet-delivered games.

A BUSINESS ANGLE ON ONLINE GAME PLAY

Changing the Game will have a great impact on the interest in games for business training. This book describes the game-based learning phenomenon in such expert and objective detail that if trainers have not previously considered funding a game or simulation, they will after reading it.

Video and Internet games have an aura and power that capture our attention and our time. Many of us have anxiously watched our children, controller in hand, clicking away the hours. But children aren't the only gamers; a growing number of corporate managers have MMORPG (massively multiplayer game) accounts.

Whether through observation or personal experience, we know intuitively there is something powerful about video games. Witness how children and adults persevere with games that have a steep learning curve and seek to master multiple levels of fun. Academics have researched this power and the game industry’s use of learning principles to ensure their video games win market share and thrive.

Video games need to be challenging and have didactic components to survive; in other words, they need to teach and keep the gamer constantly at the edge of his or her competence. Powerful learning principles are in play.

Edery and Mollick describe how, over the past several years, marketers and trainers have created sophisticated games of all kinds that help accomplish business objectives. Changing the Game is the first large-scale attempt at documenting the success of this phenomenon in the business world. It is also a business case for how to profit from online games.

I AM A BELIEVER

Full disclosure: I drink the Kool-Aid. I recently attended Games, Learning, and Society classes as part of my University of Wisconsin Ph.D. program and have seen up close the effort of academics to theorize and conceptualize the secret ingredient of video games. In addition, I run a small development shop that builds educational Flash games for both adults and children.

Can video game-like activities help students learn better and faster? Can understanding how video games work help designers harness their educational power? Academics think it is possible. So for me personally, Changing the Game is potentially a manifesto. It perfectly outlines both contemporary research (from an academic perspective) and provides case studies of how games have been created for businesses profit.

The authors, one an insider at Microsoft and the other a MIT School of Management researcher, stay true to the “business angle”--but thankfully stay away from excessive geekiness. In the words of one of the authors, FT Press (Financial Times) was their ideal publisher because they could create a business book that utilizes an academic “End Notes style” and yet include business stories to ensure that it would be an “airport read.”

Thus, the chapters focus on topics important to practitioners--Customers, Employees, and the Future of Business--but they also supply prolific footnotes. You will not find a lot of software specifics since, as Mollick says, “we did not want to date our work with a discussion of technologies used.” Smart.

Nevertheless, the book covers a wide continuum of game uses and types, even mentioning the eLearning Guild's research report on training games.

DOCUMENTED CASE STUDIES

What Mollick and Edery do that the Guild report does not is provide training executives with comprehensive documentation of success stories covering multiple game genres. Corporate training executives now have a single source for facts and case examples (ammunition, so to speak) to assist in the argument to justify investment in gaming genres.

Let’s look at each section and a few examples of what I am talking about. First, the authors try to help you understand why games matter in the business world. They make the profound argument that learning is not perceived as “work” in the context of a game or “that all work must not necessarily mean ‘no play.’” They stay focused on using success stories to demonstrate what techniques make games special—interactive, immersive, and fun—and what that means for business.

The success stories are organized around games used to reach and influence customers, employees, and the future of business itself. Part One, for example, uses Burger King, Nike, GM, and a litany of Fortune 500 companies that have arranged for product placements in commercial games.

“Game Mods” and unique games that use commercial engines are described. A decision grid the authors provide will help executives evaluate how much to invest in a game. The authors include discussion of online virtual worlds like Second Life and ARG (Alternative Reality Games) and provide a rationale for why certain ARGs succeed.

Part Two is ideally suited for corporate training managers. It details the phenomenal success of America’s Army as a military recruiting tool and gives plenty of actionable advice such as how much money game developers are paid. The authors believe that employee training is one of the best investments a business can make and question why only $150 million of the $46 billion spent on training each year goes to electronic games.

Then the authors set out to prove the need to change, starting with the notion that games in business may need a different name like “serious games” or better yet "immersive learning systems." Whether it’s teaching about working in teams (a game from Harvard requiring a climb of Everest), thinking in systems (a game called Peacemaker), or learning from virtual experience (“truck drivers who enroll in realistic driving games decrease accident rates by 50%”), the authors show that investment in games provides quantifiable results. Again, the authors explain what game mechanics make these training tools work.

The final section of the book takes a look at how game mechanics can be used to increase worker productivity, how innovative discoveries can be coaxed from customers, and how games can harness the collective knowledge of millions of people (example: Google’s image labeling project).

NO HYPE?

Does this book separate the current hype surrounding game-based learning from true successes and failures?

I’m not so sure, as it does not take a critical look at the phenomenon. There is no fair and balanced look at the dollars that have gone into failed projects. Or the millions of dollars of taxpayer-funded research grants for idiosyncratic video game topics. By citing stories found in trade magazines, the book could serve to strengthen the fad to include anything “game-like” into online learning, regardless of quality.