Designing Game-Based Learning to Enhance Employee Work Life

Many years ago, when I was first introduced to scrum, I wasso excited that there was a philosophy out there that considered an employee’swork life as something to enhance. I could not believe what I wasreading: “Scrum will consistently enhance individual development andquality of life” (The Scrum Papers).Unfortunately, this failed to be true, but the failure has nothing to do withscrum. It has a lot to do with the way it is implemented.

As an agile coach and trainer, I see development teamsstruggle to meet the demands on them. I have had calls where teams aredescribed as totally unmotivated, as not knowing what they are doing, as unproductive,and the list goes on. Many times I am brought in to find the cause, but when Ifind it I can only apply short-term techniques, because teams are not given thetime they need.

I know that the lack of motivation, lack of cohesiveness,and lack of performance are the symptoms and not the root causes. The problemis not due to lack of will; it is due to a series of factors that influenceperformance. One of these is lack of soft skills, and while scrum and otheragile practices can make some improvement if applied correctly, it will not changethe makeup of your team. These soft skills need time to be taught and nurtured—timemany transitions do not give teams. With the problem in mind, I searched for asolution. The need to do more to help the teams I come across every day droveme to design my first game.

Game-based learning

I know games are not a traditional solution, but sendingteams to team-building exercises once a year just does not solve the problem.Sure, they have fun and will learn a thing or two, but when they get back towork, everything is back to being the way it was.

I decided on game-based learning because it couldcontinuously reinforce soft skills while improving the quality of the team’swork life. I wanted teams to look forward to coming into work, and not dreadthe very idea. I wanted a place where teams would be able to escape.

I took threemain steps in designing my game.

The problem

To start my game, I revisited all the reasons why I wantedto endeavor in this path, in order to maintain focus and stay true to what Iwas trying to solve. I wanted something that could help make an agiletransition for individuals and organizations easier.This meant creating something to help teams learn how to work together. Itis very easy to lose sight of what you are doing when designing your game.There are lots of fun things you may want, and can execute, but that will notnecessarily get you to the result you want within a budget.

The clearer you have in mind the problem you are trying tosolve, the more likely you will keep on track. Write it down and post it whereyou can see it.

Storyline

The storyline helped me take the game to where I wanted. It maynot be an award-winning storyline, but it has the elements I needed to createthe escape environment I wanted—one in which team members could escape and befree to be themselves, make mistakes, and learn from them.

I created the story of a tribal quest and named the tribesomething symbolic of the teams’ quest. “Akeakami” in Polynesian is “a seekerof wisdom.” I included in this quest the necessary elements of life tosymbolically relate to work life.

I debated with myself whether to add design beforestoryline, because I really did both at the same time. Much like in agile, Iproduced just enough of a storyline to get to designing. I did not want to waita year to have my game out.

As we moved further into design, I continued to develop thestoryline. Don’t get too caught up in getting your story perfect.

Designing

Here is where all the thinking about what you are trying tosolve comes in handy. You can get lost in the landscape of games, and there areplenty of elements to consider, ranging from puzzle games to simulation games.Let’s go over a few I considered:

• Puzzle games are brain games
• Decision-based games are choice-driven games;the player’s decision lays out the path
• Combat games are all about fighting opponents
• Adventure games use puzzle-like features and astory to fill in characters
• Simulation games use real-world equipment totrain professionals
• Multiplayer games allow players all over theworld to play within the same “room”

Decisions, decisions!

In my case, I wanted to solve team problems, so for me itwas a no-brainer to make a multiplayer game to allow teams all over the worldto play together. You see, in a world where teams are distributed, this is a “must-have.”But I also wanted to make teams think, so I included puzzle features, forcingteams to think about how they will reach the goal of each level.

Another must-have for me was adventure. I wanted to createan atmosphere where teams could lose themselves, so I created a story tosupport the design.

I checked the decisions against my goals in case I missedanything. These were my goals:

• Force teamsto work together—place them in the same virtual room
• Forcecollaboration—game mechanics need to enforce this
• Forceteams to communicate—game must allow teams to be in the same virtual roomto communicate
• Challengeand motivate teams—game must have a puzzle to challenge teams
• Removethem from their current environment—game must have a storyline

With these decisions made, I needed to fill in all themissing pieces. Now that I could place a team in the same room, what would theybe doing? They would be solving a puzzle, but by itself that was not enough.

I relied on my coaching and training skills to guide me therest of the way. You see, when I teach scrum and other agile practices, I usegamification similar to what Jane McGonigaldoes on TED talks.(If you have not heard her, you should look her up; her talks are educationaland she is awesome.) I use quick games that correct team behaviors. An example of this isa ball game that places managers around a circle; they are given certain rulesand time to complete. Depending on what I want to drive in, I change up thegame. This could mean making rule changes on the spot. Its purpose is to createempathy for a team and to show how it impacts a team’s performance.

The next step is creatingrules that will force teams to collaborate. For example, the game will notstart without all the team players ready, and the game will not end until allthe team members have, in the case of my game, reached the “crystals of life.”Rules help drive the game to serve your goals.

I also placed atimer in each session, making the game more challenging, but it served anotherpurpose. I wanted the game to continue to be played so that it would reinforcethese soft skills, but as I mentioned, earlier teams are not given much time tolearn to work together. What I did was time-box each level into three to five minutes.This meant teams could play a game quickly before a scrum daily, or aretrospective, or any meeting without impacting their work.

How will you reward the learner?

The other elementthat you need to consider when designing is a reward system. You need to keep teammembers motivated and coming back to play. In our game, we use two forms ofrewards: badges and rank rewards. Players obtain badges for completing a leveland for being the best at a specific skill. For example, the best catcher orthrower earns that particular badge.

When using rank,the player acquires points for each action. I had to be careful here because Idid not want team members within the same team to compete against each other.Competition is healthy, but when you want to form a cohesive team, you don’twant team members competing against each other. So I decided to reward points tothe players who helped their team members, and when the whole team obtains acertain amount of points, they are rewarded with the highest badge. If thereare multiple teams, the “best team” badge is earned by the team thatcollaborates the most; this could go a long way toward getting a littlecompetition across teams going. From an agile transition, it is a great way toget momentum!

What does my gamelook like in play? Here is a video of the first version of the game (it is adesktop version); this is the fourth time this team played this game—it tookthem that many tries to succeed. You can also download a free version of ournew game, Akeakami Quest, for iOS or Android.

I hope my experience gets you on your way todesigning your first game. Again, think about what your minimum viable featuresare, your must-haves. Don’t try to get everything in the game all at once.Stick to what you are trying to solve.