WHEN PLAYING VIDEO GAMES AT THE OFFICE IS

GOOD FOR BUSINESS

Companies are increasingly turning to specialized video games to train their
employees on how to sell, manage and lead. It is largely taking the place of now
outdated e-learning


By Thomas Monnerais
LE MONDE/Worldcrunch

PARIS - What if video games turned out to be just the latest job-training tool? Top
French companies BNP Paribas, Orange, Alcatel-Lucent, and Thales have joined
others around the world in using so-called serious games, a burgeoning video game
genre with pedagogical ends, in order to train their sales staff and managers.

Employees of BNP Paribas are now learning to better manage evaluation interviews
in a virtual way. Seated in front of their computer screens, they guide an avatar,
dressed-up as a manager either a chicly-dressed woman or a blue-suited man
giving it certain attitudes to take during the course of a meeting. If he intends to
reprimand his virtual employee, he then becomes nervous, sinking down into his
chair, crossing his arms as a sign of rebellion. It all looks pretty believable.

The use of video games for business purposes is not a new phenomenon. The
organization of orientation courses and other role-playing games has often been
viewed as an excellent way to reinforce the cohesion of teams, and to help present
the business under a different light, explains Olivier Mauco, a researcher at the
University of Paris, Sorbonne-Paris I, who has a blog about ideology in video games.

However, at Renault, video games have revolutionized the training of sales people,
otherwise resistant to any type of training, which they see as useless and
bothersome. Serious games also highlight the relative failure of e-learning: the
system with which the learner reads theoretical texts on a screen is simply not
convincing.

We quickly realized that, despite initial enthusiasm, e-learning was not an ideal
solution, says Gil Simoncini, the head of Renault Academy, the training center for
the automobile company. More than 70% of employees were not finishing the texts,
which were often uninviting and lacking any sort of interactivity.

With serious games, employees want to stick with it. In the Algerian division of
Renault, for example, sales departments organize tournaments. The one with the
best score wins an additional month of salary. Video games promote a spirit of
competition and emulation among the sales team, says Damian Nolan, commercial
director of Daesign, a traditional game designer that has moved into serious games
development.

Simoncini notes that there was some resistance in certain countries, having to
convince company chiefs that they werent wasting money or time.

But does it work?

Serious games may fascinate, but are they effective? A good salesperson in a
serious game is a good salesperson in reality. It is rare to see a poor salesperson
achieve high scores, says Simoncini. But these games also promote learning by
failure. Its not uncommon to see some purposefully chase away a client. According
to Simoncini, some would even like to virtually kill someone. The game allows errors
to be made in order to measure the consequences.

The limit, of course, is that it does not teach by itself. We must be aware of the myth
of self-training. Just because its a video game doesnt mean that an addiction will
develop. People are not going to give up their free time in order to train themselves,
says Mauco, himself an author of a serious game.

Simoncini concurs: It is imperative that someone be next to [the trainee] in order to
bring to life the video game and offer pedagogical lessons.

How are these games made? At Daesign, they are the result of a collaboration
between a business sponsor and a design team, also composed of experts in
management and communication. But its the client who decides the situations,
says Nolan, owner of Daesign.

Serious games are meant to standardize the different behaviours of employees, but
may also drive them to a childish level. The real problem is that the learners tend to
start believing it all a bit too much, says Mauco. The fear of game over, without a
doubt.

Read the original article in French