Gaming

What do we mean?

While traditional games aim to entertain, serious gaming focuses on learning in its widest
sense, whether that’s for simulation, training or marketing.

Why are we researching this?

The ideas delivered through our current ways of working are less likely to create genuine
change1, the contradictions in people’s demands and the impact of the recession are more
likely to disrupt the way we work than we are used to.

Gaming doesn’t provide the unique answer to these tensions. It can however make it easier
for business units to tackle these, especially from a daily frontline perspective. This is
because the most effective gaming technologies enable you to simulate real life, influence
behaviours, training, improve self help and market key messages virally.

Simulating real life

Training needs to be far more related to real life scenarios, so that people can anticipate and
prepare for working in new ways. However for anticipating crises, you can’t just base
scenarios on real life, you need to take a leap into the future.

Either way, it’s crucial to involve people who have experienced the scenario to advise you on
how design these into gaming. In terms of preventing everyday crises, combining role
playing by actors with simulation hardware may also be necessary. Videoing the simulation
or game playing can provide crucial content for feeding back, debriefing and case
conferencing. It puts learners on the spot in a safe environment. The mock ward that the
university hosts can also be used as a living lab which could be particularly beneficial for
children and adult social services.

Influencing behaviours

You need to develop games in ways that give people a better understanding of what your
team does and what your customers can do to change the community and their behaviour -
helping their friends and enabling them to compete against each other. Given that gaming
puts into perspective the wider choices that may not be so visible to us in our daily lives, it is
important that it gets people to think the game matters to them in real life.

1
Known as the “innovator’s dilemma” that an existing system won’t invest in new approaches that threaten to destroy it
 Improving self help

By using gaming to improve support for people in need, you can help them plan, act and
reconceptualise self help. In this area, actors are used to either illustrate types of behaviours
to gaming developers when designing the technology or to allow attendees to practice their
intervention skills when using the online game in a live environment. The technology in this
context would need to be customisable to changing circumstances.

Looking at self help for staff, such as when they require updating their knowledge with
regards to the new duties they may have, you need the game to bring the perception and
emotional connection between the learner and the environment they are confronted with.

Market key messages virally

To improve marketing, you need to develop the game so the scenarios can unfold gradually,
run instantly and interactively and enables people to complete a set of actions.

How can you develop this?

Before even commissioning or developing a game, it is critical to plan out the process;
work out who business units want to use gaming and what for, attract people to join the
game and train people to make the best use of gaming. As such, testing and developing
proof of concepts can provide a trusted environment where these issues can be
explored.

It’s vital to understand which audience you are targeting when developing gaming, not just in
terms of whom uses gaming but what they will benefit from using it and how they will be able
to play it. This is why we have engaged business units in areas where gaming can add the
greatest value, to identify with them what the challenges and opportunities are.

By focusing on specific issues the game can tackle, people can simulate the impacts of their
actions, so they can more easily identify with them.

Involving users in designing the game

It is important to develop a framework for people to take part – whether that’s providing
players with incentives and rewards, giving them higher status and the ability to customise
their involvement or enabling them to collect social points for online transactions.

Attract people to join the game

Sending a clear message about the work or social benefit of the game is vital given the
assumptions about gaming not being “serious – you can do this through drawing lateral
parallels with the real world. It can also work better if you mobilise groups who may be
strongly involved in a very niche area within the gaming community.

Mixing up real world and virtual gaming

Using the real world as a platform for gaming developed online tackles the challenge of
digital inclusion and gets people to have to actually change their behaviours to be able to
complete the tasks. This can help get people to play as if the scenario was really happening
rather than just role playing. This technique, called pervasive gaming reduces the distance
between seeing what you can do and how can you do something about it.

Train people to make the best use of the game

Walking through with people how to use the technology is particularly important if you want
to decide whether to develop single or multiplayer games. This can include making the game
time-limited, changing the visuals and most importantly, starting with simple instructions and
making it more complex as it develops.

What can you develop?

It is important to make the technology as universal as possible so that people feel

comfortable, such as using games consoles and GPS enabled mobile phones and most
importantly working with technology currently used in KCC for developing games.

Once business units have planned the process of developing the game, they can
actually start developing the technology, working out if this will be produced in-house or
commissioned from a gaming developer based on the different resources needed and
think up whether they can or need to mix up the virtual game with real world games that
they may already be using.

What does the analysis show us?

Now that many more groups of people use gaming and that the technology can be
integrated with other tools and content, you can involve users in designing them and bring
down the costs of development, not needing to rely on expensive games engines or virtual
worlds.

Gaming helps teach people without them noticing they’re changing their behaviour. It also
provides the flexibility to impact different learning styles – allowing players to temporarily re-
organise the tasks they need to complete amongst themselves.

Above all, it is important to make the best use of the skills developed through gaming:
entrepreneurial games are often more effective than providing guides to set up a business,
negotiation games enable people to engage in artificial conflict and confront them with
conflicting interests, while cognitive games encourage people around prevention and
rehabilitation from poor health.
 What does the analysis show us?

We want to work out how we can improve ways of working for staff and engaging the public,
whether through simulation, scenario planning or other gaming techniques.

It’s not sufficient just assuming that the techniques will work. Using analytics to understand
how people behave in the game is also critical to measure success. This can include using
background analysis to inform broad scenarios, monitoring people’s journeys through geo-
coordinates or SMS texts or simulating real time data to mimic real life conditions.

It’s also particularly important to enable the players themselves to use analytics to monitor
their own performance. For more advanced use, focusing on researchers or analysts as
users, you can link up to datasets which can be simulated within the game.

Using tools which enable people to write their experiences (or even take photos) and
chronicling their own scenarios provides feedback to measure success too.

What do we recommend?

Research and analysis

 Explore the benefits and challenges of a longitudinal study to check if gaming influences
behaviour in both the short and long term.
 Research to get better understanding into which particular behaviours may be influenced
by gaming
 Compare well-established methods of changing behaviour and the influence of gaming.

Game design principles

 Script the instructions and steps of the game before commissioning games developer
 Make time-limited sequences, where visuals can be modified and most importantly, start
with simple instructions and make them more complex as the scenario develops
 Give people tasks that focus on specific issues and ask them to make real changes both
within and outside of gaming, especially changes which involve “tough choices” (such as
restructures or budget consultation)

Techniques that enable players to

 Choose a crisis at the start of the game and map out what stakeholders they want to
simulate
 Use analytics (such as through SMS, geo-coordinates or real time data) to monitor their
performance
 Write their experiences (or even take photos) chronicling their own scenarios in the
game
 Gain incentives and rewards, customise their involvement or collect social points for
online transactions

Choice of technologies

 Focus on innovative use of existing gaming technology when deciding which

technologies to include in the build, such as games consoles, GPS phones or geocaches
 Test tools proposed in the Scenario Planning2 review in conjunction with “day in the life”
scenario-based games
 Use video embedded within the game to show people’s emotions
 Embed analytics that test how people behave during the game

Communications and engagement processes

 Focus on organising meetups around gaming to bring together local innovators in this
area with people who are newcomers
 Promote games through viral channels, such as payslips, email signatures, tickets from
speed banks, geocaches and forward to a friend tools
 Develop guides or screencasts to walk through people on how to play the game

What resources do you need?

A lot of

Some

Not a lot of

Please see this visualization to compare the different types of resources required for each
process in developing games.

2
See Scenario Planning Handover Pack
All contacts

Thanks to advice and ideas from

Claire Matthews Technology, Research & Kent County Council

Transformation, CED
Robert Bromley Technology, Research & Kent County Council
Transformation, CED
Bill Cordwell Road Safety, Kent Kent County Council
Highways Services
Hugh Martyn Leadership, Learning & Kent County Council
Development
James Barrett Primary ICT, Advisory Kent County Council
Service
Nicola Parker Training, Children’s Social Kent County Council
Services
Sarah Russell Transport Training, Kent County Council
Commercial Services
Kirsty Warboys Client Systems Training & Kent County Council
Support, Adult Learning &
Resources
Deborah Smith Public Health, CED Kent County Council
Ian Vickery Explore Kent, Environment Kent County Council
& Waste
Ian Whyte Community Safety Kent County Council
Training, Regulatory
Services
Donna Henderson Training, Libraries & Kent County Council
Archives
Holly Goring Community & Corporate Tunbridge Wells Borough
Planning Council
Al Smith Communications Newcastle City Council
Michael Norton Knowledge IDeA
Andrew Fletcher Innovation & Imperial College
Entrepreneurship
Kathryn Summers Health, Wellbeing & Canterbury Christchurch
Family University
Sara de Freitas Serious Games Institute Coventry University
Ryan Flynn Computing & Mathematics University of Greenwich
Jason Wilkes Director Innov8 Learning
Chris Thorpe Director Jaggeree
Dominic Campbell Director FutureGov
Steve Jarvis Learning Consultant SELEX
David Wilcox Director Social Reporter
Joelle Butler Student It’s Not A Game