Games at Work? Are You Serious?

2 comments Written on February 11th, 2010 by
Categories: Digital Media
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INNOV8 Cast

The Cast of INNOV8

I had the opportunity to attend my first Triangle Interactive Marketing Association (@TIMA_NC) meeting this week.  The speaker was Phaedra Boinodiris, Serious Games Program Manager from IBM.  Now I have to admit when I saw her title I wanted to ask her, “seriously this is your title?” But after hearing her present at the meeting I was like seriously, how do I get a job like that?

So what are serious games?  Phaedra explained that serious games leverage gaming technology to teach complex ideas, specifically business processes.  Basically serous games allow students and professionals to hone their problem solving skills in a compelling and familiar video game format.  IBM’s game is called INNOV8, a business process management simulation game.  Currently it is being used in over 1,000 schools and universities.  The University of Southern California Marshall School of Business MBA program has even incorporated INNOV8 into its curriculum.

Other examples included Farmers Insurance that used INNOV8 to train over 12,000 call center agents annually.  Serious games have applications in other business areas including marketing, leadership, on-boarding new staff and play@work.  I had to ask Phaedra what play@work meant and it deals with teamwork initiatives and programs.  IBM is even developing custom games for its customers.

Take a look for yourself at the IBM web site where you can play INNOV8 online at: http://www-01.ibm.com/software/solutions/soa/innov8/index.html. You can follow Phaedra at @INNOV8game

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About the Author: Brian McDonald
http://www.squarejawmedia.com
Brian McDonald started Square Jaw Media to document strategies and techniques he had used over his experience working in marketing and communications since 1990. During this time Brian wrote about many of the exciting Raleigh social media events where great knowledge was being shared and tries to share some of the tips and tricks.
  • http://twitter.com/johnvlane John Lane

    I'm glad you got to see Phaedra speak — she knows her stuff. And at the risk of looking like I'm pimping our own stuff (that's only part of it ;-), here's a link to some background info about the power of Serious Games for both marketing and education. It's something we'll start to see more and more of as the “gaming generation” comes of business age.

    Thanks for the post!

  • http://squarejawmedia.com Brian McDonald

    Yes she was really good and was expert in her field. I like the video you did and was pleased to see your logo at the end! Nice branding!