Serious Games And The Japanese Toilet: Introduction The Japanese are famous for perfecting designs. Sometimes they may go a bit too far -who needs a toilet seat with an MP3 player? However, there is a Japanese seat that is particularly fascinating. It basically takes the traditional Western bowl and pushes the concept a bit further. This is how it works. Once you flush, you can use a little faucet to wash your hands with the water that fills the tank. Thus, the Japanese toilet is clever, elegant and ecological at the same time. It manages to deliver extra performance simply by changing a couple of parts of the original design. If we want our designs to be useful and to stand out we need to apply the same philosophy to serious games. Their reach needs to be extended beyond their original audience in order to deliver more than what they were originally designed for.
The phone rings at your game development studio. You pick up the receiver and listen to the feeble, desperate voice of some corporate big fish uttering the four magic words: "We need a serious game." Chances are that your new client is not really very sure what a serious game actually is. She probably made the decision after reading an article on the subject and the bulb went off: "If I could somehow harness the untapped power of a thousand games, I would rule the Universe!" Ok, maybe that is not what exactly what she thought but what is sure is that nobody commissions a serious game just for the sake of it. If a client calls you it is because she has a problem that needs to be solved. In the traditional gaming industry, developers know that you can sell a game just crafted around cool graphics, a nice IP or great gameplay -or, hopefully for players, all of the above. In the business world, all that clients care about are results that can be clearly measured. For example, I recently visited the Beit Berl College, which recently launched Israel's first game development academic program. They told me that they recently got a call from a factory owner looking for a solution for his problem. His factory employs a small set of workers in order to supervise the machinery. Most of the time, the machines work fine, so the workers do not have much to do, except waiting until something goes wrong and fix it. Because of this, workers get bored and drowsy... which is a safety hazard. The man was hoping that they could play some sort of video game that was good enough to keep them awake but not so addictive that they would totally forget about their work. I am not sure if such game actually can be conceived but as design challenges go, you have to agree that it is a pretty unusual one! Multi-Purpose Design Challenges? As this example shows, companies can commission serious games for quite unexpected purposes. However, most of the time their main goal is to be able to train employees in both an effective and engaging way. By definition, training accomplishes short-term goals: it helps employees to learn or practice a new skill. If your game manages to deliver exactly that, then your job is done. Unless, of course, that you want to deliver 110%. That extra 10% is not about training but deals with long term goals: it can deal with work culture, public relations and even education, or hopefully all of the above. In addition to death and taxes, there is something else that you can bet on: people love to see their lives on the media. If you ever watched a TV and saw images of your neighborhood, your workplace or of some friend or family, then you know what I am talking about. Multiply that feeling by ten thousands and you will understand what most people experience when they see something related to their everyday life in a video game. Trust me: you may think that you are creating a serious training game for new employees, but the fact is that your game is likely to be played by every single employee and potentially their families and their friends. Chances are that it will play a PR role too, and may be shown to the company's clients and visitors. So, it is better to design your serious game with your core audience in mind but without forgetting that there is a secondary audience that you can also cater to. Designing Serious Games For All Of course, your client will never think beforehand about these secondary players, because she will likely be focusing on the training problem that she needs to solve. This is your opportunity to make her realize that your serious game can serve two purposes at the same time: training employees but also educating a broader, secondary audience about the company's culture. It is a win-win situation for both of you. Your client not only solves her training problem but also benefits from a tool that can convey some of her company's values. As a developer, you also win because chances are that the client can get excited about this secondary use of the game and may expand the budget a little bit. If that does not happen, do not worry. After she sees with her own eyes how excited workers get when they get to play a game about their own jobs, your client will likely give it a second thought the next time that she commissions a game. The main design advice that I can provide is that you should focus on the game's main purpose without forgetting that the game is likely to be played by a larger audience. Serious games serve both as tools and as messages and as long that you keep that in mind, your game can deliver that extra 10%. What follows are some other design considerations. Minigames: This is the most obvious way to expand the reach of your project. You can repurpose some of the production assets into small, company-themed minigames. In most middle to large-sized projects, this should not take more than a few extra days of work and, if the games are cleverly done, they can be a very appreciated, unexpected bonus feature. Think socially: Something went terribly wrong in the early video game age. The fact is that play has always been naturally multiplayer. However, both because of technical and cultural reasons, the default video game playing mode has been single player mode. Thankfully, this trend is changing. Sadly, our ideas about learning change more slowly. Most of the time, when we think of a student, we picture this idea somebody sitting alone with his book, working alone. Of course, this does not have to be like this. Even though it is unlikely that your client will accept a multiplayer-only training game, try to convince her of allowing both playing modes. The design rule of thumb is that video games are pretty much like sex: you can do it by yourself but it is much more fun when done with somebody else! Focus on the environment: If you are trying to recreate the life of the company, focus on the workspace rather than on the people. It may be tempting to represent actual employees but I strongly advise against it (and bosses are specially a big no-no, see below.) Wendy, the office manager may seem like an ideal candidate for becoming a little avatar that greets you in the game. However, it may be unknown to both you and the management that she is pretty much hated by 46.3% of the workforce. Even worse, Wendy could eventually be fired from the company after an awful, shameful incident that everybody would try to forget. It would be hard to forget about her if her face keeps popping up in the training game. Instead, try to incorporate elements from the workspace into the game. This does not necessarily mean that you must realistically model the actual architecture. Try to do some research at to what are the little details that employees like about the physical space where they work. It could be the paintings, the plants or the view through the window. Talk to the workers, pay attention to their behavior and you will be able to create a game that will make them feel at home, I mean, at work. Never play with your boss!: If your client is a gamer and insists that she would love to be included on the game as a character on the game, do whatever it takes to dissuade her. Even though it would give a whole new sense to the term "boss level", it is not a good idea. Video games are about experimentation and, trust me, players can be very creative and will always find a way to interact in not-so-kind ways with authority. So, next time that you embark on the adventure of creating a serious game, remember that games are still rare in the workplace so they will gather much more attention than originally expected. They will be played by far more people than initially intended. That is an opportunity for taking the game an extra step further and using it not just as a training tool but also as a communication device. There is something magical to be able to play within a virtual model of your workspace. After all, video games are still more likely to show alien or fantasy worlds rather that your own everyday life. A serious game can work as a virtual mirror where players see themselves and, hopefully, learn more about their world and their own lives. "Hey, look, I'm on TV" suddenly became so 20th century...
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This Japanese toilet offers an unexpected bonus: its clever design allows people to wash their hands with the water that will fill up the tank. Deliver more than expected, in an elegant way: this design principle also applies to serious games.
