This week we're joined by Eric Berget and Rose Benedicks as they discuss the origins, process, and concept of Serious Games. We take a deep dive into what might be the most exciting new trend in Learning and Development.

If you'd like to know more about Serious Games, Rose will be doing a presentation Oct 30th for The Training Industry. Sign up here: https://trainingindustry.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN__2HUfOZ4Te2nVYF832lsGQ#/registration

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Welcome back to Learning Matters. I'm Doug Wooldridge, your host. And today we're joined by Rose Benedicts, the VP of Operations for TTC Innovations, as well as Eric Burgett, who is our Creative Solutions Lead. And they're going to talk about all things serious games. Let's get to the show. Thank you guys so much for joining the podcast. Eric, thanks for coming back. Rose, welcome. Let's start off with this. So I think this is probably the first question that folks have when they think about this, but

What do mean by serious games and how did you get into the business of developing serious games?

Well, I'll take it. I've got a very patchy response about what serious games are. So serious games, if you look up an actual definition, it's going to tell you that they're games that are for a purpose other than just play, which means that serious games in our industry is a subset of serious games. So that's important to understand. Serious games can be anything. They can be a sport game preparing you for war. They can be a game in a classroom teaching you to read. It can be

all kinds of things. Our subset is specifically around adult learning, workplace learning, career learning, growth and development learning done via games. So it's a subset of a larger thing called serious games. Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah. And if you think about, you know, just games in general, you know, games can be for the sake of entertainment. And like that is their objective is to have fun and to play.

within this, like you said, there is a learning objective. There is something to be educated on and to feel that advancement in some sort of learning objective. And so that's kind of how we define it. And how did you take the concept and start implementing it on the Dash side of things? I I think in little ways,

you know, within a more traditional e-learning module, there'd be little interactions where I would say that would be most often the case where, you know, we'd have some sort of training module that followed fairly traditional, you know, kind of informational modes of e-learning. And then there might be some element of the test at the end instead of just that standard multiple choice, it says, okay, let's play.

in a way that's more immersive, more realistic. And, you know, it's a little bit of a stretch in the word of, is this a game or an interaction? But, you know, my desire was to try to pull our ideas toward that. And so I think we early on kind of dabbled a little bit, you know, a slide or two here, kind of baked into a more traditional e-learning module. Gotcha. sorry to interrupt you, Doug. No, go right ahead.

A really interesting thing happened where we were interested, we had to find a client who's interested too, right? And that just doesn't just mean interested for the sake of doing something immersive and fun, interested but had the right use case, right? They were using it for more than just that engagement factor. So things that you can't learn unless you experience scenarios again and again with nuanced changes over time. So we had to find a client for whom that's the right solution. And once we did it, we pitched it and then we can...

you know, they were amenable, they were excited about it. So we came together on it. That's how it originally started. And I think I think it was helpful. I ironically, it was in the the process of play to that we that we engaged in that conversation because, you know, a member of a co-worker mind TJ also was interested in this and we'd have some back and forth ideas. And we, you know, we talk about, wish, you know, I wish clients would ask for this type of thing more. Well, you know, in one time,

he created a tire repair game. A client didn't ask for that, but just in a sense to see like, what can we do a storyline to make this sort of process a game, a clickable element, and then things that a little sandbox that a person can go through and see, okay, did you do all the steps correctly? And if you don't.

and you hit drive away and you didn't tighten up the lug bolts. The thing flies off and the tire flies off. It's sort of a playful, just little miniature experiment. And then the same with escape rooms. It didn't begin with a client necessarily coming and saying, this is my idea for what we should do. We just played in Storyline and said, escape rooms in the last five, 10 years have really kind of taken off in real world, but also

you you start to see different little click and reveal games and different apps and things like that that are really fun. so, you know, playing with Storyline, you think, wonder, we could basically make this game that's very similar to something I've played on my iPhone, you know, those little click and reveal games in Storyline. And so we just, made like a little proof of concept mostly for our own fun when we had a little downtime between projects and then put that on the website to say,

Hey, this is a capability. like, like Rosette, you know, then eventually there was some, dialogue with clients that had similar ideas. Yeah. And how do you, how do you distinguish with clients the difference between what a lot of people call just gamification in serious games? Yeah. Really good question. The fundamental, like if you want us to definition that helps you clear it.

It's that gamification is adding game elements into a traditional learning experience. Whereas serious games are a game itself that's built on learning. Gotcha. one of the big differences from an L &D perspective is the objective. So if you have an objective like be able to negotiate a contract, you're not going to learn that through a linear, here's what a contract is. Here are some.

methods and some theories about negotiation here, you know, you're not gonna you're not gonna get it from that kind of information, but you would get it if you if you had an experience if there was a game if it was negotiate these contracts. yeah, love that idea of it as an experience. Yes. One of our innovators Rob Kessler asked he's interested in the conceptual phase of the game. So how that impacts the end user design.

and the UI. And I think we can kind of touch a little bit on both sides of this. So from the learner's perspective, but also from someone who is just getting into designing these type of things. Eric, I was going to say you and I talked about this, go right ahead. I think it's really significant for these types of learning experiences and what I would call, there's a few different ways to kind of describe this phase.

but the conceptual side, like the ideation, even backing up to a phrase that Rose has used is like the art of the possible, which we've engaged in where, you know, we have had times where a client has come with a very, you know, fairly mature vision of what they wanted the game to be. We've also had clients that just say, I want to do something creative. I think there might be a game here.

And then that's, and then that's like, and a budget and then it says like, Hey, what can we do? And I think that's where the art of the possible comes in to say, from a conceptual standpoint, let's, let's just, you know, have an open dialogue with creative space to ideate brainstorm and think about like, what's here, what are you after? Like, and then dive on that, like, what are you really after? and, sometimes that takes a while that you can't just

write that in an email and say, here's the bullet points of the objectives. But just to kind of listen and say, like, what's the story here in the context of, of, you know, what we're after. And then, just in that organic conversation, ideas start to emerge of different ideas of games. Like, well, what if we did this or, well, what if, what if we put it in this kind of scenario and just start to sketch out, sketch out ideas just merely on the idea level. then.

phasing into the creative and I think, you know, knowing Rob, starting to visualize that, like, what does that look like? And, you know, that's my role in a lot of these games where as a creative director, trying to sketch out the visual elements and components that'll go into it. And like, and then how does that play with the basic mechanics? And that's where it's just jump into Photoshop, you know,

try to find the core components visually that sort of set the tone of the game and then set the basic mechanic just to make sure like, how does this work? Does it match those original ideas that we had when we were in a room together ideating? And does this, and then getting back to the client to see like, how is this resonating with you? Does this feel like we're on the right track? Is this gonna be what we're after? Gotcha. And you've mentioned

Articulate as well as Photoshop, are there any other tools that you're using to develop these games? We do most of it in in Articulate, which is actually way more powerful than I think a lot of people realize. You have to have empathy for the software, right? have to know software is able to do and like how you can maybe coerce it into doing something else without fundamentally breaking it, right? Yes, we're going outside the bounds. You end up with a mess that you can't do maintenance on.

Do you, so predominantly storyline. Now I have seen and I've worked at companies that do use Unity or so on and you could certainly do that, but make sure that you're not hitting a thumbtack with a sledgehammer, right? Yes. So can I just say one, can I go back to the previous question, Doug? I hope this isn't too long. no worries. I think there's something really, really great about what Rob is asking about the conceptual side because oftentimes in the industry we get

We almost intake orders from clients, not all the time. Sometimes they're asking us to work on analysis or come to us with, know, and say we need your help figuring out what the widget is. But often you get a solid idea and you have a vision. That doesn't necessarily happen when you're working with serious games. And there are ways that we can find some parameters to help us start anchor on what we can think about. One of the tenants of a CERVED experience is to make it realistic, but not real.

Right, because you make it fundamentally real. You're never going to hit the nail on the head. People are going to be like, no, that's not realistic. That doesn't really happen. But if you make it realistic, right, you have that room to play. And one of the questions that falls out from that are things like. Do we want to make this real life or do we want to make this more metaphorical? They can start with questions like that. That helped me that conceptualized phrase in things, excuse me, to land the plane. And how do you balance the

I'm sure it's kind of like walking a tightrope a little bit with we want to make this entertaining, but we also want to get across everything that needs to get across to the learner as far as an educational side of things. Well, OK, to that I would say you're probably looking at a blended solution. Like a game, a serious game doesn't necessarily replace knowledge based learning or procedural learning, right? Like at some point you have to be aware of that. can't, you know, but.

You can play with how that looks in a serious game or an experience, you should say, that happens across blended learning. It might be that you embed those procedural things into the game. Like you're getting a game and then you have to go learn something that's relevant at that moment in the game. Or you can do it more traditionally and build on it and scaffold. And so you're gonna start with this information and we'll end with some sort of capstone experience. But it's not a game, a serious game is not right for every objective. It's great for objectives that are big and nuanced.

Yeah, and I'm testing this theory out as we go. But what would you think of the idea that just as a rule of thumb, in terms of learning potential, think games have a greater ability to go kind of deeper into a narrow objective, where you have a richer learning experience of that concept. But in terms of breadth, like you're saying, it's not going to be as effective in terms of

being able to hit 12 different objectives or kind of have this sequence of information or a quantity of information. But in terms of depth or maybe not so much depth as like actual lasting potential of that learning of that idea, like that memory hook is going to be solid. And that'll be something that you can easily come back to because you have this moment in time of a game experience to that, that really specific objective.

I think as a general rule, think that's probably where you find games to be effective. Yeah, I think you're probably right. Do you guys see this as the future of L &D where you have serious games blended with more standard style of learning so that, like you said, you're able to get those memory hooks and then also have that directly

have people remember, yes, and then that was directly related to this other packet of information that I would normally just kind of read through and go through and then just in one ear out the other type of thing. Yeah, this is an interesting question because it's a really big question. It's got a really big answer because there's so many things that touch it, right? So the future of L &D, I think, I think in my humble little world, I believe it's going to be about experiences.

it's going to be about experiences. that, so serious games becomes one tool in the tool belt to address that, but it isn't the end all. I think we have to be aware in our industry, we're really good about going, yeah, the latest, greatest thing, that's the future of L &D, but flip that and say, no, it's these things that are more experiential. And that has such broad reaching implications because L &D is gonna have to start, it's got an onus to help bridge the gap.

between traditional education and career professional development. And we're seeing as generations go on, those gaps change and they morph and that all has an impact on what the future of L &D is gonna look like. But I do think if you look at everything that's happening in the world today, it's gonna be about experiences. How do you get people to have lived something or realized something, to internalize it, to actualize them? And I think that is absolutely where the future is going. And with that in mind,

What do you think the overall impact is for a learner that's going through these type of experiences? And also what type of, we, are we able to get new and different types of data to come in from these experiences? In terms of experiences, you know, I think it's, it's broader than, like you said, it's broader than simply the serious games. That's, that's kind of one tool. I think I read something

recently that was interesting, like looking at these learning experiences on a spectrum of play. And so if you think of the beneficial activity, learning activity of play, that is a state of mind and being that is really conducive to growth and learning is when you're in that state.

So when you're on the spectrum of openness, of literal just kind of, there aren't any rules, it's just freedom of movement, freedom of agency and decision. It's a very high state of choice for the individual. thinking of a child at play in the backyard, just open to choices and high engagement, high enjoyment, but not really a structured scaffolding of what is the actual learning in that situation.

thinking in terms of like L and D, you know, we have self-directed or explore topics that you're interested in that are in your kind of career field. Wide open sense of play, follow your heart kind of invitation, very impactful. But if you, you know, if you're a manager trying to kind of certain skills or you want to, you cultivate certain kind of narrow skill sets that you want to help them learn in, then

you know, then you need to put something that's a little bit more rules in place. And so down the, down the spectrum, have serious games, which might be a structured set of objectives that you've mapped out, you know, for the game, but agency is still key in these serious games. And so in this learning experience, if we can cultivate that feeling of, of agency, of, of making, trying to make,

choices to overcome the challenge, the obstacles that are in this little learning experience. There's a sense of satisfaction and enjoyment in that process. But like Rose said, it's, it's a part of the collective. There's going to be, you need to move down the spectrum to and have things that have less agency, but are more prescriptive. Like, Hey, we need you to know how to, what the protocol is for file uploads on our, you know, on our file management system.

It might be less engaging and enjoyable, but necessary in the broad scheme of activities. We need to be thorough with our information. But to draw that back to the question of what is the future? What is the vision for a L &D company that is doing this well? mean, Rose, if you need all those things, how do you know if you're doing it well? Yeah, that's a great question, right? The measurement question is a big one.

And there's the technical side, and then there's the more virtuous we're measuring because we really want improvements and to know what's working and what's not working. On the technical side of it, what you can measure largely depends on the systems you have. A standard LMS is going to track less than if you have a learning record store or if you have something a little bit more robust, right? So there's a technical side of it that does kind of dictate what you can and cannot do. However, in terms of what's possible, almost anything is now.

So I've even worked on ones where it had eye tracking. Where are you gazing? cool. Yeah, very cool. How are you holding your arms? There's one in how to navigate a clean room. So it was actually tracking how people move their arms. What am I doing with my hands? Yeah, exactly. And then it's like, don't touch the canisters. Right? the reality is, what is it that you're measuring?

And the reality is also make sure you're connecting that to other indicators, right? Data is an indicator. Data doesn't tell you the little story. It tells you where to look for the story. Right? I like that. Yeah. Very insightful. There's so much here and I'm sure that we could spend hours just talking about this. But one thing that I, that Eric, you and I talked about on our meetup in Kansas city just a little bit was

the not just the impact of serious games on the learner, but how a learner how a learner thinks about their organization after going through training like this and how they feel that not only does not only does the organization care about learners overall, but they they care about the individual and they they see that the investment is there for them to succeed. So

What do you think that does for an organization overall as far as retention, as far as loyalty, those type of things? Yeah. Well, the training you put out, the experiences you put out reflect on your employer brand, right? Like that's the bottom line. It's part of shaping the experience you have as an employee and therefore it's part of your employer brand. So I think we need to be really careful that we're upholding brand and culture and heritage when we do these games. So for example, if I did a game for

make up a company, big liquors, right? That's been around, they've been through all the wars, they went through the industrial revolution, whatnot. That's heritage, man. That's gotta get in there. Your experience is they're gonna wanna speak to that culturally. But there are others on the opposite end that are like a financial institution that is just gonna be so risk adverse. So what a game looks like when you consider that culture is going to be fundamentally different.

So I think it's sort of very, very, very much part of that experience that makes part of your employer brand. So I think there's a lot of care that needs to go into it. I mean, but I do like the idea of asking, having a moment to reflect at a leadership level or an L &D leadership level within a company to say, are you taking time to ask that question of, you know,

What are our goals as far as our kind of employer brand? you know, what the people that work here and do they feel invested in? And the learning experiences that we're providing, are they, you know, how would we grade ourselves on like how relevant they are? Does it just feel like, you know, we're able to match make two roles specifically in terms of things that are empowering to help them do their job?

but also from that creative standpoint to say, people engaged with the learning experiences that we're providing over the course of a year? Is there a spark of, you don't wanna say, it's not for entertainment purposes only, so you don't wanna say like, great, I can't wait to binge the next e-learning series. Company rolls out. But like, are there a few in the course of the year that there's a little bit of spark of a smile of like,

like, that was that one fun thing we did back to review the policies on this and remember that and having those little moments of learning experiences sprinkled throughout, you know, that reflects on the overall identity of the organization. Like you said, it puts a little bit of a message to say, you know, hey, we can, we see you and we try to create learning experiences that are going to be engaging and we appreciate you. So I don't know, I think that that matters. I don't have

like data to support the thesis that those investments are like this make 20 % difference, but I don't know. It's just a human being. Anecdotally. I think that stuff matters. Great. I think anytime that anytime that an employee can feel like they're loved, they're cared about, that they are wanted, they're going to do better in whatever their

position is they're going to have more investment. They're going to those mornings where you didn't quite get enough sleep, you're still going to get out of bed and be like, you know what? I'm, I'm, I'm excited to just work today. We got to go. We got, we got to get these goals done. So how do you, what, what are the factors that come into play when you are, when a client comes in and asks, or an asked to develop some type of training program?

where you go, okay, we need to do just a standard learning here or we should do a serious game, is it? I can't imagine it's always like, let's just build some games. I would imagine that there has to be some type of thought that goes into it to be like, okay, is this gonna work for this specific topic or something? And Rose, you kind of mentioned a little bit of that at the top of the podcast. Yeah.

it does go back to what you're trying to achieve, right? So if you're trying to get across a new policy or a new procedure, that's one thing. But if you're trying to get people to live that policy and procedure, that's another thing, right? We've already gone from the realm of a communication to an experience, right? Like what's it like to live that? So we've already moved the needle away from maybe a more traditional learning.

or communication. We've already said, okay, this is something that they have to experience. And then you get into what does it take to turn that experience into learning, right? How much experience and what has to happen in that experience to make it work. So for example, a doctor diagnosing. I mean, they go through years of training for that, right? So no, I wouldn't put 16 hours of plain old e-learning together on how to diagnose. It would be the worst thing in the world and it wouldn't achieve the results.

But if I go put them into an actual scenario where they are diagnosing and it's game, it's a game in that, you know, it's diagnose these people correctly, right? Like, you're not getting points based on time because time is not, you know, necessarily the thing when it comes to diagnosis in some cases. But, you know, having the wrong measure is just as bad as having the wrong objective, right? It's going to cause the same kind of trouble. So we look at what they're trying to achieve and what that outcome is.

is going to tell you, is this in the realm of something more experiential? Is this a place where there is room to play? Because play is also another word for a safe space to sort of mess around and experiment, right? Yeah. Yeah. So you've got to get that into the experience as well. So really, honestly, I don't think it's that much different from what we ask in a normal intake. What are you trying to achieve? What is this going to take? Where are your people right now? All of that goes into saying, OK, this is not.

you know, a rise course. is an experience. Are there any unique challenges to developing serious games as opposed to regular e-learning? Yes. One of my favorite ones is the attempt to overburden the mechanics. Because it's so fun. It is so fun to do. So you get, so for example, a mechanic, if I said to you,

Halo, what would you think the mechanic is?

Like the halo. I mean my personal thing that I think of is the game halo. So combat evolved Right. So what what are the mechanics there? It's not actually overburdened even though it's a robust game. It's simple aim and shoot Yeah, very much so Yeah, so but it's really tempting to overburden it and say and this paint means they'll aim and shoot and then there'll be a click to reveal and then there'll be a puzzle and then there'll be

another kind of mechanic that comes into play and it gets overburdened real quickly. Yeah, yeah, okay. I have a tip for that one. So you ask what some of the pitfalls are. That's a big one. But the test for that one is your mechanic should be simple and fit in one line. Okay. It should also map to your objective, right? So if your objective is diagnose something, your mechanic is probably going to be intake information, make decisions. Yeah.

That's it. We're not going to go spin wheels and jump out of airplanes and whatnot as a mechanic. Those might be features and functions of the game that happen that that work with that mechanic, but that's all you're going to have. Keep the mechanics simple. And another really good test for this is how easy it is to learn your game. Something Eric and I always say is make your game easy to learn, but difficult to master. I like that. Yeah. And that's a really, really good one, because if it's easy to learn.

Think about Mario, right? There's no instructions. Yeah, no. You just jump right in. And everyone falls at the first level of tutorial. Right? That's perfect. It's got simple mechanics. It teaches you how to use the game. It's clean. It's easy. But my goodness, the time you're in those upper levels, even though the mechanics haven't changed, it got a lot harder. And you're having to do a lot more in terms of effort.

That's soapbox. Thank you for coming to my talk. No, no, beautiful soapbox. I think especially true in, you know, like this isn't for entertainment. So there's a lower patience to, to kind of learn the mechanic. I'm like, okay, yeah, this is overly complicated and you've designed some control panel that the person needs to kind of figure out and like decode to see, okay, what do I need to do to do this game?

This is gonna take 15 minutes just to learn the mechanics of this. an e-learning based game, especially if it's an optional learning experience, it's like, that's a cool that you guys did this, but I gotta go. I got other stuff to do. got emails coming in. So you wanna have that sense of progress and satisfaction relatively early. if it's like a sequence of puzzles that you're making advancements, you want a few easy wins early to say, I have this key.

There's the door that this key opens. And then, that was kind of satisfying that I found the key and there's the door. And so it's not like you have to wrestle with your brain and all of sudden you're stumped on the very first puzzle. Then you just gotta quit. Well, life is about little wins. So I think having those little wins to begin with is really good. Build that momentum. Yeah, exactly. And confidence. Yeah. Yeah. T-Ball. That's what T-Ball is all about. Before I get you guys out of here, one last question.

Do you have any advice for L &D professionals that are just getting into this idea of building serious games? Yeah, don't do it alone. Ask for help. Find someone who's done it before, who's willing to meet with you every other week or something while you go through the process. Honestly, that's the best way. That's how I did it. That's how I learned. As I just said, let me hitch my wagon to somebody who's done it. The other thing is, I think

If you want to get into it, think it's about that art of being able to invite a client in to sit at your table, the table you've made. So if you're able to say and speak on it and talk to how it's going to achieve their goals, there's going to be a little, you'll find yourself getting better at those conversations and your clients might be more amenable to these newish ideas. Again, not across the board, general rule.

But yeah, once again, I would say embrace that state of play and experiment. And that's the best way to give yourself that feedback. Like what's working? What's surprisingly doable? If it's storyline or whatever it is, or maybe it's PowerPoint. And you think, okay, this is the constraint. I'm in PowerPoint and I wanna make this facilitation into a serious game. What can I do? And just kind of play with those.

Play with the constraints and say, within this constraint, what can I do? And just play, play with the idea, play with the possibility. Don't be discouraged by any kind of compare and contrast of what the most elaborate thing is that anyone's ever done with Power of the Ranger storyline. But like what would be a surprise, just a little bit delightful and just play with that possibility. Yeah, you made me think of something, Eric, that's really important. Don't do it alone.

This is not a type of thing that takes just that an ID can do. When we've done it, we have an ID, we have a creative director, we have somebody who's a visual mastermind, and we have somebody who's on the technical side, right, who can do things like I wanna measure, you know, not so much how long someone spends in the course, but how their decisions do or don't get better over time in the experience, right? You're gonna need a team of people who know what they're doing.

who have domains and come together. is absolutely a cross-functional endeavor. Well, it takes a village. So with that, thank you both so much for coming on the podcast and explaining Serious Games. This has been wonderful. Thank you. Thanks Doug. Thanks for listening. As always, like and subscribe wherever you get your podcast. And don't forget to sign up for our newsletter, The Buzz, to keep up with all things L &D. If you're interested in hearing more about Serious Games,

Rose will be doing a presentation on behalf of TTC Innovations for the training industry on October 30th. There will be a link in the description and you will not want to miss this one. See you next time.