How many of you went to work today, poured yourself a cup or two, zeroed out voice and email, then dashed off to some dim-lit cloistered conference room to spend your morning huddled around tables trading notes or sleepily eyeing luminous slides sporting bullet points and 36-48p text? Did you give a talk? Snooze through one? Struggle to articulate an idea? Hold one back for fear of ridicule or rebuke?
Maybe it's time you ditched the meetings and just played a game or two, say one that does away with tables and bagel bars and sometimes animated Powerpoint presentations (woo-woo!). And most of all? One that lets you say or do what you like without worrying about a rent-a-cop and packing box loitering next to your cube the following morning.
No, it's not The Sims: Business Tycoon, just an approach Toronto-based software firm ExperiencePoint Inc. is taking to help its professional clients work through basic problem solving and strategizing issues. According to a report by The Globe and Mail, the Nintendo generation may be having an effect on the daily grind by embracing ideas their older (or former) bosses might've snickered at. Say situational business simulations that let you take that theory you've quietly been kicking around and (virtually) test it out.
It makes a lot of sense when you think about it. After all, what are games if not teaching/learning tools? Think about the games you played growing up. Even a simple match of tag can train essential skills--in tag's case, the mechanics of rapid visual assimilation, goal-based analysis, and tactical execution. Where do you go? Should you walk or run? Zigzag or feint? And if you're "it," do you go after this person or that one?
The power of gaming is the potential to explore and create and receive feedback in a safe, risk-free environment. As Assistant Professor of Psychology at Iowa State University Douglas Gentile said in an interview recently:
...video games are excellent teachers. They're kind of the perfect teacher in many respects. They give individualized instruction. They give immediate feedback. They give rewards. They adapt to the level of the learner. They give what's called in education circles a spiral curriculum, where you have to have learned one thing and mastered it before you can go on to the next. And you think about the way levels are structured and skills you need. They're just masterful teaching tools.
