Back to business: from live to online gaming
By BNR (orig. Dutch)
The Netherlands goes back to work after the ‘Intelligent Lockdown.’ Adapting to a ‘1.5-meter economy’ is not just an option, but essential.
How can you be successful as possible during times like these? Project manager Jetske den Boer of Businessgames explains how the company reinvented itself. ‘One day, we realised that the measures relating to COVID-19 would take longer than expected, and one of our regular customers asked us about the possibilities of online training programmes.’
‘Our customers still believed in the importance of ‘experiential learning’ (learning by doing). But the game flow and design of our training programmes had to be rearranged rapidly. Most of our customers pointed out that their current online training programmes left little room for involvement (they only conveyed information). That is why we took on the challenge to convert our creative games from live to a virtual variant.’
‘It was a difficult transition because we did not want to compromise on the content. We put together a list of key points for a successful game. For example, the competitive element, working together in sub teams, solving challenges on various levels, and dividing the programme in different rounds to ‘build up the tension’.
We then completely immersed ourselves into all the online possibilities to recur these key points. We built our first prototype and put the content to the test on as many people from our social network as possible. We took on the role as a coach by assisting every online team, and we built a chatbot that provides the teams with new challenges throughout the game.
Our demanding work resulted in our first online high-energy game that we carried out for Google. It felt like we were a start-up once more. But it feels amazing when everything you hope to achieve, is being reciprocated by the participants.’