The Handover Series Ep1: To Game Or Not To Game

In the learning industry, the terms 'serious games', 'gamification', and 'game-based learning' often seem to be used interchangeably - understandable, since they all serve a similar purpose of making learning more engaging.

Now, while this is not necessarily a concern for the learners themselves, knowing the difference between the three is likely to be useful for learning experience designers.

Although there are plenty of definitions available online, I tend to find examples easier to work with.

Let's consider a topic like delegation.

Approach 1

You are Head Chef at a popular restaurant. The evening dinner service is about to begin and you have way too much on your plate (pun unintended!). Work closely with your team to make sure all your customers all well-fed and satisified by the end of the evening.

This forms a premise for a serious game. By stepping into the shoes of the Head Chef, making decisions and facing the consequences of their actions, learners can master the art of delegation - all while immersed in a game-like environment. Games like this tend to follow a non-linear path, with multiple branches, decision points and outcomes.

Approach 2

Take this 10 question quiz on the do's and don'ts of delegation to unlock your delegation badge. Do the best you can, as only high scorers will make it to the top of the leaderboard.

This is an example of gamification, where game elements like leaderboards, badges, reward points etc. are used to entice people to engage with the learning material (the quiz, in this case). Usually, gamification does not directly add to the learning. Instead, it acts as a way to bring people to the learning content.

Approach 3

Riyaz is a new manager, with a lot on his plate. Help him choose the right tasks to delegate to his team members to ensure everything gets done on time. You will get 10 points for every correct answer, so choose wisely.

This is an approach that I usually refer to as game-based learning (although available definitions online sometimes differ) - a space where learning experience designers often get stuck. While at the surface, this appears to be similar to a serious game, it tends to play out more like a gamified case study (as a client once pointed out about some of my early games, much to my dismay). Game-based learning is likely to be linear, with well-defined cases, options and a clear distinction between correct, incorrect and partially correct paths.

None of the three approaches are right or wrong - they all just have their own applications.

Gamification is great when the problem statement is how to get more learners to engage with the material. Research suggests that this works best with areas like compliance traning.

Game-based learning is useful when you want to show learners how to best respond to various different (and at times, unrelated) scenarios - like how to respond to different types of customer complaints, or how to write emails in different situations.

Serious games work well when a deeper, more experiential understanding of a topic is required - in a way that captures all the subtleties and ifs and buts associated with it - like how to transition from an individual contributor to a first time manager or how to be customer obsessed while balancing business needs.

Keeping these difference in mind is likely to help learning professionals create more powerful and impactful experiences for all.