By Paul Ranson, Development Director, Serious Games International

You hear a lot about ‘gamification’ or ‘games-based learning’ these days. People claim that adding a games element to something serious will make it perform better. If you learn more quickly by playing a game, the thinking goes, so you will play the game more often, and so the knowledge acquired is retained better.

A serious game can be one which uses technology that players of Call Of Duty would be familiar with to train real combat troops (see America’s Army, a series of video games commissioned by the US military and published as an aid to recruitment).

It can also mean using video games to teach enterprise and business skills to teenagers, and it can use the just-one-more-go elements of gameplay to have players controlling their fitness and weight (see Wii Fit Nike+).

One way of describing how games-based learning works is to look at how it can be used to teach people by stealth. One oft-quoted example comes from the Karate Kid movie. In the film Daniel is taught karate by painting a fence, scrubbing the floor and waxing a car, ie, in ways so obtuse that he doesn’t realise he is training. When a good game is used to teach a skill, players are so immersed in the technology that they require no other motivation to keep them engaged.

For a number of clients I’ve worked with, serious games are seen as an effective way to reach out to the 20-somethings in their company. A way to conduct training, inductions or present simulations in a way that will be intuitively understood and seen as cool by their young recruits, who, the thinking goes, have grown up with games and understand games language.

Customers often also expect you to be part of the culture as well. They imagine you will turn up for the pitch meeting with green hair, multiple piercings, shorts and carrying a skateboard under your arm. If I turn up in a suit I can almost feel their disappointment.

One aspect of my job is to walk this line between an entertaining game and a professional and creative solution to a problem. It’s vital to ensure that the client is walking along the same line as well. My idea of what is cool and cutting edge has been shaped by years of working in tech; theirs may well be different.

It is essential as well not to arrive with pre conceptions however. I’ve worked with a company where the 60 year old CEO knew exactly what games-based learning would bring to the employees and the benefits to the company; it was the 30-40 year old middle managers whose mindset was more conservative and needed everything explained to them.

I’m constantly surprised too by the large amount of legacy kit that people are using, day in, day out, at companies whose image would lead you to expect them to be very forward-thinking and hi-tech.

I’ve learned not to be fooled by the fact the sales guys all have iPads – it often turns out that they are owned personally and in the office everyone is still on Internet Explorer 6. So finding out out very precisely what devices and operating systems will be running the software I produce is vital.

If I succeed, then trainers can train with memorable material; simulated experiences can be replayed over and over without danger, and customers can visualise concepts without requiring expensive prototypes actually to be built.