Step 1.01: Identify and Build Buy-In for the Broad Need for Sims

Why use educational simulations and serious games?

The first step in developing simulations in an organization is to build a broad understanding of why sims are important, even critical.

Competence + Commitment = Comfort

The core reason to do a sim is to drive competence and commitment. In fact, sims do this better than any other media.

Competence

Competence is a pretty well understood idea. It is the ability of a learner to apply the right skills. It can even include use the right words.

Conviction

But developing conviction in an audience is even more important for most applications. Conviction is the enduring understanding and drive in the learner to do the right thing.

I look at the conviction level by gauging:

• How do people actually behave when no one is watching, and/or when stressed?
• Can people improvise the philosophies to appropriately adapt it to situations not covered in the formal course?

The Incomparable Value of Conviction

The enterprise value of employees (or students in universities) with conviction is so great that the old methodologies seems absurd.

• People who learn conviction are not capricious. They stick to these convictions, even in times of boredom, greed, and stress.
  
• They are also ridiculously powerful at holding others accountable to the same higher standard.
  
• And they apply the material to broader areas.

How

Simulation-Based Programs Develop and even Change Conviction: An Example of Design

Sims shape conviction (and commitment) in a scalable and measurable way. This requires a specific design process. When convictions have to be changed, for example, scenarios may take on the following properties:

1. Allow the student to experiment with their traditional behavior. Allow them to do what they would naturally do. Then show not only the immediate, apparent, and high-probability consequences (which are often positive) of their traditional behavior, but also the long term, hidden, and/or "unlikely" but possible consequences (which can be devastating). Allow the player to experience emotionally the direct devastating consequences.
   
2. Visualize the "invisible system" - the flow of events that people can't normally see, but leads to any devastating outcomes.
   
3. Allow students to repeat the scenarios (which means they can't be too long, or rely too much on linear content), and then "discover" for themselves the right way of doing things.
   
4. Include the little feedback signs to teach players what are signs in the real world that indicate a straying into risky behavior.
5. Put the student in novel situations that require improvising based on their earned knowledge.
   
6. Present tailored, not generic, after action reviews/debriefings.
   

Comfort

The combination of Competence and Conviction creates Comfort. This is the ease that comes with real experience, especially experimentation. Comfort can be around a using a new online tool, selling a new produce or service in a new way and in a new environment, or leadership or project management.

The ability of sims to create comfort is unique and insanely valuable. Once an organization begins developing simulations, they understand why there old ways failed.

Step 1.02 Identify the Area of Need

Once there is an understanding of the importance of sims, consider where to build them.

At a strategic areas, ask these question to find the best places for development:

• What are the important areas where people need to learn but are not learning using traditional methodology?

• Where is there an increased need for competence and conviction?

• Is there a group of people who really want this to happen outside of the Learning Development Community?

Then, tactically, use this framework:

• To create a sense of presence, use virtual worlds;

• To easily access diverse, “real-world” communities, use virtual worlds;

• To increase user engagement, use games;

• To provide access to labs and props, use stand-alone sims or sims in virtual worlds;

• To increase depth of knowledge, use educational simulations or environments, either stand-alone or in virtual worlds.

Step 1.03: Assign the Early Roles

What are the Skill Sets Necessary to Create a Serious Game?

In this step, assign three roles.

Title: Client Manager/ Sales Person/ Client Requirements

Description of Responsibilities: The client manager is the de facto lead of a sim project. They are the people who identify and secure the project to begin with. They then provide a constant voice of the customer throughout the development process. They may or may not be involved directly in the content creation process. They are constantly looking over everyone's shoulders, and often making final judgment calls on tough decisions based on what they believe the client wants. The client manager may also assist the project manager and the lead designer in setting up a critical approval meetings, project pilots, and meetings with subject matter experts.

Percentage of Entire Project: 20%

Title: Lead Designer (and other Designers)

Description of Responsibilities: (This is the role I personally take.) The lead designer can be thought of as, in movie-making parlance, the director of the simulation. He or she controls the tone, content, and length of the experience. The lead designer is responsible for all of the necessary research for the simulation, the level structure, the interface, mock ups of screenshots using PowerPoint or crayons, identification of users, walkthroughs, meta-coding and framing of underlining systems and mechanics, goal states, all written material including dialogs, and more, and often presents all of this in the design document. The lead designer is also responsible for ongoing calibration. (See The Complete Guide to Simulations and Serious Games for full details.)

Percentage of Entire Project: 20-30%

Title: Project Manager

Description of Responsibilities: The project manager has to be a master of precision and tact. They have to be there to support all of the other people and talents, and yet at the same time enforce deadlines and budgets through soft and hard power. Ultimately, project managers have to be of high skill level and low ego. They report to the client manager. It is a sure path to failure when a project manager tries to overreach and seize control of everything, just because they have the role of managing the project's budget.

Percentage of Entire Project: 10%

Begin to line up, but don’t put on the clock:


Title: Lead Programmer (and other Programmers)

Description of Responsibilities: The lead programmer is responsible for creating all of the code for the sim. This includes prototyping, piloting, creating any authoring or editing environment, and creating a finished simulation. In many projects, this category also includes skills for evaluating and adopting third party technology and tool sets. (Most of my projects require Flash or increasingly HTML 5).

Percentage of Entire Project: 20-30%

Note: Programmers may create authoring environments that significantly decreases the time it takes for the designers to input and refine information.

Title: Lead Artist

Description of Responsibilities: The lead artist is responsible for all of the art of the project. This includes the aesthetics of the interface, any and all color schemes, drawings, and animations.

Percentage of Entire Project: 10%

Title: Database Systems Integrator

Description of Responsibilities: The database systems integrator is responsible for all integration of the program into the customer environment. This includes SCORM compliance, LMS integration, database integration, and knowledge of the end user environments. This role often extends the furthest out, as client implementation environments change months or even years after the simulation has been successfully installed.

Percentage of Entire Project: 5-10%

Unschooling Rules. Now Available from Amazon.

Step 1.04 Set the Right Expectations - Most educational sims developed for corporations are about the complexity of an iPhone app

Setting expectations is a critical part of building an educational sim. All of us, from sponsor, to designers and developers, to subject matter experts, need to understand the level of complexity.

It was not too long ago that clients would initially ask me for a serious game that had the feel of World of Warcraft or Halo. This was absurd, of course, for so many reasons, including:

Approach	World of Warcraft	Corporate Sim
Budget	$150+ Million	$100,000
Time to Develop	$3 + Years	7 months
Operating System	PC, Installed	Flash, Web deployed
Desired Addictiveness	Very high	Low
Player Time	15+ Hours/Week	1 Hour in Total
Predictability of Success*	Low	Very high

*Predictability of success is critical: WoW has been attempted to be duplicated by quite a few game companies with little success.

Instead, it is much more relevant to point to iPhone app games or (increasingly) other enterprise-built serious games (such as PlayTrue) as much better level setters. This keeps the conversations sane and productive, while delivering solutions that are manageable and, better yet, highly effective in building competence and conviction.