State-of-the-art in Business Games

Abstract

The use of digital games and gamification has demonstrated potential to improve many aspects of how businesses provide training to staff, and communicate with consumers. However, there is still a need for better understanding of how the adoption of games and gasification would influence the process of decision-making in organisations across different industry. This article provides a structured review of existing literature on the use of games in the business environment, and seeks to consolidate findings to address research questions regarding their perception, proven efficacy, and identifies key areas for future work. The findings highlight that serious games can have positive and effective impacts in multiple areas of a business, including training, decision-support, and consumer outreach. They also emphasise the challenges and pitfalls of applying serious games and gamification principles within a business context, and discuss the implications of development and evaluation methodologies on the success of a game-based solution.

A Serious Game for Eliciting Social Engineering Security Requirements

“…Serious games have demonstrated a significant potential in industrial education and training disciplines [22], [23], [24], given that organizations care for players' privacy and working atmosphere and especially do not use gaming data for appraisal or selection purposes, and clearly communicate this to employees [? ].…”

Approaches to Gaming the Future: Planning a Foresight Game on Circular Economy

“…Simulation enables games that mimic a real world situation, possibly taking place in the future. It has been used in so called business games [8]. The downside of simulation related to futures work is that it often requires fixing a lot of assumptions in place, effectively closing down the range of possible futures.…”

“…They can be used to support internalising knowledge, communicating and sharing ideas, increasing and broadening participation and creating new futures knowledge [7,8]. Games can create fun and engaging experiences that increase the interaction between participants to the foresight process as well as with the data gathered.…”

Green@CU: An environmental game for residential accommodation

“…Recent estimates on home energy showed that 22% of home energy consumption could be saved if people were more environmental aware and were more discerning with their energy behaviours, for example using a light energy efficient bulds, turning off their lights, replacing their boiler with energy efficient [11] . Recent research suggests that a 10% reduction in energy use could decrease fossil fuel consumption by an amount approximately equal to a 25-fold increase in wind & solar power or a 100% increase in nuclear power [12].…”

“…The approach taken mirrors the achievements and online leaderboard systems integrated into various gaming platforms such as Xbox Live, Steam, or PlayStation Network. Previous research has shown that the usage of such system could prolong the play and increasing the replayability of the game via increasing the motivation and engagement of the players [12]. Other applications of achievements to increase use and uptake in more serious application areas have demonstrated positive impacts on user experience [14], and the technique is a common trait of many gamification approaches [15].…”