GamificationInnovationLeadershipTransmedia Storytelling

It (isn’t) the video game, stupid! (V)

By March 19, 2013 No Comments

After the discovery of Transmedia and Dramanagement as the spearhead for our new way of doing things, which I mentioned in the article It’s Transmedia!, we had to keep taking steps in the same direction in order to consolidate our model.

The video game market took hold worldwide as the primary sector in the entertainment industry and the penetration level of the video game culture at all levels never ceased to grow. Therefore, we decided to investigate in depth about how the videogame could really help us in our mission of helping companies and managers in their internal communication as well as in their processes of change and development.

An energetic and enthusiastic student at Esade Business School in Barcelona, Silvia Ollé, decided to make it the subject of her end-of-degree project. I tried to help her in the design, and together we decided it would be interesting to carry out a series of interviews with groups of people involved in the video game industry: From Game Designers to executives, from buyers of the top retailers of leisure and electronic products and ending with universities in which research and training in these disciplines is done.

One lucky day in one of our meetings to carry out follow up, she spoke enthusiastically about a person who had treated her kindly and had said things she wanted me to hear in person. So, we went to a wonderful setting to visit Oscar Garcia Pañella, namely The Dome at La Salle. An inspiring location and European benchmark in the teaching of media disciplines. That day I sensed that we had just discovered something big even though in reality I was far from understanding what had happened.

I saw Oscar again a few weeks later with Jaume Castelló and Sergi Corbeto in order to keep talking and we explained our project to him about making a video game for the subject of Strategic Sales Management, which is part of the MIM (Master in International Management) at Esade.

A few weeks later, I went again, invited to attend presentations of the end-of-degree projects for the Masters degree in Creation, Design and Multimedia Engineering. I witnessed how three projects were presented. One in particular left me in a state of shock: a company was facing a strategic change, which was therefore complex and deep. They wanted to go from operating in a professional market to doing it in the domestic market as well. So, an application totally conceived under Gamification criteria served as a fundamental support to help in the process of training, informing, persuading and accompanying the client in their buying process like you’ve never seen before.

“It isn’t the video game, stupid!” is what my head kept repeating. From that moment on, Cookie Box not only changed its idea of what should be its brand of video games Y-Games, but began a process of profound transformation in the way we understand our services.

The methods and concepts used by them were based, above all, on a rigorous analysis of human behavior. Words such as extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, learning curve, yield curve or experience points were pronounced absolutely correctly … in presentations for a Masters degree in Multimedia!. Today we are proud and fortunate to say that Oscar Garcia Panella, then Head of Studies of that marvel, is also a leading member of the Cookie Box Community working side by side with us on gamification projects.