Review of Current Serious Games in Project Management

Finally, here is the third post of the series about a review of the state of the art highly interactive environments in project management. The previous two posts were on definitions and methodology. Here I am presenting my analysis of results.

Role Play

All reviewed games develop a specific story to represent the learning context, usually putting the learners in project manager's position. Some (e.g. Sharkworld, SimulTrain) feature an already started project as part of the story.

Social Play

There seem to emerge several categories within games and simulations employing similar patterns. The group of games that seems to have attracted most commercial attention is a variation of traditional tabletop games that makes use of a common computer-supported dashboard (e.g Synergest's game, G2G3 Polestar, ManSims, Sim Project). Variations make use of spreadsheets to make calculations easier (Family Life), interactive dashboards to share data and even pre-recorded video sequences to enrich the story of the experience (Race-to-Results). These games are essentially workshop-shaped group learning activities, lead by a facilitator that manages both team dynamics and learning content. An advantage of these games is the fact that free conversations are possible between learners or with the facilitator.

Simulations

Another group of simulations takes a more technical approach. These project management simulators put learners in one single role, although many of them are nevertheless intended to be played by small teams. A long-improved classic is TOPSIM, deployed around the world for several decades. Each temporary deployment is customized for the particular context. A number of the other project management simulations are closer to computer-based role-playing games within a simplified virtual environment (e.g. Leadership-in-Action, Harvard's game, CBT module, Contract and Construct, Simulation laboratory). Usually these have also a more expressed game story and some form of virtual characters (Sharkworld, Prendo's games, SimulTrain). Communication with virtual characters is based on predefined multiple-choice dialogues. A somewhat different approach has been taken in vLeader, where interaction is done at the level of speech acts in a conversation (Aldrich 2003). This allows the learners to focus on the illocutionary force of interactions, thus enabling complexity of interaction, while still maintaining relatively simple vocabulary and repertoire. A very-domain focused approach has been developed for the purposes of construction management, a technology called 4D virtual construction. It allows for an actual virtual construction process. It adopts a 3D perspective and tracks the time as a fourth dimension (hence 4D). For the purposes of this review, it is considered along applications that simulate product development and focus on the more technical side of project management.

Interactive Storytelling

The two storytelling applications for training have been developed by the Institute for Creative Technologies – one of the leading institutions in interactive storytelling. They both have been developed for military training purposes and are specific to the field endeavours military leaders need to engage in. One of them, Army Excellence in Leadership (AXL), adopts an interactive case-method teaching that employs pre-reported video sequences. In its video-based approach that provides a much more specific context, AXL is similar to HP's Race-to-Results and Sharkworld. The other one, being currently developed is called Virtual Officer Leadership Trainer (VOLT). It is being delivered within a training room environment. Through interaction with virtual characters, it is intended to deliver practice of communication skills to complement traditional learning methods.

Virtual Worlds

Finally, three virtual worlds have been identified to be reviewed here – SecondLife, Telespace and Sun's MPK20. In their specialization, these three cover the range from general purpose through customizable on demand to dedicated development. All these have been adopted for some form of learning, incl. in the domain of project management. However, in contrast to the previous categories, this software was not developed for the purposes of project management training in particular, thus serving only as infrastructure to facilitators that conduct project management trainings. Subsequently, the use of virtual worlds for training is very diverse. In line with this, various authors focus on the identification of possible uses of the platform for educational purposes, for examples see e.g. (Ryan 2008). Thus virtual worlds actually afford themselves as environments for learning where multiple activities are possible, as opposed to learning tools which are matched to a particular activity.