Introducing gamification with an escape game
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If you’re looking to bring gamification into the workplace, or even the classroom, why not try an escape game? Escape room games were originally developed by Japanese companies to improve employee retention and encourage teamwork.
Today, escape games, or escape rooms, are being used by companies around the world as a team building exercise, but they have also found a market as a day out for friends and families, and even serve a purpose in education as an activity for students.
An educational tool that creates experience through gamification
An escape game is a type of game based on an interactive story where players must find objects, hidden clues, and answers, to navigate a series of interconnected puzzles and challenges. In this sense it’s similar to a video game, except that instead of being controlled by a computer, the action and the experience takes place in real life, with a games master dictating the action and challenges.
In an escape game, participants are presented with a series of challenges and will have to make quick decisions, as they have limited time to think about what they are doing in order to progress through the interactive story. The games usually end when the time limit is reached, or when the participants manage to escape from the room (hence the name, escape room).
Corporate gamification combined with escape games is an innovative way to engage your employees by using a unique blend of gaming elements, with an immersive story, puzzles, physical obstacles, and challenges that can create a unique experience that will bring employees out of their shells and encourage critical thinking.
Using the escape room format to make a serious game
Gamification is the application of gaming mechanics to typically less playful contexts to increase motivation, and ultimately engage a target audience. In the context of corporate training, or even educational games, these are referred to as “serious games” – they are games where the primary purpose is something other than pure entertainment, such as learning a foreign language, or learning soft skills to be more effective in a new role.
Companies can use gamification agencies such as Drimify to create their own versions, and merge the escape game concept with the serious game format to engage employees in a shared task. The purpose may be purely to facilitate team building, but could just as easily be used to incorporate some work or industry specific scenarios as a way to reinforce learnings from more traditional educational methods. While mobile and internet technology has already made highly professional, customisable games very accessible to businesses small and large, as virtual reality becomes more readily available, the idea of an escape game that can be participated in at home that’s just as immersive as one at a physical location will become a reality.
When you factor in the possibilities integrated artificial intelligence (AI) programmes will be able to add, such as assisting games masters, or potentially even replacing games masters, the complexity and sophistication of escape room games in 10 years time will probably blow away our current perceptions of what’s truly achievable in this medium. While today’s escape rooms and gamified experiences have their constraints, this really isn’t much more than a factor of immersion. In the same way you watch a horror movie and know the ghost or the demon isn’t real, but you suspend your disbelief and enter into the fictional world for the ride, so too do you suspend suspend your disbelief as you enter into the premise that a serious game or an escape room might ask you to entertain. As the games get more sophisticated, the amount of disbelief they’ll need us to suspend will lessen, as they become more and more immersive, realistic, and exciting.
Create a tailor-made escape game for your company
Corporate escape games are designed to be fun and engaging, yet educational, offering a meaningful learning experience to the employees playing. Once in the game, players don’t know where they are going or what challenges await them, so each escape game’s content can be customised and tailored to a particular theme, and to the objectives of each group of employees within a company.
This gamification experience involves players and teams working together, using logic, problem solving skills, and determination to solve puzzles and escape a locked room as quickly as possible. For a successful experience, it is important that team members communicate with each other during the game. They are designed to be challenging in such a way that it will be almost impossible for just one person, with their own idiosyncratic way of thinking, to be able to solve everything.
By introducing this type of activity to your teams, they will be able to gain valuable insights into their own working practices and group dynamics. As they progress, the players will learn more about the people they are participating with, and also about their own skills and abilities. These types of training simulations have proven to be effective in achieving a variety of learning and practical business objectives, including increasing employee retention and motivation at work.
Games as part of a broader corporate strategy
An escape game is a unique and fun activity that promotes mental plasticity and stimulates creativity. Businesses putting together escape games should be looking to deliver an intense gaming experience that challenges their employees’ minds, and encourages them to work as a team.
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