Serious Play Award winners include ISS outsourced services strategy game

by Brianna Crandall — September 2, 2016 — More than 30 studios, publishers, companies and academic student groups addressing the growth of games for learning or “serious games” recently won Gold, Silver and Bronze honors in the 2016 International Serious Play Awards competition.

The program recognizes outstanding examples of titles that deliver a high quality of engagement and learning opportunities for students, employees or other education or training situations. Many of the games are designed to be used in a variety of K-12 and higher education educational subject areas, as might be expected, but several other winners are intended for use in corporate, nonprofit, healthcare or financial literacy settings.

The Gold winners are:

  • Workz: ISS Strategy Game (Corporate)
  • Learning Games Lab at New Mexico State University: Night of the Living Debt (K-12 Financial Literacy)
  • WeWantToKnow: DragonBox Numbers (K-12 Math)
  • Enabling Play: Millie Moreorless (K-12 Math for Special Ed)
  • Gamelearn: Pacific (Corporate)
  • 1st Playable Productions: The Fiscal Ship (Nonprofit)
  • BreakAway Games: Vital Signs (Healthcare)
  • True North/Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center: A Fine Line (Student Higher Education, Academic Integrity)
ISS Strategy Game

Among the corporate winners, the ISS Strategy Game was awarded Gold for its ability to promote business and strategy understanding through game-based education. The ISS Strategy Game was designed in collaboration with Workz, a Copenhagen-based change agency, to stimulate experimental learning, and was in particular awarded for setting new standards for strategy board games by “promoting collaboration in an elegant way.”

ISS Strategy Game

The ISS Strategy Game provides a real-life scenario on how to bid for a customer, what services to provide, and how to identify and win a contract in competitive environments.

Christian Lauritzen, head of Group Learning and Development at ISS A/S, commented:

We are thrilled about the Gold Award we have received from the Serious Play Conference. Many colleagues in ISS have been involved in developing and testing the game to ensure that it mirrors the strategic reality of our company as closely as possible. This is a key reason behind the game’s success with both top managers and trainees. We are currently using it as a core element in covering strategy at training sessions throughout the company as this allows the participants to engage with the strategy themselves instead of just being told about it.

Originally developed in 2013 as part of a Nordic management conference, the game has been shared widely across the organization, with nearly 300 managers and trainees taking part. The game provides a real-life scenario on how to bid for a customer, what services to provide, and how to identify and win a contract in competitive environments — with emphasis on the importance of a commercial mindset, strategic alignment, and a deep understanding of the customer’s purpose and needs. The game also allows players to learn from their mistakes and adapt those lessons to real-life situations.

For the complete list of 2016 Gold, Silver and Bronze winners, visit the Serious Play Conference Web site.