What's behind a video game that teaches and hooks you at the same time? In this episode of Jugando en Serio (in Spanish), learning designer Melina Mireles and game designer and scriptwriter Samuel Prado open the doors of Game Strategies' creative studio to explain serious game design step by step: from the learning objective to the script, the mechanics and testing.
Two paths leading to the same place
Prado comes from TV fiction, where he worked as a scriptwriter and producer. In the early 2000s he started getting calls from training consultancies: e-learning wasn't meeting its goals and storytelling was starting to gain value. He went from graphic adventures with a guide character to plots where learners play a role, and ended up almost working as an instructional designer, because the content he received was «hard to digest».
Mireles, a psychologist with an educator's soul, knew the other side: consulting and a learning and development department, always looking for alternatives to heavy formats. When she saw the job offer, she thought it was exactly what she would hire from a training department. For her, games activate the player's memory and let them learn without noticing: they're not just players, they're learners.
How a serious game is designed: content, story and mechanics
According to Prado, the formula has three ingredients: quality content with clear learning objectives; a story in which you become an avatar and overcome challenges; and gamification, the mechanics that create healthy competition. Each ingredient has its own role on the team: learning designers, scriptwriters and game designers.
The process always starts with the teaching: what we want to teach or, in communication games, which key messages to convey. Then comes the creative brainstorm, both guests' favorite part: the scriptwriter proposes plots and the game designer suggests mechanics to practice the cases prepared by the learning designers. After that come the outline, the script, assembly in the editor and testing.
I always see our process as a balance. You have the rigorous part, the knowledge you want to convey, the instructional design you have to carry out, and then comes the highly creative, flexible part that lets you wrap all of that in an entertaining package.
Global games for diverse cultures
Their games are aimed at a global audience. They write from a Western perspective but take care of the details for Asian or Middle Eastern cultures, and pay close attention to inclusive language. For custom projects they usually pitch two ideas, one more disruptive and one more conservative, and sometimes a client who seemed very corporate chooses the bolder one. So far, they say, they have never had to give up on an idea.
What players say and the mistake of traditional training
The games include a survey, and reading the comments is, according to Prado, incredibly rewarding. One player wrote about a goal-setting game: «I started the game expecting training and never thought it would transform me». A user of 2100, the customer service game, valued being able to make mistakes without a real customer in front of her. And in the games on diversity, some players recognize their own biases.
Mireles, who knows the HR seat well, points to the typical mistake: when you're responsible for training large teams, you lose breadth of vision. With such diverse generations, she calls for a change of mindset and for trying different things.
You get stuck on the what and don't think about the how. You insist on the what and on familiar formats, and don't realize that the same knowledge, delivered differently, can get there faster.
How HR can start gamifying
The first step, according to Mireles, is listening to employee feedback on training, filtered with an objective eye, to understand what your corporate culture needs. The second is understanding that gamification isn't just video games: it means energizing the process with challenges, including day-to-day ones, meaningful bite-sized content, curiosity and rewards, because positive reinforcement is very powerful. And all of it adapted to your culture, because «there are as many corporate cultures as there are people».
Coming up for the team: Terra 2, on everyday sustainability actions; a game on the European Union's AI Act, following a first AI awareness game; and revamps of catalog titles with new mechanics. Their final advice for HR is simple: dare to try it.
