PIXELearning Leadership Game Goes Live!
www.PIXELearning.com
Kevin Corti and Richard Smith on behalf of the PIXELearning team have been showing me their latest Serious Game.
So let’s set the scene…….
“On a small uninhabited island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean a mysterious energy source has been detected. Your mission (should you choose to accept it) is to lead a team, locate and retrieve the energy source and bring it back to your company HQ. You’ll be personally challenged, it will require exemplary leadership skills, in particular team building, coaching, decision making and problem solving.
Door to the Game
Great leaders can make difficult decisions quickly under pressure, and achieve results in the most challenging environments, when the stakes, in this case a major business opportunity, are huge! So let me ask you this – do you have what it takes to be a Great Leader?”
The overall experience is really set on this unnamed tropical island. You are ‘sent’ there with a clear objective (“to recover a secret power source”). The journey through the environment takes you from a beach, through a jungle area, a WW2 concrete bunker, a 1950s-themed area and, finally, to a futuristic ‘alien’ area.
Bunker
There are several players and you all face nine distinct challenges which have been carefully crafted to test each of your ability to coach, solve problems and communicate effectively in what is a dynamic, time-pressured and frequently confusing situation.
You have to decide whether to fully collaborate with and trust other people as you find them…or to withhold information and compete. You even need to establish what the challenges are, what information and resources you have at your disposal before you can attempt to solve them. Managing your own frustration and confusion is critical to success.
Just as in a real work environment…sometimes you have to work out what the problem is before you can even attempt to solve it.
This is a true multiplayer serious game.
To begin with you have to explore the island and travel deep into an underground building. You start as an individual, then you get paired together, then two pairs combine if you are to win the game. Overall it’s competitive and collaborative.
Water Puzzle
Now as I said earlier the first task is done solo, and it’s a ‘water puzzle’. I am not going to spoil the fun and give you the details. However, what the game does is make you think, drives you to make decisions because you are on a clock, and work through the defined problem to come up with a solution (or not).
As the game progresses it drives you to work in teams. For example there is one challenge where both teams are in two almost identical chambers. One team has night vision goggles but none of the switches or leavers work that they can see. The other team is in pitch blackness and can see nothing, but their switches and leavers work and actually control the functions of both chambers. This drives the team with the night vision goggles to guide and communicate with the other team to help them achieve the tasks to release both of the teams from being trapped in the chambers.
Night Vision Goggle View
The environment and the challenges really do test your communication skills, some people get frustrated with each other, some are calm, some get nervous – it really does help hone those leadership skills.
I found it a fascinating experience and I have already been getting several learning experts who are friends to experience this Leadership Game and they also agree with my opinion – PIXEL have got a winner on their hands.
Instructions
Anyway, if you’re an organisation looking to develop Coaching, Decision Making, Problem Solving, and Team Building skills in your managers and leaders. This is a great way to do it. Give PIXELearning a call 02476 236 971 or go to www.pixelelearning.com – and remember they have been smart so aside form having a hosted solution they can adapt the core platform so lots of different scenarios can be achieved and can customize it for you and your organisation.
Plus if you are a training company you should think about getting a Distribution license – this game was originally created for a very large US company but already the order book is building, and I know that several companies have approached PIXEL to see if they can get licenses to sell the forthcoming generic product version of the game and rumours have it the ‘Sales Game’ is coming along well. I get to play that next Month!
