Learning Review
Interview to: Kevin Corti, CEO
PIXELearning Limited
Subject: Serious Games
1. Nowadays,
what are the companies that are more interested in Serious Games? Why do you
think this happens?
Generally I don’t see any
particular industry sectors dominating the demand side of the serious games
space. The finance sector is rapidly becoming a strong part of it but we can
also see interest in consumer brands, food and drink companies, petro-chemical
and many other sectors. There is also much interest from publicly-funded
governmental organizations and NGOs.
I think that if you were to
describe a dominant type of serious game adopter, it is generally medium to
larger organizations that are well-versed in the use of technology to enhance
learning (as well as marketing, recruitment and other business functions),
which understand that the younger (<30) age groups have different
communication/ICT demands and which have a business culture which is open to
change and new approaches.
2. What
is the acceptability that Serious Games are getting as corporate training mode?
I can say, based on our
experience at PIXELearning and from conversations with several industry peers,
that since 2006 the interest in serious games from the corporate sector has
most definitely surged. That is not to say, by any means, that it is yet an
easy sell but many larger organizations now have people in training/HR
functions who are at least aware if games and simulations as learning tools and
who are prepared to evangelize internally as well as to start to foster vendor
relationships. 2007 has been a great trading year for us (150% growth) however
I strongly believe that it is in the next 18 months that we shall see an
explosion in acceptance and adoption.
3. What
are the main challenges that business developers and implementing companies
have to cope?
It used to be that the
biggest challenge was to get training/HR professionals to even consider serious
games. That no longer seems to be the challenge (in general). Where I would say
our challenges lie going into 2008 is around being able to coherently align
serious games to specific organizational needs/problems and to build a level of
customer-vendor trust that will enable sales opportunities to be closed. Whilst
price, or more accurately cost-effectiveness, will always be an issue, I have
seen a trend towards the need to prove added value and expected
performance/quality improvement over other approaches (such as eLearning). This
demands that serious games service, technology and content providers must be
able to demonstrate prior case studies, assessment proof and ROI examples.
4. Do
you consider that the Serious Games market is still lack of maturity? Which factors
do the market requires to get mature?
Absolutely! The market (if
it is indeed a single market) is no longer a new-born but is still very much a
toddler. I think 2008 will see a rapid acceleration in adoption but I think it
will be at least 2010 before we can claim any credible level of ‘maturity’. In
order for this to happen it demands a broad level of awareness amongst the
customer/commissioning community, a transition of many serious games vendors
from being perceived as ‘games’ companies to being recognized as (learning)
solutions companies and a large body of successfully implemented serious games
implementations of all shapes and sizes in many organizations across many
different industry sectors.
5. What
is your vision for the medium term (2 years approximately) regarding the
Serious Games market in
Although I am absolutely
certain that we will see a strong increase in serious games activity in Europe
I do not, unfortunately (for Europe) see the continent catching up with the
level of activity in the
Europe has a strong track
record in innovation but, generally speaking, a weakness in marketing compares
to
Other resources:
>> Attached to cover email
>> See LinkedIn:
www.linkedin.com/in/kevincorti
PIXELearning Limited, The Serious
Games Institute, Unit 6
Cheetah Road,