Virtual Training -- And It's Fun!
More companies are finding that staffers enjoy training in video game form. Here's a look at some offerings from top companies in the field
By Reena Jana
One of the hot topics at the Serious Games Summit at this year's Game Development Conference -- held Mar. 20-24 in San Jose, Calif. -- is corporate-sponsored training games. The buzz at the GDC echoes the wave of attention training video games received at the Training 2006 conference in Orlando in early March.
In the past year major companies like Canon and Cisco have been increasing the rate at which they are developing video games that teach technical skills such as equipment repair and network maintenance in a playful, efficient, and highly addictive manner.
Some game-development companies are starting to focus their attention on the training-game market as well. At the GDC, Northampton (Mass.)-based Cyberlore Studios, for example, announced the company is relaunching as Minerva Software -- with a business plan to switch gears from entertainment titles to customized training games for large corporate clients.
The newly christened company is launching with an intriguing product: a remake of Cyberlore's most recent entertainment game, a Sims-style title called Playboy: The Mansion, which has sold 750,000 copies to date. The game's designers altered the graphics and scenarios so that they no longer involve Hugh Hefner and models, but instead sales reps and customers. Take a peek at some leading examples of training-game design -- usually available only on corporate Web sites or laptops.