Casual Games, Serious Results, Metrics to Prove It

In the training industry, major corporations ranging from Bank of America to Sun Microsystems have used serious games for everything from ATM maintenance to new hire orientation. Many instructional designers have had the opportunity to experiment with using learning games in a training environment, and it isn't difficult to find success stories. In one example, Canon printer repairmen that trained using a simple learning game achieved up to an 8 percent improvement in training scores compared to those trained with more traditional methods. Yet for every success story that gets reported in the press and discussed at conferences, there are numerous efforts that miss the mark.