How I Design a Serious Game Around One Behaviour, Step by Step

I make learning games, and a good chunk of that work is custom serious game design.

A team comes to me with one thing they want people to do differently, and I build a game around it.

A game made for them, and only really for them.

I used to start in the wrong place, honestly.

So these are the six steps I actually take now, written out so you can follow them, borrow them, or tell me where I have gone wrong.

What a custom game means, for me

Off-the-shelf games are lovely, and I use them too.

They are tested and ready, and a facilitator can pick one up on a Tuesday and run it on a Thursday.

But, a custom game starts from the behaviour the room needs to practise, and the game comes after that.

Sometimes a distant second.

If you would like the longer comparison, I wrote about it in custom vs off-the-shelf simulations.

Step 1: Find the one behaviour

The first meeting is mostly me asking the same question in different ways.

What do you want people to do on Monday that they did not do on Friday?

The early answers are usually big, kind words like collaboration, ownership or strategic thinking.

They are good words, and I have used every one of them myself.

But, I cannot build a mechanic around a word.

So we keep going until we reach something I can watch a person do.

Say, a manager asking a quiet team member for their view before giving their own.

That I can design for.

Step 2: Find the tension

For me, a behaviour is hard because something pulls the other way.

Time pressure, a target, a boss in the room, a habit that has worked for ten years.

That pull is the tension, and the tension is the game.

If there is nothing to lose by doing the old thing, there is nothing to play.

Simple to say. Fiddly to get right.

So I write the tension as one line on an index card, something like "Speed wins points, but only listening wins the round."

If I cannot fit it on the card, I probably do not understand it yet.

Step 3: Pick a mechanic that carries the tension

This is the bit I enjoy most, and also the bit where I make the most mistakes.

A mechanic is the rule that makes players feel the tension in their hands.

Hidden information, limited resources, a timer, a trade between teams.

If the behaviour is asking before telling, I might give each player one piece of a puzzle that nobody else can see.

Then the only way to win is to ask.

I try to keep it to one core mechanic.

Every rule I add is one more thing to learn before players get to the bit that matters.

Step 4: Paper prototype first

My first version is always cardboard, sticky notes, a pair of dice and my own terrible handwriting.

It looks rubbish, honestly, and that helps.

Nobody is precious about a game drawn in marker, so people tell me plainly what is broken.

And it is cheap to throw away.

I have thrown away a lot of them, actually.

Step 5: Playtest, then playtest again

I playtest with colleagues, with friends, and with anyone patient enough to sit at my table for forty minutes.

My Li'l Goblin is my toughest tester, and she found the loophole in one of my games before I had finished explaining it.

She was very pleased with herself.

In each playtest I watch for one thing: are players doing the behaviour because the game asks for it?

Or are they finding a clever way around it?

If they find a way around it, the game is teaching the way around it.

So I change the rule, and I test again.

Then I run it with a small group from the actual team, because their reality always has details I did not know about.

Step 6: Design the debrief alongside the game

I used to treat the debrief as something I would sort out on the day.

That was a mistake, and a slightly embarrassing one.

The game creates the experience, and the debrief turns it into something people take back to work.

They need each other.

So I write the debrief questions while I am designing the rules.

If a moment in the game does not lead to a debrief question, I ask myself why it is there at all.

Three questions I keep coming back to: what happened, why did you choose what you chose, and where does this show up in your week?

When a custom game is worth it

For me, a custom game is worth it when the behaviour is specific to your team and nothing on the shelf quite fits.

It is also worth it when the same game will run again and again, cohort after cohort.

If a good off-the-shelf game already does the job, I would honestly use that.

It is quicker, and it has been tested at more tables than mine.

And if you are weighing up who to build with, I wrote down the eight questions I would ask a serious game vendor.

If you would like to think it through

If you have one behaviour in mind and would like to think it through together, have a look at how we work with partners.

I am always happy to talk it over, even if the answer turns out to be that you do not need a custom game at all.

The best moment for me is when someone stops mid-turn, looks up and says, oh, this is my Monday.

And plenty of people build games a different way and get lovely results, so take whichever bits of this are useful to you.

With love from Bengaluru, this is Arvindh saying over and out.