Sometimes the development need is specific enough that an off-the-shelf game won’t fully serve it. A particular team dynamic, a defined cultural challenge, a unique strategic context. When that’s the case, Arvindh designs the game from scratch.
What custom design involves
Every custom serious game starts with a brief: what behaviour needs to surface, what’s the context participants work in, and what should they leave with that they didn’t arrive with.
From there, the design process builds a decision architecture — the mechanics, constraints, information flows, and consequence structures — around that specific brief. The theme and narrative come last. They’re chosen to engage the audience and fit the context, but they don’t drive the design. The behavioural mechanics do.
Custom games take longer to build and cost more than deploying an existing game. They’re worth it when the development need is precise, the audience is specific, or the organisation wants something that can be reused repeatedly across cohorts over time.
What custom games have been built for
- Leadership team diagnostics before a major organisational change
- Onboarding cohorts for high-potential programmes
- Culture change initiatives where specific behaviours need to be named and shifted
- Assessment centres where observable behavioural data is needed alongside other tools
- Conference keynotes and large-format learning events
What to bring to the first conversation
You don’t need a polished brief. It helps to have a rough answer to three questions:
- What behaviour or capability gap are you trying to address?
- Who is the audience, and what’s their context?
- What does success look like six months after the session?
Everything else gets worked out from there.