What Serious Games Are
A serious game is not a team-building exercise. It is not gamification. It is a designed scenario where real leadership behaviour emerges under pressure, and a structured debrief that makes that behaviour visible, named, and connected to what needs to change at work.
The difference between a serious game and a workshop: a workshop tells leaders what good looks like. A serious game creates conditions where leaders show what they actually do when the pressure is real and the stakes are live. You cannot fake it in a well-designed game. The game surfaces the real decision-maker, the real collaborator, the real person who goes quiet when things get complicated.
That's what makes the debrief different. The facilitator isn't working from a slide deck. The facilitator watched what actually happened in the game and is naming it back to the group.
The India Context
Most serious games used in India are imported — designed for Western organisational cultures and running on the assumption that participants will challenge authority, speak up freely, and admit to mistakes in public. Those assumptions don't always hold in Indian organisations, particularly in GCCs, family-run conglomerates, or heavily hierarchical sectors like pharma and BFSI.
Put The Player First's games are designed in India, run in India, and calibrated to what actually happens in Indian organisational dynamics — the coalition-building that happens outside the room, the deference that blocks honest feedback, the silence that looks like agreement but isn't. The games create space to name those patterns without threatening anyone directly, because the game did it, not a facilitator with a point of view.
Programmes have run across Bengaluru, Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Chennai — in-person, full-day and half-day formats, from 12 to 150 participants depending on the game.
Who Uses Serious Games in India
The typical buyer is an L&D head or HR director at a company between 200 and 2,000 employees. Common situations:
- A new CHRO who wants data on leadership behaviour before deciding on development priorities
- A GCC that has run 360s and workshops but hasn't seen behaviour change
- A team with visible dynamics problems — silos, communication breakdowns, influence failures — that HR can see but can't name clearly enough to fix
- A company scaling fast and needing mid-level managers to make better decisions under pressure
- An L&D consultancy that needs a serious games facilitation partner for a client programme
Clients have included Lowe's India GCC, Keka HR, Akamai, Walmart, Bosch, Novo Nordisk, Citrix, Coromandel, IIM Bangalore, and IIM Indore. 100% have commissioned at least one more programme after the first.
The Six Games
Each game surfaces a different leadership behaviour. The game you run should match the behaviour you want to examine — not the theme you want to talk about.
- Welcome to Zombiepuram — influence, coalition-building, political intelligence. 15–150 people, ~6 hours.
- Bloom — stakeholder management, networking behaviour, relationship investment. 12–40 people, ~2 hours.
- Sticky Fingers — emergent leadership, collaboration under pressure, information sharing. 12–150 people.
- Planetfall — learning agility, ambiguity tolerance, adaptive decision-making. Up to 20 people, ~2 hours.
- Ripple Effect — cross-functional trust, systems thinking, silo vs. collective optimisation. 16–60 people, ~3 hours.
- Chaos in the Kitchen — senior leader decision-making under shifting conditions, strategic thinking. 15–50 people.
What the Research Says
The evidence for experiential learning over passive instruction is well-established. Kolb's learning cycle, the 70:20:10 model, and decades of training transfer research all point in the same direction: knowledge transfers in a classroom; behaviour changes through experience, reflection, and application.
Serious games compress that cycle. The experience happens inside the game. The reflection happens in the debrief. The application — specific committed actions — happens before the session ends.
Outcome from Lowe's India GCC: 8.82/10 NPS across 113 respondents, 6 sessions. Outcome from Keka HR: 100% comprehension and engagement, 13/13 participants. These aren't vanity metrics — they measure whether the intervention landed.
What's Included in Every Programme
- Pre-session discovery call and brief
- Facilitated game session (half-day or full-day) — run by Arvindh Sundar, who designed the game
- EPPA debrief — structured to make behaviour visible and name it clearly
- Post-session behaviour summary — written, suitable for sharing with a CHRO or board
- Committed action plans from every participant
No associate facilitators. No licensed delivery without the designer in the room. If the session doesn't surface at least three named leadership behaviour patterns worth changing, the next session is redesigned at no additional cost.
Pricing
Programmes start at ₹50,000 for a group of 15–25 participants. Final investment depends on group size, seniority level, location, and single vs. multi-batch. Quotes are provided within 24 hours of a discovery call.
Capacity is limited: 2–3 programmes per month. Slots fill 3–4 weeks out.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are serious games suitable for all seniority levels?
Different games work better at different levels. Bloom and Sticky Fingers work well with mid-level managers (team leads, senior individual contributors). Welcome to Zombiepuram and Chaos in the Kitchen are designed for senior and C-suite audiences. Ripple Effect and Planetfall work across levels. The pre-session brief will surface which game fits your specific group.
Can serious games be run remotely?
The six games in this portfolio are in-person only. The social dynamics that make the debrief valuable — who talks to whom, who leads when no one is watching, who goes silent under pressure — require physical presence. Digital platforms can run simulations, but they produce different data. If your group is distributed, that's a conversation worth having before booking.
How do serious games fit alongside other L&D interventions?
Best as a diagnostic or anchor, not as a standalone. A serious game gives you behavioural data — specific named patterns for specific people or teams. That data is useful before a coaching programme (what to coach), after a leadership framework rollout (did it change anything?), or as a reset when previous training hasn't produced visible change.
What industries does Put The Player First serve?
Programmes have run in GCCs, tech companies, BFSI (banking, financial services, insurance), pharma, FMCG, and manufacturing. The games are designed to surface organisational behaviour patterns, not industry-specific knowledge — so they transfer across sectors. The pre-session brief ensures the scenario framing fits the group's context.