Off-the-shelf training games work well for...

Convenience and predictability. A licensed training game — a packaged simulation, a box-set business challenge, a digitally distributed team exercise from a large vendor — comes with a known structure, certified facilitators, and reproducible results. For organisations that need to run the same programme across multiple sites or cohorts with minimal variation, the standardisation is valuable. The content has been validated, the facilitation guide is written, and the logistics are solved.

Many of the most recognised leadership game products in India are sourced from international publishers and localised for the Indian market in varying degrees. They fill a real gap in the market for L&D teams that do not have the budget or internal expertise to build custom experiences but need something more interactive than a workshop.

Where it falls short for leadership development

The problem is that generic games produce generic insights. A simulation designed to teach negotiation to any leadership team in any industry in any country cannot account for the specific dynamics of your team. It cannot surface the particular tension between your finance lead and your operations head. It cannot reveal the avoidance pattern that shows up every time your senior managers face cross-functional conflict. It cannot connect to the strategic challenge your organisation is actually navigating right now.

The debrief after an off-the-shelf game is limited by the same constraint. The facilitator — often an associate who was not involved in designing the experience — can only speak to what the game is supposed to surface, not to what actually happened in the room with your people. They are delivering a script. Valuable, perhaps. But not specific to what just unfolded.

In India's hierarchical corporate culture, this matters more than the vendors acknowledge. The dynamics that emerge when senior leaders play alongside middle managers, or when participants from different regional offices interact under pressure, are not accounted for in a globally standardised game. The cultural texture is missing. The insight is blunted.

What seriously designed games do differently

Every game I run is either custom-designed for the client's specific behavioural challenge, or selected from my portfolio of six proprietary games because it maps directly to the outcome the client needs. There is no catalogue-browsing and no one-size fits most. Before I design or select a game, I want to understand what specific leadership behaviour the organisation is trying to develop — and why it is not currently showing up.

The game design itself responds to that brief. If the challenge is cross-functional collaboration breakdowns, the game creates the conditions under which those breakdowns occur — and makes them visible, safely, in a setting where they can be examined rather than managed around. If the challenge is that leaders default to compliance over initiative, the game builds in the decision points where that tendency will appear.

The result is an experience that feels immediate and relevant to the participants, not like an exercise lifted from a training catalogue and delivered by someone who met them that morning.

The facilitation difference

I design every game I use and I run every session personally. That is not a positioning statement — it is the structural reason the debrief works. When the game ends and I ask a team to reflect on what just happened, I am not asking them to imagine what might happen in a real situation. I am asking them about what I observed happen in this one. Specific moments. Specific choices. Specific patterns.

I saw which participant went quiet when the stakes rose. I watched which leader took over when the group was stuck — and whether that helped or compressed the space for others. I noticed when the team's strategy shifted and why. The debrief is built on that observation, not on a generic list of what this type of game usually surfaces.

That specificity is what produces insight that participants carry past Tuesday. Generic debriefs produce generic reflection. Specific debriefs connect to something people actually recognise in themselves, which is the condition under which behaviour actually changes.

The bottom line

Off-the-shelf training games are a reasonable choice when you need standardisation across cohorts and budget constraints are real. They are not the right choice when the goal is genuine leadership behaviour change connected to your organisation's specific dynamics.

If you know what leadership behaviour you are trying to develop — and you want an experience designed around it and facilitated by someone who will be in the room reading what happens — that requires something custom. That is what I do.

Common Questions

How do you know if a game fits our context?
A 20-minute conversation about your group, their role level, and the specific behaviour you want to develop produces a clear answer. Arvindh will tell you which game fits, or whether none of them do. That conversation is free.

Can we see the game before committing?
Arvindh can walk through the mechanics and debrief structure in detail. What he cannot do is run a demonstration session — the game requires a live group to produce meaningful data. The detailed brief is usually sufficient for training buyers to make a confident decision.

How much longer does it take to get a custom or bespoke session compared to off-the-shelf?
One of the six existing games can be deployed within 2-4 weeks of the initial briefing conversation. A custom game design requires 6-8 weeks minimum. For most development needs, one of the existing games fits well enough that custom design isn't necessary.

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