Background
The idea of a compliance game was initiated by ULURU and served as a basis for our joint initiative with Kluwer and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). PwC's question was: Are there ways to teach employees of a financial company in a more interesting and more efficient way about the rules of compliance? Up to now, compliance to regulations (such as the Sarbanes Oxley law better knows as SOx), laws and other rules (e.g. security) is fairly boring material to teach and learn. Employees usually receive traditional ‘classroom’ type training, maybe enriched with digital material on a CD-ROM or databases showing typical situations with questions on how to react in such cases. Not always very effective and inspiring.

The concept
The idea is to create a multi-media competence game where employees from commercial and headquarter departments can actually experience real-life situations and get confronted with compliance questions. By forming teams and competing “against” other teams - with rewards to be won by the best teams - the employees are motivated to learn more about compliance and about applying the rules in everyday work.
Via the cockpit of the game, a company has insight into the results. The game visualizes on which topics employees have already acquired competences and where extra effort is needed. This information can easily be translated into business scenarios.
The compliance game is specifically developed for the client, so that the cases addressed in the game match the culture, work-flows and values of the company.

What’s in it for the user?
The game will be played online by employees directly from their own workspace. The duration of the game can vary, it will typically cover a few weeks, but if so desired it is also possible to play the game in a short timeframe of max one day. In all cases, the actual playing time is 2-3 hours.
In case of a game duration spread over many days, the game does not require 100% of the user’s attention, it can be left running in the background until a notification comes in, similar to an e-mail notification, asking the user to react upon. Alternatively, game notifications can be sent by real e-mail and/or SMS, requesting users to start up the game to respond to a situation.
In its most common form, players are grouped in teams and the game is played by many teams simultaneously (i.e. all teams are taking part in the same game and compete against each other). This doesn’t necessarily imply that people are simultaneously online in the game, as the game is played over a longer period of time and players go online/offline continuously during the course of the game.
In the game, the players are asked to work on a case, for example the development of a new product for the company. The product development is accompanied by various communications between the game host and the players, using mail, video messages and dilemmas posted in a forum. All players are confronted with various ‘compliancy’ situations, in which they are requested to react. Depending on their reactions, players can score points for themselves and for their team. Team points and individual points can be redeemed in a shop.

What’s in it for the business partner?
Serious games are much more suitable for creating real behavioral change in a company than traditional courses. The Compliance Game will make employees aware of the various issues and situations that can arise in compliance. It will also trigger discussion amongst employees, making it part of their everyday working day. Finally the Compliance Game allows to monitor progress on an individual level, using scoreboards and competence levels very common to the gaming world.