Virtual Monopoly
A Minneapolis firm’s business simulation games pit executives against each other in an online corporate contest.
BY JENNY SHERMAN
At a recent semiannual leadership conference, nearly 140 senior executives from Minneapolis-based real estate finance company GMAC-RFC huddled around computer monitors, frantically trying to interpret e-mails, spreadsheets, press releases, and news reports. The clock was ticking, and they had to make critical business decisions based on that data, or else they would lose the game.
It was, in fact, a game—a business simulation game developed for the company by Pixel Farm Interactive, an operating group within Pixel Farm, a Minneapolis company that provides animation, visual effects, and finishing services for TV and music videos. Pixel Farm Interactive works primarily with businesses to produce DVDs, CD-ROMs, and Web-based interactive communications. After getting GMAC’s request for a unique presentation model that would unite different company cultures after a major acquisition, Pixel Farm Interactive came up with the idea for an interactive business simulation game. The game would act as a catalyst for change as well as a collaborative, experiential-learning exercise.
Think Monopoly customized for a particular company and presented as a real-time, interactive competition between teams of executives. Unlike the board game, however, players get information in a variety of formats about a fictitious marketplace. They even take phone calls and meet with customers (role-played by actors or other company executives) in an attempt to adjust their business processes and reach a higher sales volume than the other teams. Boards at the front of the room posted each team’s results during four hour-long rounds.
The results, according to Gary Lindberg, executive director of Pixel Farm Interactive, were outstanding. GMAC’s CEO Bruce Paradis moderated the game, wherein teams competed for the best sales in a mock robot manufacturing company. “Underneath the surface there are a lot of business rules about how the game will work,” says Lindberg. “Most of the business rules are hidden but discoverable.” A team couldn’t corner the market, for instance. It also had to have some balance in its investments; a GMAC team that chose to build high-tech robots, for example, had to invest more in research and development or else it saw penalties in sales. In the third round of the GMAC game, the CFO in the fake robot company was indicted for tax fraud. “If a team had not invested in marketing and public relations, they got a 10 percent penalty on sales,” says Lindberg. And, if they hadn’t decided on a succession plan, they weren’t prepared when their CEO was killed in a plane accident in round three (after all, acts of God affect the real marketplace, too).
Pixel Farm Interactive has three custom-designed business simulation games under its belt, designed for GMAC as well as for Cargill and Taylor Corp. A number of other contracts are in the works, including a game for a phone company that will, naturally, incorporate cell phones. The firm is also developing a more generic,“shrink-wrapped” version of a business game that is highly customizable for a variety of clients.