Meet Isabel Travada, a former Cisco systems engineer pursuing volunteer work with the Red Cross. Her father's journal has been stolen from her apartment. It contains writings and drawings describing his adventures as a cartographer. Isabel is determined to find out "who done it" and why. Travada has managed to reconstruct parts of the journal, but needs your help to solve puzzles, piece together clues and rebuild the missing sections.
Thus was the scenario presented to the Cisco global sales force before and during its annual meeting, known as GSX (or Global Sales Experience). It's the new norm of education meets alternate reality games, which can provide key benefits in learning, immersion and entertainment.
Cisco called it The Hunt. Developed for GSX 2010 by JUXT Interactive and No Mimes Media, The Hunt was "part high-tech thriller, part treasure hunt, part social media experiment." The game, which incorporated video and audio, photos, e-mail, phone messages, social media and live engagement, was designed to engage Cisco's sales force prior to the event and integrate entertainment and learning in the meeting process, according to Behnam Karbassi, producer/content director for the game and founding partner of No Mimes Media, a Los Angeles-based multimedia production company.
Actually, The Hunt spawned from a game developed for GSX 2009, says Angie Smith, senior manager of the global sales experience for Cisco. That game, The Threshold, was intended to engage Cisco's global sales force and introduce it to the meeting, she says. Cisco felt that such a game would be well suited to an audience with "an average age of 39 that was 82 percent male and highly competitive," according to Smith.
One of the most intriguing aspects of The Threshold was an e-mail area outside Cisco's platform that allowed game participants to communicate with each other and keep answers to the game within their groups. In the process, these participants collaborated across borders and used every toolbox possible, Smith says.
In contrast to The Threshold, The Hunt was intended to be much "more productive and less time consuming," says Todd Purgason, creative director at JUXT Interactive, a digital design and strategy firm. In fact, participants spent an average of an hour to an hour-and-a-half per session. Karbassi emphasized that a special effort was made to avoid interfering with the actual sales conference and the work schedules of the audience and to achieve a judicious balance of difficulty and fun.
Players used various methods to communicate with each other, including text messages, voicemails, e-mails and live engagement. Social media tools included Facebook, Twitter, wikis and online forums. Audience-generated content was at the heart of the game: Isabel's Cisco sales colleagues were encouraged to help her rebuild the book she lost by uploading their pictures and work experiences relevant to the game's story.
The game "was a great way for the audience to learn about new Cisco products, particularly about their use in a sales context," Karbassi points out. For example, The Hunt helped familiarize the audience with Cisco's telepresence products.
Another key objective was spurring participants to collaborate and network, Purgason says. Creators specifically designed the game to be solved by a group rather than by an individual, he says. Special emphasis was placed on challenging the participants to devise solutions using the Internet.
In all, 9,000 people participated in the game, representing 50 percent of attendees at the meeting, Karbassi says. The game was considered to be very effective, generating "great feedback" and "high engagement."
Smith says that Cisco offers several games for its sales force, including a company version of the puzzle game Sudoku and Symphonic Togetherizer. The company hosts an entertainment section at the GSX Hub site, which incorporates games such as The Hunt. All the games enable participants to better communicate with each other and learn more about Cisco products and services. One+
