TEAM BUILDING GAMES: THE IMPORTANCE OF TESTING

As a game designer who has worked on everything from card games and RPGs to online games and interactive comic books, I am very familiar with the concept and practice of testing. Any game designer knows that testing never ends, as unseen issues and “opportunities for improvement” present themselves continually, even long after a game is published. This situation is no different with Team Building Games, often large-scale interactive corporate events that employ game mechanics and principles to teach, train or promote positive bonding experiences and sometimes, problem-solve serious difficulties in the workplace.

Team Building Games are, in many ways, games that fit into a bigger picture. Less about winning and more about the playing, and the playing is the process wherein team skills can develop. Testing these types of games involves the usual procedures of any game-testing (test the rules, the dynamics, the goals and the interest level, etc) with an extra emphasis on the team skill values as they are being (hopefully successfully) reinforced.

Many Team Building games are even less about rules than they are about how the play directs or encourages team growth, and this is a primary area of concern during testing. Games that are really about the journey moreso than the destination. When testing team Building Games, one is analyzing the quality of the players’ journey together.

I firmly believe in endless testing for all games, and in the case of Team Building Games, I find the process rewarding and fruitful. As an added bonus, the testing sessions themselves often are t5eam building exercises themselves!.