Skyless Game Studios is a
Philadelphia, PA based Serious Games studio focused on games that have social,
educational or philanthropic impact.
Founded in 2012 to empower social causes to change the world through
gaming, Skyless Game Studios partner with experts on an important cause, then
work with them to develop a great game with a purpose.
Their flagship product, Follow the Money, is a Serious Game for
law enforcement that teaches skills and techniques for investigating financial
crimes and recovering assets. It is intended for government agents around the
world who deal with crimes like corruption, fraud, and money laundering.
Game Background
Skyless is developing the game in collaboration with Repatriation Group International, a
nonprofit corporation based outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Their
mission is to train and assist developing countries to combat corruption and
recover as much as possible of the billions of dollars/euros it costs them each
year.
RGI’s founders have over 50 years combined experience training
officials around the globe on anti-corruption and anti-money laundering
strategies.
Skyless began developing this game after meeting the directors of RGI,
who showed them, in quite some detail, how corruption was closely related to
many other world problems including poverty, hunger, poor healthcare, organized
crime and even terrorism. They also explained to the Skyless team many of the
inadequacies of current training practices in this area – little practical
education, poor scalability, and lack of customization to name a few. Working
together they designed an alternative training mechanism that is Follow the
Money. They hope that through this game they shall not only be able to
train law enforcement more effectively, but also make a dent in some of the
issues that plague our world.
Gameplay
Expected to be released in 2016, Follow the Money is designed as
a “point and click” investigation training game for Windows and Mac OS that
allows players to detect, investigate and prosecute financial crimes in the
public sector.
In the game, players investigate a virtual corruption case that rapidly
evolves to reveal a number of different crimes and schemes, learning skills
such as evidence gathering, transaction tracing, mutual legal assistance
requests, and asset forfeiture. Players have access to a wide variety of
investigative tools and techniques that they must apply correctly to advance
through the case.
Giving players this broad range of tools
emphasizes critical thinking and problem solving over “guess and check.” At the
end of the case, participants are scored on metrics such as the quality of
charges leveled and value of assets recovered, creating an exciting training
culture, and allowing competition and verification.