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Companies Championing Serious Games May Need A Chief Gaming Officer


Chris Melissinos - Chief Gaming Officer at Sun Microsystems

Via: Innovation Games Why Every Company Needs a Chief Gaming Officer (CGO)

Although The Innovation Games Company is a shining new star on the Serious Games scene, it was born out of many years of laboring and nurturing by Enthiosys® founder and CEO Luke Hohmann and the entire Enthiosys community.

His vision: A world where Serious Games and collaborative play are naturally, effortlessly, and instinctively used in pursuit of everyday goals. 

Innovation Games Company has just published a most interesting post intended to be “the start of a global conversation on the role of the CGO.” If you care about the power of Serious Games to create amazing, transformative results for companies, Innovation Games invites you to join this conversation and defining this role.

Here are the highlights:

Wikipedia Is Wrong

According to Wikipedia, a Chief Gaming Officer is an executive position whose holder is focused on research and technical issues within a computer game company.

Innovation Games states that the problem with this definition is that it is tragically limited along a number of dimensions. IG believes that a) every significant organization requires a CGO, not just computer game companies and b) t he primary focus of the CGO should be on developing a comprehensive set of programs that leverage Serious Games for the benefit of the organization.

The Responsibilities of a Chief Gaming Officer

According to IG, the key responsibility of the Chief Gaming Officer is to “ensure that the organization’s use of Serious Games is aligned to the strategic interests of the organization and executed within the tactical context of the organization”.

In pursuit of this of this responsibility, the CGO would need to:

• Participate in the development of organizational strategy

• Educate the organization on the purpose and value of Serious Games

• Assist organizational units in creating programs that leverage Serious Games pursuant to their objectives (e.g., helping sales leverage Serious Games to more efficiently allocate sales resources, helping marketing design more engaging Customer Advisory Board meetings, and so forth)

• Assist organizational units in producing/contracting Serious Games designed to realize the goals identified in the programs

• Manage the software infrastructure that the organization uses to play games.

As a senior executive, the CGO would also represent the corporation’s interests in the ongoing evolution of the Serious Games industry.

Innovation Games goes further, exploring the key attributes of a CGO, as follows:

• Has the proven experience of using Serious Games to solve complex problems

• Has a background in either cognitive psychology and organizational behavior, and is able to leverage this in developing programs and producing games

• Is a skilled educator who can clearly frame the hard ROI and soft benefits from Serious Games

• Is highly effective at managing the internal and external relationships that are critical to the success of the organization.

Examples of a CGO in Action

IG declares once they exclude gaming companies, consulting firms, and pundits, they can’t seem to find any.