Formulation Type Matters: the Dow AgroSciences sales game
Formulation Type Matters is a sales training game made by Bottom-Line Performance, Inc. for Dow AgroSciences. It was a finalist in the business category of the 2013 Serious Games Showcase & Challenge.
Updated
What the game trains
Sales representatives at Dow AgroSciences needed to understand how a product's formulation type affects its performance. With that knowledge they could recommend the right product, deal with product problems and answer customer questions. Bottom-Line Performance (BLP) built a game around the reps' real task, which is reaching sales goals.
The story starts with a predecessor who ruined sales in the player's newly assigned territory. The player must win back customer satisfaction and sales by solving issues tied to formulation type. On entering the territory, the player meets five customers, each with a different problem, and has to find the right information for each one. Memorizing facts is not the point. The player has to ask good questions, recognize when to look something up and draw on expertise inside the company.
Bottom-Line Performance is the maker, and Dow AgroSciences is the client whose representatives played it.
Behaviors and scoring
The game aims to build four habits: asking relevant questions to clarify a problem and understand what the customer needs, seeking out expertise in the player's real organization, reviewing past issues to see what may be driving a customer's current behavior, and answering correctly the first time.
Feedback comes from two meters. Territory sales rise or fall with the player's decisions, and customer satisfaction moves the same way. Looking up resources earns potential sales, while choosing a wrong response to a customer costs heavily. That penalty mirrors the real risk of giving a customer inaccurate information.
The contest result and what is true today
Formulation Type Matters was one of the finalists in the 2013 Serious Games Showcase & Challenge, shown at I/ITSEC 2013. The contest's results for that year name other games as winners, among them GORRDEE, A Slower Speed of Light, Algeburst, MACBETH and Decisive Combat. The contest's page for the game lists Bottom-Line Performance, Inc. as the organization, business as the category, 2013 as the release year and Flash as the game engine for a browser version.
The maker's old address now forwards to the website of TiER1 Performance, a consulting firm. Its home page, read in November 2026, does not mention Bottom-Line Performance or the game. No page that offers Formulation Type Matters for play was found, and so its status stays unconfirmed.
Business was one of seven award categories that year, and the contest's results page lists 18 finalists for 2013.
Questions about Formulation Type Matters
Who made Formulation Type Matters?
Bottom-Line Performance, Inc. made it for Dow AgroSciences as a training game for sales representatives.
Did Formulation Type Matters win at the 2013 Serious Games Showcase & Challenge?
No. It was a finalist in the business category. The 2013 awards went to other games, including MACBETH for Best Business-Developed Game.
Can Formulation Type Matters be played today?
That is not confirmed. The contest page lists a Flash-based browser version, and no current page from the maker or the client offers the game.