Business Training Simulations and Serious Games

Hello SimDevGroup Community!

Apologies for the terribly long time between posts. Its been a much busier 2013 than we had anticipated. But we're back.

Ok, we often get the question, "What is the difference between Business Simulations and Serious Games?" We have a pretty strong opinion and I doubt its very popular: Very little. In our opinion, they are both game based. It seems as though serious games is popular from a marketing position. Its a lot easier to sell something that feels very trendy. Ever since the TED talk about gamification, serious games has become very sexy to talk about. There is nothing special in this except it sells.

As we suggested, this is going to be a very unpopular opinion. But in the end, action learning, simulations, business games, war games, and serious games all describe 95%+ the same things. We will admit that the terms gamification and serious games sounds a lot more interesting and exciting, but don't fall victim to marketing. They are all basically the same thing.

Have a great day!