Serious gaming for Innovation and Change

T-Xchange - a joint venture between Thales Netherlands B.V. and Twente University - designs and develops serious games for public and private organizations.

Our vision is that serious gaming has great potential for supporting human judgment and decision-making regarding innovation and change processes. Taking the ‘right’ decisions in these processes is complex due to the absence of reliable information, the different knowledge disciplines that need to be taken into account, and the different interests and perspectives of stakeholders involved.  

In the recent years, T-Xchange has shown in more than fifty cases that a gaming approach works. A picture may be worth more than 1000 words. A game is worth more than 1000 pictures. We design and develop three types of serious games (both board and computer games):

• Awareness games aiming at changing people’s attitudes and transfer of knowledge. An example of such a game is the ISS Game in which players discover the characteristics of different maintenance models and the GO4IT Game in which players discover the necessity of civil-military collaboration.
• Co-creation games aiming at discovering and stress testing innovative solutions for complex issues. For instance, in the BEST Game players explore future markets and business models and the VER Game, in which players jointly plan an urban area.
• Training games aiming at improving people’s knowledge and skills. An example of such game is the Mayors Game developed for training majors in time critical decision-making and the Social Dilemma Game developed for training employees in using social media.

By designing and building these games T-Xchange has built and is developing profound knowledge on game based judgment, decision-making and learning.

In building a game, every step is goal oriented and is a means to an end. The design and development process are as important as the end result. That is to facilitate human work and thought processes in a transparent, structured and intuitive manner.

 T-Xchange introduction video (click on picture)