Serious Games for Talent Selection and Development

The use of serious games is quickly becoming a more mainstream method for achieving key objectives in a variety of business initiatives. Having produced many positive outcomes as a result of applications designed for the military, education, healthcare, and the government, serious games have infiltrated the corporate world on a large scale. Programs such as customer attraction and retention, employee recruitment and training, marketing, performance management, and talent measurement (just to name a few) are quickly realizing the benefits of serious games and the broader trend of gamification (see DuVernet & Popp, 2014). In fact, analysts have posited that this trend will be a part of 25% of business processes by 2015 (Gartner, 2011a), will expand to more than a $2.8 billion business by 2016, and will see 70% of global businesses utilizing at least one “gamified” application by 2014 (Gartner, 2011b). If these predictions materialize, we will be sitting on the verge of a revolution in the way the corporate world approaches traditional business challenges.