Fun with strategy: 4 Lessons from Role-Playing Competitors/ Suppliers/ Customers/ Stakeholders in 3-D

What will the competition do next? How can we re-negotiate a deal with suppliers? Are there some unmet needs with our customers? How can we make sure the partner really uses this project? These and other questions can be handled in role-playing games, of the sort we designed for use in the real world. Recreating this immersive approach – where you have to step into the shoes of a different stakeholder and think like they do – is very hard in a Zoom/Webex/GoogleHangout/Teams environment.  Today, however, we conducted our first role-play in 3-D space – in this case 3DICC’s Immersive Terf – and here are some of the lessons we draw. The 3-D environment is:

1. A lot less tiring than a standard video conference. You are constantly pro-active, even if just moving your avatar. Time flies when you are having fun!
2. Highly conducive to roll-playing. We could stick the companies’ logos on our chests, have large images of their offices on the wall, and summon up lots of digital information easily.
3. At present it still requires intensive moderation – one moderator per group – as for some people it is a challenge to use a (game like) avatar, write post-its, place them on the wall…
4. Able to offer things we cannot do in a real (presence) meeting, notably you can build 3-D models (e.g., of where factories are in the world) in the room itself!

In any case, we can now do everything and more, that we used to do in real (war)game retreats!