Losing time with video games at work seems a legitimate reason for dismissal

Losing time with video games at work seems a legitimate reason for dismissal, but it is just what the Spanish startup Gamelearn encourages . The trick is that, in fact, the games they have developed promote such useful skills in the workplace as leadership, team management and time, negotiation and customer service. Now, this management- focused learning system has just received an investment of two million euros from Kibo Ventures.

The idea came when three fellow mates, Ibrahim Jabary, Mai Apraiz and Eduardo Monfort, founded a company to give face-to-face training to managers. Realizing the popularity of video games between people aged 25 and 40, they decided to offer a product instead of a service. Thus was born in 2014 Gamelearn, which already has 85 employees. Its business model is to sell 'online' licenses to companies interested in these courses, either as a complement to their training program or as a unique learning tool.
To date they have developed four titles - with a fifth in gestation -: Triskelion, to improve personal productivity; Pacific, to improve leadership skills; 2100 to boost customer service capabilities; Shipping companies to learn how to trade. The latter, for example, makes us a merchant of the Venice of the fifteenth century who must create his own fleet of ships.

"They are the most realistic situations possible, you have to make decisions and if you do not find the right solution, it explains what you had to do," said Gamelearn executive director, Virginia Donado, to Teknautas. If the player is 'stuck', the video game throws clues that help him to reach a good port.
The key to these training courses is that, while educating, they share the spirit of any video game: entertain and engage. "We have a completion rate of 92%, which in the world of e-learning is very high," adds Donado. The leaderboards allow dozens of employees of the same company to compete with each other and 'peck' to improve their score and finish the game.
Shipbuilders makes us a merchant of the Venice of the fifteenth century who must create his own fleet. To do this, you will need to learn how to negotiate
Each game is available for mobile, tablet and computer, so it can be used from work or dead times. The duration is between ten and fifteen hours, so that it can be completed in a couple of weeks without getting too long. The titles are available in eleven languages, from English and German to Chinese and Arabic, an internationalization designed to reach multinationals with presence in several countries.
"We go to multinationals with many employees, but it can be coupled to smaller companies because at the budget level it is cheaper than the face-to-face training," says Donado. Its clients include well-known companies such as Repsol, Iberia, LG and BMW and in total reach about 7,000 players connected every month.
Donado says that the advantage of online games is that they can be updated and improved to extend their life. One of the latest built-in options allows the technical team of the company that buys the license to customize the video game: "The titles have very generic situations, and so each company can have their logo or a smartphone or A specific product ".