#houthoff

Houthoff is a game played in real time.  Law firms looking to recruit new lawyers host a game interview essentially.  The various lawyers vying for the position are split into teams and each assigned the same task.  "They have 90 minutes to convince enough shareholders of the target company to sell their shares and to come up with solutions to hidden problems.  In this time they will be confronted with video & text chats, films, mails, news, websites, social media and more."  (youtube video)

I consider Houthoff to be a serious game because it teaches the 'potential lawyers' what the company is looking for in how it's employees work and the process they expect their employees to follow.  It also teach the 'potential lawyers' how to work as a team and figure out problems on the spot that happen within teams.  In the Designing Effective Serious Games: Opportunities and Challenges for Research it says "serious games represent an acknowledged potential for instruction, because they are able to strongly motivate learners.  They can also provide immersive environments where advanced users can practice knowledge and skills, also exploiting multimodal interaction."

Houthoff presents a competitive environment which motivates players on its own and since Houthoff is a learning game it motivates to learn fast and enough to solve the issues arising because the players only have 90minutes to solve tasks.  Houthoff is also immersive because the players are being fed different media to help them solve their task thus they have to delve in and discuss what is happening in order to convince the shareholders to sell their shares.  They have to use the knowledge as well as skills they already possess plus what they are learning through this game play experience in order to complete the task successfully and before the other lawyer teams.

Thus Houthoff is a serious game that is immersive by grouping lawyers into teams teaching these potenital lawyer's playing how to go about solving an issue that a law firm company could present.

Reference:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhNW4uV-hro