This October saw cities across Scotland play host to the first ever ‘Scottish Games Week’, a nationwide event featuring a conference, an education symposium, and awards show. What lessons from that event can the organisers share with the L&D community? 

This week on The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, Gemma and Sam are joined by organisers Brian Baglow and Julie Drybrough to discuss: 

• the elements of a good ‘learning’ game; 
• some of the problems that come when we design games with an explicitly ‘learning’ focus; 

• how to leverage game mechanics to improve learning. 

During the show, Brian discussed the game Island Saver, from NatWest. See: natwest.mymoneysense.com/island-saver/  

Sam referenced McDonald’s gamified approach to till training: kineo.com/case-studies/mcdonalds-till-training-game 

For more on Scottish Games Week, see: gamesweek.scot/ 

In ‘What I Learned This Week’, Sam discussed what a World of Warcraft virtual outbreak taught us about how humans behave in epidemics: arstechnica.com/science/2020/03/that-time-world-of-warcraft-helped-epidemiologists-model-an-outbreak/ 

Julie discussed the relationship between trauma and coaching, with reference to Dr Gabor Maté. See: drgabormate.com/ 

Brian discussed Bugzy Malone’s Grandest Game, a podcast series about Grand Theft Auto, available on BBC Sounds: bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/p0df1893 

And Gemma discussed ‘inosculation’, courtesy of Robert Macfarlane on Twitter: twitter.com/RobGMacfarlane/status/1592220645697486856?s=20&t=NcanHDv48LNdU1BAdl0qaQ 

For more from us, including access to our back catalogue of podcasts, visit mindtoolsbusiness.com. There, you'll also find details of our award-winning performance support toolkit, our off-the-shelf e-learning, and our custom work.    

Connect with our speakers    

If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers on Twitter:     

• Gemma Towersey - @GemmaTowersey
• Sam Brown - @SBrownMT 
• Julie Drybrough - @Fuchsia_Blue 
• Brian Baglow - @FlackBoy