Playful Serious Gaming for Change Management

Abstract

Change management is among the more difficult professional competencies to develop, and conventional training approaches produce limited retention and transfer. Serious games offer an evidence-based alternative, yet a structural design flaw undermines their effectiveness in practice: domain theory is routinely embedded as thematic decoration, allowing players to complete the game without engaging with it. This study addressed that flaw through iterative serious game design. Drawing on De Caluwe and Vermaak's (2003) colour-coded change management framework, six prototypes were developed and evaluated across two design cycles. Two designs are reported. The first enforces theoretical knowledge mechanically, requiring players to apply specific change management actions to accumulate employee support and clear phase transitions. The second, modelled on the commercial card game Exploding Kittens, sustains engagement through deception, bartering, and crisis management, but enforces theory less structurally. The prototypes reveal a central design tension: mechanical enforcement of theory risks producing a structured workshop rather than a game, while prioritising engagement risks reducing theoretical depth. Theory-as-mechanical-prerequisite is established as a transferable design principle, and the balance between instructional rigour and player engagement is identified as the primary open challenge for future iterations.