The developing of a game exploring the effects of trust on projects

Abstract

In this master s thesis a game about trust was developed. The game was to be designed as an educational tool for project management courses.

Four main concepts were discovered through the study of current educational games and the effect of games in education: Learning by doing, Gamification, Transferability and Simulation. The game that was made incorporates these four concepts to try and create an effective and useful game.

An important part of an educational game is to have grounds in reality. A study was done on the current research of trust in projects. Interviews were also held with people who have experience with project work. Project managers and project workers were interviewed. The main results from the current research and the interviews where that people felt more motivated to work harder when they felt they were trusted. When trust was lacking, people felt the need to supervise each other to make sure everyone was doing their work. This led to increase in the time it took to complete the project as they end up using their own limited time to supervise others. It was this concept that the game was based on and would explore. Lack of trust between players, leads to longer time to complete the goal of the game. Through studies of existing educational games and interviews with game developers it was decided that the game was to be played by multiple groups and to have a debriefing phase after the game session. The sharing of different experiences and the discussion of this is where knowledge will be gained.