Further Challenges

I was reading on Brettspiel about a book that discusses the importance of simplicity in systems (such as board games). Among the points argued is the basic premise that the system that is presented in the simplest way, without sacrificing any internal complexity, is the best system.

In my highest-low system I have found that the perceived complexity has hindered my employees interaction within the game. While it is true that the system is not really that complex, the scoring mechanism is a completely new and foreign concept to most people it, which limits their understanding of the system. As a result I have found, for example, that most of the employees forget or choose not to participate, and those who do participate have completely ignored one of the rules I set in place: that your score for the week is the score of the category you did the least amount during the week.

Instead, they have been reporting activities in one or two catagories for an entire week, which, according to my rules, would get them zero points. At this point I begin to wonder if they misunderstand the concept entirely, or if they simply forgot that I would be tallying scores every week instead of cumulatively over the whole summer.

To solve the problem I have assumed the latter and ignored the former, supposing that I could begin scoring cumulatively without anyone knowing the difference. At the same time, this will allow me to use the chart I made, which--when people see that others are participating--may create more incentive for everyone else to get involved.

After three weeks I did not expect to have as many roadblocks as I have had so far, but I should have expected at least this. In game design there are uncountable side-effects and incentive barriers that appear once people are added to the system. My goal is to "playtest" game mechanics in real management settings as much as possible so that they can be implemented in similar situations as easily as possible. The questions, then, are: How many playtests are required to get a game right? and Are there enough opportunities to playtest the number of times that are needed to reach the goal?