LEARNING COMPANY VALUES THROUGH PLAY
CLIENT
Volkswagen AG
ROLE
Concept and Art Direction
PRODUCT
Game Design
Following the Dieselgate scandal, Volkswagen wanted to introduce a new code of conduct that supported a more open and people-driven culture. Inspired by adventure games like The Legend of Zelda, I designed a serious game that allows employees to explore workplace scenarios, solve quests, and learn company values through play.
CLIENT
Volkswagen has had some bad publicity in the last few years. Dieselgate was an enormous scandal to the world. To Volkswagen, Dieselgate was a result of a flawed working culture. It was clear that they needed a culture change.
Volkswagen wanted to transform their image from an old dusted hierarchical enterprise to a 21st century people-driven global company. This required a fresh new code of conduct. Rather than communicating this with a management presentation or an abstract e-learning, Volkswagen wanted something fresh and exciting. A serious game.
concept
What if you could play The Legend of Zelda in the office. Talking to people, getting quests, and solving puzzles to advance in the game. I used The Legend of Zelda as an inspiration when designing the game for Volkswagen. In the game there were colleagues that needed your help, cultural etiquettes you had to follow and you could discover more of the office as you progressed in the game. In addition, the player could earn coins through solving quests. These coins can used on embellishing your avatar giving it a unique personality.
Are the employees confident to speak up and hold their ground against the managers or clients? Through playing mini games this will be put to the test. Players are encouraged to spot the people not following the safety guidelines for bonus coins, such as someone not wearing a safety helmet. The more coins the player collects the more outlandish they can dress up their avatar and share this with their team.
Art Direction
A large part of Volkswagen's code of conduct is to emphasise human interaction. I decided to move away from Volkswagen's cold sleek white, blue and grey branding replacing it with warm earthy tones. This gave the game a more informal experience inviting the players to be more open with each other.
It was important to humanise the characters within the game making the different human emotions accessible to the players. This was best achieved by replacing Zelda's top view perspective to a side view perspective within the game. Taking this view gave more focus not only to the emotions of the characters, but also to the details of the rooms and the player's avatar.
Not wanting to distract the player story, I chose to implement the game in 2D rather than 3D. It also allowed for more detail to the game at a lower cost.