Roleplaying Games at Work
Résumé
The aim of this article is to study management games using simulation, specifically role playing games (RPGs) for managers. I have deliberately chose to analyze these games in terms of enterprise gamification, that is to say considering that a game structure (i.e. role playing games) is brought from games to be adapted to the context of work and its organization. This choice will lead us to debate in what way and how a role playing game may integrate the concept of gamification. It will also lead us to question the concept of game, considering like Mollick and Werbach (2014, 440) that “given the confluence of approaches in enterprise settings” it would be quite artificial to separate games and gamification (understood as gameful elements or game-like mechanisms).
Studying several cases of role playing games for managers, my article will analyze two structural aspects attached to role playing games: the question of roles and the question of fiction. This will lead us in turn to consider in the last part of my paper what these gameful elements produce, by analyzing the functions that underlie the structure of role playing.