Beyond Gamification - Co–Innovation with Gameforge

[Former Member]

As part of our co-innovation activities with our customers the Design and Co-Inovation Center (DCC) worked together with colleagues from Gameforge on future scenarios. Gameforge is one of the world-leading provider for online and free2play games and it is located in Karlsruhe.

After a first joined Design Thinking introduction workshop some weeks ago, we now started the first 4 day Gameforge d.camp with the goal to both work on a concrete and relevant scenario and also to teach and train Design Thinking and co-innovation work. The 4 days were therefore full of hands-on work regarding the given challenge, some more theoretical inputs, a lot of time for reflection and last but not  least enough room for everybody to form a really creative and performing d.team.

How are our players and why do they play? Simple questions but interesting insights after some hours of research and interviewing "out of the building" in downtown Karlsruhe. And how energizing to see how testing an early "paper" prototype in on of the biggest malls in Karlsruhe.

"We felt like street musicians", was a comment from one of the team members. "We were crowded  from interested people and we got a lot of valuable feedback.". Feedback based on a prototype build in less than one hour with paper and a lot of  creativity.  What a simple but powerful approach. "I had no idea about prototyping beforehand, but now I will do it again and again and again, ..." one of the team hand crafter told me in the end.

"We skipped the forming and norming phases of typical teams – we directly jumped into the performing" another workshop participants stated. Well down coaches – as we truly believe that co-innovation work starts always with an inter-diciplinary team working in a trustful, open and creative atmosphere.

To sum it up – it was very interesting to see that also in a gaming company there is a lof of very serious work going an. Great to see that we can support here and we are looking forward to the next steps in our co-innovation journey.