On Friday morning, 20 police officers in Las Vegas will be climbing behind the controls of videogames instead of police cars. As part of GameWorks' new Team Building Program - an instructional program designed to draw corporations into the mega-arcades - the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department will spend a morning blowing away zombies, in the belief that the team that plays together, stays together.
"The key to team-building and communication is to go beyond the box we're closed in all day," says Phil Roland, a spokesperson for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. "These games will let us realize we need left-brain solutions, more creative approaches to problem-solving."
The 20 police officers will converge on GameWorks Friday for three hours; during that time, they will go through three modules designed to enhance different team skills. For example, in the Team Strategies for Managing Change module, police officers on a Top Skater speed-skater simulation game might be suddenly instructed to shut their eyes; a team member would then have to figure out an innovative way to navigate them through the course blindly. Other games that will be used include Prop Cycle, the shooter House of the Dead, and tank game Tokyo Wars, as well as sports simulations games like Alpine Skier and Waverunner. These games, GameWorks says, were chosen because they required "multiple skills."
But how exactly will Alpine Skier and Tokyo Wars enhance teamwork? Roland's assumption is that as different police officers discover their varied skills in the games, they'll be forced to look in new directions for leadership. Not only will they recognize the individual strengths of their fellow officers and "develop 360-degree communication," but the unconventional setting could foster new types of relationships between officers. All this, Roland says, will lead to a "better-quality product for our customers," as he refers to the citizens the officers serve.
Using videogames for training is not a novelty. Since 1995, the Marine Corps has been using a specially tailored version of Doom as a cheap, additional way to prepare soldiers for combat. Both military Doom and the GameWorks program have been designed to emphasize multiplayer games requiring teamwork to defeat a common enemy (whether aliens, armies, or simply the clock).
If all goes well, GameWorks plans to market the program to businesses as a cheaper and more convenient Outward Bound-type company training tool. As the beta-testers of the program, the police department seemed like an appropriate, albeit visually amusing, group.
"We're excited to see people like that playing games. It's a funny combination," says GameWorks VP of corporate communication Melissa Schumer. "It's a great way to take out aggressions, no matter who you are."
