Business games

I gave a keynote speech at the Zukunft Personal - a massive HRM Expo and conference - today, in Cologne, Germany. One of my presentation themes in the main arena was 'openness'. My keynote went well and afterwards I was asked during the discussion whether companies would be wise to give their ideas away for free. I had previously explained that increasingly, many teachers and lecturers are sharing their content freely, because we are aware of the need to improve learning while reducing cost. Its not completely altruistic. Many of us are handsomely rewarded for this free giving. If the content is open for re-use and repurposing, it is almost always more widely and more quickly disseminated than it would be if it were closed. Some academics share their content through social media to get it 'out there' to the public more quickly, and in a more visible way, so that dialogue is encouraged and amplification can occur. Giving away content therefore makes sense to a lot of teachers and lecturers, because they want to gain a larger audience for their ideas.

But does it make good sense, my conference host asked, if commercial organisations were also to give away their products with no charge? Would this not result in lost revenue for those companies? The predominantly corporate sector audience waited expectantly for my answer. There were more suits on view than at Moss Bros. In my response, I echoed what I had earlier said in my Zukunft Personal keynote - Open Educational Resources are the start of a movement that is already transferring itself to the business sector. It is already happening not just in companies such as Google and Facebook, whose business model is to advertise on the back of free products in a pay-per-click strategy. I pointed out that some major players in the gaming industry are participating. One of the leaders in the game engine world is Unity, who sell their Unity Pro developer software package for $1500 but give away a lower level version of the same package for free. How can they afford to do this? The reason is quite clear. Unity wants games developers everywhere to use their software, and wants to encourage a community of interest to form around its products. It gives them a competitive edge over their rivals. Unity does so by not only offering free software but also an evaluation service on games that have been developed using their software. Last year the company announced its Union partnership scheme. If your game is deemed to be commercially viable, Unity will market it across a variety of platforms, and takes 20 per cent commission on all subsequent sales. Other gaming companies are following similar business models. How long will it be before companies in other sectors of business and industry begin to give their products away for free to become even more competitive in their niche sector?


Business games by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.