This was a lecture developed just for pre-sessional students at the University of Southampton, in 2018. The aim of the lecture was to give them an overview of the application of games in business contexts. The students were mainly from China and they were applying for several masters degrees in Design and Management topics.

For this lecture, I have developed 2 learning outcomes and very simple and easy concepts for them to think about. Considering that these students are at least between 20-30 years old, they definitely have played any time of games and might play games on their phones (maybe even during the lecture – hope not?). But the good thing is that they can relate to games and they have already an interest in business, branding or marketing subjects. Therefore, the lecture needed to mix these 2 expectations and contexts.

Slides (2018 version)

Did it work? I think it did. I’ve asked from feedback from the tutors who were in the lecture room with me and the students appreciated that I also showed them advantages and disadvantages of games & business. Showing the 2 sides of the coin is always good for students so that they can see the 2 sides of the argument and then figure out which side they agree with (or create a new side – who knows?). The whole point was to introduce this topic and provoke them to think on possibilities.

I will definitely improve this slide deck in the future, but at the moment it was good and I’ve decided to add it here! :)

Update: I’ve given this lecture again in 2019, and I’ve deleted some slides from the initial deck in order to make it more concise. There was a lot of information in the previous version. In 2019, I’ve received good questions, such as “How games can be used for good?” and “How do I see the future of VR in general?”. Both questions were interesting and showed that students engaged with the content. I’ve also added examples using Pokemon Go and that was a big highlight of the presentation. We had very nice discussions this time!

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