Professional Boundaries for the Computer Game Industry

 

Working with Ubisoft, one of the top 20 gaming companies, we’ve accrued extensive sector knowledge, and excel at supporting their customer facing teams to deliver an excellent customer experience.

The computer games industry can be a highly toxic environment. We have developed a variation on the professional boundaries training which incorporated the key building blocks of the training and introduced a range of concepts that allowed the participants to then look at practicing the application of the theoretical elements in real life scenarios.

The training was called “How to have safe & exemplary player interactions” and has been broken down into three modules, with the first two modules delivered a week or two apart and then peer coaching sessions following up around 2 months after the initial training, and then repeated quarterly.

We’ve been working with the EMEA head office team, based out of Paris and covered all of their regions and subsidiaries from Europe through to the Middle East, Asia and Australasia.

 

Module 1

  • What are professional boundaries in gaming and their role as a guide vs. friend

  • Keeping yourself in control of a situation and out drama

  • What are your boundaries like at their best (and worst)

  • How we each perceive situations differently

  • The role of our brain, body and nervous system when we perceive stressful situations

  • How to give yourself advice in order to gain feedback and insights from previous player interactions

 

Module 2

  • Toxicity vs. disruptive behaviours

  • Asking better questions to find out more about other person’s perspective using Clean Questions

  • How concerts have some of the answers when it comes to a great customer experience

  • What can be done upstream to create better communication and a cohesive environment

  • A reminder of why their boundaries are so important

  • Putting it all into practice

  • Ensuring their boundaries are in place and developing a coping toolbox to difficult times

 

Peer Coaching Sessions

 

  • Co-creation environment where participants were joined by an experience mentor within their area of the business to discuss and give advice on what is happening/had happened

  • A space to share honestly and in confidence and gain insights through the principle that there is no failure, only feedback

It’s well documented that the gaming industry faces tough questions both from it’s consumers and internally amongst it’s own staff, with many companies facing questions about sexual misconduct, “gamergate” and a “bro culture”. Whilst the focus for the Ubisoft project was customer facing, the topics covered can also be used to hold boundaries between team members.

 

The Ubisoft project was aimed towards the community managers, community representatives, eSports Team leads, community developers, marketing and brand management teams and social media channel specialists.

Over 250 people have attended the training in their organisation to date, which has covered the offices and subsidiaries in Europe & Scandinavia, United Arab Emirates, Russia, Korea, China, Singapore, Japan and Australia.  Everything has been run virtually and the project has been administered by our team in conjunction with main HR teams.

 

Each business is unique and yet the problems facing the gaming industry, when it comes to supporting their staff to deliver exemplary interactions with the consumers, are not, and we’re working with other gaming organisations to expand out the support to the sector as a whole.

From smaller games companies through to multi-national organisations, I know that what we’ve delivered can really make a difference to the mental health and support that staff feel they get. Get in touch if I can help your organisation improve the way it handles its player interactions.