Asteroid Escape: A Serious Game to Foster Teamwork Abilities

Abstract

Teamwork skills have become a fundamental asset in the labor market. Modern organizations are increasingly implementing team building activities, aimed to improve or assess their employees' skills. Research suggests that serious games could be promising tools capable to support the creation of engaging and effective team building experiences. However, the design and development of serious games targeting these activities is still sparse and requires further investigation. This work introduces Asteroid Escape, an immersive serious game for team building, whose design was based on theoretical models on teamwork effectiveness. Although conducted on a restricted user sample, preliminary experiments suggest that tools like the devised one could positively contribute to ongoing research and implementation efforts targeting the exploitation of technology-enhanced learning methods for the development of teamwork skills and, more in general, of so-called soft skills.