In recent years, games have shown a potential for personality assessment, becoming a new way to develop or assess specific traits in addition to regular assessment methods, such as questionnaires and tests, for example.
This research focuses on a game which is designed to investigate leadership in a group context. This paper discusses leadership in society, the potential of serious games for leadership assessment and leadership behaviours in games.
A framework of leadership traits and behaviours is defined, and through an iterative and qualitative design process inspired by design science, the game is designed, prototyped and tested with participants. In total, 6 prototypes have been run where the behaviours of each player have been observed based on the framework of traits.
Additional assessment tools such as self evaluation questionnaires are also implemented in some prototypes. Observations show how the game allows an external observer to assess leadership potential for each team.
Results also show that some traits, such as conflict or stress management, seem to be more complex to distinguish among the players, whereas traits such as communication seem to be the most shown traits of all. It also shows how the group dynamic and players behaviours can be impacted by the team composition rather than by the game design itself.
Finally, the limitations and the potential of games for leadership assessment are discussed, as well as directions for future research or what questions it raises when it comes to how games can be used for leadership assessment.
Players are an emergency team part of a spy agency gathered to help agent DEXTER complete his mission of sabotaging Lexaxis Corporation in time. They are put in contact with DEXTER through the game and have access to confidential files with the mission information. However, this mission was failed in the past because of erroneous or contradictory information. The players are required to determine what is useful and what is false.