Gamification meets pension provision: the path from vision to reality

‘Pension Run’ is a jump-and-run game in which users playfully explore their pension situation. Users are guided through real-life scenarios and learn to explore their pension situation in a playful way through realistic events in the game. The development of such a game sounds exciting, but the implementation in an internal project, which is mainly supported by students, harbours particular difficulties. In this blog post, I shed light on the challenges the team faced.

The idea for ‘Pension Run’ arose from the desire of adesso employees in a community of practice to make the complex and often perceived as dry topic of (retirement) provision more attractive and thus reach a younger target group in particular. By combining gamification and pension topics, ‘Pension Run’ aims to help people better understand financial decisions and their long-term effects. The added value is to make it easier to get started with (pension) provision and to lower the barriers to obtaining information and making decisions. For users, the primary aim is to have fun playing the game.

Read more about the background in my first blog post on the Pension Run.

Availability and capacity: a balancing act

One of the biggest challenges of ‘Pension Run’ is the availability of team members. As many students are involved, they have to reconcile their project work with their studies. University commitments often mean that not everyone is available at the same time. This requires flexible planning and the ability to react quickly to changes - a challenging task, especially when it comes to meeting deadlines.

In addition, the project is being carried out at adesso, where permanent employees are involved alongside the students. They have parallel tasks and projects that also need to be prioritised. Capacities must therefore be carefully distributed and cooperation well coordinated.

Knowledge management: the key to success

‘Pension Run’ is not only thematically challenging, but also technologically demanding. Many team members have to familiarise themselves with new technologies and a new model of collaboration. A significant part of the work therefore consists of building up the necessary knowledge and ensuring that this knowledge is retained during team rotations.

This knowledge transfer is time-consuming and requires close collaboration. Senior developers must pass on their expertise while students familiarise themselves with the new technologies and gradually build up their skills. This learning process is crucial for the success of the project, but also harbours the risk of delays, as not all steps run smoothly from the outset.

The technologies used: an overview

The development of ‘Pension Run’ requires the use of modern technologies that fulfil specific tasks. The use of these technologies should be practical for the project team to gain experience. Here is an overview:

• Angular: Angular is used for the development of user interfaces. It enables component-based development, efficient data binding and seamless navigation within the application.
• BabylonJS: This JavaScript framework is responsible for the 3D visualisation of the game world and avatar animations. It enables three-dimensional environments, realistic animations and physical effects.
• Bitbucket: Bitbucket is used for version control and team collaboration. It enables source code management, branching and merging as well as code reviews by team members.
• Jenkins: Jenkins automates the development process including build, test automation and deployment. Jenkins ensures that the application is compiled after every change and that potential errors are recognised at an early stage.

Complexity of the functionalities: a particular challenge

The biggest challenge with ‘Pension Run’ is to translate the complex subject matter of (retirement) provision into an entertaining game concept. State benefits, insurance and investments are characterised by regulatory and legal aspects that are often presented in a complicated manner and are not very intuitive to understand. Communicating this complexity in a game requires a precise and creative approach.

The team must ensure that the game mechanics are intuitive and realistic enough to help players understand the impact of their decisions on their (retirement) provision. The balance between technical depth and fun is essential and leaves a great deal of room for interpretation in the design, which can only be overcome with an increased coordination effort.

Conclusion

‘Pension Run’ shows how demanding and challenging the development of such a game can be - especially under the conditions of an internal student project. Despite all the difficulties, the project also offers enormous opportunities: the team members gain valuable experience, learn about new technologies and develop their skills in a practical environment. There is also the potential to get young people interested in an otherwise often dry subject and make an important contribution to financial education. Both pension schemes and large employers can benefit from ‘Pension Run’. On the one hand, pension schemes can use a new communication channel to sensitise a young target group to relevant pension topics and position their own products and services. Employers, on the other hand, can sensitise their employees and reduce the amount of advice required on occupational pension provision by imparting knowledge.

Would you like to find out more about exciting topics from the adesso world? Then take a look at our previous blog posts.

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• Gamification in pension provision
• Gamification - How games can lead your company to success