IT Managers Called To Duty With New Online Game
It’s never going to be as big as Call of Duty, but IT managers can show their skills and save the day in an online role-playing game
The computer game blockbuster Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has got competition, from a game where, instead of killing bad guys, the player is the IT manager of a small company.
The game, “IT Manager III: Unseen Forces”, charges the player with a number of tasks in order move up through the ranks. When you reach the level of CTO, you know you are officially an IT managing god.
“Whether they want to unwind after a long day of office frustrations, engage in some friendly competition with a community of their peers or even enhance their IT knowledge, IT Manager III: Unseen Heroes gives them the opportunity to see if they have what it takes to be an IT superhero,” says the blurb.
In the game – which we’ve now played for about ten minutes – players aim to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of a fictitious company, by applying special – Intel-based – powers to a fleet of PCs, laptops and servers. And just like in real life, players must deal with a never-ending stream of high-tech hiccups that threaten their business’s bottom line. As the player succeeds, both the IT department and company will expand, leading to tougher challenges.
Clueless colleagues lighten the mood with daft comments: faced with a faulty monitor, one asks: “What’s wrong with my work telly?” When IT takes a while to fix a user’s problem, the frustrated user can be seen getting all hot and bothered, by jumping up and down.
“This is the third version of the game, and carries on from the huge success of the previous version,” said Keti Rogava, Internet marketing manager at Intel.
She explained that the game does have a serious angle, namely to highlight Intel technologies to IT decision makers, while entertaining them at the same time. “The target audience is IT decision makers, people who in real life are really hard to reach and talk to, as they don’t have a lot of spare time,” Rogava told eWEEK Europe UK.
“The previous game was really successful (120,000 worldwide registrations apparently) and it is a useful tool to engage our target audience,” she said. “As new technologies are evolved, the game will reflect those new technologies.”
“The feedback from the previous versions of the game has been very positive,” she added. “IT personnel use it as a way to get away from it all (i.e. their day-to-day job), and as a game, it really taps into their problems and issues. We find it a very useful tool and one of the most successful ones we have.”
