A serious game going viral! The Erasmus+ SHOEGAME

The first-ever serious game for the footwear industry has been recently launched and tried across Europe, and already counts with more than 5000 users. The video game, funded by the Erasmus+ ShoeGAME project and developed by partners from Belgium, Romania, Spain, Portugal, and Greece, aims to introduce children to the footwear industry through a challenging and entertaining methodology. The overall objective is to attract younger generations to footwear studies and professional careers.

The ShoeGAME, best played on computers and tablets, lets players explore challenges and puzzles in different departments of a footwear company with economic problems. The game takes about 45 minutes to complete and consists of 25 mini challenges that teach about observation, strategic thinking and other soft skills. The better the players complete the challenges, the more the company’s performance indexes – money, staff, clients, and sustainability – grow, the more profitable the company becomes.

Students, teachers and the public have been invited to test the game through various project-organised events and social media channels. With only two months, the game has already been played by over 5000 users. In addition to the more these users, over 800 teachers and students in Romania, Spain, Greece, and Portugal have participated in various events where they could try out the ShoeGAME as a pilot exercise. The feedback received from the participants has then been used to continuously improve the game.

“The competitive element combined with the opportunity to explore different departments of a footwear company through gameplay, made the ShoeGAME experience more dynamic and fun”, commented a student in Romania after playing the game.

The game is developed to be used in the classroom as a basis for discussions about different departments in footwear manufacturing companies. The project results also include support tools, such as guidelines for implementing gamification in education and ShoeGAME lesson plans, as well as educational materials to be consulted alongside the game, to support teachers in implementing the game in their classrooms. The game and the additional support tools are available in English, Portuguese, Spanish, Greek, Romanian, Italian, and French.

Carmen Arias, Secretary General of the European Footwear Confederation, partner in the project, expressed this week at a webinar with teachers from schools and VET centres across Europe:

“By going viral, the ShoeGAME will help us reach children and families all over; make them discover what a shoe factory can consist of, as well as the different occupations. If they do not see us as an opportunity as from an early age, it will be more difficult to later attract them to footwear studies and professional careers.”

The game can be played on the ShoeGAME website, as well as on the free online store gd.games. It will also soon be available in the Google Play and Apple Stores. Please follow us on Facebook and try out the SHOEGAME you too! Join us in our community!

The ShoeGame project is co-financed by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union.