Rating:

In a hurry?  Recommendation    Product Preview/Demo

C3 Softworks has released the latest version of its BRAVO gaming software. The suite is available in three formats, classroom, web , and LMS. It is comprised of the following games:

• Quiz Show
• Billionaire (see screenshot below)
• ShowDown
• Spin Off

This gaming software provided me with an easy-to-use interface that walked me through the simple steps of creating a game. And C3 Softworks really gets customer service; they offer free Photoshop and Flash game templates from their website.

But enough about C3, let the games begin.

BRANDING THROUGH THE GAME
I've not seen gaming software before that lets me, or should I say encourages me, to tweak the game interface. For example, I can customize the game intro page to show off my company logo or my corporate brand!

Another feature is the concept of branding avatars. Say I'm an instructional designer for a marketing group. I could brand the avatar clothing and the background colors in the avatar cells to match company colors.  Or better still, pre-assign team names based on company groups or divisions. Is that cool or what?

USING AVATARS
For those of you who remember paper dolls, you will love these avatars!

To start designing avatars, I simply opened BRAVO and selected one of the games. I chose Billionaire and then selected Teams from the left-hand menu. From this page I enabled characters (a simple check the box). After enabling, I clicked one of two avatars that appeared on the page and I was off to the Character Builder tool.

From this really wizzy interface I could save, cancel, customize, delete ,or add a new avatar.

I had way too much fun building several new avatars--some male and female with different face types, hairstyles, some thin and some round--and then selected from many different clothing styles. The game developers got very creative here considering the avatars are only viewed from the waist up.

Also, interesting to note, one of the facial accessories was a facemask. Every classroom should have a superhero! What's left? Naming the avatars of course--weird how some of my avatars looked like people I work with.

AVATAR TEAMS
You can do lots of interesting things with avatar teams. For example, as a training manager I can give my instructors the ability to increase or decrease the number of teams depending on the size of the class. Or I can lock down how many teams the instructor can build. Or they can swap out avatars based on the cultural dynamics of the classroom.

By default Bravo assigns colors to the teams, but if I wanted to, I could enable my instructors to change these. And for those instructors who just say no (and we know they are out there), they could choose not to use avatars.

From my perspective, the primary purpose of an avatar is to improve the quality of the interaction between the game and the player. The game developers have given avatars characteristics that make them appear more lifelike, for example, their eyes move from side to side and blink. They can also wave their arms and clap their hands.

Recommendation
See Part 2.

Part 1 | Part 2

BRAVO! Rating