The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants’ Turnaround Game – Virtual Imagination Leads to Real Life Success 

The success of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants’ (AICPA) The Turnaround Game, www.theturnaroundgame.com  is anchored in the understanding that students can be long-term prospects — as long as they are entertained along the way.  The AICPA’s primary tactic of implementing a graphically enhanced business simulator that provides authoritative and practical information to students is a study in the successful application of relationship building.

Since 2001, the AICPA has worked with premier relationship marketer, Wunderman; on a long-term multi-disciplinary campaign called Start Here. Go Places., which seeks to engage high school and college students to declare accounting as their college major and to ultimately pursue CPA certification. 2005’s The Turnaround Game is the most recent installment to this campaign.

“We needed an innovative and insightful way to demonstrate the relevance and opportunities of the accounting profession to students and to show why business and accounting should be their career choice,” said Louise Hraur De Sina, Director, Advertising and Communications for the AICPA.  “Our goal was to educate, support and inspire students.”

The AICPA found a solution: an entertaining business simulation model that serves as a virtual gateway to the profession, while striking down common misconceptions along the way.  The Turnaround Game also provides the AICPA with the means to send prospects, who opted in, more detailed information on the profession via targeted e-newsletters, free website access and alert e-mails.

In The Turnaround Game, students are invited to play the role of a CPA consultant called in to help turn around a failing record company. The game is divided and played in three chapters, each focused on a different business problem. Players interact with virtual characters by posing questions that elicit different responses — and vital information to produce recommendations that will solve the business dilemma. The Turnaround Games’ use of video fosters a real-world level of interaction, which is experienced by practicing CPAs. 

“We were especially interested in making the game experience challenging and engaging to increase visitation rate,” said Tina Miletich, Managing Director of Interactive at Wunderman. “If we could immerse each player into the world of the CPA, his or her understanding of the profession would grow.” 

Game participants have the opportunity to ask characters multiple questions and depending on when (and which) questions are selected, character-driven data are provided to the player at different stages.  This enables nonlinear game play and permits students to replay the simulation with somewhat different results each time.

The Turnaround Game also employs a virtual PDA. Pertinent details automatically get downloaded to the player’s onscreen PDA.  Other information can be searched for and downloaded based on the player’s actions in office locations.  All of this information (e.g., bits of conversations, facts, charts, red herrings) is sorted by the student and provides the necessary data to help the student formulate the proper recommendation to submit at the end of each level of the simulation.  These recommendations influence the music label’s “stock price” and the player’s final score.

The student has constant access to documents, conversations, charts and a summary of the “assignment” at his/her fingertips.  This data remains in the PDA until the student submits a business recommendation and is allowed to progress to the next level of the game where the clue/data collection begins again.

The resulting business solution to each chapter has an economic effect (stock, cash flow, and sales) on the company. In the game, players need to use their critical thinking ability and street smarts to turn around this ailing recording company. As in the real business world, students are evaluated on how their data support their recommendation, as well as on how that recommendation affects the company’s bottom line.

Earlier games on the Start Here.Go Places. web site, including the immensely popular Catch Me if You Can game, utilized linear, text driven problem/solution exercises.  While easy to play, these early games lacked online interactivity. While students’ worlds became increasingly more digital, the games needed to evolve in online complexity, while still preserving the three objectives of game development.

Utilizing “live” actors as characters, rather than employing an animator to render characters, was instrumental in giving The Turnaround Game a more robust feeling.  Actors, speaking specific lines to enhance game play, are initially captured on video.  These video clips (some 500 in all) are laid on top of 3D office and hallway backgrounds.  This technique provides a realistic environment for the students to immerse themselves in as a CPA consultant during the simulation.

Another enhancement to the overall design has been the introduction of “mini” tasks.  These tasks increase interactivity between the student and game play and the student and other characters.  Often the tasks get the characters to elicit more business information than what the player would get if he/she skipped the task or never completed a task (which is an option).  Without this information, it is difficult to determine the proper recommendation to submit at the end of each level of the simulation.

The AICPA team played an instrumental part by ensuring that actual game play mirrored the real world experiences that CPA’s are experiencing on a daily basis. 

The results of the AICPA efforts not only ensure the future of the profession, they also show the value of using business simulation models. To date, more than 273,000 students have registered on www.StartHereGoPlaces.com. Of those, 84% represent incremental value to the AICPA and to the CPA profession, i.e., as these students were not on an accounting path. More than 55% of members have participated in at least one of the program’s online simulation games, gaining firsthand experience of the role of a CPA.

The increased awareness of the possibilities of a career in accounting has led to a ground swell of interest. Of those high school members enrolled in the program, 40% say that it has elevated their likelihood of studying accounting in college.

And, most important, the profession’s numbers are moving up:

·        7% of students in early college are declaring accounting as their major, up from 2% in 2000.

·        4% of high school students are planning to declare accounting as their major, up from 1% in 2000.

Thanks to The Turnaround Game’s combination of engaging game play and practical information, it was awarded the 2006 Internet Advertising Competition (IAC) award for Best Non-Profit Interactive application.