ORIGINALLY RELEASED JUNE 2007

Straylight’s CEO, Tim Nixon, has been guiding the company’s vision to bring games to the mass market by finding immediate vertical opportunities in the Serious Games sector, a highly untapped and lucrative marketplace. Previous Straylight developments focusing on such markets as Small Business and Injury Prevention training have paved the way for this highly detailed, yet incredibly intuitive educational tool.

Mr Nixon states that the unique challenge with mass market games lies not in driving graphics performance, but rather in “building an intuitive interface that can be understood by someone with no existing computer skills.” The team at Straylight offer a unique perspective in that their combination of design and engineering expertise drives a user centric approach, whether that user is a computer whiz or café kitchen hand.

THE KITCHEN
In The Kitchen, players are walked through a day in the life of a real world kitchen hand, thawing meats, baking pies, and preparing sandwiches. Throughout the process the player must observe all the correct food safety standards such as cleaning down benches, checking temperatures of food, and washing hands. After being guided through the process once by a virtual tutor, the player must then complete the tasks on their own. Should they follow all the correct food hygiene steps, the player will pass and walk away with the required knowledge to safely work in a food handling environment.

The first client of The Kitchen, Otago Polytechnic, are thrilled to be trialling the technology within their campus. Mike Waddell, Marketing and Business Development Manager for the Polytechnic, cited the “high turnover of staff in the hospitality industry and constant concern about standards” as key issues demanding new approaches to a traditional problem.

As the list of queuing clients grows locally, the focus now shifts to the international marketplace, in particular to Europe, where world leading partners are already making plans to adopt the technology into their catalogue.

THE RESPONSE
Not only has the game quickly found a first client, but already it is attracting accolades from industry, being announced as a finalist in the Computerland Excellence Awards in the category of Innovative Use of IT.

The game was featured on New Zealand’s TV3 news with the full video available at their website.

The Kitchen is being commercialised by partner company The Street, who have heard nothing but glowing reviews for the product as it is taken to the international market. “It’s fantastic to see such innovative technology coming once again from our small yet significant country. It’s becoming very obvious very quickly that there is a massive opportunity for games, especially in the compliance space.”

THE FUTURE
While the momentum gathered for this product is already huge, Mr Nixon insists that this really is only the beginning.

“We’re working with partners in Europe, and the USA to ensure that we’re finding the most exciting opportunities worldwide, not just in the training space, but also in ways we can bring our distinct accessibility to the entertainment market.”

View the project profile here