MONTREAL, November 16, 2018. NITE Team 4, a new video game that officially launches December 11, has been attracting international attention in the cybersecurity industry. Its creators Alice & Smith received the grand prize in the Best PC Game category at the Games Startup Competition in Barcelona. The young studio has also announced a partnership with the International Air Transport Association (IATA) to develop a worldwide gamified training program in cybersecurity.
A few weeks back, the three-year-old company launched the beta version of NITE Team 4 during SecTor 2018, Canada’s premier IT security conference. “Although the video game is intended for the general public, we came to realize during production that more than 18% of our fans work in the cybersecurity industry. This led us to push the boundaries of what can be simulated in a game,” shared the creator of NITE Team 4, Andrea Doyon. “Today, we are able to adapt the missions to make the game a fully comprehensive training platform.”
According to the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA), there is a high demand for expertise in the fast-growing cybersecurity industry. A recent report from Deloitte stated that between 2018 and 2021, 5,000 news jobs in the field will have to be filled across Canada. Needless to say, the competition to find skilled workers is fierce, and many organizations resort to hiring subcontractors to meet their needs.
Gamification and video games are key to stimulating employee engagement and education. Gamification has proven its worth: not only does it help to explain highly complex subjects and significantly increase the level of engagement and retention of employees undergoing training, it also plays an invaluable role in managing change as well as employee behaviour.
As a member of the Humanise collective, Alice & Smith has won several awards in the marketing industry over the past year, in partnership with creative agency Bleublancrouge,for Hello Games and Ubisoft (including a Bronze Lion for Digital Content at Cannes; Silver for Strategy’s Digital Agency of the Year; and two Gold Marketing Awards).
Alice & Smith has also earned international recognition, with 80% of its revenue coming from European markets. Just recently, the growing studio has acquired three confidential mandates with listed companies in the entertainment and business sectors.
