07/09/2025 | News release | Distributed by Public on 07/09/2025 11:53
July 9, 2025 Ever heard the one about a data scientist, psychometrician, designer, and engineer that walked into a consulting firm and created video games?
Probably not, because McKinsey may be one of the few places where this is-really-happening. Since late 2020, McKinsey has had a game-based innovation lab (GBIL), a team of about 25 colleagues creating digital games for the firm's recruiting, client learning academy, and professional development.
Led by Brian Mendoza, GBIL became part of the firm when McKinsey acquired Imbellus, a start-up that pioneered using gaming to assess how people think.
How does a video-game team fit into the world of a consulting firm? We caught up with Brian and Teplyn Fournier, principal product manager, to learn more about their ideation process and how the games work.
What was the first game you created for McKinsey?
Brian Mendoza and Teplyn Fournier
Brian Mendoza and Teplyn Fournier
Brian: McKinsey was the first client at Imbellus. The relationship started with the firm wanting a better way to measure how people think, as opposed to what they know. It had previously used a multiple-choice test that was very quantitative and probably triggered people's test anxiety. Now, candidates do things like play Sea Wolf, which involves selecting and evaluating microbes to clean up contaminated sites as a way to evaluate, in context, how they think analytically.
That is part of our assessment called Solve, and it's given to around 300,000 early career consultant candidates per year. It measures analytical thinking and problem-solving as an additional data point in recruiting.
The pool of applicants at McKinsey is large enough that it allows us to continuously improve the game. We started piloting a new version in January and already over 60,000 people have used it, which gives us a lot of data to play with.
How have the game offerings evolved since the team became part of the firm?
Brian: When we joined, we said we wanted to go beyond recruitment. We've since built games used by McKinsey Academy for client leadership development workshops, and more recently games for firm learning as an interesting way to teach conceptual skills-like apprenticeship-to colleagues. We're always looking to see what lends itself to learning in a fun and explorative space.
How does a game teach apprenticeship?
Teplyn: We have a game called Nebula Odyssey set in space. The player leads a crew of four-pilot, scientist, engineer, and cook-making sure each is developing and has the skills they need to complete the mission safely and successfully. As the captain, you are given information on each crew member's daily task, including their degree of familiarity and capability with the task. Players are then asked to choose an apprenticeship skill best suited for the individual and situation, and you can see if the choice helps or sets the crew member back. You can also play with changing course, learning from alternative choices to see how other skills may have worked in that scenario. Ultimately, players come away with a better sense of apprenticeship skills and when they're best used-and we've seen promising data on their ability to retain these lessons over time thanks to the game format.
Nebula Odyssey, a game used to teach apprenticeship
Nebula Odyssey, a game used to teach apprenticeship
How is the team set up, and what is the process for building a game?
Brian: We have four disciplines inside the game lab: Product and Live Services, Assessment Science (data scientists and psychometricians), Engineering, and Design. It's a very collaborative process, where all teams weigh in on ideas throughout, so no one gets too far with something before another discipline can collaborate on challenges.
Teplyn: First, we align on the overall goals of a game in a particular space, like teaching apprenticeship skills. We then come up with high-level concepts that could accomplish those goals, differentiated by mechanics, narratives and characters, core loop structures (repetitive actions that provide rewards to the player), and other key building blocks. We filter these down through scoring them against the product objectives, stakeholder feedback, and user testing. Once we're down to one main concept, we create a digital prototype or even minimal viable product, which we test extensively. We do a lot of "think-alouds," where potential users play the game and talk through what they're thinking while we observe-because the thinking during play is what this is all about.
Solve, a game used for recruiting to assess thinking
Solve, a game used for recruiting to assess thinking
How long does game development take?
Teplyn: There's always this tension between the "blue sky" ideation and the ideal experience we could craft versus what we can build in a reasonable timeline.
Assessment games take longer than learning games to develop because the stakes are higher. If we're only 80 percent effective in teaching something, that's okay. But if we're 80 percent effective in assessing someone's candidacy, that 20 percent is a big error. In learning, we're trying to deliver games in three to six months because we can do further testing and learning while the game is live.
On the other hand, candidate assessment may take a year to build, then another six to 12 months to validate "in the field" to confirm the accuracy of the scoring and experience-what we finally launch stays static once it's live, so we need a much higher degree of certainty before we hit "go."
Brian: Firm teams that want to build game-based experiences are often surprised by the level of detail and effort required. Most people don't have an appreciation for it, and we enjoy educating people and bringing them into our world.
Does the team play video games together?
Brian: Sometimes! We have people bring in their Switch, and we'll play together when the team meets. We're spread all over the country so we can't always do that. But a lot of team members game together in their free time.
Teplyn: We talk about video games a lot, probably daily. When we're ideating, people will bring up games they've played and break down the relevant elements so we can learn and gain inspiration from them. I'm not from a gaming background; I was a consultant at the firm working in solutions and our digital practice. Actually, one of the main pieces of feedback I received when I first joined this team was to play more video games.