Among the key competencies for game development that tertiary education provides, soft skills are among the most challenging to coach students on. In an active learning environment the expectation is that soft skills such as communication, estimation, and prioritisation are gained through experience when students undertake group project work. While appropriately scaled projects may provide an opportunity to engage with soft skills in a meaningful way, this learning is often a lower priority to the student presented with more tangible project outcomes that they expect to be graded upon. Engaged and enthusiastic students may reflect upon how their experiences have helped them to hone their existing soft skills as they have a basic understanding of their value, but most students are reliant upon direct involvement with a subject to recognise its benefits in any meaningful way. To facilitate this learning an activity was designed to encourage reflection upon soft skills and their value to games development. Trial By Fire is a tabletop card game that was developed through action research across the course of three years of iteration and qualitative testing with students. Students consistently expressed a clearer understanding of how soft skills are applicable in their projects and careers after just a few minutes of gameplay. Today this activity can be incorporated into university level lesson plans alongside a class discussion after just a few minutes of gameplay and presents an opportunity for expansion into other disciplines or soft skills.
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