Oil Co. Uses Game Sponsorship To Beat Hiring Crisis

With the oil industry suffering from an employee recruitment crisis, Danish shipping and oil company Maersk has come up with a curious hiring idea. It's developing and distributing a computer game called 'Quest for Oil' as part of the company’s larger plan to engage and educate the public about oil and gas exploration, and to inspire younger players to consider employment in the industry down the road. The first-of-its-kind computer game allows players to experience the stresses and strains of successfully managing an oil company.

“By playing the video game you can learn some basic and more advanced aspects of our industry: how to combine data from different sources and make very difficult decisions on high value or high cost, so risk based decisions based on a variety of incomplete information. If you’re successful, you can see how you can grow the business through this game,” said Jakob Thomasen, Maersk Oil CEO. “The idea of the video game is to introduce the players to the industry and there are secrets in the industry, but we try to give away whatever we can give away and be very transparent about how we do our business.”

Check out the trailer...

While companies have often used advergaming as a means to promote a product to consumers, few have used games to attract employees especially in old-school industries like oil and shipping. Who thinks this will work?