The Game
Open the game- Brand
- Houthoff Buruma
- Year
- 2010
- Objective
- Lead Gen & Recruiting
- Industry
- Finance
- Mechanic
- Simulation & Strategy
- Platform
- Installation
- Agency
- Agency: TDE
Objective
Houthoff Buruma, a Dutch law firm, needed a sharper way to spot the graduates worth hiring. With fewer than 200 candidates a year meeting its bar out of roughly 800 law graduates, and transcripts revealing nothing about how someone handles pressure, the firm wanted to test social skills, focus, resilience, and judgment under stress directly — while giving candidates a real taste of life inside the firm before they signed on.
Solution
Teams of up to five candidates sit down at dedicated computers in Houthoff Buruma's offices and step into the shoes of the firm's lawyers, guiding a Chinese state conglomerate's takeover of a century-old Dutch family shipping company. Over 90 minutes, players work through a flood of deal material — more than 100 documents, emails, video and text chats with colleagues and clients, and news-style video breaks — deciding how to advise their client at each turn as the acquisition unfolds. Several teams play the same deal side by side, competing on how they read and respond to it. The session ends with each team standing up to defend the decisions they made.
Results
About 600 Dutch law students played in 2010 — roughly three-quarters of the country's annual law graduate pool — and word of mouth carried the game to full recognition among target candidates within weeks of launch.
- 1
The player is invited to play at Houthoff Buruma's offices, where the game runs only on the firm's dedicated computers; a week before the session, the player watches a video briefing at home that introduces the case.
- 2
On arrival, players are grouped into teams of up to five, with as many as five teams competing side by side; each team is cast as Houthoff Buruma lawyers advising China Mining & Marine, a Chinese state-owned concern.
- 3
The premise: to meet Chinese government energy targets, the client must quickly build the Panlong Renewable Energy Park, which requires six specialized vessels whose unique technology and know-how belong to 't Hoen Marine & Offshore, a century-old Dutch family firm that must be acquired.
- 4
With a 90-minute countdown running, players work through a case file of more than 100 fictional but realistic documents, letters, video chats, text chats, and video clips to extract facts about the target's ownership structure and the risks in the deal.
- 5
Players interact with in-game characters through video chats and text exchanges played by professional actors and enhanced with 3D graphics.
- 6
The central task is to persuade as many of 't Hoen's shareholders as possible to sell, weighing the stakes and influence of each family member and related outside party.
- 7
Scripted disruptions — breaking news segments, incoming letters, and chats — interrupt the session with new problems under time pressure, and some issues in the case are hidden, requiring players to uncover and address them themselves while balancing the interests of both the Chinese buyer and the Dutch family.
- 8
The session ends when the team has secured enough shareholder support and drafted a Letter of Intent for the deal.
- 9
Afterward, in a plenary session, each team presents its results and defends its decisions to the other teams and the firm, with the ability to defend those choices being what is evaluated.
