Play Away: Singapore’s First Nationwide Career Gaming Event by WITGRITFIT Youths
Over a Thousand Youths Engaged in a Week-long a Career Exploration Gaming Adventure
Singapore’s biggest nationwide career gaming event, Play Away gathered over 1,000 youths competing in award-winning career game.
The week-long competition that ran from 4th to 10th December 2022, saw players clocking in a whopping total of 300 hours building their virtual careers and exploring career paths.
Designed by WITGRITFIT, the career game brought players on a journey of self-discovery, career exploration, exciting real-life experiences and attractive prizes in the real world!
The whole career game experience took its time to unfold one round per day throughout the week, sharing career principles like the importance of upskilling, skills stacking, career mobility and adaptability, resilience, the ever-changing jobs world and elements of how they can find job satisfaction.
Players begin by creating their avatars and determining their natural strengths, performance characters and core values. Each of these elements affect how players interact within the game to gain skills and reap career satisfaction.
Mimicking real life, the game tactfully illustrates how our personalities, strengths, weaknesses and values affect our career outcomes.
It was engaging and really gave insightful information about career planning. -Padilla Chloe Janelle Zabala, 19
In addition to gaining education, skills and jobs, players had to perform a balancing act maintaining Work, Health, Love and Play on their Life Dashboard.
As is in real life, our resources like time, energy, and money are limited. Players had to decide which areas to prioritise, ensuring that neither of those areas fell dangerously low.
As the competition grew fiercer towards its final leg, players woke up on Day 6 to the shocking news that certain sectors were shut down and retrenchment ensued. Players had to make a decision to pivot or wait in the uncertainty.
I particularly liked the fact that the adversities were rather unexpected, which were quite meaningful when applying to real life which is similarly unpredictable. – Chua Feng Xiang, 16
Play Away’s Grand Prizes were awarded to the Happiest Person, Most Influential Player and Most Skilled Player in the game. The intention was to create awareness and emphasise the importance of job satisfaction, upskilling and critical core skills like communication and persuasion.
From Left: Grace Wiggins, Jacintha Phua and Celestine Yeo
“Success has traditionally (and erroneously) been defined as accumulating money, possessions or titles. But what we intend to do through the game is for young people to understand their value as individuals and redefine what career success means to them. Our goal is to equip youths with career principles that they can carry with them throughout their lives, so that they can make better career decisions in future.” – Jac, CEO of WITGRITFIT
Play Away was organised by WITGRITFIT Youths comprising Grace Wiggins and Celestine Yeo, students from Nanyang Technological University, and Jacintha Phua, CEO of WITGRITFIT.
Funded by Realise Your Somerset Project by the National Youth Council (NYC), the event drew support from like-minded partners: LUMOS Projector, Charles & Keith, Dont Yell At Me, Revolution, Lockdown, Peony Blush, Fatburger, Candy K-Bar, Singapore Indian Development Association (SINDA), People and Career Development Association (PCDA), and venue partners *SCAPE, 111 Somerset and Orchard Gateway.
The WITGRITFIT Youths are thankful to all sponsors and partners for this ambitious project and are excited to see what’s in store in the next instalment of Play Away!
