North Carolina-based BB&T Bank has released a mobile video game application to aid the company?s community service efforts in sharing its leadership model with the world.

The game, ?Legacy: A BB&T Leadership Challenge,? takes the user through challenges in the setting of the Middle Ages and embeds options in the game that develop leadership skills. BB&T has been teaching its financial literacy to high school and college students for a while now, but the bank decided to roll out the mobile game so that it could offer its leadership training program to a wider audience.

?[Our CEO] had basically two objectives which were to create a game that would introduce the BB&T leadership model, and the second was to make it fun and engaging,? said Brittany Brown, designer of curriculum design and development and project manager at BB&T, Winston-Salem, NC.

?We do a lot of philanthropic work with high schools,? she said. ?We wanted to reach a larger audience and saw a lot of potential in colleges [and] high schools. We saw a gap, and we wanted to address that by introducing our model and sharing it with the millennial generation.

?What better way to make a game than to make this fun and interesting, humorous really, medieval role-play driven game. They get to play a fun game, and they get to take something away from that.?

BB&T worked with Chaotic moon to create the game.

Mobile Legacy
BB&T claims that this is the first multi-platform, mobile video game app ever introduced by a United States bank.

During the game, the user must try to rise from a fledgling settler to the ruler of a Gothic-themed, Medieval province. Their status depends on choices they make and interactions with other game characters.

There are 25 main story quests and ten mini-games within the app. An example of a mini-game is that a player would have to help the town mason repair a bridge.

While the game is meant to be fun, it is also meant to help the user become a better leader off-screen as well.

The user will be asked to coach characters within the game to help them realize their full potential. The player will then earn points towards his or her leadership meter and benefit the village.

The game is available for free download in Apple?s App Store and Google Play.

Leadership training
BB&T started working on its leadership model in the 70s and began ramping it up in the 90s. The model focuses on how a person?s beliefs drive their behaviors, which drive their results.

After applying the model to the bank?s corporate workings, BB&T decided to share its model with its community and began a training program at high schools.

Now the bank is expanding its community service by opening its model up to a global audience via a mobile app.

The Legacy game includes a section that explains the BB&T leadership model in depth.

?There are foundational things about BB&T - our culture our mission our values - those things will never change,? said Brian Davis, corporate communications strategist at BB&T. ?But our strategies and tactics have to change.

?So when you think about this leadership model, it?s been in the company for 30 years now, but you?ve got to change the way that you present that because you can get aged out if you?re not careful,? he said. ?That?s a big reason that we?re doing this in this manner.

?We don?t believe that leadership is some mystical thing, that it?s just in your genes. We believe that it?s a learned skill. That it can be improved. And hopefully this game will lead us towards that.?

Final Take
Rebecca Borison is editorial assistant on Mobile Marketer, New York