Put The Player First is a solo serious games practice run by Arvindh Sundar. Since 2019, Arvindh has designed and facilitated leadership development sessions for teams at Lowe's India GCC, Keka HR, Akamai, Walmart, Bosch, Novo Nordisk, Citrix, Coromandel, and others — including programmes at IIM Bangalore and IIM Indore.
There are six proprietary games. Each is designed to surface a specific leadership behaviour under real pressure. Every session — from brief to debrief — is run by the person who designed the game. No licensing. No associate delivery. The designer is in the room.
Trusted by teams at
Results That Speak
NPS. 113 respondents. Day 2 outscored Day 1 in every batch.
AI enablement workshop across 6 sessions. Client commissioned a second programme immediately after.
Read the case study →Comprehension. 13/13 engaged. Zero neutral or disagree across all metrics.
Stakeholder management workshop using Bloom. Every manager left with a committed action plan.
Read the case study →How a Session Works
Every session runs the same core sequence — regardless of which game is used.
Participants receive their roles, resources, and objectives. No rehearsal. The game starts before they feel ready — that's intentional.
The game runs in rounds. Conditions evolve. Decisions compound. Every action has a consequence that participants will have to account for in the debrief.
Arvindh is not playing. He is watching. Tracking who does what, when, and under which conditions. The debrief is built from what actually happened — not from a script.
The EPPA loop: Experience (what happened?), Patterns (what did you keep doing?), Principles (what does that tell you?), Application (what will you do differently, in which specific situation, starting when?).
Sessions run 90 minutes to 6 hours. Groups from 12 to 150 participants. In-person only — the social dynamics are the data, and screens kill them.
The Games
Six proprietary leadership simulations. Each targets a specific behaviour. Each is designed and facilitated by the same person.
Welcome to Zombiepuram
Who builds coalitions when factions compete? Who gets isolated? Influence, negotiation, and political intelligence made visible in 6 hours.
Learn MoreBloom
How do your leaders invest in relationships when something valuable is at stake? Stakeholder management and networking behaviour, visible in 2 hours.
Learn MoreSticky Fingers
Who leads when no one is appointed? Who shares information and who hoards it? Collaboration and problem-solving behaviour under time pressure.
Learn MorePlanetfall
When conditions shift and no answer is clearly right, who adapts and who freezes? Learning agility and ambiguity tolerance made visible in 2 hours.
Learn MoreRipple Effect
Who optimises for their team's numbers at the expense of the whole? Cross-functional trust and systems thinking, visible in 3 hours.
Learn MoreChaos in the Kitchen
How do senior leaders make decisions when the situation keeps changing? Strategic thinking and scenario planning under real pressure.
Learn MoreThe Debrief Is Where It Happens
A serious game without a sharp debrief is just a game. The EPPA loop is the method Arvindh uses to connect what happened in the room to what happens at work.
Experience
What just happened? Participants name what they did, not what they think they should have done.
Patterns
What patterns emerged? Where did the same choices keep appearing? Who showed up the same way across different rounds?
Principles
What does this tell us about how we actually operate — not how we think we operate?
Application
One specific behaviour to change. Not a general intention. A named situation and a named action.
The Philosophy
Behaviour under pressure is the only data worth developing from. Games create the pressure.
Read moreWork With Us
L&D consultants and training vendors can partner to bring serious games to their clients.
Partner with usCustom Game Design
When an off-the-shelf game won't fully serve a specific development need.
Learn moreCommon Questions
Are these games available digitally?
No. The social dynamics that produce the behavioural data — the negotiation behaviour, the trust decisions, the competitive and collaborative instincts — require physical presence. Screens remove too much of what makes the debrief meaningful. All sessions run in-person.
Do participants need any preparation?
No pre-reading, no pre-work. Participants receive a brief at the start of the session. Games work because they start before people feel ready — that's when authentic behaviour emerges.
Can the games be customised for a specific industry or context?
The six existing games are sector-agnostic — they surface leadership patterns that apply across industries. If an organisation has a very specific scenario they want to model, a custom game design is possible, but it requires 6-8 weeks of design time and a more involved brief. For most development needs, one of the existing six games fits without modification.
Is this suitable for very senior teams — MD and C-suite?
Yes. Senior teams often produce the most productive debrief conversations because the patterns the game surfaces are ones they've been living with for years and haven't necessarily named. The game creates a container where senior leaders can engage with their own behaviour without the political consequences of doing so in an actual work setting.
What's the minimum group size?
Sticky Fingers and Bloom run with 12 participants. Other games have higher minimums — Ripple Effect needs at least 16, Zombiepuram at least 15. The minimums exist because the games require enough people to generate the dynamics they're designed to produce. Under minimum, the social patterns don't emerge clearly enough to make the debrief worthwhile.