To respond to the increasing demand from government and society for improved performance of the safety and security professionals and supporting educational institutes in the Netherlands, four institutes for higher education, the Netherlands Institute for Safety (NIFV), the Netherlands Police Academy (PA), the Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI) and the Netherlands Defence Academy (NLDA) joined forces and proposed a common plan for establishing a Virtual Platform for Safety and Security (VPSS). The plan consists of a number of different projects related to the primary processes of the involved institutes: education, research and knowledge dissemination.

This paper focuses on the project to develop a serious game for use in a multidisciplinary educational setting. The development team consisted of representatives from each of the four institutes. Within each institute, representatives worked not only within their respective internal line of management but also within the project's structure. The workgroup was accountable to a steering committee that in turn was accountable to a consulting group consisting of the directors of the involved institutes. Keeping the different levels of management aligned in this complex management structure was the greatest challenge encountered during development of the serious game.

The paper argues that an iterative and prototype based approach works very well to develop a serious game in a complex organisational setting. We start with explaining the rationale of the serious games project. Next we explain our approach: the project was divided into short prototype cycles - rounds we call them - with a focus on delivering prototypes fast. The results and challenges of each round are discussed and finally abstracted to lessons learned. More focus on iterative development approaches and producing prototypes will lead to a better understanding of the product and a closer relationship between developers and clients.