I did look at this article from three points of view, as a gamer, as an educator and as a former high-tech R&D administrator.
I agree that this article really looks at how most of our business organizations are structured, and gives a excellent comparison/contrast to the organization of MMORPG as it relates to actual play as well as to the organization and development of guilds.
I personally think gamers make better entrepreneurs than they do employees, because of the ability to think on the fly, to look at short-term strategies for long-term solutions/goals. I think gamers want rapid change and flexible environments responsive to their manipulation, as well as fortuitous circumstances and events. Sometimes the real world isn’t like that.
In answer to a comment on this article that: “
Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that gamers would make the best workers if you could get them to stop gaming long enough to work? The problem is that employers generally don’t offer such a democratic, meritocratic work environment, and expecting gamers’ strengths to translate to a bona fide, traditional organization is highly unrealistic. Still, it’s nice to think that such a workplace could actual exist,” The authors answer that, “
The key, we believe, is that workplaces must acknowledge and facilitate dispositions that embrace change. The gamer disposition offers one model of what must take place at multiple levels of the organization in order to meet the challenges and demands of work in the twenty-first century. “
I agree that gamers are
(1) bottom-lined orientated, but they are setting their own bottom line as part of an ultimate bottom line set by the game and they don’t set the ultimate goals (bottom line) in games unless they are the game’s designer. In the real world they may not be able to decide that they want full pay for getting halfway up the company or department goal WOW is up to 90 levels, and a good article in Forbes by Daniel Tack (Jan, 2013) discusses what can be done at that level WoW at Level 90 So a gamer can decide to enjoy the game at a level 30 or 60 or whatever. They are content. Brown and Thomas are writing for business management, but who wants a level 30 or 60 “employee?” I still believe that there is a big difference between the real world and the immersive MMORPG world, the “big game achievers” in are not particularly successful in their personal or business lifes.Second Skin Documentary finally on line again (94) minutes,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_2FycHamfA I would agree that
(2) They thrive on change, but is the change they create in the game always positive? Not necessarily, they can also create chaos and destruction. I can say that if they “thrive on change” that a professorship may not be their venue (smile). Coming from High Tech and owning my own businesses, I find that most educational changes move at glacial speed. My college moves faster than most on technology, as demonstrated by this MOOC, but still, change takes time. We talk about “implementing something in 2015 or 2017” and in high-tech R&D it would have been implemented “yesterday.”
Yes, they do
(3) Understand the power of diversity, as shown by getting persons in the guild to fulfill different role, “healer” and “tank” for example. They are good at building teams, but even in my guild (StarTrekOnline) it was difficult to keep that team together because of the fluid nature of the players time and commitment. I am not sure that the idea of understanding the power of diversity translates to the real world, and I would love to see a study of MMORPG players who are wonderfully embracing of diversity in the game, and the composition of their friends and associates in real life as well as their attitudes toward someone different than they are, anyone have grant funds available? I am your anthropologist. I do see in the table top game club that I sponsor that these face-to-face encounters are very open to the diversity of the players and I see that in Magic the Gathering face-to-face tournaments. I would hope that this is the Number One skill that is transferable from gaming to real life.
Yes,
(4) They marinate on the “edge,” and do explore radical alternative, they do look for a better and quicker way to achieve what they want within the game, but the alternative is that in real life that isn’t always something a business wants in an employee.
Yes,
(5) They do see Learning as Fun, and I see that in my classroom, and for some odd reason when I ask a class who are gamers, 90% of those that raise their hands are sitting on the right side of the room as I face them, once it was 100% in a class of 24. Anyone have an explanation for that? I have been doing this for a few years and it is consistent. We are in a computer classroom by my choice even if we are Social Science classes. However, gamers are more interested in completing/beating the assignment, than those who aren’t. I did a people bingo icebreaker, and told them they could leave when they completed the card,
the gamers were out of the room first and the non-gamers too longer and continued chatting till break. This is what anthropologists call “ethnography” or a field study and is subjective research.
I do like to use games like this for studies of Focal Vocabulary (Anthropological Linguistics) and the use of words we know but in new context is so integrated into gaming, not just online games either. I used Magic the Gathering (link) in one of my classes on Anthropology of Folklore, and we really looked at the glossary of the manuals as part of the experience. Those that knew how to play were anxious to teach the others and there was good social interaction as well as learning. Here is a slide show about what all we did in the Folklore of Anthropology class to engage the students about two years ago.
Playing the GAME and Other Tools of EngagementMy bottom line? I don't think that most classes match their learning skills, but not all of my students are gamers! So when I set my syllabus I must keep in mind the background of all of my students,
I did have a student who on finding out the first day in the Anthropology of Folklore class, that we would be going into WarHammer and maybe World of Warcraft, stand up, say her husband plays "those games" and she hates them and walk out and drop the class. MMORPG games came ahead of smart phones so there is a change in social media and the way that persons interact with each other, facebook for many is fulfilling the basic human need for human contact and socialization that may have previously only been available in online guilds. Even texting is giving way to interfacing and communicating through other social media. And of course there is a bleed-over of gaming and social media personal exchanges and sites. Don't get me started on "Farmville." (smile).