Online games - the new job training
steven on July 19th, 2007
Forget all work and no play.
New research from IBM shows practicing leadership skills in the virtual worlds of online games like World of Warcraft or EverQuest a€” often pigeonholed as hangouts for nerds a€” can lead to real-life success at work.
“The lessons from online games are directly applicable to the things you do in corporate jobs,” said Eric Lesser, who co-authored research for IBM’s Institute for Business Value. “The ability to bring people together, identify people who have key skills and expertise, the ability to provide immediate feedback to people, all are relevant to the corporate environment.”
In the games, players create online characters, join teams to complete tasks and survive in a simple economy. Skills that translate well are collaboration, self-organization, risk-taking, openness, influence and communication, according to the study.
Jesse Baker, 23, said he is addicted to World of Warcraft, where his favorite character is an assassin troll. He has led up to 40 other players in raids on opponents’ strongholds.
“Communications are key in a raid. When you have 40 people, you have to talk to each one and make sure everybody understands what they are supposed to do, because everyone has a key job,” he said.
It’s the same way at work a€”except there are no monsters to slay.
Baker’s job as a game tester for Octopi in Tucson requires him to work with game developers and designers, he said.
“I’ve actually never thought about it consciously before, but you do learn some things about patience, concentration, teambuilding and working with others,” Baker said. “Sometimes you have to take risks and you have to make the right decisions at the right moment.”
For its study, IBM surveyed 214 of its own employees who are gamers and found that nearly half believe game playing is improving their real-world leadership capabilities. Four out of 10 said they have applied leadership techniques learned in games to workplace situations.
Leading a raid in an online city might translate to building a team of coworkers with a variety of skills and motivating them to collaborate to complete a project, Lesser said.
In games, characters can make lots of mistakes and be able to play again, he said. In business, the stakes are different. Workers can have a lot of small failures at low costs and discard them. “You learn from those things and place your bets on those things you think will be most effective,” Lesser said.
IBM is about as virtual as it can get. The company owns an island in the online game Second Life, a virtual world created by its players. Lesser said 40 percent of employees don’t go to an office daily, and even his research group is virtual, with members living across the world.
The point, Lesser said, isn’t to rush out and buy a game but rather to look for lessons about what virtual leadership looks like and apply that to the workplace.
“People have always used sports and military metaphors to describe leadership,” he said, “but online gaming provides a new window on how companies should think.”
Learning Leadership With Play.
