Why Online Games Will Change Work & Events
Monday, February 28th, 2011
More than 375 million people worldwide engaged in a computer or video game last week. Adam Martin, T=Machine
63% of the U.S. population from ages 15-65 play some type of online game. (NPD Group 2008 Report)
Multiplayer online games like Call of Duty, EVE online, Guild Wars2, Habbo Hotel, Lord of The Rings Online and Medal of Honor have more than 1.5 billion registered identities (meaning that many people have several accounts). Adam Martin, T=Machine
MMOs And The Future Of Work
Multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), also known as MMOs, are sophisticated games with immersive environments. These games provide users unique experiences with communication tools, user interfaces, real-time feedback and a timely pace of challenge and reward.
In MMOs, people compete, cooperate, cry, explore, join, laugh, meet and immerse themselves in social roles that engage the mind and emotions. An increasing number of these online games involve complex, collaborative problem-solving strategies that are social in nature.
“Game psychology and technology are broadly relevant to business. There are new and important lessons for those whose work touches on recruitment, hiring, training, retention, leadership, teams, evaluation, collaboration and innovation. The lessons are applicable across business functions–sales, marketing, research, development, production and management,” Bryon Reeves and J. LeightonReed, Total Engagement.
The MMO Stats
The median age of an MMO player is 33, as compared to the median age of the general population, 35. People in their thirties make up the largest concentration of players, six times larger than the number of teens and three times the number of college students between 18 and 22. The average age for all online game players is 35 with 26% older than 50. 60% of the most active MMO players are female avatars who might or might not be women. (Data from Total Engagement)
Almost two-thirds of MMO players have some college education as compared with 40% of the general population. Only 8% of MMO gamers have less than a high school education as compared with 20% of the general population.
MMOs gamers that have full-time jobs and a family, play more than 25 hours per week. The under-eighteen crowd plays the least, 22 hours per week. Those over forty play nearly 30 hours a week. Women play five more hours per week than men.
Why MMOs Are Engaging
Most MMO gamers engage in levels of focus and commitment rarely seen at work. They lose track of time as they immerse themselves in alternative environments and sophisticated online interactions.
Many of today’s workforce want experiences that parallel their MMO play. They expect some of these same experiences in business, work and face-to-face experiences.
Research by Reeves and Read illustrates that the mind and body react similarly to immersive virtual environments and situations as it would in real life. The physiological and psychological responses were the same. This increases the level of engagement.
MMOs provide:
- Real-time feedback (good or bad)
- Trial and error opportunities
- Risk
- Failure as part of the learning process
- Competition and collaboration
- Governance by a set of known rules
- Fun
- Contributions for the larger good
- Stories
- Emotional connections
Business and event organziers can learn a lot about engagement from MMOs. In the future, more people will look to these online games to make work and conferences more fun, engaging and immersive.
How can conferences create an immersive environment that generates an intense focus of its participants? How can event professionals embed more elements of fun, the catalyst of engagement, into their experiences?
Posted with the permission of Jeff Hurt| Originally posted @ http://jeffhurtblog.com/2011/02/21/why-online-games-will-change-work-events/
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4 Responses to this article
Sustainable Meetings integrated a number of these last week very successfully: scoring points for a team by going to exhibitors gave that micro-feedback where you get to succeed often during the day, rather than “success is if I find one client at the conference” [= one success, rather than dozens of immediate, tiny ones as online games use]. Team collaboration on case studies gave a good balance between serious and easy ways to participate.
Explore http://www.xeodesign.com/whyweplaygames.html on types of games (“serious fun” vs “easy fun”)
And the Green Meetings Conference: http://www.sustainablemeetingsconference.com
Great article. As an MMO-player and event planner I can see a lot of parallels and possible benefits!
One reason MMO’s are so engaging relates to the RPG (role-playing game) aspect and the ability to become anonymous and act through an avatar in an artificial world. The pro to creating this kind of relatively ‘safe and controlled’ work or event environment is it might be more comfortable for more introverted personalities (me, for example) to engage where they might have been intimidated by a highly interactive in-person environment before. I’d much rather type a comment than pick up a microphone which is kind of strange, maybe, but true!
On the other hand, it can be a lot tougher and take longer to get to know someone in an MMO-style setting, especially one using role-playing. That has implications for trust-building, and creating authentic experiences, not to mention may challenge the typical ‘short’ timeline of a conference that is a few days. It can also impact the speed of collaboration if dealing with non-fiction circumstances. So whereas I might be comfortable to dive into a made-up case study project with relative strangers using an MMO-format, diving into a business relationship with real-life implications might be something I do a bit more cautiously in this kind of environment. There is more risk in the latter situation than the former.
Interested to see where this MMO orientation goes!
@Stephen
Thanks for sharing more about GMIC’s Sustainable Conference gaming aspects. I heard great things about the conference and followed from afar.
@Shawna
Interesting thoughts about avatars, introverts and trust. Total Engagement authors Reeves and Read would disagree with your assessment that MMOs create anonymous characters. They feel that avatars allow people to tap into primitive abilities to communnicate with other humans. They believe that avatars take advantge of highly evolved talents of humans and that players can process faces, gestrues and movement just like in real life.
I believe that all people immediately deserve my trust unless they do something that causes me to think differently. I don’t think other conference attendees need to earn my trust first. I bring it to the table freely right up front. For me, making other conference attendees earn my trust first, creates unnecessary hurdles.
They laid you off, there’s bound to be a certain amuont of bitterness being back. I’m working full-time on my game because I can. I had the opportunity, and the support of my family, so I took it. These opportunities DO NOT come along every day. If I had let that opportunity pass I would have a lot more money in the bank, but would I be doing what I love? Probably not. And I doubt if I waited 10 years doing something else, that I would have the energy to develop a game and another company.Everyone dies some day. It isn’t the things you’ve done that you were passionate about that you regret on that day.