Video Games: More than a Game

Video Games: More than a Game

The two articles/reports in this assignment: IBM Gaming Report: Virtual Worlds, Real Leaders and IBM Report: Leadership in a distributed world – lessons from online gaming were really very interesting and brought a very interesting perspective on a potential tool for leadership development.  At first glance many in the business world would brush this perspective aside a as joke, but the arguments and some of the experiences of those in the gaming world support this as a very valid potential with enormous ramifications. 

The basis of the perspective is that those skills that gamers develop in the gaming world are transferable to the business world, particularly those of leadership development.  Both articles draw the comparison of MMORPG to the environment of a global, virtual organization.  MMORPG is an acronym for “Massively multiplayer online role-playing games”.  There are a number of aspects of this gaming environment that are similar to the environments in the business world.  It is that “environment” and “role-playing” that makes this tool appealing to the business world. 

The ability to provide a secure or non-threatening environment for employees to “practice” developing leadership skills is a huge opportunity.  Role-playing has long been a tool that trainers have used when trying to assist employees in developing the desired skills and behaviors.  It is this opportunity to “walk in the positions shoes” that makes it so valuable.  It provides the opportunity for the person to experience a situation and learn from it while concurrently providing the business to assess how the employees would react and can handle different situations. 

What are some of the experiences or skills that are of interest to the business world?  First and foremost is the opportunity for the person to experience the virtual environment, working (gaming) with people from all over the world towards the same goal. This is a real but virtual environment in which those participating need to collaborate and work together to achieve the goal.  Developing and maintaining t relationships and the skills to navigate and mediate with a group of people is a directly transferable skill. 

A few other very similar situations are risk and reward.  The articles describe incentive systems that reward the gamers for achieving certain levels within the game.  The correlation with compensation and rewards programs in the business world is striking.  What is so different is the risk.  The risk in a game cannot be correlated to the risk in life or business. What it does provide however is the opportunity for those gamers to push the envelope, try again and again to achieve what they need to achieve.   What better training tool than to provide an environment where the “risk” associated with learning and developing skills is minimal or insignificant? 

In summary these articles presented a very different perspective of the value of gaming.  I have attached a link to these two articles and the working links to IBM and Immersive Education Minecraft as references:  IBM Gaming Report:Virtual Worlds, Real Leaders  IBM Report: Leadership in a distributed world - Lessons from online gaming, http://IBM.com, http://ImmersiveEducation.org/minecraft