May 2, 2008
I killed Illidan the Betrayer, now promote me
There’s an enjoyably quirky article about multiplayer online games in the latest Harvard Business Review. The authors, professors at Stanford, MIT and North Carolina State, report on whether the likes of World of Warcraft and Everquest can teach real managers any leadership lessons. Tentatively, they conclude that the way players - often complete strangers - operate in teams during these games can be instructive:
True, leading 25 guild members in a six-hour raid on Illidan the Betrayer’s temple fortress is hardly the same as running a complex global organization. For starters, the stakes are just a bit higher in business. But don’t dismiss online games as mere play.
Here are some of their conclusions:
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People who might be written off as management material sometimes morph into effective leaders in these games;
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Companies might benefit from making their workplaces a bit more like game environments, linking incentives to the completion of a project rather than deferring the payout, for instance;
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Leadership roles in games are often temporary and task-based, rotating between team members - something the real world could learn from.
Of course, it would be easy to sneer at any management article that refers to “the Axe of the Gronn Lords”, even with tongue slightly in cheek. But it is hardly controversial to suggest that traditional team games such as football are interesting leadership laboratories, so there must be something to learn online. And the weird thing is, there are parts of the article where the real-word management jargon is more baffling than the game jargon. What, for instance, is a ”prolonged cross-functional sales effort”? It seems less real to me than “dragon kill points”.
That said, a former US Army officer quoted within the article might be overstating the case somewhat. Holder of a master’s degree in human resource management, he says he spent close to 60 hours a week running a “guild” - or team - of gamers in World of Warcraft:
The closest thing I can liken the leadership of an 80-person modern raiding guild to is the management of a medium-size business…You need to allocate resources, construct balanced compensation for your employees, stay ahead of the competition, ensure growth, and keep everyone happy and productive while handling many other day-to-day details… It is tough work.
If you are an online gamer and feel your management skills have benefited, please post your experience below. If you manage an online gamer and feel that their real-world skills leave something to be desired, please post your experience below too.
I stop playing it a while ago. I can say it is a tough job. As an upper guild, you need to compete with other guilds in your server. It looks like several companies compete in certain industry. The reward is the new gear and glory rather than profits. As the leaders, you need to retain your best players. Too often I see plays change guilds because they think their efforts are not rewarded or the guilds have no future.
Communication is very important. You also need a stable source to recruit new members, especially those who can fit in the team culture. Without these, our guild would have been collapsed a long time ago.
Posted by: jin | May 2nd, 2008 at 6:40 pm | Report this commentI’m a 2nd year MBA student at a top school, and I’ve played seriously for the past 7 months. I must say that the lessons I learned about organizations and leading during my time playing have far outstripped anything my leadership classes covered. From learning lessons about integrating into a new organizations (when I joined my “guild”), to learning how to go from nobody in that organization to a leader, to keeping people motivated and happy - it has been an amazingly eye opening experience.
The amount of hard-work, leadership, self-study, and dedication that these games require is astounding and should not be discounted. Any company would be lucky to have it’s employees work as hard at work as they do in these games.
Posted by: Gamer777 | May 3rd, 2008 at 9:20 pm | Report this commentManagers are always playing games and plumping for the latest managerial fad. That, as any unbiased and experienced observer can attest, is because they don’t have a clue as to what they are doing and are in search of credibility for their antics. Multiplayer computer games are perhaps the current vogue. If these games prove as addictive to managers as computer games are to kids then that may keep them sufficiently distracted to enable the organizations for which they work to function without their pretentious and self-important attentions. Eventually, shareholders may realize that the cult of managerialism is more an expensive curse than a profit-making blessing.
Posted by: Tom Shillock | May 5th, 2008 at 5:39 pm | Report this commentWhile in many ways online games are limited by the options they provide (ex: marketing tools are aften very limited), there is no question that they prove useful in developing managerial and teamwork skills. Teams of players have to manage resoruces, operate together, and attempt to achieve objectives. Often, these people use complex statistical methods to evaluate chances of success or failure in an endeavour. I cannot imagine a better training for the practical business education that schools just can’t teach than an online game.
Posted by: Gordon | May 5th, 2008 at 5:55 pm | Report this commentEve Online is particularly recommended. The teams are called corporations, there are shares and dividends, and the game rewards coordinated effort and planned expansion.
I do not believe that the military man mentioned in this article wasexaggerating much. While an online game is not a complete experience, it is an extremely useful one. Hopefully in the future people will come to recognize that fact more.
Central to the discussion of the impact of 3D technologies on corporate/employee communications involves the deployment of Virtual Worlds and whether corporations should invest in shared universes (like Second Life or WOW) or build their own proprietary Worlds.
A new whitepaper, available at http://www.brandgames.com/learning/virtualworlds/ exhaustively researched, delves the role of Virtual Worlds for talent communications.
Like Intranets that went before them, corporations will erect their own worlds for internal communications. The content that fills these corporate worlds, far from the frivolous or lewd Second Life variety, will need to meet the standard of graphics, interactivity and emotional engagement currently set by today’s most advanced video games. The next generation of employees will settle for nothing less.
Posted by: richard blackbridge | May 6th, 2008 at 8:26 pm | Report this commentI don’t get it. I’ve tinkered with Second Life, and played abut 10 hours of World of Warcraft, but I still don’t understand why you wouldn’t want to play Real Life(TM) instead…
Posted by: JNMJNM | May 7th, 2008 at 11:36 am | Report this commentthey ignore the most important element there, or they did not care to say : the people element.
- that is do they have criteria while they recruit guild member? how are criteria set? are mere epic means good player?
- do they have age limit? do you have to recommended?
- as character and seriousness, stability, consistency and reliability of each of a raid member is extrememly important.
wonder if they have data of the age distribution of wow .. or the sophistication of the member..
you don’t want during a raid a kid says, hey my dad is standing outside waiting for me to turn off my pc
or
during a raid more than 2 members go offline due to bad cable connection or computer graphic card problem.
or
kids start spamming raid channel and talk about stupid non battle related stuff
or
player is merely incompetent and care not do research of their class/the fight.
there are so many things that are vital and obvious that can cause the fail of a raid. but the organisation can often live a bit longer, as there are always new people joining —- just like mba classes every year
Posted by: dust ftw! | May 7th, 2008 at 3:09 pm | Report this comment