Does Gaming Reduce Productivity?

Scott Taulbee writes "Bob Mandel of AVault has given us his interesting views on why playing games does not reduce productivity, but rather is a stimulating alternative to 'snoozing, daydreaming, overconsuming food and beverages, or sitting like a mindless slug waiting for time to pass.' He suggest that '..compared to other forms of recreational activity that could be enjoyed during work breaks, computer gaming has the greatest chance to hone skills useful for productivity in the workplace.' Should we all take this article to our bosses with requests for installing a GameCube on every desk?"

Comments

Now that you bring it up...

[NanoGator]

" Should we all take this article to our bosses with requests for installing a GameCube on every desk?"

Interesting that you should mention that. I'm a free-lance artist working in 3D. I recently discovered that when I play graphically interesing games on my GameCube (Star Fox Adventures, for example...) I get inspired with a new energy to work in Lightwave. I think I'm in an unusual scenario, though...

Gaming during work hours is a double-edged sword. It can be used effectively, it can be abused. At my full-time job, I'd occasionally fire up a game of Starcraft and spend about 45 mins or so (part of it during lunch break) playing it. But then when it came time to go home, I was comfortable leaving later. Instead of leaving because it was time to leave, I was leaving because I'd finished what I was working on. I'm not sure if that makes sense or not, but when you have to put off getting off, you look for whatever rational reason you can think of to leave work.

So yeah, I'd say there's some truth to it. If I could take say an hour during my day to pursue an interest of mine, I'd be less restless.

Re:Now that you bring it up...

[NanoGator]

"Artists have a habit of calling any time-wasting activity "inspirational" and declaring that it improves their so-called "work". "

This is insightful? Have you noticed that a lot of modern games use art these days? Have you noticed that in school, artists study other works of art?

Creativity is not a scientific process. It's not something that works better just by throwing more hours into it. It's something that comes along when your brain is stimulated. I can't imagine you listening to music and not understanding that concept.

Interesting note:

- In the movie Final Fantasy, the scene where the soldiers drop down from a ship and land in a goo like substance to cushion their fall was inspired by a scuba diving trip.

- In Star Wars, The Phantom Menace, the pod race scene was inspired by a woman walking her two dogs that were nearly dragging her along by the leash.

- The game Tempest was inspired by a nightmare Jeff Minter had about monsters that'd crawl out of a hole in the ground.

So yeah, tell me all about how 'time wasting activities' aren't inspirational.

Abuse potential too high

[Torgo's Pizza]

This is akin to saying that if workers take cocaine to pep them up during the day, it's just like a cup of coffee. This is just asking to be abused. Sure, when was the last time you *only* played 30 minutes of Everquest. Gamecube at my desk? Well, gee, I guess five more minutes of Zelda wouldn't hurt. Ignore that I said that twice already.

That's not even touching the problem of support. Now I've got to open holes in the firewall so the good strong employee can play Star Wars Galaxies. Oops, looks like Doom 3 just hosed up the graphic drivers on everyone's laptop again. If having Solitaire and Minesweeper on every computer weren't bad enough...

Gaming can be good, yes.

[MsWillow]

Many moons ago, when I was still able to work, every morning at work I'd run through a game of Freecell, while the others were staggering blindly about groping for coffee. For me, Freecell was like doing mental gymnastics, a great way to warm up my mind and get it ready for the day's onslaught of subtle bugs that were my duty to track down and eliminate.

However, my PHB saw it as "just" playing games (despite my winning streak of nearly 20 games), and I was told to stop it. My productivity dropped, though it was still better than the rest of the group.

Nothing I could say would change his mind. His decree was final. :(

The company was bought out by a smaller competitor, in large part because it was not able to turn out a bug-free product on time and under budget. However, they *were* able to ensure that their best debugger was not "wasting" ten minutes a day playing games.

What companies should do

[einhverfr]

I have been in environments where a break room had a TV and a gaming console. The idea of playing Halo, or other games either single-player or competitively during one's breaks was a good one. It helped relieve stress, helped to build friendships during those 1 on 1 games, etc. I think that it might be a distraction to put a game cube on every desk but one for the department may make sense.

Re:What companies should do

[cruppel]

I agree that it does sometimes spark companionship between people that otherwise might have not met. I met a couple people at work through this very manner and I must say it was easier than your usual talk of weather or perhaps a semi-uncomfortable lunch where very little is exchanged until you warm up to someone.

Depends on the person

[hether]

I think this says it all.

There's huge variation in individual productivity both within and across jobs. Some people can put in very little tangible effort, yet end up producing a tremendous amount of quality output, while others work their tails off all day and produce very little. For this second group, computer gaming poses the greatest threat to continued productivity.

My take on this is that since not every person who plays games can be as productive as the company expects, bosses choose to ban game playing for everyone. Little do they know that most people need to take breaks during the day so they don't get burned out. I don't think gameplaying automatically indicates you're not productive. On the contrary, if I have time to play games it's because my works all done.

Some companies know.

[sunilonline]

Back when Informix wasn't part of IBM, their Portland building had a "lego station" on every one of their floors. This was a small enclave near the kitchen with a huge mindstorms kit and about 15 board games. Everytime you went in there, there would be this huge lego creation that was absolutely amazing!

Find a better work environment

[BoomerSooner]

I cannot stand places that require
8-12 at desk
1-5 at desk

Why doesn't management understand different people work in different ways? My best friend will come in late but he gets shitloads done after lunch. Before lunch he does next to nothing (tries to wake up). Me I'm a morning person I get more done before 9am than most people do all day. However at my last job, leaving early meant you weren't a team player (nevermind I got there 2 hours before everyone else, where were the fucking team players then?).

This is why my current job is my last. They are pretty flexible (my boss respects me, and I can come and go as I please).

Once my company hits the revenue I feel comfortable with I'm going out on my own. I'd rather make 24K/year and be my own boss than make 100k/year and have to put up with bullshit everyday. There is something to be said for Quality of Life.

My future co-workers will be able to set their own schedules (with the exception of support). I'm not going to be the boss, I'm going to be a co-worker (that can fire people). As long as my teams are achieving their goals persuant to the companies goals I don't care if they work 20 hours a week. Just get the shit done and go live your life. I am also going to require 16 hours of community service a month (2 paid days off to do something the co-workers care about). There was nothing worse at my first job than them riding your ass about not doing shit in the community but turning around and making you work 80+ hours a week and work on weekends. I have no problem with hard work. I just hate hypocrites (which I strive not to be one).

Fortunately I will be job free in about 6 months if everything works out. And I'll be job free in 6 months if everything doesn't work out. I guess I'm crazy quiting a job that makes over 60k/year in oklahoma, but oh well....

From my experience, yes

[vlad_petric]

Playing a game in an office has the same effect on geeks as opening a nude calendar. The harmful effects are not on the person playing the game, but on the coworkers.

Well, it can . . .

[gukin]

In a "don't go home" environment (a la Microsoft) where you are encouraged to spend every possible moment working and being productive gaming, free food, anything you might do at home is gladly provided at work; in the hopes you won't go home and you might be able to squeek out a few more lines of code. Places such as this want to make work a place where you will WANT to be (especially for more than 40 hours/week.)

For the rest of us who "do the eight & hit the gate", our work is either not on such a tight timetable or is on a stable production environment where EVERYTHING is done carefully and deliberately to avoid downtime, gaming doesn't make sense.

Don't get me wrong, I read slashdot and do NOT agree with the boss who says "The company is losing MILLIONS OF $$$$ while the slacker trenchers screw around with the internet."

Work is for work, home is for home and lunch & after hours are for LAN parties (if IT & boss permits.)

Re:Gamecube?

[MyHair]

I don't work for that company anymore. They were a 3-year-old data center company, and I hired on in a new location that wasn't profitable yet. I left for a more secure company, and last I heard that data center company was shutting some locations down but selling my old location off, so I guess it was near being profitable.

But it was fun and enjoyable. It didn't pay as much as I wanted, but the people were cool and you could do pretty much what you wanted as long as you took care of business.

Among my coworkers, some regularly surfed porn, some played games, and one left p2p software running all shift, which is cool when you have 10Mbit bandwidtch to the internet. (For the NOC; the whole center had much more of course. We were setting up gigabit internet set up for one customer.) My coworkers and I would gather at an exceptional example of porn, but I never surfed it myself. To me, porn and work don't mix. Why do I want to be horny at work? Especially on the weekends by myself for 12 hours. That would be a bad habit to start!

We did more than just monitor, though; we were remote hands for the customers, we racked equipment and cabled for new customers, we gave data center tours for potential customers, etc.. And we were encouraged to develop new ideas for services to offer customers and services to improve our network.

I spent my idle time soaking up all the new info...I hadn't worked that closely with that much network equipment before and I was a kid in a candy store. I miss it except for the insecurity and low pay. :-)

No reading printed material at your workstation? WTF? All of our alerts had loud sounds, emails and pages in addition to the screen flashing. Our more serious alerts (e.g. main switch problem) had the Star Trek red alert sound. Syslog entries from the routers made a "thunk" sound, and we had comprehensive monitoring system that spoke the location and nature of the problem. (Well, the sounds were configurable and we used AT&T's online voice synthesizer to create alerts.) Anything in the data center moving or behaving in a noteworthy fashion made an audible and visual alert, and anything that definitely needed immediate attention would page and email, too. And of course we'd periodically audit and test the alert system.

The drinking and eating rules are actually kinda smart, but we ate and drank at our stations, anyway, although there were at least 5 other usable stations if I fried mine.

We mixed our music into the alert speakers for loud entertainment. Plus we had DSS satellite on one of our many monitors.

I don't recall a dress code, but I usually wore khakis and a patterned button-up cotton blend shirt.

We couldn't leave the building empty, but we could leave if there were coworkers working. (I worked weekend 12-hour shifts and was by myself the whole time so I couldn't leave.)

I only brought my personal computer in the weekend before my last day. But that was because our data center hosted WWII Online and it had just released and I wanted to try it, and mucking with a NOC workstation was not something I wanted to do. Plus, how often do you get a chance to play a MMOG with ping times under 20ms?

Sleeping: We weren't supposed to do that, and I didn't, but I think the midnight guy did. He was the only one who repeadedly had problems like "the phone never rang...I was making a walkthrough check of the building and the phone must've lost connection" when the same phone always rang for everyone else all the time no matter where they were in the building.

Propping feet up: not a problem.

But if customers were around we were supposed to have the NOC looking net, of course. We had a fishbowl-type NOC with a glass wall between us and the entry way (cool because the receptionist was gorgeous) and large windows into the data center floor.

For those tempted to say that our 'slacker' practices are why the company got in trouble, I don't think