Video Games Changing the Workplace

kwolf22 writes "Last night, Marketplace aired the story: The New Video Frontier (audio available). From the show description : 'Host David Brown talks to author Mitchell Wade (Got Game: How the Gamer Generation Is Reshaping Business Forever) about the video game industry and how first person shooter games will change workplace dynamics for the next generation of employees.' Mr. Wade brings up some interesting points about how persistance in gaming translates to persistance on the job."

Comments

Already changed my workplace

[Pan T. Hose]

Video games have already changed my workplace--I had to change my workplace after I was cought playing video games during work time. But more seriously, I have been using game theory while organising the cubicle space, which worker should be a neighbour of which worker, et cetera, for quite some time now with some success, and I have observed that prisoner's dilemma could be called "cubicle worker dilemma" just as well, for it proves surprisingly effective when applied to this kind of environment where people tend to interact more extensively with their direct neighbours. Using games for serious problems doesn't seem to be a new idea, but it certainly is interesting and worth exploring. Most of people tend to agree that games are fun, and for quite a few intellectually challenging tasks that very fun might be indeed a stronger imperative than the monetary compensation itself.

Gamers enjoy talking to other gamers!

[Numeric]

Today, I was in a meeting and one of the project managers decided to stop by. This was a technical meeting (the PM doesn't have any techincal background) but he wanted to see if we needed anything. Towards the end of the meeting, he was talking about he was a geek and he spent most of his evenings playing World of Warcraft Beta and I told him that I belong to the Beta program as well. We talked "offline" and we are going to try and arrange to play together sometime.

This will give me some extra time to talk to him and just get to know him better. He is the client and I am his contractor. I believe this will help the project since we both will have spent time together outside cubicle land and we don't always have to talk business.