Got Game

Eli Singer writes "Are gamer employees different? This is the question John Beck and Mitchell Wade answer in Got Game, How the Gamer Generation is Reshaping Business Forever. They argue that yes, employees who grew up with Nintendo, TurboGrafix and Genesis approach their work in fundamentally different ways than non-gaming workers. If you grew up with games, you can use this book to teach your boss how to appreciate your gaming abilities in the workplace." Read on for the rest of Singer's review. Got Game author John Beck & Mitchell Wade pages 202 publisher Harvard Business School Press rating 7/10 reviewer Eli Singer ISBN 1578519497 summary Got Game describes the unique abilites gamer employees bring to the workplace, and teaches managers how to harness these often untapped skills.

1980s-era Nintendo-thumbed teenagers are now adults moving into senior positions in the workforce. As they move up, a cultural rift is forming in the workforce between the old guard who've never held a controller, and those who grew up hunting for the Triforce. Got Game proposes how to bridge this gap.

Beck and Wade argue that a massive culture gap began in the '80s when video game systems like the NES suddenly appeared in tens of millions of households across North America. Games radically reshaped youth for a whole generation by creating a new leisure activity with a distinctive culture. Ever since, gaming has become deeply embedded in our society and in the lives of each cohort over the last two decades.

At its core, Got Game is a guide for senior managers stumped at how to manage their gamer employees. Its purpose is to teach them that they must treat video games as serious preparation for the workforce, and that gamers possess a unique set of skills necessary in the modern business world:

"Anyone who actually looks at the games selling and being played knows that the typical video game is not the blood-spattering, media-grabbing, parent stressing cartoon that makes the nightly news on a slow or tragic day. Instead, it's a massive problem solving exercise wrapped in the veneer of an exotic adventure. Or it's the detailed simulation of an entire civilization, or a pivotal battle that affected the course of world history. Or it's a serious opportunity to try coaching a sports team or setting military strategy. In short, even if their surface is violent, sexist, or simpleminded (which is not true nearly as often as non-gamers believe), games are incredibly complex computer programs that lead the brain to new combinations of cognitive tasks."

The book is divided into two parts. The first three chapters are a primer for non-gamers, outlining video game culture, dispelling myths, and generally building the case for treating games and gamers seriously. Chapters four through eight, though, are where I thought the most innovative thinking lies. Here the authors draw explicit parallels between the skills people hone to win video games, and those needed in our global, techno-centric workforce. These chapters also go the extra distance by instructing managers on how to restructure their style to harness the skills in their gamer employees.

As a casual gamer, I found these aspects of the book helpful. By outlining the instances where managers and executives from outside the game generation don't see things the way I do, and then translating into terms they can understand, it is possible for me to effectively bridge the culture gap. Building understanding and common language reduces tension, making work less stressful, more fulfilling (and ultimately more like a video game!)

Here are some of the top insights in the book for non-gaming managers:

Tap into the gamer instinct for heroism
Gamers "have a hero's appetite for a challenge that requires full attention. Meeting these needs, giving the potential heroes who work for you a challenge that will inspire extreme efforts - can unleash enormous commitment."

Don't let superficial badges of culture mislead you
"Remember the old fogies who thought men with long hair automatically couldn't be trusted? We boomers now have the chance to replicate the fogies' mistake, or to build on major assets that out less open-minded peers overlook."

Don't dismiss gamers' ability to focus and multitask
"Gamer employees will prefer to be surrounded by extraneous noise and attentional clutter. They might want to have two or three activities assigned to them at once so that when they tire of one, they can move to the next, and then come back to the first when they have something useful to add."

Manage your teams as group video games
"Structure team assignments like a game, providing clear high-level direction but also lots of room to explore. Tell your team, 'here are the boundaries; you can't go outside them, but inside try anything - open all the doors, run into the walls, find a way to succeed.'"

Beck and Wade support their points of view with a commissioned study involving 2,500 business people. Graphed results are presented throughout comparing how gamers and non-games view risk, teamwork, decision-making, and responses to authority. While I realize that providing statistical support of ideas is essential, I didn't find the graphs or conclusions very compelling.

What I do appreciate is that in publishing this book, Harvard Business School Press is sending signals to the business community that video games are an important part of our culture and that we ought to consider the serious impact gaming is having in offices throughout the country.

The scope of this book goes beyond the 'important books for managers' genre. Proactive employees could easily benefit from strategically giving a copy to a boss to kickoff a conversation on refining a working relationship. For the more adventurous gamer, I'd recommend absorbing the business insights and using them to manage upward and get ahead in the workplace.

This will not be the last book about gamers in the workplace, but it does a good job kicking off the genre. I extend thanks to Beck and Wade for bringing attention to this real phenomenon.

Reviewer Eli Singer lives in Toronto. Apart from technology consulting, he blogs at singer.to and sends biking tours to Europe. You can purchase Got Game from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Comments

which gamers?

[dmf415]

I think the Game Testers are the Gamers and the Game programers, like the ones at EA are too busy programing 7 days a week, LOL

Re:I've noticed this at work...

[sonofagunn]

Sorry for the poor formatting on the first try.

while (!success)
{
trySomething();
}
Non Gamers:
while(planMightFail)
{
thinkMore();
}
finallyTryPlan();

Data please?

[kgruscho]

I am kind of concerned that at least from what i read in the review, this "advice" is just an unempirical opinion. I don't see much of citations about gamer's being motivated differently or doing better multitasking, etc. There are such things as social sciences, you can actually study these things in an organized and meaningful fashion. you know formulate a hypothesis, collect data, test hypothesis.. I would guess that some gamers actually are actually very good at single-tasking. The problem is making the job the exciting thing and not the game. (anyone besides me have a roommate who just did nothing but play starcraft for 3-4 straight days, skipping all classes...when he actually did somethign productive it was about the same method of operation.)

Games HAVE had a drastic effect on a generation

[LithiumX]

Games have had positive and negative effects. My generation, or at least a majority of it's members, has spent years being driven half-insane by puzzles and intellectual challenges both to reasoning and patience. There have always been such challenges, but nowhere near as often, as common, as widespread, or as twistedly intricate and lovingly built as what has existed since the early 80's.

On the positive side, from an early age we have been taught the value of patience, and the rewards of outright persistance. Anyone who's played many games has seen what happens when you give in to impatience and end up blowing anywhere from 5 to 60+ minutes of effort in one badly timed move. And without persistance, you couldn't beat many games in the first place - to achieve your goal, sometimes you have to bang away at it until it's done. You become very goal-oriented, having played games, and you also become competitive - not so much competitive in general, but competitive about doing your work faster, more intelligently, and more efficiently than anyone else around you.

On the negative side, we're quite a bit more reward-oriented than previous generations (when we accomplish something, we damned well want to see something come out of it). We do have a collective taint of what amounts to ADD, being able to focus tightly on short tasks like no generation before, but having trouble sticking to one course of action for the long haul. We're always looking for the shortcut, believing fully that it exists. And sometimes, even though it's often an asset in business, we can be a bit inhuman in our logic, dispassionately accepting losses, risks, and sacrifices when it furthers our goals.

Reminds me of a quote: "If Pacman had affected us as kids we'd be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive music."

Re:Games HAVE had a drastic effect on a generation

[LithiumX]

I think this is why there is no anti-war movement on U.S. college campuses. That may change if there is a draft, but many of them think they were too smart to be a grunt, and feel superior to those that are killed, and blithley accept the Bush mantra that death is part of winning the war.

I don't think it's so much blithe acceptance, but a different focus. The Hippie Generation asked "At what cost of life?". The Me Generation asked "How will this affect my pocketbook?". Generation X, especially the younger members, seem more concerned about "How will this affect my life ten years from now?".

Again, I think the general outlook of an endangered future that must be built on today is the result of years upon years of playing games where mistakes can have repercussions that come back to haunt you. Life has lessons like that as well, but it always seems harder to take lessons from the real thing than from a game, which beats them into you.

Re:Games HAVE had a drastic effect on a generation

[Flyboy Connor]

Games have had positive and negative effects. My generation, or at least a majority of it's members, has spent years being driven half-insane by puzzles and intellectual challenges both to reasoning and patience.

Hogwash. Nowadays games are meant for almost-instant gratification. A gamer must be able to overcome any challenge quickly, or he will be bored with the game and go on to something else.

I was 20 years of age when I got my C64. Before that time, I did math puzzles for entertainment. The most interesting puzzles took days to solve. The biggest challenge I faced I worked on for three full weeks before being able to solve it.

Then, in the early days of home computing, you had text adventures that took weeks, if not months to solve. I solved the Zork trilogy without assistance, but I worked on them for over two years.

Nowadays, a game is called "challenging", if it contains a situation that takes 10 minutes to solve. As soon as it takes 15, it is called "boring" or "impossible". But hey, there's always a walkthrough, isn't there?

This situation is understandable from a game publisher's point of view. A game won't sell if it is a real challenge. And I think there are many games today that are more entertaining than Zork or math puzzles. For my personal entertainment, I seldom go back to games that are over 10 years old.

But don't tell me today's games teach you tenacity. Rather the opposite, I would say.

Re:Another perspective

[EmptyBuffalo]

The baby boomers grew up children of the military. They were taught through their society to respect the people with military style - in short, they learned to take orders from order givers. Gen-X has grown up as the first EVER American generation to (generally) not have a military dad. They're the first ones to actually grow up in an American society focused infinitely more on technological explosions than in physical ones. They've learned to respond to different stimuli, to respect different authority, to weight different values.

I don't think this is necessarily good or bad. I do think it deserves consideration as Gen-X starts to move into power positions in companies who have until now been run primarily by Boomers.

I think this book takes a look at some of the possible ways that people from the different mindsets would best perform in a shared environment. It's not trying to de-value any of the foundations of good business practice (communication, integrity, ethics) it's just trying to add to the aresenal available to someone willing to try to improve workplace relations between two very important, very talented, and (in some ways) very different groups of workers.

Love it or hate it, I think it's fairly ostrich-like to deny that generations differ.

Re:me too

[imrec]

Can anyone remember where they first heard about that cheat? I'm sure it was the only one I ever got through word of mouth. The glory days of the internet pretty much changed the spread of video game codes forever...

"remember those days? I miss those days"

Lo and behold, WoW is teaching me basic econ...

[5n3ak3rp1mp]

Within the context of the World of Warcraft auction house and the /2 trade channel, I find myself learning the basic skills of supply and demand, negotiating a price on an item, marketing, etc. etc... I've actually never had this much practice negotiating prices in my whole life. I've found that the more data you have to back up your price point, the better... just like in real life (for you WoW'ers out there, look up LootLink and Auctioneer for some great in-game info) In fact, I'm getting pretty wrapped up in finding good deals (cheap buyouts) and doing turnaround sales. Which is strange, since I'm pretty much a geek and not a sales guy, but I'm actually doing OK at this. Lastly, I realized that I needed an angel investor to REALLY start earning the G's (just like in real life!), so I had 2 guildies lend me 50 gold each and that has seriously improved my profit margins, I will be paying them back soon...

This may sound funny but this all seems based on actual business principles

How about females?

[Faeton]

If this actual book is accurate, we're really talking about males here. Males overwhelmingly comprise the gaming generation. Nintendo, Sega Genesis and all that were mostly played by boys. Even now, XBox, PS2 and such are still played mostly by boys. We're not talking a 55/45 split here. It's more like 85/15.

So where does that leave females? Did they "miss out"? Or are most of these observations "guy" oriented to begin with?

Re:the real measurement

[compressedaudio]

I am a 'volume keyer' typing parts of addresses and are one of the fastest out of around 150 people, and have been for the past 2 years.

Managers and others there don't know how I get consistantly high speeds. To put in perspective, I typically get 11,000-13,000 kestrokes per hour, whereas others are getting 6,000-9,000. As this job doesn't challenge me mentally, while typing postcodes and town names, my spare thoughts try and get me ever faster.
Another thing most of my collegues don't understand is that I tend to push it so my fingers, arms and eyes hurt a little, just to get that quicker speed, and be ahead of everyone else, like a game.
I put this limit-pushing speed down to my experiences with Quakes and Dooms.
The job was good to begin with but after 2.5 years, keying 4 hours a day, and 6am starts, I need new application!

Downsides?

[null etc.]

I wonder if this book also covers the negative aspects that can be associated with gaming, such as:

• Using cheat codes to bypass the rules of the game.
• Developing a tendency to "push the reset button" when things don't work out.
• Winning the game in the easiest way possible, since actions performed in a game don't have lingering ramifications (except online games).
• Quitting the game due to boredom or frustration.
• Throwing the controller through the window.
• Camping out and using your friends/roommates console or computer 24/7, because you don't have a life and he does.

Re:Downsides?

[bar-agent]

Whoa, there, buddy! These are all positive things. Let me show you...

• Using cheat codes to bypass the rules of the game.
  
  Find the shortcuts, the tricks your competitors don't know.
  
  
• Developing a tendency to "push the reset button" when things don't work out.
  
  If you fail, try again, rethinking your solution.
  
  
• Winning the game in the easiest way possible, since actions performed in a game don't have lingering ramifications (except online games).
  
  Make your money ASAP and move on to better things.
  
  
• Quitting the game due to boredom or frustration.
  
  Don't work at a job you don't like.
  
  
• Throwing the controller through the window.
  
  Don't be afraid to fire a bad employee.
  
  
• Camping out and using your friends/roommates console or computer 24/7, because you don't have a life and he does.
  
  Develop a social network that you can rely on to find new jobs and partnerships.
  

See? "Everything I ever needed to know, I learned while gaming."

Tap into the gamer instinct for heroism? Whaaa...?

[The Archon V2.0]

Gamers "have a hero's appetite for a challenge that requires full attention.

I'm sorry, but that doesn't even make sense, particularly when it goes on to say that gamers like multitasking, which I'd think flies in the face "requires full attention". (Maybe gamers have a task-switching brain, rather than a true multitasking one?)

I'm a gamer, but I don't go out of my way to do "hard" stuff in Real Life. I'm not out climbing mountains because they're there or because they popped up in the machine room or anything. I play games to blow off steam, not because I have some desire to spend every waking instant crushing all opposition under my armor-clad heels. I actually like to help people for a living, even if it's with stuff I find easy. Trying to claw my way ahead leaves me cold.

Meeting these needs, giving the potential heroes who work for you a challenge that will inspire extreme efforts - can unleash enormous commitment."

I can see how the few suits who grab this book are going to read that. Gamers like "extreme efforts" - as in, putting in tons of overtime or otherwise running themselves ragged - as long as you invoke the word "hero" and maybe a few gaming metaphors you picked up from the kids.

"Bobby, the deadline's been moved up three weeks and we have to cut your budget in half. Think of it as the final level of Doom, Bobby! We need you to take your chainsaw of cost-cutting and chop up that Saber-Demon! Save us from the zombies at TheCompetitionCorp! You can do it!"

Like Everquest?

[MemeRot]

I read an aritcle on Wired a while back from a journalist who bet that he could make as much money buying and selling Everquest items as he could from his real job, over the course of a month. The result? He came within about 5-10% of doing it. Of course, that month also included all the ramp-up time to meet people, establish a name, etc. Over that month he made the equivalent of a $45,000/yr, so I guess he's paid pretty well as a journalist. One of the most humorous suggestions I've ever heard for ending African poverty (admittedly not a humorous subject) is to have everyone there work 8/hrs a day acquiring Everquest items and selling them. The entire economy of offline everquest transactions is larger than the GNP of a huge number of countries.