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Corporate Gaming Is Good For Business
The Economist is running a story about how gaming is on the rise in corporate environments, and how games are also becoming a popular tool for advertising. From internally developed games to commercial offerings to simply creating a framework in which employees can interact, game-based competitions and community building are leading to increased productivity, even for Fortune 500 companies. Quoting:
"Take Microsoft's own experience. Before it releases a new version of its Windows operating system, it asks staff to help debug the software by installing and running the system. In the past, project managers had to spend a great deal of time and effort persuading busy Microsoftees to help them with this boring task. So for Windows Vista, the system's latest incarnation, Microsoft created a game that awarded points for bug-testing and prizes such as wristbands for achieving certain goals. Participation quadrupled."
If they award points for finding bugs, of course participation is going to go up. It's so easy.
Awarding points for participation is rarely the most effective way to get people involved. Modded +5 insightful
I know a good game, one that really motivates me to work more. It's called "Show Me The Money".
I thought they would speak about the need for good 3D cards in office boxen for lunch-time BF1942 smash-up between coworkers. This is boring. Corporate games as they describe it, are for suckers.
-- Home is where you eat your heart out.
I'm not really sure how to take the news that bug testing in Vista was quadrupled.
Where they focused more on the game than on actual bug testing?
Where there that many bugs that a quadrupled test force still allowed it to be shipped as it was?
I mean really...I don't know what to think other than they should have released a better product if they had quadruple the bug testing as previous versions. With any luck those wristbands were actually shock collars to deal with the consequences of allowing so many bugs to go out the door.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
Participation may have quadrupled, but what about productivity or tangible results?
FreeBSD.org - The power to serve
just fine.
See how good Vista is?
One place I worked we had 'suggestion drives'. You got prizes for making suggestions, and such. The only result is that we got deluged with worthless suggestions - and we'd have to spend days writing justifications for denying totally boneheaded ideas.
I'd love to see the quality of the bug reports they got as a result.
I can only assume the Microsoft example is meant to serve as an illustration as to why you shouldn't entrust your QA to whatever random employees you can convince to run your software in exchange for lame prizes.
I'm gonna write me a new minivan this afternoon!
in which the employee who fixed the most bugs won a car.
When asked what he was up to Wally said,"I'm coding up a Lexus!"
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Mussolini
"A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of coloured ribbon" - Napoleon
The concept has been long-observed that people will work their asses off for a symbol of accomplishment.
Anything a company can do that shows they aren't just a replaceable grunt leads to better morale. A good company will make great efforts to express their gratitude to the employees for being there and making the company what is has become. More often than not, though, you have companies who treat their employees as thin mints. Use them for a while, then spit them out, because, "you can always be replaced." Picnics, luncheons, gift cards, on-line game tournaments...if this is what it takes to encourage more productivity, then do it! Productive workers make a company more money.
Bearded Dragon
Reminds me of this: http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The-Defect-Black-Market.aspx
"You're older than you've ever been, and now you're even older."
Or perhaps if you were found with less than 5 wristbands, your performance review/raise was horrible, and chances of getting canned were more likely?
Disclaimer: I am not god.
We may not be created equal
But we can be treated equal.
What they're talking about is that it is more productive to present some boring task in game form than it is to just require people to do it.
A spoon full of sugar does indeed make the medicine go down...It's about time corporations clued in to this basic facet of human existence. Work is work, and play is play, and if work can be a little like play, people will work more.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
It did marvels for Vista indeed.
What planet are you from? When did humans ever do work they didn't have to do because they were supposed to do it? It's not like the company doesn't play the same game in reverse. They may keep you at a lower wage by promising retirement benefits, but then outsource your job to another country before they have to pay those benefits. There's no altruism in business, and there never has been.
There is a difference between a "bug" and a poor design decision. For a Windows release, Vista isn't all that buggy, it's just user-hostile. You certainly can't blame them for the driver issues that caused most of the bugs early on.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Greg Mankiw was right.
Economics is a load of bullshit.
If you can quadruple productivity of well-paid individuals by giving them junk jewelry and alpha-wave stimulation, then you really shouldn't have had to pay them well in the first place.
becasue management made a big deal out of it.
It's like when they were studying ways to increase productivity at Ford when the noticed dimming the lights a little bit increased performance.
What was actually happening was that the employees realized they were being watched and stepped up the appearance of production.
This turned out to be a short term effect.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
and that's why they used wristbands in microsoft's environment, not money. while you can reach a point where you say: "okay, that's it, i've got enough microsoft-branded wristbands and gimmicks", the same does not apply to money and useful gadgets you can sell.
if microsoft isn't offering anything that'd actually sell well as a reward, it'd make a decent system. it shows appreciation without being efficiently exploitable.
Back when I was fresh out of college (graduated in 1978), I found myself constantly having to learn new operating systems (mostly mainframe and minicomputer), new editors, new compilers (and languages), and so on. Heck, in my first year out of college, while at General Dynamics/WDSC, I worked on four different computers (CDC mainframe, Perkin-Elmer minicomputers, a Harris hybrid analog/digital computer, and some other mini-computer that I can't remember at the moment -- other than that I could tell what stage the compilie/link process was in by the noise the hard drive [5 MB and occupying a box the size of a 2-drawer file cabinet] was making).
So, one of my 'coming-up-to-speed' techniques was to write a program that interested me. In this case, I wrote a program that would randomly roll up and print out D&D monsters and NPCs, complete with stats. By the time I had that program working, I pretty much knew how to use the system and how to do software development on it. I think I still have some of those printouts in my files at home. ..bruce..
Bruce F. Webster (brucefwebster.com)
Only 5? Hmmm... You know, I really want my employees to express themselves. If you think that 5 pieces of flair is enough just because you're getting by and doing the bare minimum, I'm a little disappointed. We really want to encourage team players. ;-)
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Yeah, I'm wondering if those "bracelets" were the shiny metal kind that take keys... and that's how they kept Vista testers at it. I can't imagine any other way to get people to actually use it :-)
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
Obviously, promoting a business or a product through the use of a web based game, of course it makes sense! The trick is to create a game appropriate to the business and/or product you wish to push onto people.
It's a nice form of advertising and most of all, it provides a strong form of interaction. Imagine a game to promote Vista.
You make it work on other platforms, say on Mac and/or Linux :) The object of the game is to shoot off boxes that represent all non-Windows based OS off the screen. Kinda like a duck hunt or shooting gallery based game :) you lose points when you shoot Vista boxes!
:P
The problem being that the accounting department has been grinding productivity marks all day, and now are fully clothed in epic accounting gear.
Now we in the engineering department can't go to the water cooler without being ganked. :P
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
At least they're not teabagging you...yet.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I spotted 100 bugs for Vista and All I got was this lousy wristband.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Ever since watching Office Space and Wanted I've always viewed corporate initiatives as soul-crushing mediocrity. Now they're trying to combine my favourite escape from life, gaming, with said soul-crushing mediocrity. NOoooooOOOoooooooooooooooo
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, watch it -- I'm huge!
-your first thought when seeing the title is, "Well, of course. Gaming the system is always done for profit motives." And on good days, you also say, "But selfish systems always collapse from corruption-rot in the end." And on not-so-good days you add, "Of course, they'll take the rest of us down with them when they go."
-FL