I’m not sure what it is that causes some people to turn into uninspired automatons when they get into “business” mode. (Back in the days of the power tie, I blamed it on lack of blood flow to the brain. These days, with few organizations requiring suits, I’m not sure what the reason is.) It almost seems that there’s some work ethic thing that says “if you’re enjoying what you’re doing, you must not be serious about it.”
I don’t think anything could be further from the truth. I think that if you’re truly impassioned about what you’re working on, you can’t help to enjoy what you’re doing.
To that end, there seems to be a nascent movement toward creating tools for business that are able to achieve real results while not being so buttoned-down that they drain the humanity from the room.
The first inkling that I had of this was back in March at SXSW, where I ran into Amy Jo Kim, CEO of ShuffleBrain, on the flight from the West Coast out to Austin. AJ and her team are doing some groundbreaking work in figuring out how brain games and social networks intersect.
The very next day, while still in Austin, I had the chance to attend a session called Playing On! Interface Lessons from Games, a panel anchored by Nicole Lazzaro, CEO of XEODesign. And summarily had my mind tweaked in ways that were highly unexpected.
The net-net: Many of the key concepts that have helped propel games to be a $21 billion industry in 2008 are applicable in business, too. The concept of “collecting” things, like experience points (XP) in role-playing games? We see that behavior in business apps, as well…what’s in the upper-right hand corner of your Twitter screen? It’s the number of “friends” you have — a collecting behavior. The idea of going on a “quest” in that same role-playing game (and you can go now to see just a few of the many quests that players can choose to embark on), that what Nicole calls “Hard Fun” in gaming-speak? But game development techniques that focus on player engagement by promoting a sense of quest and XP collection have been around since the Game Boy Advance (GBA) era. Take the case of Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow where each boss encounter or level up results in an increase of the protagonist’s XP points, powers, and abilities. Or Drill Dozer where exploration forms a crucial component of its gameplay. These are but a few from a sea of titles available to download, play, learn and enjoy as gba roms from online repositories like Gamulator. Panning away from games, you can see those very concepts of quest through collection in action every time you log into LinkedIn, and are told that “Your profile is 85% complete.”
Not only are the patterns from game design starting to make their way into business, but “games” themselves are being turned into serious facilitation techniques as well.
Last week at the Innovation, Design and Serious Games Exchange, I had the chance to see first-hand how a thorny, serious product management question (“What features do our customers really want in the next generation of our product?”) could be deftly teased out of a diverse group by way of a game-based technique. Check out these two videos with Luke Hohmann, CEO of Enthiosys, where he facilitates a session that turns the traditional “focus group” into a collaborative design session:
“Buy A Feature, Part 1”
“Buy A Feature, Part 2”
(More on “Buy A Feature” here.)
I’m convinced there’s something going on. There’s a fundamental improvement in the way business people interact in this kind of scenario. It’s not the rote, mind-numbing, death-by-Powerpoint. Instead, it feels like a shift toward bringing the “whole person” into the workplace using much more engaging techniques than have traditionally been used in many industries and environments.
So, what do you think? Is this just some wacky, West-coast frittering away of time? Or are we seeing the early stages of a fundamental change in business?
Chris,
Exciting stuff that you have found regarding the intersection of play, games, and “getting stuff done, and done well” in the business realm. I’d venture to say that it is a West Coast thing, but please encourage everyone to keep it up. It might catch on elsewhere. As it stands now, the business environment still tends to hammer down the nail that sticks up a bit. This has always seemed like the downside weakness of social media. How do I use Facebook, or a personal blog, or whatever, and cover my a%% when it comes to my corporate master? How will it affect my insurability, if Wellpoint or some similar faceless machine gets wind of my emotional limp? Ultimately, how can anyone be authentic in the workplace? Put that in the mix, figure it out, and then we’ll see revolutionary progress in how we do stuff at work.
“Games” may have to be rebranded as “behavioral economics”, but I don’t see this trend going away once a handful of companies are able to share hard data on their success.
I’d be willing to guess that the “85% complete” indicator caused a spike in people completing their LinkedIn profiles, but I haven’t seen any data to prove it. With the rise in data-driven product culture, though, I think that will change soon.