4 Video Games Every Office Should Play Together
Video games are more than just fun and games. Learn how the right games can create a more collaborative, loyal and effective staff.
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Gamification is big in the enterprise these days -- but what about just regular old gaming?
We addressed gaming at work as a worthwhile activity in a recent InformationWeek slideshow on supposed workplace "time-wasters," noting that on-the-job gaming "giv[es] employees more reasons to stay in the office [and is] a great way for co-workers to get together and collaborate while keeping their minds sharp."
Indeed, video games have been shown to be good for brain health, offering myriad benefits such as increased focus, improved recovery from strokes, and an enhanced ability to stave off diseases such as Parkinson's.
Video games can also be good for a person's career -- especially in IT-related fields. Being able to successfully lead a World of Warcraft guild, for example, demonstrates leadership qualities, tactical ability, financial management skills, and a good mindset for effective gamification deployments -- just the sorts of things a company looks for in a CIO.
Conservative HR departments may be reluctant to allow -- let alone embrace -- a gaming culture in the workplace, but such a lack of confidence in one's own employees seems overly paternalistic at best.
"Salaried employees know that their work day is what they need it to be," says CompTIA CEO Todd Thibodeaux, "and if they need to squeeze in 15 to 20 minutes of leisure time here or there, they know they can make it up later."
Besides, the benefits of a gaming workplace seem to largely outweigh the risks. A permissive corporate culture that embraces video games will see a less-stressed, higher-morale, and even smarter and higher-quality workforce. The Motley Fool, for instance, attributes its extremely low employee turnover to the company's gaming culture.
In the following pages, we recommend four video games that have proven themselves as effective tools for improving productivity, collaboration, and brain function. As you click through, take note of the qualities that these games and others like them might bring to your enterprise. Maybe your next big problem will be solved with the help of gamers.
Foldit is perhaps the ultimate Rubik's Cube. It is a free-to-play online puzzle game that leverages collaboration and crowdsourcing to solve real-world scientific puzzles. The purpose is to create optimal configurations by folding protein structures.
The game (along with its players) is most famous for helping to make a significant discovery in researchers' quest for the cure for AIDS. In 2011, Foldit players took mere days to produce the model of a particular enzyme "that plays a key role in the development of a virus similar to HIV" -- a problem that had stumped AIDS researchers for 15 years.
If your work involves the healthcare or life sciences field, Foldit should probably be bookmarked on your browser, so you can contribute to and learn from effectively crowdsourced research. Even if you work in another sector, however, Foldit holds value as a collaborative platform that will get you thinking about some of the world's most difficult problems in new ways.
And if you help cure a disease along the way? Put it on your performance review. It can't hurt.
A season 3 episode of The Office (US version) features a scene of office workers -- including their boss -- playing Call of Duty at their desks as part of a team-building exercise.
Certainly, multiplayer shooters offer great opportunities to enhance teamwork and tactical thinking. Studies show that action video games improve probabilistic inference, i.e., split-second decision-making based upon partial information and fact patterns, a thought process that is vital to everyday business success.
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare in particular, however, offers an additional special benefit for the workplace: network stress-testing. The game has a reputation as a network-crippler. Its technical requirements rely heavily upon a solid network infrastructure. Subjecting your organization's network to CoD: Advanced Warfare or similar bandwidth-gluttons of titles will force your IT workers to engage in best practices for reducing latency, while allowing them to identify the weakest points in the network.
Also, it's fun to shoot things.
According to Maxis founder Will Wright, "Games are a way for us to experiment with strategy and problem-solving in toy environments."
And, truly, what's not to love about Will Wright's toy-environment masterpiece, SimCity? In a simulated municipality of which you, the player, serve as a perpetually re-elected and apparently immortal mayor, you are tasked with building the city of your dreams while simultaneously meeting the competing demands of your constituents. (For example, the demands of industry in your city may directly conflict with residents' concerns about crime and pollution.)
So successful was the original SimCity that Wright was called upon to develop adaptations of it for major corporations -- most notably, SimRefinery -- a game commissioned by Chevron to teach non-engineer employees about oil refinery operations.
There have been several incarnations of SimCity since the original, but the same need to use the scientific method, in order to both experiment with models and learn about complex systems, remains present in all.
The addictive match-'em-up sensation that is the Bejeweled series offers more benefits than simply giving someone something to do on their phone when they're in the bathroom.
Some companies allow employees to play Bejeweled on the job to sharpen their minds. That's due to the game's emphasis on pattern recognition. That policy is backed by science. According to a study at East Carolina University, patients suffering from chronic health issues -- including anxiety -- demonstrated "enhanced mood and engagement" and lower levels of stress while playing Bejeweled II.
Paramedics in the Monterey Bay Area are reportedly allowed to play Bejeweled for a different reason related to productivity: so that they can better stay awake during long graveyard shifts.
The games discussed here have been shown to help employees and companies become more productive, more collaborative, or both. The big question that remains is: Do you think they will be helpful to your organization? And, for that matter, are you already using or allowing gaming in your workplace environment? What successes or issues have you run into when it comes to gaming on the job?
Tell us all about it in the comments section below -- and be sure to let us know if we missed your favorite video game for the workplace.
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