4 ms·

If someone makes it into compeling game, yes. But it is very hard to do it, and in this case it happened by accident.

derefr 11y ago
Any company big enough to hire I-O Psych people to do efficiency/ergonomics/morale/whatever studies, should also have the budget to afford to keep a game designer or two on staff to design the game that is "working at this company." I don't expect the average startup to get anywhere with that (unless they're a games startup), but the bigcorps should be doing this sort of thing, and should be producing tons of evidence in how this-or-that idea works out that startups could just learn from/copy/steal.
- qb45 11y ago
  Until employees decide those games aren't fun anymore and start their own game, involving outgaming the game designers. There is a limit to every psychological trick and big corps sometimes have trouble noticing when stuff that worked for them for years ceases to work anymore.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  It won't work. Game made with intention to trick you into working loses its fun value the minute people figure out its intention. Which, in this setting, means your game is a waste of money even before it's deployed. Or worse, it could backfire and turn teamwork into a die-hard competition. That happens when you tie the "game" with serious monetary or status rewards, and I think it's considered a pathological situation.
  - derefr 11y ago
    I think you're thinking of a very specific meaning of "game design." Game design is the design (and the craft) of systems of incentives, and you can really [dis-]incentivize pretty much anything you can imagine. The government has some game designers (though they didn't hire them under that job title) responsible for figuring out new tax credits to incentivize certain patterns of purchasing, spending, home-ownership, family-starting, whatever. In this case, consider LoL's honor system[1]: an incentive system designed explicitly to reward good sportsmanship, which apparently works quite well. You own company could make a game out of, for example, technical debt: imagine the equivalent of "carbon credits" handed out for good work, that team-members must then buy from their peers (not necessarily with money) to be able to commit technical-debt-creating code. [1] http://www.themarysue.com/so-far-so-good-league-of-legends-takes-an-honorable-approach-to-improving-player-behavior/ http://www.themarysue.com/so-far-so-good-league-of-legends-t... --- And, on a tangent, here's a bit of a rant: game designers are really wasted on the current trend of "casual game" slot machines. Game design isn't about "how to make people addicted to a game" any more than industrial design is about "how to make people keep pressing the buttons on your radio." Inspiring addiction is what CEOs want, but it's not what game designers are trained in. Companies like Zynga could have done much better hiring people with experience in designing the layouts for casinos and theme parks.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      I agree with your points about incentive management, but I think it's not me who thinks about a very specific meaning of "game design". I think about the usual one, which is making games - stuff people do for fun, as opposed to work. I read your comment as extending the meaning of "game" to encompass all the stuff that can be gamified. So for instance, technical debt as carbon credits is an example of gamification, not of creating a game - game as in fun, something you participate in as a choice, not an obligation to an external party (not meeting which you can be punished for).
      - derefr 11y ago
        Ah, I don't think we disagree: "game designers" as a profession are almost solely employees of games companies. "Game designer" isn't even a job role you can hire for; it's just what you call someone (usually a programmer or writer or project manager in a games company) when they have enough experience to put on the game design "hat." But experience in game design—making games/toys/puzzles engrossing, fun, educational, or whatever-else—teaches game designers a set of skills that are applicable outside of games. It's not just "gamification" (which is almost only used in reference to systems of points and rewards used to bait the Achievement-oriented Bartle types[1]); it's the architectural level of "systems engineering", the same thing done when e.g. NASA tries to figure out what goes into a working satellite: designing the satellite itself, designing the support systems for it, designing an ongoing training system for the ground crew, creating training policies so that new lessons are incorporated back into new training, sourcing replacement parts and sourcing budgets for part-replacing missions and sourcing suppliers when other suppliers go defunct and setting up competitive supply-chains so a monopsony isn't created that chokes the budget... and so forth. Figuring out how to make a cohesive system, composed of both humans and technology, get something done together, is mostly working out incentives so that the system doesn't fall over from one of a thousand ills. There's more expertise in the pinky finger of an MMORPG Live Team content designer on this sort of topic than in the entire apprenticeship of a civil engineer. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_Test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_Test

Any company big enough to hire I-O Psych people to do efficiency/ergonomics/morale/whatever studies, should also have the budget to afford to keep a game designer or two on staff to design the game that is "working at this company." I don't expect the average startup to get anywhere with that (unless they're a games startup), but the bigcorps should be doing this sort of thing, and should be producing tons of evidence in how this-or-that idea works out that startups could just learn from/copy/steal.

qb45 11y ago
Until employees decide those games aren't fun anymore and start their own game, involving outgaming the game designers. There is a limit to every psychological trick and big corps sometimes have trouble noticing when stuff that worked for them for years ceases to work anymore.
TeMPOraL 11y ago
It won't work. Game made with intention to trick you into working loses its fun value the minute people figure out its intention. Which, in this setting, means your game is a waste of money even before it's deployed. Or worse, it could backfire and turn teamwork into a die-hard competition. That happens when you tie the "game" with serious monetary or status rewards, and I think it's considered a pathological situation.
- derefr 11y ago
  I think you're thinking of a very specific meaning of "game design." Game design is the design (and the craft) of systems of incentives, and you can really [dis-]incentivize pretty much anything you can imagine. The government has some game designers (though they didn't hire them under that job title) responsible for figuring out new tax credits to incentivize certain patterns of purchasing, spending, home-ownership, family-starting, whatever. In this case, consider LoL's honor system[1]: an incentive system designed explicitly to reward good sportsmanship, which apparently works quite well. You own company could make a game out of, for example, technical debt: imagine the equivalent of "carbon credits" handed out for good work, that team-members must then buy from their peers (not necessarily with money) to be able to commit technical-debt-creating code. [1] http://www.themarysue.com/so-far-so-good-league-of-legends-takes-an-honorable-approach-to-improving-player-behavior/ http://www.themarysue.com/so-far-so-good-league-of-legends-t... --- And, on a tangent, here's a bit of a rant: game designers are really wasted on the current trend of "casual game" slot machines. Game design isn't about "how to make people addicted to a game" any more than industrial design is about "how to make people keep pressing the buttons on your radio." Inspiring addiction is what CEOs want, but it's not what game designers are trained in. Companies like Zynga could have done much better hiring people with experience in designing the layouts for casinos and theme parks.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    I agree with your points about incentive management, but I think it's not me who thinks about a very specific meaning of "game design". I think about the usual one, which is making games - stuff people do for fun, as opposed to work. I read your comment as extending the meaning of "game" to encompass all the stuff that can be gamified. So for instance, technical debt as carbon credits is an example of gamification, not of creating a game - game as in fun, something you participate in as a choice, not an obligation to an external party (not meeting which you can be punished for).
    - derefr 11y ago
      Ah, I don't think we disagree: "game designers" as a profession are almost solely employees of games companies. "Game designer" isn't even a job role you can hire for; it's just what you call someone (usually a programmer or writer or project manager in a games company) when they have enough experience to put on the game design "hat." But experience in game design—making games/toys/puzzles engrossing, fun, educational, or whatever-else—teaches game designers a set of skills that are applicable outside of games. It's not just "gamification" (which is almost only used in reference to systems of points and rewards used to bait the Achievement-oriented Bartle types[1]); it's the architectural level of "systems engineering", the same thing done when e.g. NASA tries to figure out what goes into a working satellite: designing the satellite itself, designing the support systems for it, designing an ongoing training system for the ground crew, creating training policies so that new lessons are incorporated back into new training, sourcing replacement parts and sourcing budgets for part-replacing missions and sourcing suppliers when other suppliers go defunct and setting up competitive supply-chains so a monopsony isn't created that chokes the budget... and so forth. Figuring out how to make a cohesive system, composed of both humans and technology, get something done together, is mostly working out incentives so that the system doesn't fall over from one of a thousand ills. There's more expertise in the pinky finger of an MMORPG Live Team content designer on this sort of topic than in the entire apprenticeship of a civil engineer. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_Test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_Test