Study: MMORPGs Critical in Developing Tomorrow's Business Leaders

One of the neat things about educational videogames is the vast multitude of angles the research can take. Whether it is military/industrial applications, classroom adaptations, or medical appropriations, videogames can be used and studied in a wide variety of educational settings. Matthew Kirdahy has a nice article over at Sify.com on how playing MMORPGs can lead to enhanced business skills. Kirdahy gives a nod to another article appearing in the May issue of Harvard Business Review that marks the culmination of considerable research on the topic.

The article’s authors, Byron Reeves (Stanford University), Thomas W. Malone (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and Tony O’Driscoll (North Carolina State), found that leadership in online games offers a sneak preview of tomorrow’s business world. In fact, they said these games exhibit leadership abilities crucial to the future of business.

Here is the key paragraph from the HBR article regarding the sometimes serendipitous but always interesting findings:

A number of our conclusions about the future of business leadership were unanticipated. For one, individuals you’d never expect to identify—and who’d never expect to be identified—as “high potentials” for real-world management training end up taking on significant leadership roles in games. Even more provocative was our finding that successful leadership in online games has less to do with the attributes of individual leaders than with the game environment, as created by the developer and enhanced by the gamers themselves. Furthermore, some characteristics of that environment—for example, immediate compensation for successful completion of a project with nonmonetary incentives, such as points for commitment and game performance—represent more than mere foreshadowing of how leadership might evolve.

Fortunately, of the article’s authors, Dr. O’Driscoll (now at Duke) has blogged extensively about the research behind the paper. You can find his most recent entry regarding what resulted in the HBR product here. A thorough write-up, with lots of links to articles, podcasts and work leading up to the findings can be found here.

Harvard Business School is no stranger to publishing research on video gaming and business applications. Beck and Wade published Got Game way back in 2004.

References:
Beck, J. C., & Wade, M. (2004). Got game: How the gamer generation is reshaping business forever. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Kirdahy, M. (2008). How online videogames can help groom biz leaders. [Online]. Available: http://sify.com/finance/fullstory.php?id=14721468

Reeves, B., Malone, T. W., & O’Driscoll, T. (2008, May). Leadership’s online labs. Harvard Business Review. [Online]. Available: http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/hbsp/hbr/articles/article.jsp;jsessionid=
3FGSKMZGNNJNSAKRGWDR5VQBKE0YIISW?ml_action=get-article&
articleID=R0805C&ml_page=1&ml_subscriber=true

IBM Helps Universities to Innov8

Here’s a nice article by Julie Moran Alterio from Gannett, appearing in the Asbury Park Press (“From the Jersey Shore to You”) on IBM’s new business leadership skills game, Innov8. Taking a page from the military’s America’s Army game, IBM hopes to instill desired skill sets in those “fuzzy” areas that games are so good at teaching, such as leadership, teamwork, social skills, and real world problem solving.

Innov8 came about through IBM’s corporate case challenge, which involves B-school teams from two universities competing with one another to provide a solution to a business problem. IBM VP Sandy Carter noted that 40 of the 44 teams from Duke and U. North Carolina suggested using a videogame to help people develop needed skill sets for business acumen. Since January, Carter has shepherded development of Innov8, using some of the students from the case challenge to help design the game. Pilot studies were completed earlier this year and the game is now ready for prime time, to be offered free to 2000 universities worldwide.

Gameplay should be familiar to World of Warcraft players. It’s a 3-D virtual interactive environment (VIE) with human avatars. Players assume a female avatar tasked with solving various business-scenario dilemmas. NPCs provide helpful dialogue.

Jim Lawler, an information systems associate professor over at Pace University, is given prominent mention. He worried game dynamics would be difficult to master, thus detracting from lessons. However, he was won over after quickly mastering the game. His key quote: “Enrollment is lower in computer science and information systems nationally. This is what schools have to do, integrate these kind of games and tools.”

David Rejeski is also mentioned prominently in the article:

More corporations and the U.S. government are starting to see the potential of games to teach serious subjects, said David Rejeski, director of the Serious Games Initiative at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.

“The thing about games that’s really nice is you can fail softly,” Rejeski said.

The Apply Group, a high-tech consulting firm, predicts that one in five of the Global Fortune 500 will adopt gaming for learning by 2012.

My take: IBM has long been at the forefront of top companies that “get it” with gaming and Web 2.0 technologies. For instance, the company has obtained considerable virtual real estate in Second Life and holds online meetings there with avatars showing up from personnel spread across the globe. It is heartening to see this effort to help train business students in appropriate skill sets. Offering the game to universities free of charge is a good way of helping B-schools graduate students with the knowledge and skills needed by IBM and other big corporations.

References:
Alterio, J. M. (2007, November 26). New video game teaches students business and computer skills. Asbury Park Press. [Online.] Retrieved November 28, 2007 from: http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?
AID=/20071126/BUSINESS/711260306/1003

Funding Models and Educational Uses of Virtual Worlds

First came the monthly subscription fee. The most successful MMORPG to date, World of Warcraft, follows this model. Subscribers pay around $15/month for the right to use their characters within the world. This was followed by the free to try, pay for advanced features model. This is the tack taken by Club Penguin, and seemed to work well for younger audiences. Anybody can enter the world and play, but to keep property and accumulate virtual stuff, they have to pay a modest amount, say $5/month.

Second Life took the tack of offering free access, but sells virtual real estate in their world (I know, “virtual” real estate seems like an oxymoron). Companies like IBM have bought private “islands” for online meetings and sales, and pay rent for the privilege.

Webkinz, as I’ve mentioned here, gives buyers of its toy plush animals in RL a code which unlocks free access in their virtual world. This has been an extraordinarily successful sales technique for the company.

Now, Wagner James Au over at GigaOm brings news that Mattel’s Barbie Girls virtual online world has signed up 3 million members in its first two months, a rate eclipsing that of WoW when it started out. This, despite the fact Barbie Girls World remains in beta for the moment. Au mentions several “child-centric” MMOs and points out none of them are primarily subscription-based, but rather subsist mostly on selling virtual items or advertising streams.

I indicated previously there are several differences between WoW and SL, and that Second Life is much more conducive to educational appropriation than WoW. Karl Kapp commented on that blog entry, and said expecting students to pay an additional $15/month in order to participate was probably too much to ask. Certainly, the new approaches of these highly successful virtual worlds that don’t rely as heavily on subscription revenue seems to back up his assertion.

Second Life in the Corporate World

The blogosphere has made much ado lately about an article in The Wall Street Journal by Anjali Athavaley on virtual job recruiting within Second Life. Fortune 500 companies seem to be using the virtual world to conduct interviews and get to know candidates at a distance. SL continues to be one of the most heavily hyped yet lightly used serious game applications out there.

Job applicants interested in using SL for interviews often face the challenge of creating and dressing their avatars appropriately. The article related several amusing anecdotes such as newbies unable to properly control their avatars in the interview room. I noted back in April that things had improved graphically since my previous forays in SL. Alas, as I noted then, I too had initial difficulties in clothing my avatar properly. So, I can imagine the stress such endeavors would add to the interview process.

An even more intriguing article ran in WSJ’s technology report back on Monday. (These special report sections are published on Mondays because Mondays are slow news days for papers; they are usually pretty thin at the start of the week.) This one, by William M. Bulkeley, details the use IBM makes of SL.

Now, here is where my comment about SL being lightly used requires an exception, assuming Bulkeley’s reporting is accurate (which I’m sure it is). IBM uses SL like crazy. They own over 50 islands on SL, they hold beaucoup virtual meetings on SL, they use SL to meet with clients, and they hold employee presentations with virtual PowerPoint slides.

The article details how IBM has jumped on the Web 2.0 bandwagon in a big way, not only with SL but also by encouraging employees to blog, network online, create and maintain corporate wikis, leverage instant messaging and otherwise share information with one another and clients.

As stated on numerous occasions, the corporate world seems to be always ahead of the technology curve, and education seemingly always behind. Although SL and other Web 2.0 apps are gaining ground in education, they are not in large part an everyday component of student/teacher interactions. But, if these two WSJ articles are any indication, students will be part of this online gaming and Web 2.0 world in one way or another, before, during, or after school.

References

Athavaley, A. (2007, June 20). A job interview you don’t have to show up for. The Wall Street Journal, p.D1.

Bulkeley, W. M. (2007, June 18). Playing well with others: How IBM’s employees have taken social networking to an unusual level. The Wall Street Journal, p.R1.