Oh And Remember Next Friday Is Hawaiian Chainmail Day
From CNet.com:
A study released by IBM and collaboration software maker Seriosity found significant parallels between business leaders and MMORPG gamers.
MMORPG games, which include World of Warcraft, Eve Online and EverQuest, can include millions of players who come together in various groups to accomplish a specific mission or task.
Gamers learn collaboration, self-organization, risk taking, openness, influence and how to earn incentives when involved in a MMORPG, according to a study of 200 members of IBM’s internal gaming community.
We’ve seen this kind of logical leap before, and as usual it’s a tenuous connection at best. The only surprising aspect of this article is that Second Life wasn’t even mentioned. But the interesting part of the story comes from the actual “study,” which turns out to be an advertisement for a hilariously nefarious product:
Seriosity has developed solutions inspired by multiplayer games. Our flagship product, Attent™ creates a virtual economy for enterprise collaboration and a solution to information overload. Using Serios™, the virtual currency of the Attent ecosystem, the solution enables users to assign values to messages based on importance. Attent also provides a variety of tools that enable everyone to track and analyze communication patterns and information exchanges across the enterprise. You can learn more about Attent by viewing our demo, reading our datasheet, or trying it now, for free.
I’ll save you some time: Seriosity doesn’t think you grind enough in real life, so they want to implement a virtual economy in your workplace. The currency in question is the Serio. You earn Serios by, presumably, completing real life quests, such as showing up to work on time or killing 10 accountants and looting their bodies for crap you’re just going to sell to a merchant for Serios. If I’m understanding it correctly, you spend Serios by performing such tasks as sending email to your co-workers or perhaps buying “ammunition” for your epic red stapler.
From the datasheet: [PDF]
People quickly realize that Serios are a lot like money - they have value, you can barter, donate, and collect them. This versatility leads to new forms of collaboration and innovation. When people realize that Serios can be valuable, they begin to use them for transactions that reflect behavior and priorities outside the email environment.
This can only be fan-fucking-tastic. The day will come when you’re happily grinding away Human Resources faction and you get this IM from Gary in the Chicago branch:
*** CHEAP FAST DELIVERY SERIOS IN 15-30 MINUTES!!!!!! HTTP://CHEAPFASTSERIOSGAMING.COM ***
*** CHEAP FAST DELIVERY SERIOS IN 15-30 MINUTES!!!!!! HTTP://CHEAPFASTSERIOSGAMING.COM ***
*** CHEAP FAST DELIVERY SERIOS IN 15-30 MINUTES!!!!!! HTTP://CHEAPFASTSERIOSGAMING.COM ***
*** CHEAP FAST DELIVERY SERIOS IN 15-30 MINUTES!!!!!! HTTP://CHEAPFASTSERIOSGAMING.COM ***
It will be at that point that the streams will cross, the nexus between real and virtual world will open its iris-like maw, your client will start patching, and it’ll be 40 person raids from here on out.
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July 9th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
Wow. Just… wow. ( not WoW by the way ) I think it would be a mistake to start this sort of thing. Your employees would start to grind serios in the shortest easiest manner till you come to work some day to find that every one you employ spent the last month writing scripts to take advantage of the “timely email response” exploit. They’re now on vacation in Switzerland skiing on your dime. Noob. Who are you going to fire? The guy who did his freaking job or the “inovative”, “colaborative” exploit team who milked the system for a 50% pay bonus? If they are lead to believe they will profit from it, a large minority of people ( possibly even a majority, but I’m an optimist at heart ) will do something unethical on a daily basis in order to get ahead.
July 9th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
Yeah, I think they forgot the fact that MMO players tend to always find the shortest path to the cheese.
July 10th, 2007 at 8:09 pm
I can see it now
“Okay so today’s raid is taking on BD (Board of Directors). I want evens on the right side of the table, odds on the left.
Steve from Accounting, what’s our chances of survival?”
“That’d be thirty-three point three three, repeating of course, percent-”
“Alright chums, lets do this! LEEEROOOOOOYYYYYY….”
*Leeroy the security guard runs into the room ahead of everyone*