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Why Work Is Looking More Like a Video Game
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Sun May 20, 2007 10:30 AM
from the explains-the-hookers-orcs-and-skaeboards dept.
from the explains-the-hookers-orcs-and-skaeboards dept.
james_bong666 writes "According to the New York Times, business software vendors can learn a great deal from how video games are designed.
This makes a lot of sense — how many professionals like working with their software in the office as much as gaming after hours? Developers can deal with looking at tables and grids full of data to make decisions and get things done, but other types of workers (executives, salespeople, etc.) have little to no attention span and need a picture to be worth a thousand words, i.e. their software designed completely differently."
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work / play (Score:3, Interesting)
By the way, I don't care how much someone loves their job. Anyone who stays after-hours and plays games or just hangs out is sad.
Re:work / play (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Uh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Uh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Uh. (Score:5, Interesting)
Scientists, small business owners, executives, and even the person tending the grill at the burger joint have normal attention spans.
Do not underestimate the difficulty and attention required of other people's work. I am now a lab manager of a memory development lab at a major university, but I've spent many years working at mini-markets, coffee shops, etc.
Let me tell you. If you have 14 fraps, 5 iced lattes, 3 vanilla lattes, 4 hot mochas, and several ice teas to make in under 6 minutes, all the while greeting customers and making small talk, you damn well better pay attention, and concentrate.
In such cases, you transcend the planning of one or two drinks, and start planning and attending to the situation at a larger scale. At that level, its Zen.
Parent
Re:Uh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Uh. (Score:5, Interesting)
Developers write fantastic User Interfaces. Also see Unix. Not quite what you mean? Find a specialist who specialises in UIs for non developers.
Parent
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But equally and in the opposite direction: if your staff can't use the system to get their work done, there is a good chance that you fucked up in hiring them. Stop blamin
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One could argue that personality types do affect what profession you will pursue. Although this is not 100% and there are many exceptions to this rule.
And alternatively, you can argue that your profession could be affecting your personality on how you deal with your work.
As a person who has to make constant and man decisions on an daily (if not hourly) basis, then you tend to prefer information that is as concise a
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[i]"Developers can deal with looking at tables and grids full of data to make decisions and get things done, but other types of workers
Then they need to prove it to me, not the other way around. I am not the one trying to force a fact, they are, I am merely calling them
Yup - would you trust a developer to sell? (Score:3, Insightful)
Besides the comment above concerning the juggling of a large number of time-sensitive tasks, there are many, many different types of thought and operating environments.
I've been a software developer, a salesmen and an executive. Each role has its own focus and its own "style" of thinking. Most developers can't sell because they can't properly communicate with people who ar
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Cry more.
Naked Objects (Score:4, Interesting)
Jaded MMORPGer (Score:5, Funny)
"Gaming is more like work nowadays"
?
Non-programmers can't do without pictures? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Non-programmers can't do without pictures? (Score:5, Insightful)
One thing that was drilled into us in an Engineering Communications class was to assume your audience (often management) was impatient, had limited reading comprehension, and generally ignorant of your subject matter. At the time we thought this was amusing, as we imagined the standard Dilbert stereotype of a manager.
Looking back now, I see this was more of a mental exercise than a statement about our future bosses' intellectual abilities. Engineers tend to be detail-oriented, especially about their particular work. This is generally good, because details matter in implementation, but bad for communication if it clutters up the main points you are trying to convey. By telling engineers to write like their audience is stupid and lazy, you might end up with something that is almost understandable. :)
In reality, your boss might not be an expert in the field, and they also have lots of information flying at them from all directions. Making prose simple and compact speeds comprehension for busy people. Unfortunately, people who are predisposed to have a negative attitude toward management (bad previous managers, overly large nerd egos, social insecurity, etc) just remember this advice as "Write simply because my boss is dumb."
Parent
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The idea that you aren't as smart if your interface is simple is a stupid one, and makes me want to take away the spedometer in your car to illustrate the point.
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Although your Sudoku example is a bad one because Sudoku didn't exist ten years ago. Say Gomoku or something.
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"According to Will Shortz, the modern Sudoku was most likely designed anonymously by Howard Garns, a 74-year-old retired architect and freelance puzzle constructor, and first published in 1979 by Dell Magazines as Number Place."
And reading the page, the concept goes back much further. Sudoku's just the name - programming a Sudoku-styled game (a Number Place generator, say) would've been harder 10 years ago, but the game certainly existed. The example stands fine.
Patronising BS (Score:4, Insightful)
These people don't need their software designed completely differently, they just need it designed better.
Re:Patronising BS (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
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Yes. True.
Not
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You're missing the point. There ARE snotty IT types out there, though not all IT people are of the snotty kind. I'm responding to the notion that ALL sales and management people are bereft of a useful attention span. They aren't. But you have to know, as I do, that when normal business people have run-ins with particularly toxic IT guys, that it can poison their notion of IT as a cult
There's a whole business relationship here (Score:2)
On the one side, you've got the stereotypical salesperson who "doesn't care about the tool or if something's wrong with it - they just want to get the job done".
On the other, you've got the stereotypical techie who "doesn't care about the salesperson - he's got the requirements in front of him and as far as he's concerned, that's it".
Both of these people (and real examples of these stereotypes do exist) need to get off their high horse for a minute. The salesman's rig
missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree that the ideas of connection, management and cooperation within MMORPG are potentially interesting in the context of managing large companies, but the "making work like a videogame" metaphor doesn't work for me.
yskel
Please Sir, (Score:2)
Or may be a first person shooter with the TAX man as a way of handling sales taxes.
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It's always been like a video game. Says BOFH. (Score:5, Funny)
Another user rings "I said what I wanted was more space on my account, *please*"
"Sure, hang on"
I hear him gasp his relief even though he'd covered the mouthpeice.
"There, you've got *plenty* of space now!"
"How much have I got?" he simps
"Well, let's see, you have 4 Meg available"
"Wow! Eight Meg in total, thanks!" he says, pleased with his bargaining power
"No" I interrupt, savouring this like a fine red at room temperature, with steak, extra rare, to follow; "4 Meg in total.."
"Huh? I'd used 4 Meg already, How could I have 4 Meg Available?"
I say nothing. It'll come to him.
"aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagggggg
The Next Level (Score:5, Funny)
Does this mean that in order to advance to "the next level," you have to kill the Big Boss at the end of the current level?
Re:The Next Level (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Obvious, but overlooked (Score:5, Insightful)
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My computer science course, for instance, did spend some time in the first year emphasising that getting user requirements was absolutely crucial, and if you didn't have a good idea what they wanted you may as well go home now.
But most of the marks came from designing and producing code. There was only one project which required us to go out and find user requirements before implementing them, and that was in the final year. Everything else, the requirements were given to you in pl
Interesting. (Score:3, Interesting)
Be afraid... (Score:2)
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Etrade does this (Score:3, Interesting)
ETrade's user trading interface was deliberately designed to look something like a video game. Not too many choices, self-guiding, big type. This encourages users to trade too much.
Real life (Score:2)
If work was like the games I play... (Score:2)
Narrator: [Voice-over] I'm half asleep again; I must've left the original in the copy machine.
Richard Chesler: The second rule of Fight Club - is this yours?
Narrator: Huh?
Richard Chesler: Pretend you're me, make a managerial decision: you find this, what would you do?
Narrator: [pauses] Well, I gotta tell you: I'd be very, very careful who you talk to about that, because the person who wrote that... is
My word processor as Pacman (Score:2, Insightful)
Bert
I'll go one further (Score:2)
There is a reason why contemporary games often have fairly progressive and intuitive user interface solutions. As most game designer have realized, you need to have the visual communication folks on-board at the start, and they need to have input in to the design of communication tools. More often then not, desktop appl
A bit of a forced analogy, but a good point. (Score:3, Insightful)
gaming/work fun (Score:2)
Work hasn't been all that fun lately, but most modern games I encounter are still less fun.
Work and home aren't the same (Score:2)
I like sitting in my recliner at home a lot more than in my office chair at work, but it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the work chair. Different missions (pleasure vs productivity) yield different levels of enjoyment.
Funny... (Score:2)
A videogame, sure, but this is not a good thing. (Score:2, Funny)
I was tasked with setting up the Outlook profiles of 3 new users in the accounting office. This should be a very straight-forward, brain-dead job. To complete this, however, involved me eventually having to replace a machine in the office, which meant a trip across campus to the purchasing office in order to locate a spare box. The purc
From the game designer's perspective (Score:2, Insightful)
The reason why video games such as Second Life, World of Warcraft, and even RTS games such as SimCity, Civilization, and Age of Em
The Bridge on the Starship "Enterprise" (Score:2)
Sounds like my work (Score:2, Funny)
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