Russell Davies: working in a MMOG

Two things sidled up to each other in my head yesterday - this post on the wonderful Wonderland blog yesterday. And a trip out for tea with Arthur.

This is what I mean.

Alice wonders whether you could design a business environment that's explicitly like a MMOG. A business that offers you collectibles, guilds to join and which encourages collaborative competition. I'd argue that kind of stuff exists already in some businesses but it hasn't been made explicit. Though I'd love to work somewhere that did that. Just like I'd love to work somewhere that had cool uniforms with badges of rank.

Anyway, then, this evening Arthur and I went out for tea to a cafe and since he's only 5 and he loves to run we had to run there. But we couldn't just run. He instantly started constructing this elaborate scenario of the challenges we would overcome during the run. And that's the language he was using, the run was about 'completing a challenge', and it was all about having ten lives and avoiding bombs and aliens and stuff. And if you lost ten lives you could still carry on but you wouldn't win. Basically, his imaginative life is informed by the language and grammar of games.

Which is more interesting because he's not really a big gamer. He likes Galaxian on the Namco classics thingy, and we've got a V.Smile machine which he plays a bit, and sometimes he plays some Playstation games at a friends house. But, like I said, he's not a big gamer. (He doesn't seem so to me anyway.)

But the language and thought-structures of gaming are so persuasive and useful that he seems to have incorporated them into his play anyway, already. Through the V.Smile perhaps and through osmosis in the the playground. Which I think I like. I like thinking of a run as a challenge not a chore.

But, anyway, my tiny point is this, maybe when his generation get into the workforce, and perhaps before, maybe businesses will have to be organised like MMOGs, because that'll be the only option, and becuase that'll be how people'll think. Or certainly how they think about organisation and achievement and working together.

Right now most businesses operate on command and control principles inherited from the military, partly because that's not a bad model for running a huge factory, partly because there weren't a lot of other good models available. But a) business has changed (and has to keep changing) and b) MMOGs are probably a much better model anyway.

Phew. I haven't written that much in a while. I must rest.

Comments

Russell, have you seen the new Honda Element online game?
(http://automobiles.honda.com/element/index.aspx)

After you get at the instructions, the gopher hanging from a tree says: "Pretty basic stuff. If you have any questions, ask a seven-years old kid. She'll be able to figure it out".

Is exactly the point you were making here. Have you ever noticed how five or six years old are able to intuitively put their hands on some electronic device they've never seen before when we, the so-called-adults, are struggling through tons of pages of instructional blurb?

I am beginning to think something that may sound weird: Noam Chomsky talked about a generative grammar, as a DNA-based capability to learn and understand all the human languages even those further from our native one.
Could we talk about some kind of technological grammar who's becoming DNA-based for the young generations?
An inner instinctive knowledge of the use of technological devices?

Does this makes sense at all?

Posted by: Luca Vergano | March 10, 2006 at 09:20 AM