21st Century Organization

Outside Inverse

The avatars are coming in from the cold! that is their real life owners are going to meet their makers. A unique meld of Eve Online game players will be joining the  game company, CCP designers in Iceland to  oversee  what goes on behind the virtual scenes.

Today's New York Time's Art section story In a Virtual Universe, The Politics Turn Real might be from any business headline.  The users perceive something is not above board and want more transparency, but the resolution is far from the typical business spin on an issue gone public.

Apparently, a large portion of the community perceive CCP of "rigging the game" although Eve Online is a virtual world massive player online game (MMOG) hosted by CCP in Iceland.  Unique to this game is that all of the players - 200,000, just 100,000 shy of the Iceland's population appear to be on on a single server.

A scene from the multiplayer
Internet game Eve Online.

CCP says it will tackle the problem the way a democracy would. In what appears to be a first, the company plans to hold elections so that players can select members of an oversight committee.

The company will then fly those players to Iceland regularly so they can audit CCP’s operations and report back to their player-constituents. And taking cues from transitions to democracy in the developing world, CCP says it will call in election monitors from universities in Europe and the United States.

“Perception is reality, and if a substantial part of our community feels like we are biased, whether it is true or not, it is true to them,” Hilmar Petursson, CCP’s chief executive, said in a telephone interview. “Eve Online is not a computer game. It is an emerging nation, and we have to address it like a nation being accused of corruption.

“A government can’t just keep saying, ‘We are not corrupt.’ No one will believe them. Instead you have to create transparency and robust institutions and oversight in order to maintain the confidence of the population.” 

Imagine bringing the outside in to your universe or key customers to GM, Enron or any other company when perceptions of corruption were afoot.  What about key constituents to FEMA post Katrina.  I like these folks at CCP and think they are on to something smart.  Stay tuned the elections are in the fall of 2007.

~ Victoria G. Axelrod

Virtual Worlds in Business: Unisfair, ITE Expo Inworld, Ludium II

A number of interesting events revealing the burgeoning business use of virtual worlds, and indications that more to follow:

1. Unisfair and Conference 2.0

Thanks to Nitin Karandikar at Software Abstractions for a detailed and insightful review of Unisfair, a conferencing platform described as a combination of:

"WebEx with Second Life, with a dash of LinkedIn thrown in". 

Unveiled at the Web 2.0 Virtual Events for Enterprise Unisfair indicates another enterprise software wave to watch.

2. International Technology Expo Inworld

Via Bill Lessard who spent last week busily preparing for the event, a pointer to the International Technology Expo, ITE’07 held inworld April 20th-22nd. Striking is the global reach of companies participating. Not surprizing as indeed Second Life is "virtual" but interesting to consider the far reaching new business opportunities opened.

3. Ludium II: Synthetic Worlds and Public Policy

From colleague Victoria Axelrod who closely follows Edward Castranova's research through the Synthetic Worlds Initiative at Indiana University, notice that registration is open for the Ludium II conference. 

Numbers are limited as the conference will be conducted as a live game but based on the topic, "Synthetic Worlds and Public Policy", stated intent, and Castranova's influence, outcomes and consensus reached could be far reaching:

"Ludium II will bring together experts on virtual worlds from academia, industry, and government to play a live-action political game leading to an extremely serious, timely, and important contribution: a consensus Platform of 10 Statements answering the question "What policies should real world governments have with regards to synthetic worlds?" The hope is that this Platform will provide answers when legislatures and administrators wonder what to do in response to the critical public issues that will be raised by these unique social technologies."

~  Jenny Ambrozek

Influence Points

In the last few years we have experienced "inflection point" (Andy Grove, former CEO Intel). "tipping point" (Malcolm Gladwell, author) and now I wonder if "influence point" may be a way to more deeply understand the process of change?

The first two describe the awareness of change.  The change has happened or emerged to a point of recognition.  The influence point is who is initiating the change and how.  In a network there are more than one influence points yet they are synchronized in behavior.

It seems in many recent conversations about organizations transforming themselves for Enterprise 2.0 that the focus keeps shifting to either the social technology or the content knowledge generated, but rarely the humans at the point of influence.  Granted the  technology tools and the structure of knowledge content are easier to discuss, however the human interaction with the tools and the content they produce is what drives the process.

An announcement for the upcoming "Synthetic Worlds and Public Policy - Ludium II Conference  chaired by  Edward Castronova describes their process for reaching a consensus platform as:

"... a 19th  century political convention putting conference attendees in the role of delegates to a political party convention whose objective is to hammer out a common platform.  CONVENTION's  incentives will lead the group to a set of policy recommendations believed by most participants to be important, sensible, and feasible."

Would that most change processes had as clear an objective.

One of the incentives in this convention game designed by Studio Cypher,LLC
is "influence points" which reward those with the ability to exert the most influence.  There are 400 plus participants expected from a diverse set of perspectives on the topic making for "bombastic" conversations in their terms.

We have been looking at organizations as human networks (extended internal/external) and understand that they are political in their operations; to ignore the reality of organizational politics is to be naive. But how often and how well do we look at the positive influential capability of individuals in organization networks?  The Synthetic Worlds Convention is making influence explicit and building it into the consensus building process.  A lesson learned.

Robert Cialdini - Influence at Work, has done extensive research on influence and found 6 principles which one needs in order to move others to say "yes" or change.

They are:

Reciprocation: People are more willing to comply with requests (for favors, services, information, concessions, etc.) from those who have provided such things first. Think open source.
Commitment/Consistency: People are more willing to be moved to a particular direction if they  see it as consistent  with an existing commitment. Think AMAZON rankings.
Authority: People  are more willing to follow the direction or recommendations of a communicator to whom the attribute relative authority or expertise.  Think  relative as in blogosphere or f2f, your expertise counts in rankings by peers.
Social Validation: People are more willing to take a recommended action if they see evidence that many others, especially similar others, are taking it.  Think word of mouth.
Scarcity: People find objects and opportunities more attractive to the degree that they are scarce, rare, or dwindling in availability. Think any niche item.
Liking/Friendship:  People prefer to say yes those they know and like. Of course!

It would be interesting to run a social network analysis of the individuals who amass the highest number of influence points at the Synthetic World's Convention to see if network central roles correlate with influence ability.

My guess is yes ... what do you think?

~Victoria G. Axelrod

Bronwyn Stuckey Day 6: The labor of fun

Why should organisations buy into the popularity of what could seemingly be dismissed as recreational activity? Did we take this much notice of television? It would be seriously wrong of us to see broadcast technology, even with developments in interactive TV, as comparable to the many-to-many social capacity of today’s MMORPGs and virtual worlds. Interestingly, research does suggest that the hours devoted to game play have been stolen from TV viewing. Interaction with people seems to be the lure not just vivid technology.

Two aptly titled articles might give us a clue to where this technology could be all taking us. ‘The labor of fun: How video games blur the boundaries of work and play" by Nick Yee and Hans Christian Arnseth’s research paper titled "Learning to Play or Playing to Learn

Playing to learn

Games are socially complex environments where players are continually required to deal with chaos and emergence, being called upon to strategize, make decisions and take on social responsibility. The games allow them to develop as sense of mastery of many real world skills. As the article that I launched this guest spot with suggests, most players do not just engage in the pursuit of mindless fun. Learning in games is less about acquisition (other than goals and rewards) and more about interaction Arnseth would suggest that the games encourage a "practice-oriented approach" and the reflection on that practice can clearly be seen in the accompanying community forums, fan sites and blogs.

Morrison (quoted in Galarneau and Zibit) suggests the key 21st century skill is learning itself. "The most valuable skills someone can acquire are the skills to learn rapidly and efficiently and to go into almost any situation and figure out what has to be learned". Gamers are learning to learn not just through a relationship with the technology but through relationships with others. The games establish a real reason to collaborate and build social capital.

The labor of fun

Fun is much more than escape and friendship. Jen Dornan suggested these games represent the new rituals; the places to build shared experiences.

Who are the people engaged in these rituals? Are they all spotty post adolescents? Yee suggests that "The average MMORPG gamer us is 26 years old. About half of these players have a full-time job. Every day, many of them go to work and perform an assortment of clerical tasks, logistical planning and management in their offices, then they come home and do those very same things in MMORPGs"

Yee proposes that MMORPG are work for the players and at the very least they are causing the boundaries between work and play to become blurred. Constance Steinkuehler’s view of MMORPG as third places would in part be supported by findings in Nick Yee’s Daedalus Project "On an aggregate level, the general categorization of why people play seems to be quite robust and can roughly be described as: 1) achievement, 2) socialization, 3) immersion, 4) vent/escape, 5) competition."

We don’t need to envisage our workplaces transformed into massive game spaces but we do seriously have to contend with understanding how games and virtual worlds motivate, enable and sustain learning and build effective learning systems. Whether we design games and worlds, or adapt and coopt them, we need to learn from them how we can in our workplaces sustain a labor of fun.

I am very grateful to have had chance to highlight some of the issues that intrigue me. Thanks

~ Bronwyn

Bronwyn Stuckey Day 5: Virtual ethics, norms and civil rights

I have been wondering how to conclude my somewhat staggered guest visit and how to say what I take from the current interest in MMORPG and virtual worlds. I have to say getting my head back into this after tramping the wilds of the south Island of New Zealand and Stewart Island was very hard. I plunged back to a 'reality' of sorts when I started facilitating online workshops for teachers and academics using the 3D virtual world and game space Quest Atlantis in their classes. The promise and concerns such environments hold for teachers are or should be shared by all organisations embarking on use of these environments.

What currently attracts them?

• Innovative ways to motivate and excite clients (learners)
• Providing interaction in social contexts outside the usual formal contexts
• Scaffolding independent decision making without dumbing things down
• Providing competition in a supportive environment
• Exposure to a diversity of cultures, languages and perspectives.

What concerns them?

• Regulating online behaviour
• Understanding the boundaries
• Maintaining a duty of care.

These teachers are as Gee suggests visioning new learning systems. This new virtual world technology provides opportunity for us to review our assumptions about learning and social contexts. With these new social contexts comes a raft of legal and ethical issues we cannot ignore. We have to ask what or who dictates the behaviour or establishes the norms, and when and how should we address issues of civil liberties and censorship? The program I am currently engaged in Quest Atlantis is a bespoke design of worlds and infrastructure that addresses many of the teacher concerns. But what can we expect if we enter the open space of already inhabited commercial environments where community norms have begun to develop? I don’t have answers but loads of questions.

Susan Tenby and Beth Kanter wrote on TechSoup describing nonprofit use of virtual worlds as efforts to “Change the world by working in a virtual one”. The article describes aid agencies are working and raising funds in virtual campaigns and projects similar to their efforts in the ‘real world’. The only thing is, as the nonprofit managers agree, we don’t as yet completely understand what those virtual efforts will entail. We know from the headlines that if you build it they definitely will come but they won’t always behave or react in ways that you anticipate. Nic Fulton (quoted in Jenny’s last post) reminds us we may have to be prepared for the totally unexpected. I’m sure we can all comfortably envisage how to behave in controllable circumstances like corporate meetings and talk back events when they occur in virtual worlds.

• Meetings
• Events

But what is happening right now in the open social framework of games and virtual worlds while exciting is equally dark and unknown. Take for instance this noted example of "griefing", a term that excuses sometimes heinous behaviour

So where does the responsibility ultimately reside if we decide intellectual property, ethics and civil liberties are important? In many cases I have watched as educational virtual world communities mature, the members moderate each others behaviour and norms emerge that the members own. The community becomes somewhat self regulating. But in all these environments the convenors carry responsibility for the initial regulating, policing and modelling of some basic tenets of behaviour. They are not free for all spaces with open membership and untraceable levels of anonymity nor are they open market places with competing agendas. What are the ethical considerations for organisations seeking to market, inhabit or sponsor virtual environments? And what backlash can organisations and education institutions expect from natives when they immigrate to their worlds?

• Where does the responsibility lie?
• Violence as a norm
• Law enforcers

Gamers themselves are thinking about these issues.

• Ethics in games
• Second Life - bans in marketing and PR for false claims
• Intellectual property and freedom of the press

Constance Stienkheuler sees MMORPG games and virtual worlds as “third places”. Third places were described by Ray Oldenburg, like the English pub as the sanctuaries people maintained between home and work. Places where people would find a warm and inviting community to drop in on whenever needed. If organisations are to embrace these environments do managers/convenors need to start thinking like publicans to take responsibility for keeping order to provide for the safety of their patrons? Or at least recognise that responsibility comes with the license.

I will close this guest spot formally tomorrow by returning to where we began examining the notion of 'fun' in games and virtual worlds.

~ Bronwyn

Bronwyn Stuckey Day 4: Games as the practice arena for 21st century skills

Chris Dede of Harvard has identified three new century demands for learning:
1. Collaborate with diverse teams of people
2. Create, share and master knowledge by assessing and filtering quasi-accurate information
3. Thrive on chaos – make rapid decisions based on incomplete information in order to resolve novel dilemmas

Research is showing that games can help develop these skills and attitudes whether the games are purposed for, appropriated by, or incidental to the formal context in which the skills will be applied.

Games purposed for learning were highlighted with spotlight on the serious games development and their use of simulations and role play strategies. These games have learning objectives as part of their design. They are very often content focused and engage players in bounded representations of real world environments. Players manipulate aspects of the world and hypothesize and test out the repercussions of their actions. In the past few such games included the multiplayer social dimension allowing for many-to-many discourse, collaboration and knowledge sharing.
Examples:
· Finance for Decision Makers
· One the job video training

Games that are part of entertainment are also being appropriated as a part of formal learning agendas. Teachers in schools struggle with how to slice and dice multi-hour engagement in immersive games like Civilization within inflexible school timetables. Family counsellors like my daughter are considering use of the Sims in their work with adolescents growing up in dysfunctional families.
Examples:
· Civilization
· The Sims

The most intangible and arguably the most exciting area of learning gain from online gameplay may come as an unintentional by-product of personal and recreational engagement in games. Most recent research into online games would suggest there are gains to be made in three key areas.
1. content
2. ‘soft skills’
3. habits of mind.

It is in these last 2 areas that MMOG appear to have the greatest strengths. Their capacity to develop as complex social environments extends to players access to knowledge sharing and support through the self-organising communities that envelope them. Players in these games do not act as docile consumers but are instrumental to the system as Taylor’s First Monday article reminds us; “... scholars and designers need to pay serious attention to the role of players in game culture, not simply as consumers or widgets that can be plugged into rationalized systems, but as prime agents in producing and sustaining the very systems they are engaged with.”

Skills and attitudes developed in online games transfer into decision making and complex problem solving in workplaces. Mike Antonucci boldly states “The people who play games are into technology, can handle more information, can synthesize more complex data, solve operational design problems, lead change and bring organizations through change”. Galarneau and Zibit identify the “soft skills” developed in gaming as critical thinking, teamwork, problem solving and collaboration. In their research into World of WarCraft forums Steinkuehler and Chmiel (2006) found evidence of the development of scientific habits of mind such as scientific argumentation, model-based reasoning and, theory-evidence coordination.
Examples:
· World of WarCraft
· EverQuest

There is a big lesson from MMOG environments. People are enormously capable when given the space and motivation, even through simple gameplay, to flex their cognitive and social muscle in an environment where anything is possible and experimentation is safe, permissible and desirable. (Galarneau & Zibit)

A nascent body of research, and I have only cited a few luminaries, indicates that games have a role to play in answering Dede’s demands for learning and in developing skills beneficial for the 21st century. Now we have to work out how – more on this tomorrow.

- Bronwyn

Bronwyn Stuckey Day 1: The zeitgeist of virtual games

Avatars, MMORPGs, serious games, 3D virtual worlds, clans, grinding and twinking are all part of the everyday language of online gamers. More and more this language is becoming relevant for those of us in educational and organisational contexts and yes you might need to get the tourist dictionary to converse.

If you are still in any doubt about the arrival of games, after Jenny's introduction, consider the corporate sponsorship of clans in massively multiplayer online games which might have gone to sporting teams in the past. Mexican and Chinese farmers game in the in 21st century digital sweatshops to acquire game assets that can be traded as commodities in an open market. Wells Fargo and Sony Music have open virtual worlds to market their products and services. The Sydney Symphony Orchestra was the first to perform in the 2005 version of PLAY a symphony of game themes. But the arrival of games offers up much more than opportunity for CAPITALIST US to act entrepreneurially in THEIR WORLD.

I have worked for the past three years as part of a team exploring virtual world architecture Active Worlds for educational purposes in Quest Atlantis. My interest in this area arose not from some inner desire to join geekdom but to further explore and understand online social contexts and how identity, relationships, knowledge and skills can be developed within them. I came into this from several years working to understand and build Internet-mediated communities of practice. As an ex-teacher I had some understanding of the use of games and simulations in learning but I was totally unprepared for how engaging and socially-oriented the new breed of online games and virtual worlds would be.

Over the next couple of days I want to differentiate games and virtual worlds and explore what makes them exciting prospects for us. While there might be little argument over the popularity of games and virtual worlds there is a lot of debate about the reasons for their coming of age. A recent post on the Wired Game Life Blog opens up a number of the issues I would like to explore in the coming days in relation to games. You might read this post and the ensuing comments and consider how reflective (or not) many of the gamers are about their "play" and what your current position is on this issue of games as social contexts.

Bronwyn

Building on the Past: IBM & Sears in Second Life

No doubt as for others, 2006 departed in a rush.  Belated 2007 New Year greetings to all.

I've been wondering what is an appropriate post to start a New Year but yesterday IBM and Sears delivered the answer with their announcement of partnering to give Sears a presence in Second Life. 

As a PRODIGY Services Company alumni (and thanks to fellow alum Gary Belden for pointing to the story), I have to wonder if connections built two decades ago when IBM and Sears worked together in PRODIGY to create the online consumer space,  laid the foundations for this latest partnership. 

I'm betting that they did and hope that somebody involved in this Second Life initiative (that testifies to business interest in this burgeoning virtual economy in 2007), can confirm.   

~ Jenny Ambrozek

A few 2.0 questions.

Now that I've spent five days writing and thinking about Web 2.0 effects, affects, and promises I find myself left with questions. I hope they are generative.

In a comment a couple of days ago, Richard Cross linked to an article about recovering lost group communication skills. This is a very encouraging report of how we can use what we already know to know more about what we're currently using. We need to be doing more of this.

It makes me wonder if, and how, our experiments with Web 2.0 technology will help us with collaboration and participation skills. As my anthropologist friends continue to remind me, "culture always wins." So we need to ask what kind of culture are we building? Is our current culture helping us move forward, or holding us back? How might we know?

Finally, I've long kept myself distant from computer games, but I think that the wider gaming community is all about collaboration and participation. I know this is important. Games have long been used to help people adapt to new technology. A colleague once worked on a project that used computer games to help NYC subway mechanics become comfortable with using computer-based diagnostic tools. It's also well known that the military uses games for training soldiers, and airlines use simulators to train and test pilots. My son spent endless hours with SimCity and before that in the Dungeons and Dragons worlds. Gamers have been developing serious social change activities around poverty, race, and the environment. And there seems to be real business going on in Second Life. (One interesting note about Second Life is Nick Carr's posting on the real world energy cost of virtual world activity. Do read the comments. It's important to keep reminding ourselves that everything has a cost.)

My last questions are speculative. Should companies be creating their own internal virtual environments? Should they just create virtual organizations in game arenas? It seems reasonable, but how might if affect productivity or the bottom line? That question makes the suggestion sound subversive. That could be good.

Organizations and individuals (that means me, too!) need to learn what they can from games and their associated communities. I'll take that as my 2.0 homework assignment; to get a Second Life!

-Bill

Second Life or Life 2.0

I have recently joked that the emerging core competence of the US is our entertainment industry, but maybe there is a hidden redeeming virtue. If you think about it entertainment is where some amazing innovation is taking place. Is Spielberg’s virtual reality providing a platform for manufacturing simulation or are the two evolving simultaneously? Is the military borrowing gaming software or are game designers ex-military programmers?

Robert Hof, has written the cover story for the May 1^st Business Week: Virtual World, Real Money, a more detailed account of Second Life, an online game by Linden Labs. He first described Second Life in his story The Power of Us where he laid out the context for how the internet and other collaborative technologies have impacted organizations, their structures, leadership and management processes, new product development and even the legal definitions of intellectual property ownership. The ability for many-to-many collaboration in real time has created a transparency that has truly tipped the balance of power from one-to-many, to many-to-many – what I call the “outside-in” world. Both these articles are must reads.

In short, Second Life is a MMOG or massive multi-player online game which enables the players to create fantasy avatars (your representative in cyberspace), acquire property, buy and sell just about everything. Create as you go along and game of course means winning, conquering, joining forces for a goal.

After following up on some of the briefly mentioned names and ideas in the article these are three of my conclusions:

1. Talent and hard work evolve in a social context.

Players work exceedingly hard to create the worlds for free – Hof estimates “$410 million worth of free work over a year.” Without open source software none of this would be possible.

We have known for years from behavioral science studies that people will put forth their best when they are passionate about what they do - money is not the ultimate driver, yet it has been consistently ignored within corporations. I find it amazing that so many are just now waking up to the idea but better late than never!

2. Accidental learning is paramount.

John Seely Brown describes what takes place in virtual games as “learning to be - a natural byproduct of adjusting to a new culture - as opposed to learning about. Where traditional learning is based on the execution of carefully graded challenges, accidental learning relies on failure. Virtual environments are safe platforms for trial and error. The chance of failure is high, but the cost is low and the lessons learned are immediate.”

Experiential learning is another format we have known is highly successful but the new twist is the evidence we now have from cognitive neuroscience.

3. Human behavior is still the same, only the technology is different.

Online games afford us an opportunity to act out behaviors in time and space that we might never have the opportunity to experience otherwise. Reaching high status in an online game is a transferable skill valued by some employers. In a complex world where we need to work in a rapidly changing environment the online game actually affords a dynamic simulation.

 

Understanding the interface between our selves and technology is the crux of our 21^st century world. We have slipped into a new space of digital fluency which younger generations accommodate seamlessly but its larger societal impacts are emerging daily.

Edward Castronova, an economist and social scientist, is making some stunning observations about human behavior in these games which has enormous impact for business and organizational practices.

Catronva’s Arden Institute at the University of Indiana is a center for the study for synthetic worlds or MMOGs. Their first conference on games brought together the academics, game designers and business people, but with a very big and cool twist which we subscribe to 100%. The conferees landed in a game environment. Collaborative iterative emergence is in play with Castronova’s conference, letting go of the old control model of "talking at" which is replaced by high interaction.

Hof mentions that through the Massie Center over 200 corporations are looking into the research being done on online games. The arena of synthetic worlds blending with reality is one with which to stay in touch.

 

“New environments are fascinating and challenging. We combine elements of the new place with different outcomes. Yet, the piece of biologic tissue that does these wonderful things is the same for all humans and hasn't changed in thousands of years. On Sunday afternoon on Mars, citizens of the New City will still love a cold beer and a good NFL game.” Michael Gazzaniga, PhD

~ Victoria G. Axelrod

To read more try Synthetic Worlds or Malaby's blog on the study of games.