Team Shepard saves the Universe

t0bs3n — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 10:22:47 +0000

Blizzard Picture from Diablo but still it is a Video-Game Picture

Probably some of you will have played Mass Effect 2 until now or at least heard about it, so I will try to avoid major spoilers. Vaguely speaking, this game is about a hero who assembles a team of aliens and humans in order to defeat an evil enemy. However, it is interesting that Bioware, the developer, stresses the interaction and the atmosphere between team members and the hero/leader. It is essential to raise the loyalty of every team member in order to succeed in the game, as these team members work or fight better if they trust the hero. Special at Mass Effect 2 is that Shepard (the hero character) searches for team members based on their skills and not based on their race. Therefore, he seeks for example a weapon specialist, an assassin, a warrior and several other extraordinary talents. However, contrary to the general tone in Human Resources, these talents are cutting edge in their field because of their race. Another example, the scientist in the team is a Salarian. “Salarians excel at invention, preferring to use cutting-edge technology rather than settle for anything less.” [1] As you can see, it is obvious that Shepard is choosing a Salarian as scientist having the best cultural requirements for the job. This demonstrates a key finding in my research field. Choose the best and use the cultural background. Sure, it is easy to do such things in a video game, where there is a big evil at the end, which destroys everything, however it is still necessary to forge a team, and this game shows a great way of forging. Beside the common goal, it is important to establish trust and loyalty observing the team leader. In Mass Effect 2 Shepard helps the team members to solve issues of their life, finding the lost father, defending by a trial. Sure not realistic in the world, but still it is interesting to watch. Shepard teams up with the best in the universe, who also are sometimes the scum of the universe, helps them to solve their past, gives them purpose to show their skills and, additionally, contribute to a project, in this case save the universe. Somehow excessive for the common job world, but still fascinating to see the parallels between multicultural high performance teams and Team Shepard.

[1] http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Salarian

The effects of cultural differences

t0bs3n — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 10:48:57 +0000

Meine Diplomarbeit an dem Lehrstuhl für Betriebswirtschaftslehre, insb. Wirtschaftsinformatik und Informationsmanagement handelte von dem Thema “The effects of cultural differences on software development team performance”. Dieses Thema beinhaltete eine Umfrage mit 179 Teilnehmern, hier ein kleiner Ausschnitt aus der nationalen Verteilung:

The biggest group is from the United States of America (35%), followed by Canada (17%) and United Kingdom (8%), All three countries are leading in video game development, with about 70 studios under the Top 100 most successful video game studios worldwide in the year 2007 (EvolvingMedia 2007). Following up is Germany (7%), Sweden (7%), France (4%) and Poland (3%). One to five participants were from: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Philippines, Romania, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Switzerland, Syria and Venezuela.

Weiterhin noch der Modell-Aufbau der Befragung und die verschiedenen Bereiche die abgefragt wurden:

Im Moment sitz ich an einer Überarbeitung der Diplomarbeit für ein Journal, jedoch werde hier und da ein paar Ergebnisse auf der Seite veröffentlichen. Stay tuned.

GameStudy » culture

Team Shepard saves the Universe

The effects of cultural differences