GameStudy » team

European Academy of Management Conference

t0bs3n — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 09:58:43 +0000

European Football Finals in 2008: Spain with the better Culture for Football?

And another paper got accepted, this time for the European Academy of Management in Rome. I handed in a paper with the topic “Different Jobs need Different Cultures“. It is based on the survey I made for my diploma paper and here is the abstract:

Team performance is affected by cultural values; in this paper we propose that cultural differences have different influences in distinct job-fields. The implications are based upon a survey of software development teams in the game software industry. We focus on the game software in- dustry as it represents an under-researched field, and the game software development teams are truly international work teams and are predestinated for cross-cultural research. Based upon cross-cultural information systems and teamwork literature, we develop a conceptual model with the constructs of cultural values, cultural intelligence, mindfulness, teamwork quality, and team performance and tested it on a sample of 179 game developers. The results show that cultural values have an influence on team performance and more important these values differ in the job- fields.

World Media Economics and Management Conference

t0bs3n — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 08:57:25 +0000

Counter-Strike Game at the EPS Finals XIV in Cologne

So got my first conference approval for the 2010 year and I will be going to the World Media Economics and Management Conference in Bogotá. This is the most important Media Management Conference so I am thrilled to present there a paper about video games and especially World of Warcraft and Counter-Strike.

Here the abstract of my paper: Current Leadership faces severe problems, since the workforce is changing and it becomes more complicated to motivate employees. Therefore this paper looks into how video games are handling the topic of leadership. Gaming is part of the modern media world and as research indicates it gives insights into leadership of future organizations. In this paper leadership theory will be compared with two cases of games: On the one hand World of Warcraft and on the other hand Counter-Strike. Both games give different insights of the intuitive game leadership training of these players. After comparing these cases with the leadership theory, we see that they are mostly fitting to the leadership theory, thus their approach to these principles is different. Therefore the cases allow us to learn diverse tactics of leadership, as the cases focus on the fun and the motivation. The players enjoy the learning of new skills and align with other peoples and different abilities. In summary this paper shows, that gamer already learning several skills for leading companies and teams, however they also learn to participate in teams on their own. Companies can learn that motivation and keep raising the bar are essential for organizations in order to attract the new gamer generation. We also learn about the importance of the fun in work, which becomes more essential for the gamers.

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 Strength of Team Will

t0bs3n — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 16:43:59 +0000

Picture of the Fare-Well Game of Christian Schwarzer

Currently is in Team Handball the European Championship and I just watched the game between Germany and France and it is interesting to see, how important it is to have a strong team will. This tournament is even more fascinating as there are 15 favorites plus Austria, but what makes the difference? First of all we can say that each team is not at their best shape – many technical errors – and players not at their best conditional shape. So in general, every team can beat every team in this tournament and it is important that the team will is strong. The players have to handle hard situations and have to overcome weak phases. If you look at games like Austria versus Island, where the draw was secured in the last minute after a three goal lead of Island, or Germany overrun by France at the beginning of the second half with over eight minutes without a goal. Team Handball shows that it is essential to focus on the team and thereby get the team in a positive shape; although there are crises it is necessary that some people take the responsability to succeed in particular moments and additional to these small moments convey the emotions to the rest of the team. It shows that it is essential to give the team a signal and the team has to amplify these single moments to an entire motivational impulse for the team will. However these are some short insights into Team Handball it should be researched how these team will can be used in the team work in a Non-Handball area. Sure this sport lives from the intensive moments, the fast game and the emotions; still if we look at American Football, a game with long breaks, there are similar emotions possible. In context of GameStudy, Counter-Strike has similarities to these team will and the intense moments, and we can see that teams can fight their way back and turn a 14:1 to a 14:16 win. The question in any case is, what is necessary to achieve this emotional base in a team? Is the same target enough and/or has the chemistry be right? In my opinion this is an interesting topic and I hope that I can gain insights in future.