With SecondLife in the news, releasing a new and improved ‘Viewer’ tool and scoring keynote at the IEEE VR 2010 conference, today’s recommended resource is Byron Reeves’ and J. Leighton Reed’s “Total Engagement: Using Games & Virtual Worlds to Change the Way People Work and Businesses Compete“.
Every week, millions of people including many of your employees spend hours playing multi-player online games with a level of engagement they don t bring to work. These aren’t just adolescent video games we re talking rich narrative quests with 3-D environments, cool avatars, and compelling goals and rewards. Imagine the value if you could transfer key ingredients of game design and the gamer excitement and focus that come with it to the office. What if your employees could solve customer problems, design new software, or configure better shipping routes working inside a game environment at work?
This isn’t just possible, say Byron Reeves and J. Leighton Read; it s inevitable. As global competition intensifies and employee productivity and engagement become more critical, the user experience provided by game technology offers a tantalizing solution for business. This is far more than a quaint metaphor for business and it s way beyond training tools. Implemented in the workplace, elements of games can solve a host of business problems with morale, communication, and alignment all while honing skills like data analysis, teamwork, recruitment, leadership, and more.
Disclosure: The publisher sent me a free copy of this book which I am reading now. Expect a review later.
You can find this book and several others in the VizWorld.com Store, Powered by Amazon.
