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Collaborative Video Games Could Increase Office Productivity

posted by Fnord666 on Monday February 04 2019, @01:55AM   Printer-friendly
from the playing-halo-at-work dept.

"exec" writes:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Move over trust falls and ropes courses, turns out playing video games with coworkers is the real path to better performance at the office.

A new study by four BYU information systems professors found newly-formed work teams experienced a 20 percent increase in productivity on subsequent tasks after playing video games together for just 45 minutes. The study, published in AIS Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction, adds to a growing body of literature finding positive outcomes of team video gaming.

"To see that big of a jump -- especially for the amount of time they played -- was a little shocking," said co-author and BYU associate professor Greg Anderson. "Companies are spending thousands and thousands of dollars on team-building activities, and I'm thinking, go buy an Xbox."

For the study, researchers recruited 352 individuals and randomly organized them into 80 teams, making sure no participants with pre-existing relationships were on the same team. For their initial experimental task, each team played in a geocaching competition called Findamine, an exercise created by previous IS researchers which gives players short, text-based clues to find landmarks. Participants were incentivized with cash rewards for winning the competition.

[...] The researchers found that while the goal-training teams reported a higher increase in team cohesion than the video-gaming teams, the video gamers increased actual performance on their second round of Findamine significantly, raising average scores from 435 to 520.

"Team video gaming may truly be a viable -- and perhaps even optimal -- alternative for team building," said lead researcher Mark Keith, associate professor of information systems at BYU.

-- submitted from IRC

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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by MostCynical on Monday February 04 2019, @02:19AM (3 children)

    by MostCynical (2589) on Monday February 04 2019, @02:19AM (#795953) Journal

    defining the succes metric is half the battle

    --
    "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
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  • (Score: 1) by krishnoid on Monday February 04 2019, @03:16AM (1 child)

    by krishnoid (1156) on Monday February 04 2019, @03:16AM (#795966)

    G.I. Joe works well together, right?

    the video gamers increased actual performance on their second round of Findamine significantly, raising average scores from 435 to 520.

    Wait wait -- they got better because they played a game a second time? Isn't that just warming up? This whole thing is suspect. I bet if they attached bonuses/raises primarily/only to team performance vs. individual performance, they'd instantly start getting better results.

  • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday February 04 2019, @06:41PM

    by DeathMonkey (1380) on Monday February 04 2019, @06:41PM (#796220) Journal

    defining the succes metric is half the battle

    My boss hasn't quite come around to Soylent-posts-per-hour but we'll get there eventually!