Managing Gamers -- a preamble

Working in a technical environment presents opportunities to engage people with outstanding specialized talents and skills. I went to college with them. I've socialized with them. I've worked with them. I've seen this technically developed mostly male group create much of what we now take for granted in the world around us. I believe that the gamers represent an identifiable subset of that technically engaged culture. This cuts across cultural background and nationality. It's a phenomenon worth exploring. I typically hesitate putting people in categories, so I’m struggling with the words to describe this group, even to group them. Not all those who respond to technology as do gamers are actually gamers, but exhibit behaviors in the workplace that suggest management in a similar way.


The Gamer

A growing component of the technical workforce is composed of a highly skilled sub-culture in which the participants have grown up heavily engaged in computer games. Members of this group have developed a specialized skill set, but more importantly have developed as competitors, with a set of attitudes and views that differentiate them from the mainstream workforce. This group of individuals has finely tuned responses, developed in a virtual world that enables them to outperform all comers in certain realms of the real world.

Expertise quickly developed: When faced with a carefully structured set of problems to solve, the gamer can often whip through the options, arriving at the optimal solution quickly because they have learned that they can win by forging ahead. They often believe themselves invincible, since they have survived every challenge they have faced, including death, in their virtual worlds.

Cooperative problem solving: Despite the image of the individual against the computer game, there is an extensive group of massively multiplayer online games. These gamers consider themselves sociable and successful in cooperatively achieving mutual goals.

Processing of visual information: Moving quickly through huge amounts of data presented visually develops a specific analysis and problem-solving skills that gamers bring to any visually presented problem, whether it’s an online form to be filled out or a large spreadsheet scrolling by.

Persistence and flexibility: The gamers willingness to continually try different approaches, coupled with the belief that there is a way through the maze, sets them up to not only plow through concepts and approaches doggedly with an open mind, but to have no doubt that an optimum solution exists.

Ambition and competitiveness: Gamers play to win. While there is generally a sense of following the rules of fairness and an a often a teamwork attitude, winning is the driver.

Insubordination: Spending hours upon hours in virtual worlds that they share only with their peers, gamers often disengage from those outside their world. In particular, the guidance and criticism of peers far outweighs any direction given by authority figures in the workplace.


This analysis is based on an article by Erin Bilba in the April 2006 issue of Wired magazine. Maybe sometime I will continue with my thoughts about how this understanding of the gamer character can influence the management of this valuable component of our technical workforce.

How to provide a workplace environment where gamers excel: to be continued…