Spring Break #4 - The Art of Video Games

This is the final Spring Break 2012 dispatch and I wanted to share what I thought was one of the coolest things I saw this week in Washington, DC, the Art of Video Games exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

As the exhibit's website describes -

Video games are a prevalent and increasingly expressive medium within modern society. In the forty years since the introduction of the first home video game, the field has attracted exceptional artistic talent. An amalgam of traditional art forms—painting, writing, sculpture, music, storytelling, cinematography—video games offer artists a previously unprecedented method of communicating with and engaging audiences.

The Art of Video Games is one of the first exhibitions to explore the forty-year evolution of video games as an artistic medium, with a focus on striking visual effects and the creative use of new technologies. It features some of the most influential artists and designers during five eras of game technology, from early pioneers to contemporary designers. The exhibition focuses on the interplay of graphics, technology and storytelling through some of the best games for twenty gaming systems ranging from the Atari VCS to the PlayStation 3.

And thinking beyond the artistic and technological breakthroughs in video game design and development, it probably is also worth considering the medium's impact on a generation (or two), of gamers. We have already seen several elements of video gaming work their way into more corporate or mainstream practices - interactive candidate assessments, sophisticated video game-like training programs that are commonly used in military or other technical arenas, and of course the entire 'gamification' industry that if you believe the hype, might turn almost every workplace action into some kind of contest with badges, leaderboards, or prizes.

Some reports claim that worldwide as many as half a billion people a day spend time playing video games, and that 99% of boys under 18 and 94% of girls under 18 report playing video games regularly. Whether or not those statistics are precise doesn't really matter, the larger point worth considering for those of us interested in creating great workplaces and attracting great talent is that chances are quite high that the talent you will be recruiting and working with today and in the future has grown up in the video game culture.

Does that matter at all? Do you care as a HR or Talent pro? Should you?

I guess it is hard to say, I'd love for you to offer your take if you have thought about some of these larger trends in your work in HR and Talent Management.

Regardless, the Art of Video Games exhibit was quite cool and I do recommend stopping in the next time you find yourself in Washington.

Have a great weekend!

Plantville: Gaming as a Recruiting Tool

Of course you know about the rapid growth of the series of Facebook-based games Farmville, CityVille, and the like. Some estimates indicate as many as 250 million people play one of the 'Ville'-style social games. Ah - Industry!

With so many people, across all demographic groups, engaging in these massively popular games online, it only makes sense for organizations that are facing recruiting challenges to look for opportunities to leverage these gaming concepts in their recruiting and candidate engagement efforts.

The Germany-based industrial company Siemens, is one such company that is experimenting with games, at least in part as a recruiting vehicle. Specifically, Siemens has developed an online interactive game called 'Plantville', that gives players the opportunity and challenge of running a virtual factory, complete with evaluation of key performance indicators, allocation of scarce capital funds, and the ability to improve process efficiency with the purchase and installation of (naturally) more Siemens equipment. Factory managers in Plantville have to hire and deploy workers, balance worker safety and satisfaction against production delivery schedules, and continuously adapt strategies to changing external conditions.

It actually sounds like a fun game, in a geeky kind of way. 

The 'Getting Started' in Plantville video is embedded below: (email and RSS subscribers may need to click through)

While the game serves as a kind of marketing tool to help educate the public, current employees, and potential customers about Siemens products, the executives at Siemens also see the Plantville game as a part of their employee recruiting strategy.

In a recent Business Week article about the increasing use of games in various business scenarios, Siemens Tom Varney, Head of Marketing Communications, observes, "With Plantville, we think there's a big educational play with colleges and high schools." Varney also indicates he hopes the game can help make manufacturing more attractive to young people. "We have about 3,000 jobs posted in the U.S. at Siemens, many in technology or manufacturing," he says. "We're hoping to inspire a new generation of plant managers."

It is an interesting approach, and one that makes sense in what by many accounts seems to be a tightening labor market for high-skilled and high-tech candidates. It has to be difficult for more traditional manufacturing companies that are facing mounting pressures to groom the next generation of technical and managerial talent to compete for the most desirable candidates with the likes of Google, Facebook, and ironically, Zynga, the makers of many of the popular 'Ville' games.

Could online interactive games like 'Plantville' capture the energy, attention, and fascination of enough young people to help make manufacturing exciting again?

Are you seeing more companies looking to leverage the insane popularity of these kinds of games for recruiting purposes?

Meanwhile, I need to run - I am thinking of installing some high-tech security cameras in my 'Plantville' factory.

Never mind the mainstream

With more and more organizations attempting to internally leverage now widely known and in a way sort of similar Web 2.0 concepts and technologies (Enterprise 2.0), with varying internal goals like increasing employee collaboration, making it easier to locate and connect with widely distributed colleagues, or improving the organizations ability to generate and execute on new ideas for products and services, one can start to get a little numb or even jaded by the technologies and recommendations for the application of Web 2.0 tools at work. How many times have you heard these kinds of statements:

Why not start an internal wiki for company policies?

Set up a Yammer network for internal microblogging!

Let's get the CEO to put the quarterly newsletter on a blog!

While these may be great ideas for the organization, and certainly despite what many of us more active in these technologies would care to admit, would still represent massive leaps forward in openness and communication for many organizations, on the surface the tools and the simple, beginning approaches can seem a little repetitive.

There are lots of Enterprise 2.0 tools on the market, but at some level they all seem kind of the same.  I know that isn't really true, but still, the sense at least to me is that while in many of these kinds of projects selecting the right kind of technology to solve the specific and pressing need is important, the specific solution selected is probably less important. And for me, a technology person, that can be a little tough to admit.  Or at least we are at a point where the secondary or below the top level distinctions between competing solutions now matter, and will likely be the differentiation criteria for selection. When the base technology, say a wiki or an internal blog, is so technically simple, what matters more are things like customer service, integration with existing solutions, longer term product vision, and vendor and solution viability.

It seems not that different to the reasoning that is frequently cited around a more traditional HR Technology solutions say for Performance Management or Succession Planning.  Many of the leading solutions are really quite similar once you get a bit below the surface, and often success or failure of these projects is more about whether or not your managers really understand the importance of the process, are trained and rewarded to have regular and ongoing performance conversations and coaching with staff, and finally that they see the value is using a new set of tools to support these processes. If you have those fundamentals right, the specific solution is relatively less important.

Recently the inventor of the term Enterprise 2.0, and one of the leading authorities in the application of technologies to solve business problems,  Andrew McAfee observed that for many larger organizations the recognition and the inclination to apply E2.0 technologies and strategies has become mainstream. From even a casual observation of the volume and breadth of articles, white papers, conferences, blogs, and other non-traditional coverage of the E2.0 movement it seems apparent that there is no shortage of attention being spent, technology solutions to choose from, and set of experts both individual and well-established to turn to for help in the E2.0 space. 

So if Prof. McAfee is right, and E2.0 is really becoming mainstream that begs a few questions.

1. What's next?

2. More importantly, if you missed the mainstream (the equivalent, I suppose of clinging to your CDs in an iPod world), is it too late?

The worry also about the 'mainstreaming' of a set of technologies is that they will continue on the path towards homogenization, be individually non-distinctive, and leave the typical buyer discounting their importance since 'they are pretty much all the same'. What made the iPod so great was that it was not just a better version of something else (it was), but that it changed the game of buying and consuming music entirely.  

So, what's on your iPod this morning?  

Strange Creatures with Amusing Names

In the 1930s a British tobacco company, the W.D. and H.O. Willis Company issues a series of illustrated animal cards, that comprised a kind of matching game.  Each card contained a portion of an illustration of an animal, a rhino, leopard, or platypus, etc.  The cards could be 'matched' to assemble the correct entire animal, or, more interestingly, be combined to discover new creations like in the image at right.

From the official instructions on the cards:

The complete series comprises 16 animals, each in three sections, and by mixing the sections you can produce a large number of strange creatures with amusing names.

It is natural when playing this kind of game to want to build the 'correct' creature, to align the front, middle, and back of the armadillo or the alligator - to get the 'right' answer. 

But it is much more interesting to mix up the cards to build something new and unique and totally original. And likely much more exciting and scary than the 'right' animal. 

I think that analogy carries over to what can happen in the organization as well.  We create, as a matter of tradition and I suppose necessity, roles and job descriptions like 'programmer', 'analyst', 'recruiter', that are the functional equivalent of the 'right' animal in the card game.  But the problem is that most people, likely the most talented and interesting people, don't really fit those roles and descriptions, at least not totally.  Like in the card game, they are maybe one third a 'programmer' and one third an artist, and maybe one third a community leader. Or a combination of accountant, bowler, and glee club singer.  

While I don't think organizations can or should attempt to create that try to formalize these odd combinations of traits or characteristics, at least perhaps some more awareness of and recognition of the diversity, complexity, and 'interestingness' of the people that comprise the organization's talent pool would be beneficial.

What could some of the benefits be?  Perhaps to better tap internal talent for new ideas and innovations, to gain increased knowledge of some of the drivers effecting workplace health and wellness, to find or discover ideas and opportunities for enhanced community outreach and volunteerism, and even possibly to unearth new marketing and business development opportunities in underserved market segments. Heck, maybe just to make the office a little more 'fun'.

The truth is all organizations are made up of 'strange creatures with amusing names', and mostly we try to fit them into classifications and roles that are better described as 'mundane creatures with common names'.

What seems more interesting to you?

You can 'play' the animal matching game online - here.