Won’t it be nice if you could come in for work and just play computer games all day? Given the tantalizing productivity gains that could be reaped if people applied the same zeal to work as they do to games, it’s no wonder that much energy has been expended on bridging the gap.
One approach has been to bring elements of work into the gaming environment. Particularly promising have been the various training simulators for the military & healthcare verticals, some of which are rather effective and quite literally save lives.
More disappointing have been the multitude of educational games that were supposed to revolutionize the classroom. Their main problem is a gaming environment that pales in comparison to what most youths today expect, which can easily cost tens of millions of dollars to build.
Somewhat intriguing has been the idea of using games for crowdsourcing. For example, players in a virtual world often choose a profession such as a doctor or a miner. In order to raise their level, they could be asked to acquire a slice of real world domain knowledge, such as how to identify a cancer cell or a good place to drill for oil, and have actual data fed to them. The results could provide valuable information to real world physicians and geologists.
The other approach has been to bring elements of the gaming environment into the workplace. Here I believe the greatest potential lies in immersive & intuitive user interfaces. Imagine the time saved if I could navigate my desktop, an ERP system, or for that matter the management console of a datacenter with the same ease that I can plunge through a virtual game environment.
Also interesting has been the idea of creating some kind of points system that allows people to store/redeem/trade credit for tasks they perform – an analog to Dragon Kill Points which are used to distribute the loot from a mission among team members in many role playing games.
Seriosity has already built an email prioritization application based on this concept. Another use could be enabling people within a company to build a reputation for domain expertise, hence improving the accuracy of enterprise people search tools. Or perhaps it could form a component of an internal prediction market that augments existing corporate forecasting methods.
