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The Engagement Game: Why Your Workplace Culture Should Look More Like a Video Game
What if all workplace cultures were as well-crafted as video games?
Effective workplaces and popular video games have a lot in common. The things that make employees happier, more motivated, and more productive leverage the same underlying psychology that makes video games engaging, but sometimes the lessons for work are easier to see when presented in the context of play. The Engagement Game is a leadership and management book that shows how organizational culture and leadership can be super-charged by applying the same principles that video game designers apply when creating a new game.
This quick, one-hour read will show you how to do this by blending industrial-organizational workplace psychology with insights on good video game design. This will help you become a better leader, manager, coach, and coworker. You don't have to be a hardcore gamer to benefit from this book. It is for anyone looking to create a positive work experience for their team.
This book covers topics
How games lay out their tasks, goals, and challenges so that they motivate people to do amazing thingsThe ways in which games encourage problem solving and growth mindsetWhy expanding skills, building self-confidence, and finding opportunities to innovate feel so natural to those who play a lot of gamesHow social information is framed in games so as to engender fruitful competition and cooperationWhat multiplayer games can tell us about building cohesive, high-performing teamsHow to create shared experiences and values that can craft a great organizational culture and shared expectations for the right kinds of behaviorsWhich is all to say that you could learn a lot from video games about how to be an effective leader and manager. Ready? Game on.
Effective workplaces and popular video games have a lot in common. The things that make employees happier, more motivated, and more productive leverage the same underlying psychology that makes video games engaging, but sometimes the lessons for work are easier to see when presented in the context of play. The Engagement Game is a leadership and management book that shows how organizational culture and leadership can be super-charged by applying the same principles that video game designers apply when creating a new game.
This quick, one-hour read will show you how to do this by blending industrial-organizational workplace psychology with insights on good video game design. This will help you become a better leader, manager, coach, and coworker. You don't have to be a hardcore gamer to benefit from this book. It is for anyone looking to create a positive work experience for their team.
This book covers topics
How games lay out their tasks, goals, and challenges so that they motivate people to do amazing thingsThe ways in which games encourage problem solving and growth mindsetWhy expanding skills, building self-confidence, and finding opportunities to innovate feel so natural to those who play a lot of gamesHow social information is framed in games so as to engender fruitful competition and cooperationWhat multiplayer games can tell us about building cohesive, high-performing teamsHow to create shared experiences and values that can craft a great organizational culture and shared expectations for the right kinds of behaviorsWhich is all to say that you could learn a lot from video games about how to be an effective leader and manager. Ready? Game on.
145 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 25, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 4, 2022
I was deeply disappointed with the book and had to force myself to finish it. Maybe the main cause of my pain is the fact that I've read the author's first book Getting Gamers and given it five stars. It was cool, entertaining, fun, and informative, learned something from it.
This... I feel sorry to say it, but this was mostly made with the idea "Hey, let's put together some cool popular gamer stuff and sell it as s a trendy 1h read for managers who will buy it in airports while they wait for their flights". I feel cheated because I actually preordered the book. Obviously, my expectations were definitely not aligned with the product.
Like... When you open the book you see a special page for a "From/To" dedication which gives you an intro warning that this is a book meant to be bought when you have no inspiration on what to buy as a gift. Ofc, it's hardcover to look more expensive.
The book is filled with cool, trendy Getty Images stock photos of "people having fun" while holding joypads in front of the monitors. Yaaaay, we're having so much fun while talking about our business goals!
The content ... If you've read the original book Getting Gamers, nothing new here, a lot of recycled materials. Maybe it's OK if you've never read something about employee motivation or whatever HR stuff is trendy and popular at the moment. However, while I was reading it, I had a Lovecraftian sense of dire. It's like those articles on cows who got VR headsets stuffed over their eyes to produce more milk.
There's nothing wrong with how the author gives advice on giving feedback or creating goals, but when you somehow pack it like this, full of Getty images stock photos, forcing it to look 'so much fun' and thinking that feeling of playing our favorite games can be translated into corpo environment... it just feels deeply wrong.
(Most of the) Games have a 'reload' feature and let's be real, most of the working environments are not as forgiving and caring as we'd like them to be. And that's normal because work culture has a goal to produce profit, not to be fun. So maybe we can try having more 'fun' in our work, but let's be real, we all know what's the endgame of 99% of corporations. Ironically, I'm writing this as a person employed in game dev so I actually know that I have more fun at my work than average workers.
This... I feel sorry to say it, but this was mostly made with the idea "Hey, let's put together some cool popular gamer stuff and sell it as s a trendy 1h read for managers who will buy it in airports while they wait for their flights". I feel cheated because I actually preordered the book. Obviously, my expectations were definitely not aligned with the product.
Like... When you open the book you see a special page for a "From/To" dedication which gives you an intro warning that this is a book meant to be bought when you have no inspiration on what to buy as a gift. Ofc, it's hardcover to look more expensive.
The book is filled with cool, trendy Getty Images stock photos of "people having fun" while holding joypads in front of the monitors. Yaaaay, we're having so much fun while talking about our business goals!
The content ... If you've read the original book Getting Gamers, nothing new here, a lot of recycled materials. Maybe it's OK if you've never read something about employee motivation or whatever HR stuff is trendy and popular at the moment. However, while I was reading it, I had a Lovecraftian sense of dire. It's like those articles on cows who got VR headsets stuffed over their eyes to produce more milk.
There's nothing wrong with how the author gives advice on giving feedback or creating goals, but when you somehow pack it like this, full of Getty images stock photos, forcing it to look 'so much fun' and thinking that feeling of playing our favorite games can be translated into corpo environment... it just feels deeply wrong.
(Most of the) Games have a 'reload' feature and let's be real, most of the working environments are not as forgiving and caring as we'd like them to be. And that's normal because work culture has a goal to produce profit, not to be fun. So maybe we can try having more 'fun' in our work, but let's be real, we all know what's the endgame of 99% of corporations. Ironically, I'm writing this as a person employed in game dev so I actually know that I have more fun at my work than average workers.
September 29, 2022
A short and entertaining comparison of video game design with organizational psychology research. The recommendations—as usual in these books—are quite generic and not useful. You would need to know the specific organizational culture to apply them well. What you're left with is a short compendium of some of the most scientifically supported and potentially useful psychology theories that can apply to both work and video games.
November 11, 2020
Easy and quick read combining theories of IO/work psychology with practical examples from video games
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews