Everything I Needed to Know, I Learned From the Godfather II Videogame
Wall Street Journal (May 20, 2009)
By JAMIN BROPHY WARREN
Being a don isn’t easy. As Dominic, an underling of the Corelone family in Electronic Arts’ Godfather II videogame, I’m responsible for a pretty hefty operation. I have several regions to control – Cuba, New York and Florida – and I need to work with my henchman appropriately. Dominic has a wide range of business ventures to manage, from adult entertainment to construction, and the game’s “Don’s View” gives me an overhead perspective on my booming empire. There are bills to pay, employees to please, and negotiations to be straightened out. Strange to say it, but at times, Godfather II feels a lot less like a videogame and more like primer for running a business.
In fact, there are plenty of similarities between playing a game well and operating a successful enterprise.
“When we use games in controlled ways, what they do they teach well,” says Ethan Mollick, a Ph.D candidate at the MIT Sloan School of Management and co-author with David Edery of “Changing the Game: How Video Games Are Transforming the Future of Business.” “Leadership simulation games or simulations specific to a business can be really helpful.”
Mr. Mollick, who will be teaching at the Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania in the fall, says that games teach valuable skills such as experimentation. “There’s a lot of value in trying and failing in different approaches. It’s not tied to you -- it’s tied to your avatar [or videogame character].”
He also points to multi-player games such as World of Warcraft as excellent ways to build communication and team work skills. I noticed the need for clear pathways to communicate with my friends while playing the zombie action game Left 4 Dead. We needed constant interaction with each other, trading weapons and rescuing each other under fire. It’s comforting to know I’m not wasting time—I’m practicing a skill that could be used in the workplace.
What some games excel at is teaching about systems. When I was a teen, I was utterly abysmal at SimCity 2000. The goal of the game was to create a successful, functioning city, but I was better equipped to plant the seeds of social unrest. I would raise taxes to collect funds which would upset citizens who were already peeved about traffic problems. Pollution choked the skies—coal was one of the cheapest form of energy—and I didn’t plan ahead to create public transportation. Although my city was a total mess, I was able to learn why and had I developed a modicum of patience at age 12, my skill at SimCity would have surely improved. (I soon graduated to the less business-savvy action title Doom which did not require me to consider tax rates or manage a city budget.)
“With a game you can see how previous decisions affect future choices. Players get emotionally invested and they want to do well,” says Jason Begy, producer of Tipping Point, a puzzle board game based on a paper by MIT Sloan professor Nelson Repenning called “Past the Tipping Point: The Persistence of Fire Fighting in Product Development.” The game, which is being developed into an electronic version, requires four players to plan together to manage the process of prototyping and production. Each player places game pieces on the game board to create projects and manage work flow through creating balance between “concept work” and “production work.” The game ends when the projects move too far past the “deadline.”
“If someone tells you a story, that may or may not have an impact, but we learn better from our own mistakes than the mistakes of others,” says Mr. Begy.
There are more specific applications for games in business. This year, Hilton Garden Inn released a game for the Sony PlayStation Portable entitled Ultimate Team Play and sent 500 units out to their different locations. Developed by simulation maker Virtual Heroes, the game is designed to teach Hilton employees different skills related to their jobs such as housekeeping and engineering. The game rewards you for completing different tasks such as cleaning rooms or checking-in guests while teaching the appropriate way to do so. Answering a guest with “Did you find everything you needed?” will earn you more points that glibly stating “Is that it?”
“The way to deliver incredible service is to find people with that mindset of wanting to deliver incredible service,” says Adrian Kurre, global head of the Hilton Garden Inn Brand. “This generation will learn through videogames.” Mr. Kurre was inspired by watching his daughter play bowling and golfing games—and pick up tips on the proper form for both sports.
To describe Ultimate Team Play as “fun” might be a bit of stretch. It’s a game that’s designed to teach and any actual fun is incidental. I did find the process of managing the number of guests who came in and keeping them happy challenging. Team Play actually shares a lot with games from the “time management” family of games where you are asked to complete a certain task repeatedly as the game speeds up. In one of my favorite arcade games, the 1983 Bally Midway game Tapper, you play as a bartender serving frothy mugs of Budweiser as more and more patrons enter your bar. In Gamelab’s more recent Diner Dash, you are a waitress serving guests, taking orders and clearing tables with burgeoning difficulty.
That repetition is intentional and well-done games can place players in what is known as a “flow state” where a player is completely immersed in a task without actively thinking about it. That’s a goal of good games and that’s certainly the goal for Ultimate Team Play. Hilton thinks the ability to deal with that kind of repetition can be transferred to the hospitality business as a type of muscle memory for corporate training.
When this skill “is taught in a classroom, students may grow tired of it,” says David Kervella, senior manager of brand education for Hilton. “When you check-in someone in the game, you will do it over and over again,” he says.
Of course, not all games feature the kind of skills that may be valuable in the workplace. “We’re not ready for people to start placing games on their resume,” says Mr. Mollick. But that’s a future that’s hardly inconceivable.
