Educational Gaming Commons - Press Start

Successful Virtual Teams

Kevin Morgan

PSU, IST

Team performance depends on 2 factors

 - Effective communications

 - Understanding roles and expectations.

Virtual teams - work across space, time, and organizational boundaries to accomplish specific tasks.

Gaming Environments for Teams

 - MMOG, MMORPG

 - First-person Shooters

 - Interactive and Collaborative Environments

Common Elements

 - persistent env.

 - communication tools

 - collaborative & social settings

 - need for coordination and interaction

Social Aspects

 - need to feel valued

 - social engagement

 - commitment to team and product

 - cohesiveness - do we want to work together in the future?

Ran a survey to find out more about all this with 40 guilds.

Findings

 - Strong social connections led to more play time, and more interactions.

 - Guilds are a social community. Norms exist. mentoring exists to help people meet these norms.

 - Players spend a great deal of time with other guild members.

 - Teams success based on communication and clear expectations.

 - Development activities do not equate to success. They may be seen as not fun, and if you are there for fun....