Chrystal Taylor:
Welcome to SolarWinds TechPod. I’m your host, Chrystal Taylor, and with me, as always, is my co-host, Sean Sebring.
Sean Sebring:
Hello.
Chrystal Taylor:
Today’s topic is near and dear to our hearts as we are constantly talking about being gamers, so we’re going to be talking about gaming and its effect on the workplace. And to that end, we have some lovely people here who have written a research paper called Learning by Gaming: Nonwork-to-Work Enrichment Among Successful Massive Multiplayer Online Gamers. And two of the three researchers are here with us today, and we’re very excited to hear about it. The paper was super interesting. I myself have written blogs on skills that can be taken from gaming and applied to real life, although I was definitely not talking about specifically MMOs. So I’m very curious to dive into the topic. So we have Melika, if you would like to introduce yourself.
Melika Shirmohammadi:
Sure. I’m Melika Shirmohammadi, and I’m an assistant professor of Human Resource Development at University of Houston. I study how work shapes people’s lives, especially how work and nonwork domains impact one another. That’s something that excites me to do and to help people thrive in their jobs.
Chrystal Taylor:
Awesome. And Mostafa, can you please introduce yourself?
Mostafa Ayoobzadeh:
Of course. My name is Mostafa Ayoobzadeh. I’m an assistant professor in Human and Organizational Development at Université du Québec à Montréal, which is a francophone university, but the name translates to the University of Quebec at Montreal. And I’m mostly interested in how people develop their skills, such as leadership skills, interpersonal skills, and how they navigate their careers.
Chrystal Taylor:
Well, that kicks things off pretty nicely as far as… I mean, obviously, you’re interested in studying how different factors affect the workplace. So what prompted this particular study?
Melika Shirmohammadi:
As I said, one of the things that I’m interested in studying is how personal life and professional life impact one another. And looking at what has been done in the research world, our team realized that we don’t know much about how our hobbies impact our work life, and that’s something that we don’t usually talk about in the workplace as well. We also observe this trend out there that there are millions of people who play these online games, and even from our own family members and colleagues that we knew about, so we became curious to see how having a hobby in the gaming world and being successful there can transfer into the workplace and advanced skills.
Mostafa Ayoobzadeh:
Yeah, I think Melika – she summed up the whole motivation behind our study very beautifully. I just want to add that as researchers, obviously, if we see something, a stigma in the society or something that people they tend to look at it negatively, but there are some positive aspects to it, regardless of what the topic is, we go ahead and investigate that area to bring some light into it, to not necessarily portray as the opposite, let’s say, in a positive way, but to also bring a more wholesome perspective to it. So that’s how we ended up looking at video games from a positive point of view, which is a rare thing that people would do in the society, or even in the research community.
And I just want to also mention that our team was engaged in discussions early on in the process, and Professor Mina Beigi, which is another colleague of ours from the University of Southampton, was one of the key members of our research team. And we were engaged from early on in this research development, and we pretty much were excited about this topic, especially also on a personal level that we were connected with some video gamers and we could see that they benefited from playing video games, but not a lot of people would talk about those benefits and those positive aspects. So this gave us a personal motivation as well to go into this research topic.
Sean Sebring:
Well, personally speaking, I’m grateful for your assistance in de-stigmafying that gaming is just for non-motivated people sitting in a basement somewhere. And that stigma kind of sticks out, especially with MMOs. I feel like specific MMOs, very big names might get a stigma that applies to gamers in a broader sense of mom’s basement, I never leave, I never take care of myself, I’ve got no motivation.
And yeah, I would love to think that a lot of the skills that I had as a gamer are super transferable in many ways. And a lot of them, I think probably some of the most important, are social. So, I’m super excited to discuss this. I think the social skills that you gain in particularly MMOs are super cool. And I love that you guys were motivated both personally and just as researchers to do this.
Chrystal Taylor:
I think that in tech there’s a little bit less of a stigma than the wider society for playing games. It’s a bit more accepted here, but I do think that it still… There’s still the trope. You mentioned it, guy in a mom’s basement kind of situation, right? And when we were talking before, Melika, we had a conversation about why this hobby is so stigmatized when it’s not really… You don’t invest more time in it than you do in any other hobby.
Pickleball is super exciting right now for a lot of people and there’s so many people playing it, and they spend hours and hours of their time playing it. But if you tell that same person that you play video games in that amount of time, even in tech, you’ll get a, “Really? Really?” That’s not as good for you. So I think it is really interesting.
I did want to ask you, what drew you to the MMO genre of gaming specifically? I know part of it, based on the study, is based on the fact that is the online interaction. There’s the social skills that come from dealing with people online. But, what specifically drew you to MMOs as a genre to look into and research specifically for the paper?
Melika Shirmohammadi:
I would say that I think the fact that you just mentioned that the real-time collaboration is very much similar to the work environment. You have to work with people. Sometimes you get into these groups that you’re working with people you don’t know. So you have to coordinate, and you have to communicate. And then some people are more prone to taking the leadership role. So there’s lots of teamwork, collaboration, working together, things that are very similar to the work environment that allowed us to look into the skills that might be transferable to the work environment. So that was one of the reasons.
And I think at the time it was also being very trendy. We got to know about it. And we got curious as well just to see. And it also helps with research to narrow down and look at one context and study it carefully and see what happens there and then we can generalize it to other contexts.
Mostafa Ayoobzadeh:
Early on, when I was involved in this project, a lot of things that I did was just observation. So I went online, and thanks to all these gamers, enthusiastic gamers who upload their sessions online or broadcast their session online, I would join the live stream or I would watch their videos on YouTube online, and I was fascinated by how much interaction would go into it. Let’s say there were 30, 40 people involved in a so-called raid, and they would divide tasks between themselves and they would brainstorm, either by voice or there was a chat box that would talk with each other. And I was thinking there is so much similarity between this context and what we see in the workplace. Let’s say the problems are not the same, but the way we approach them, they are more or less the same, the way that we resolve those problems, the way that we coordinate actions, the way that we collaborate with each other when we…
When we have a solution, we have to defend our point of view and try to convince people, inspire them, motivate them. There’s so much similarity. And I thought there is definitely some overlap between this context and the workplace. And chances are that if someone uses those skills in this context, they will be able to practice and use those skills later on in the workplace, which I think we’ll have opportunities to talk about it later. We have some examples of how we use those skills in the workplace, and they were fascinating.
Sean Sebring:
I think one of my favorite parts of online MMOs, specifically online gaming, it’s definitely the sense of community and overcoming the challenge. So of course, when we think of gaming, we think of getting an epic item, a sword, the loot that’s at the end of a boss. And that’s, of course, like a driving motivator, like, “Oh, I really hope it drops the gear that I want. I want my piece of gear.”
But as a community, I think the best feeling, better than getting a piece of gear, is when you as a group… Let’s say there was 40 of you and you’d been going head-to-head with this boss for a few days, maybe even a few weeks, because you tried last week and it was too hard, you couldn’t get it. But then as a group, as a sense of community, you tried. And like you said, Mostafa, is you come up with different strategies. You have to voice different angles and defend your views of, “I think we should try it this way.”
And then when your group, 40 people all coming together, when your group finally succeeds at getting there, that’s one of the coolest feelings. Like, “Oh, yeah, we got it.” And actual shouts and cheers. All 40 people just, “Oh, yeah. We got it. We got the boss down.” And that feeling is part of sense of community, but the reward you get from having worked together to take this down.
And then, of course, there’s the minutiae in there of like, “All right, sweet. Now we got it.” Someone in the group’s already like, “All right, what could we do better? Who underperformed? How can we raise them up so that when we come to do this again we can make it an easier challenge?”
But yeah, that sense of accomplishment together, and we can find those in seeing a project done at work, too. And again, there’s not always a direct incentive that comes at the end of completing a project, but the sense of completion itself can be that incentive. And it’s one of my favorite things to compare to a real-life work environment, right?
Chrystal Taylor:
I really like this comparison, Sean. I want to add to it, though, because you mentioned the loot at the end and typically in MMOs in a raid, you’re not guaranteed, even if you go beat it, even if you win, even if everybody survives, you’re not guaranteed personally to get the loot at the end. So not only it can’t be the primary motivating factor, you’re most likely going to have to do this whole project again, which I think it reinforces the translation of the skills to the workforce. Because the likelihood of you doing a project once and never having to do a similar project or even have to go back to the well and start over and do it again is very slim. You’re going to have to do it again. You’re going to have to work with people again.
Arguably, the same as in a raid, even if people… Raids are generally done by guilds. You have a whole bunch of people together, and these people work together on a fairly regular basis, but people leave and join all the time. It’s just as in the workplace. And so even if you’ve already learned how to work with people in that context once, or twice, or three times and you’re comfortable, there’s always new people, and new elements, and new strategies that have to be come up with all the time, just as in the workforce. You never know when someone’s going to leave, you never know when someone new’s going to come on, and you’ve got to work around that.
Mostafa Ayoobzadeh:
I would like to add something to what both of you mentioned. I saw the sense of community and collective effort was mentioned in what the both of you mentioned. And I also… I mean, all of us, the team members, we noticed that these sense of community was reflected in many of the interviews that we did, both in pleasant situations, let’s say when we accomplish something, we beat a boss and we finish a raid or a stage of a raid, or in negative situation, let’s say when we fail to accomplish something.
So in positive aspects, the accomplishment, the celebration was shared by all the members, and also the negative aspect. Let’s say if it failed, what was the reason behind? If somebody joined the raid late or unprepared, they would bring down the performance of the whole group. But at the same time, I noticed that many of those participants, they didn’t necessarily engage in blaming the person. Or maybe in short term they would say, “Well, why don’t you come prepared?” and this and that. But in long-term, they would engage in coaching and training. “Okay, let’s practice for this before we go into the main raid.” And I found that this sense of community was one of the main reasons that prepared these people for using these skills later in the workplace, and it’s something that we don’t necessarily see in all sorts of video games.
Chrystal Taylor:
Well, I would like to ask, there were a lot of learning outcomes. And for our listeners, if you’d like to read the paper, we are going to link it so you can read the paper yourself. There were a lot of learning outcomes, different types of learning outcomes. And I would like to know from each of you what was the most surprising learning outcome going into this? And I’m asking this question specifically, especially because I know one of you is a gamer sometimes and one of you is not. I think it’s a completely different perspective of how you went into this and the perspectives you might’ve had going into the research and then what you got coming out of it. So what was the most surprising learning outcome from your research?
Melika Shirmohammadi:
Okay. Oh, I’m the non-gamer person, so I learned a lot going into this. And I would confess that I started with some of those assumptions or I wasn’t clear or aware that learning can happen and in this way even. I wasn’t really mindful of that.
So one thing that stood out to me specifically… Of course I understand the teamwork, the collaboration, leadership skills, the affective learning outcomes, which included seeing work as a solvable puzzle and that sense of resilience, as you were saying, going back to do the project again and not giving up quickly.
And also, self-confidence and awareness were some of the things that were really interesting to me personally. I wasn’t thinking that if you are successful in a game, you would take that sense of pride and success. Some of our participants talked about how they were treated like a celebrity in their gaming community, and that would really lift them up. And then they can take that feeling back to work, approaching problems, challenges a little bit with more confidence and wanting to overcome them, finding a solution on their own, so being more productive in that way. So that was very interesting to me.
Sean Sebring:
One of the things that I think you touched on, it was one of my favorite parts about the paper was how they’re solvable problems. And one of your contributors just really hit home for me, which is there’s always a way. There’s always a way. If it’s very difficult… And it is like solving a puzzle, but knowing that there’s no unsolvable puzzle. There’s no project that can’t be completed somehow. And that’s what gaming had taught them, is that like, “Okay, well if I’m doing it this way and it’s not working, I’ll try a different way. Or maybe I need to level up.” And to use a true gaming term, and in the workplace, “Maybe there’s a skill I need to level up at work that would help me get to be the means to my end on this project.”
And so just taking that same outlook of, “Okay, well if I were playing a game and I wasn’t winning, what would I do?” And then applying that skill to the workplace of, “Okay, I’m not getting my promotion. What do I need to do?” Or, “I’m not getting the buy-in from this team that I need to get. What should I do? What would help them believe that we should take this?” And Mostafa, you brought this up, defend your position, your opinion on a strategy.
And those are just some of the coolest things to me, is just the perspective you get of, well, why is work different than a game? It’s really not, right? It’s all about creating scenarios and solving problems. And it was really cool to, from a piece of literature, see that there was a study done and people contributed these same opinions.
Mostafa Ayoobzadeh:
That’s true. That’s true. So I think everything… You asked for each of us to share our opinion. Melika, she mentioned many of the things that I totally agree with her, that those things stood out when I was reading through the interviews and when we were analyzing the interviews.
I want to add to it that… You mentioned seeing work as a solvable problem. And tied to that, persistence was something that was seen in many of the participants, so they wouldn’t give up easily. Let’s say some of them, they mentioned, at the workplace, if a problem comes out, some of the colleagues, they get stressed, they get anxious, they don’t know what to do, they tend to go to the supervisor. They want to get help from somebody who’s more experienced. But these gamers, they were in the mindset of there is a solution always for everything. So they would spend some time thinking about the problem, reflecting on possible angles to attack that problem. And a lot of times they would come up with solutions, and that’s one of the reasons that they were respected in the workplace.
I remember one of them specifically mentioned that, “In the workplace, if there’s something going wrong, I’m the one who brings the team stress level down, and I always invite them to, ‘Let’s spend some time thinking about it. It’s not time to panic yet.'” And there’s always a solution for any problem that comes up in the workplace, especially in stressful context.
And one other thing that was fascinating for me was how much these gamers, they thought about how they could use these skills in the workplace. So without us pushing them too much, they were ready to share their experience of using these skills in the workplace. So to me, it was a sign that they had already thought about those transferable skills, and they were already engaged in using those skills. So regardless of if they think about these skills being transferable or not, they use those skills in the workplace, being it strategy, development, problem solving, planning, organizing, you name it. All those different skills, they use them consciously or subconsciously in the workplace.
Chrystal Taylor:
Yeah. I like to think of it as no skills left behind. And I have said this in blogs I’ve written, things like that, where it doesn’t matter what you’ve done before, there’s always something that can be learned and taken from that and applied to what you’re doing now. So I’ve done this with jobs in other industries that I’ve done or with gaming or whatever, where you can… If you analyze it a little bit, you can discover that you did gain something from that and you can apply it forward.
For me, I don’t know if surprising is the right word, but the most interesting part for me, mainly because I wasn’t surprised by your outcomes very much, because I’ve already done similar analyzing, I think that the interesting thing for me was the behavioral learning outcomes where… Because of the way that these kinds of games work, where you’re working together and you’re collaborating with such a big group of people, whether you’re in a leadership role or not, you are required to rely on everyone to do their job in order for it to be successful.
You guys talked a little bit about that kind of similar thing where that’s translated into coaching and kind of talking people through, “Well, you weren’t prepared, so let’s talk about how you can be better prepared next time.” And for me, that’s the most interesting thing.
I personally am not very big into MMOs. I play a lot of other different kinds of games but not MMOs. And so that was the most interesting thing out of the study for me, is that there’s such a huge sense of not only relying on everyone to play their role perfectly, which can easily translate into work, and I think could possibly prevent people from micromanaging. Even though you’re looking at work as a solvable problem and that everything has a solution, even if it’s not the solution you’re thinking of right now, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to do everything yourself.
If everyone has a role to play, everyone has their tasks that they have to perform and you can identify that, and even if it requires coaching, or advice, or what have you, then you can still require that person to perform their role. And that, I think, was very interesting to me to see. It seems like it would enhance collaborative action at work more so than just… I know we’ve talked a bit about the more leadership aspects. But for me, that seems very interesting of collaborative action between teams, or you have to work with people outside your team, that kind of stuff. You can still think of it in that same way of they have their job to do, I have my job to do, and relying on them to get that job done.
Mostafa Ayoobzadeh:
Yes. And may I add something to what you said-
Chrystal Taylor:
Yeah.
Mostafa Ayoobzadeh:
… just now, Chrystal? So you mentioned the behavioral aspect, this behavioral learnings of playing games, and you mentioned leadership skills, and collaboration, and everybody playing a role. And that was actually another interesting aspect of the data, particularly about leadership. One of the misconceptions that we have is that leadership is about taking control and being in control of a group of people, and the goal is that everybody becomes a good leader. But in fact, when we talk about leadership, it’s just important to learn that whenever there is time that I should step forward and take action or lead a group of people, I should be comfortable with. But it doesn’t mean that necessarily in every situation I should be a leader.
We realized that many of these gamers, they learned how to collaborate with others and to share leadership with them, the role of a leader. And whenever the time was right for each of them to use their skills and lead a group of people, they felt more comfortable to take it. And they learned more about shared leadership rather than taking control and micromanaging a group of people. That was another fascinating aspect of this study for me.
Sean Sebring:
Well Chrystal, for your lack of MMO hours, I’ll make up for them in my history. And I can’t tell you how much coaching, leading, and social skills are needed in scenarios like that. And you mentioned some super important things. I mean, we’ve actually mentioned a ton of super important things.
You mentioned, just like work, people come in, people come out. And it’s nice when you can work with the same people for so long. You know everyone’s intricacies, everyone’s strengths, everyone’s weaknesses, but you don’t always. But as you do, this will teach adaptability and agility, which are some two important things. And both adaptability and agility need to be applied to your ability to coach and lead, because you can’t lead one style always because everyone hears different, everyone follows different, and everyone’s skill level is different. So there’s important facets to being a leader at a higher level, and then, again, being able to delegate to leaders at a medium level.
Because when you’re talking about 40 people, you can’t have one person give 40 instructions at once. It has to be a high-level strategy for the 40, and then there’s groups. If we break it down, you’ve got damage dealers in an MMO, you’ve got tank people in an MMO, you’ve got healing people in an MMO. And each of those groups have potentially different responsibilities within each group.
To your point, Mostafa, you have to be able to lead in many scenarios, and sometimes leading is entrusting others with the ability to lead. And again, Chrystal, you said this, too. You have to trust. You have to delegate, and you have to say, “Okay, you guys take care of your role.”
And another thing that I just really love, the skills you can learn from something like this, is when to step up. Because, yes, we trust you’re going to do what you’re supposed to do. But if something happens, sometimes unforeseen circumstances, a bomb blows up, whatever kind of game you’re playing, something blows up and someone dies, uh-oh, we needed that person to do something, damage, heal, tank. Someone has to adjust role, right? And so that again, that’s an opportunity to step up and lead and just have more skills of being adaptable and agile to say, “Okay, well, I’m going to fill in for this position to see if we as a team can still find success at the end.
Chrystal Taylor:
I’m going to pivot us a little bit. So earlier we mentioned the social stigma of gaming as a hobby for adults. Let’s be real here, because we’re talking about for adults. Kids don’t care. But gaming as a hobby has a social stigma in the general population. I think it is much less in tech, and I mentioned this earlier, but I do think it is much less. I don’t get a lot of guff from people in tech about my gaming hobbies. I get it from people outside of tech, like my family and things like that where they’re like, “Chrystal, you need to go outside. You need to go do something else.”
My mom tells me I’m a hermit all the time. That’s the thing that she does. She’s like, “Chrystal, go to…” The answer is go to a bar or some other socially acceptable place to hang out with people instead of hanging out with my friends online because they don’t understand. There’s a disconnect, right? And I love my mom. It’s nothing against her. She just doesn’t understand.
Part of your study, there was stigmas in there and part of that was a lack of family support or family support, and you had studied how do you think that this affected the outcomes that you had on their learning? I know there was a section on the study that was about this specifically. If you don’t have support for this, it gives it more of a negative connotation than it would otherwise. So, how do you think it affected them being able to take those learning outcomes into the workplace?
Melika Shirmohammadi:
Well, family support for sure came up in our conversations. Pretty much without prompting, us asking about it, people brought it up. Similar comments from fathers, or mothers, or family members about not spending time on their nonwork activities.
One of the things that stood out, because we were looking at learning, when you don’t have the support or you have the negative atmosphere, you are less likely to focus on the learning that you’re taking, or you might not reflect on it as much. Yeah. I would say would really interfere with reflection and thinking about what you’re taking out of it. Mostafa, if you want to add anything.
Mostafa Ayoobzadeh:
Yes. In fact about parents and supporting or… I talk about parents first. So, many of the participants, they mentioned that they had some feeling of guilt or shame when they played video games, and they thought it lingered on them since they were a teenager and they would play video games at home. And many of their parents, what do they do? They say, “Well, this is a waste of time. Why don’t you spend your time inventing something or doing your homework and things like that instead of wasting your time playing video games?” So this gives a feeling of shame or guilt, which stays with these people. And some of them they are in their thirties and their forties and they have successful careers and they have families. But still, if an hour per day they spend video gaming with their friends, they still have a feeling of guilt in them, which comes from their teenage years.
And what we learn from them was that parents, they didn’t necessarily need to give full support and say, “Okay, you know what? If you want to play video game, play as much as you want. I don’t have any problems with that.” This is not necessarily the case that it should be. Many of them, they said, “I don’t have a problem. I didn’t have any problem with my parents.” They said, “You know what? Let’s limit the time that you spend. During certain hours, you can play your video game. This is your hobby. But let’s say, for example, for having dinner, we have the dinner at a dinner table. Or let’s say that some hours allocated for family spending time together or for your homework.” We realized that these kind of approaches to set boundaries with teenagers, with children, they were more effective than giving them a feeling of guilt or shame for playing video games. So that’s something that was interested that came up in our interviews.
And about society, well, I mean I don’t go… You already mentioned, Melika. So these stigmas, many of the participants who had this feeling of guilt or they felt that the workplace looked at video games with some sort of stigma, they were not comfortable talking about video games. And because of that, that limits the extent to which they would use these skills in the workplace, or they would mention where they learned certain skills.
Chrystal Taylor:
That’s really interesting. First I want to say I’m gratified to hear that as a person who has a nearly-15-year-old son who is also a gamer, I’m gratified to hear that setting boundaries on him is not going to impact him too badly.
But I do want to say you were just talking about the societal stigmas and not being able to talk about it, and I was thinking about how that is incredibly true even in tech. Because let’s say depending on what role you’re interacting with, when I’m interacting with someone who’s in sales, for instance, it is a natural human inclination, I feel like, to try and find some common topic to be able to talk about. And in America at least, the accepted common topic is sports. And if you don’t know anything about sports, which lots of people, including myself, don’t know much about sports in tech… Even if gaming is a more accepted hobby here, it’s not really a thing that you can talk about with just anyone in tech even.
And you can go talk to… You walk up to the water cooler and they’re having a conversation or whatever, and you can feel completely isolated even as an adult at work because you can’t take part in the conversation. What you just said really resonated with me because I do think that is a problem still of your hobby is not generally accepted by the wider populace. So people in technical roles tend to be okay with it, but non-technical roles are less okay with it, Sean excluded.
Sean Sebring:
Yeah, because I am in sales, and I know nothing about sports, and I do play video games.
Chrystal Taylor:
Yeah. But you have to admit, though, it’s much less common-
Sean Sebring:
Oh, 100%. 100%.
Chrystal Taylor:
… and much less accepted.
Sean Sebring:
By the way, in Europe, sports is still king as well.
Chrystal Taylor:
Football over there. Yeah.
Sean Sebring:
Yeah, yeah. Football. Or hurling in Ireland.
Chrystal Taylor:
Oh. I think that’s really interesting. It would affect your comfortability, I guess, conversing at work, which can affect your relationships at work. So that’s really interesting.
Sean Sebring:
Speaking of stigmas, because we’re kind of talking about stigmas now, it could be a good transition to bring up the evidence that suggested how women are treated a bit differently in this aspect. From personal experience, not as a woman, but as a gamer who’s seen women and partnered with women in raids and such before, they’re definitely treated differently. I think unicorns is a term that comes online because they’re so rare to see a girl gamer show up, especially in the higher ranks of things. And so they’re absolutely treated differently. And I’d be super curious to hear what kind of stigmas you guys saw in your studies. Yeah, Chrystal, did you want to add before we keep going again?
Chrystal Taylor:
I just want to say that I think that they’re less rare than people accept that they are, but they’re not the people that come off on voice chat to let people know that they’re a woman. They hide that they’re women. So you might not know that more women are gaming, but there are just as many… I would say there are almost just as many female gamers as there are male gamers out there in the world right now.
In these online contexts, you’re right, it’s definitely a different experience being a woman in those contexts. And that is also why I have never gravitated towards these style of games, because I don’t want to subject myself to that. So that’s all I will say, is that I think there are probably more than you can give credit for.
Sean Sebring:
I would totally believe it. I would totally believe it.
Chrystal Taylor:
… out there because they don’t expose themselves as women, so you’d never know. It’s also very common, and I find this interesting, and I don’t know if this contributes to the topic at all, but I think it is very common for people to play the opposite gender role in a game, so it also makes it very difficult to tell when they’re not using voice chat or they’re not announcing that they’re male or female for you to even know what anybody is. So that’s just a point of interest.
Melika Shirmohammadi:
True.
Chrystal Taylor:
But yeah, how did your participants think that it affected them, I guess is the better question?
Melika Shirmohammadi:
Yeah, the same things showed up in our study. It was harder to recruit women to participate in our research. We had fewer people participating who identified as women. And they also talked about hiding identity. And unfortunately, the gaming context being male dominated and bullying happening, so they would want to protect themselves, so they would not use voice chat or they would just hide their identity.
As far as how it impacted, I would say that still they talked about their satisfaction with the learning they took out of it. That was pretty much the same. But just the fact that the context is not open for their participation would definitely put a limit to how much you can benefit from a context like that.
Mostafa Ayoobzadeh:
Yeah, exactly as Melika mentioned. And I want to add to what you said. Many of our women participants, they said that they would not use their voice when they go into raids and they would use the chat box. And that would limit the extent to which they can benefit from these interactive environments and they can engage, they can take leadership roles. So that would limit their learning experience.
And later on in the workplace, they wouldn’t talk about their gaming hobbies, even if… Let’s say even men, they don’t necessarily talk about gaming as a hobby in the workplace, but they tended to be more comfortable in some extent. After realizing that gaming was accepted in the workplace, they would talk about it. But our women participants, they were not comfortable with that. So, their learning experience was limited.
And some of their learning that they would mention they got out of playing MMO games were not gained in a positive context. Let’s say, to give you an example, they were harassed by people in the gaming environment. They were not taken seriously. They had to prove themselves. So they said, “Because of this, I’m more resilient. I have more adaptability. I am able to deal with difficult people better than many of other female colleagues.” So although they learn something out of this experience, this learning was not done in a pleasant environment. So nobody should said, “I have learned these skills because I was harassed in a certain context.” You know what I mean?
Chrystal Taylor:
Yeah. I think that is absolutely fair. I do think that even in tech today, similarly, it’s a male-dominated field, and women experience similar situations where there is a higher harassment or higher reported for harassment. I’ll say that because I don’t know for sure that there’s not harassment going the other direction, it’s just reported less.
I would also say that it makes a lot of sense. Everything you’re saying to me about how their learning outcomes were affected of it changes the context of it being resilient and… You still can be resilient and adaptable, but it’s that forged in fire kind of situation where you had a negative experience.
And it doesn’t keep them from coming back to the game, which I think is interesting also to take into the workplace. Your takeaway is that you’re being resilient, but you haven’t had such a negative experience that you’re not still enjoying the game or you would stop playing. So I think that that’s all very interesting, and I still have no desire to go play MMOs. But for our listeners out there, if you’ve ever been negative to women online, maybe just don’t. Maybe just don’t.
Okay. So this has been really interesting. I think the study was really interesting. I enjoyed reading about the learning outcomes and the quotes from your participants and the experiences that they’ve had. I would like to ask, though, this study, I know for research it’s best to keep it… You said earlier, Melika, that it’s best to keep it kind of targeted. In order to not go too broad to be able to get real understanding, you have to target it a bit.
So how do you think that your study would be different if there was a different genre of games that you had asked people questions about? The whole reason that… Or a lot of these outcomes are centered around more social aspects of MMOs. So, how different do you think learning outcomes are for a different style of game, like a single player game even, or even not MMO but other online games, like your Call of Duty types, right? It’s an online game where you might work together in a squad or it might be one person versus a bunch of people. You can still hear people. There’s a lot of games out there with things like proximity chat and things like that where you can hear other people even if you’re not on the same team. So I’d be curious to hear how you think this would affect your studies.
Melika Shirmohammadi:
Yeah, I would say the findings will be a little bit different if we were looking at a different type of game. I think we were looking at an extreme case of where there’s lots of opportunity for interaction, as you were saying, social interactions, teamwork and having a shared goal to work together towards that goal and just having a lot of people working together, which is similar to the workplace.
But I think the main idea remains the same, which is now we want to be more mindful that gaming is not just entertainment, there is learning that comes out of it. Let’s look into reflecting on what you actually take out of your learning, even if it’s a single player game or it’s two people are playing together. The question to ask is, “Okay, what did you take out of it? What did I learn?” Maybe the aspects like resilience and persistence will stay the same, or solving puzzles and problem solving would be the same because that’s the nature of gaming a lot of times.
Mostafa Ayoobzadeh:
You mentioned everything beautifully. I don’t have much to add other than saying that, as Melika mentioned, MMO games are probably the extreme case of having these environments where teamwork, leadership, communication, coordination, collaboration, teams are important. And in other types of gaming, such as first-person shooter kind of game or strategy… Not strategy. I mean puzzle solving games, there are some skills involved such as hand-eye coordination or problem solving, adaptability, but we don’t have the same level of teamwork, and leadership, and communication involved.
Sean Sebring:
I think one big thing that would separate for me with thinking about it… Because I do play non-MMO games, too. I’m not exclusive with my gaming selections. I have a hypothesis that creativity and the ability to embrace creativity would be much higher in a non-MMO scenario. And don’t get me wrong, there’s strategic creativity in, of course, like raid planning. We kind of talked about that a lot. Needing to problem solve forces some creativity. But I picture more creative minds.
And then again, on the flip side, one thing I didn’t see in here, which I totally would’ve expected, and that’s probably because of the kind of gamer I am, is a competitive mentality. And MMOs, to be successful in MMOs, often requires very highly competitive mentality. Because if you’re going to be successful… Chrystal mentioned something important. You have to be trusted to do your job. You don’t do your job, you don’t continue to stay a part of that high functioning guild because they need high performers. And competition, competitiveness is way up there for me on a skill that’s required in here, so I was kind of surprised I didn’t see it specifically called out today. And if there’s more we want to add to it, by all means.
But you know, I use that when I think about coaching as well. There’s always meters in games like MMOs to see the statistics. Everyone loves data. Everyone loves data. It’s even in video games now. I need graphs and charts to show me how well everyone performed so that we can fine tune, “Did you heal enough? Did you heal enough in that moment?” So you can get super granular. But that data helps drive competitiveness. And I mentioned at the end of a raid, I want my loot, but I also want to be number one on that damage chart.
So there’s a lot of different things to it. I was surprised to not see competitiveness as much in here as I thought. But I think that was a really cool question, Chrystal, because it is a very niche kind of gaming to look at. I think it was one of the coolest things to study when it comes to transferable skills because of the social aspect of it and the fact that we’re looking at how would this apply into the workplace, and social is huge and underrated when it comes to what you can do in games, and it doesn’t have to be just MMOs when we’re talking about social skills. But a really cool question and just wanted to share my perspective on that as well.
Chrystal Taylor:
Well, I think it’s really interesting, too, what you just said because I find that, especially people in more technical roles think that they’re antisocial. And I say this a lot, which is that human beings are social creatures. We require other people. And I think that this study just proves that you’re probably more social than you give yourself credit for, even if you’re just a text-based social person. I know people who don’t ever get on voice chat. They don’t ever turn their cameras on. You’re still getting that interaction.
My best friend is huge into MMOs, and he’s been friends with people for 20 or 30 years that he met in an MMO doing this, raiding and being in a guild. And he has that competitive factor also where… One of the things that you do in the MMORPG specifically is that they have these craftsmen classes, and so people will make and make real money off of selling armor and weapons and stuff that they craft in the game. And that competitiveness is… I’ve seen it really drive my friend of like, “I want to be the best so that they will come and spend their money with me.”
So, I think that all of what you just said, Sean, is really interesting. It really triggered something in my brain of people think that they’re not social in IT. There’s the stigma we talked about earlier about the guy in your mom’s basement. And I think that in general in IT, people have that stigma still, even though tech hasn’t been like that in 15, 20 years, really. I mean maybe in the ’80s. But for the most part, it’s not really like that anymore, and there’s still the wider stigma out in the world of like, “This is what people in tech are like.” I mean, you and I work in tech, and I don’t think people we know outside of tech would think of us in that context. So, I don’t know. It’s just really interesting.
I really liked the study. I really liked all the thought process that it triggered. It’s fun for me because I’m a gamer and I work, so it’s good.
Sean Sebring:
Chrystal, I do have to apologize because we knew going into this we were going to unintentionally maybe dominate too much of the conversation, but at least you guys have a whole paper that the listeners can follow up with your thoughts and findings on. I did want to ask one more thing of you guys. After having conducted this research and given the data to folks in the paper, how is that going to change your potential hobbies when it comes to gaming? And I’ll start with Melika first. Do you think you’re going to lean into gaming at all? It doesn’t have to be MMO. What do you think?
Melika Shirmohammadi:
I would say I’m more open, also more receptive to the creativity that it’s involved in designing these kind of games. I’ve tried escape rooms that I didn’t do before. I’m stepping into that zone slowly, but definitely appreciating it much more and understanding that it can also be a relaxing thing. It can take you out of your own world and out of your own head and be in a different world, and it can actually be engaging in so many ways. Yeah.
Sean Sebring:
How about you, Mostafa?
Mostafa Ayoobzadeh:
So here’s the thing, I never played MMO games. I did a lot of observation to be prepared for this study, but I never did MMO games. I have done video games, and I don’t think I necessarily had negative aspects of video games. But I did feel that people who use a lot of time video games, they’re missing on some things. So this study changed my view as well. I don’t know what they’re getting out of video game. I learned that some people even make money out of playing video games. So you want to follow a career and you’re successful, why not do video game? So, I’m more open to the idea.
Once in a while now we do family gatherings, and we have friends who are around the same age with us. If they’re interested, we do half an hour of playing a video game, all of us together, and it’s fun. I think it starts from these small gatherings that people if you know who play video games, we don’t necessarily say anything negative. We kind of show some curiosity, learn more about the game. “What do you do? So what’s the context of this game?”
And Chrystal, you mentioned about the socialization aspect of playing video games. And I’m sure, Sean, you have played MMO games, too. You know that when you are involved in a MMO game, you are not necessarily all the time talking about the game, solving problems, coming up with solutions. There are times that you have to wait. And what do people do when they are waiting? They ask from each other, “Okay, how is life? What are you doing? What’s going on? What’s your project?” And some of the participants mentioned that, “We made a lot of friends through these discussions. And I have friends that we catch up and we talk about our lives.” And many of them had been friends for 20 years. The stigma that video games are for people who are isolated or antisocial, it couldn’t be farther from the truth.
So we start by embracing video games, and talking about them, and fighting with some stereotypes that are common in this society. And then step by step, we get to a point that those who don’t play video games are more accepting towards people who are playing video games. And those who play video games, they’re not as shy or maybe reserved about their hobby and talking about their hobbies in public. Sorry, I think I went too much with this.
Sean Sebring:
Not at all.
Chrystal Taylor:
It’s great.
Sean Sebring:
No, not at all. I don’t think we’re quite here yet, but one thing I love about something like this study and this paper is… I worked with my previous guild master a lot on his resume and helping him try and find a different job. Because I had been successful in helping some others get a job, and he had watched my career, and so he said, “Hey…” He was my guild leader. He led me through raids and we played games together for years. And so he reached out to me and asked me for some help. And I would love to say, “You know what? You should put on your resume all of the people you helped orchestrate. You helped orchestrate 40 people to success for several years through different groups, through different raids, like projects,” and of course we’re not there yet, right?
But the amount of skills it took for him to be able to deal with the people, to deal with the strategies… And it’s more than just the fight itself. It’s all the things that you have to do to prepare for it, which is, “Hey, do you have the right armor? Hey, do you have the right potions? Hey, did someone get our group enough of this resource so that when we go together we’re all ready?” And it was just delegation.
There’s so many cool aspects to this. I just really appreciate all of the research you guys did because it helps gamers like Chrystal and I feel validated that we’re not just nerds, we’re smart and professional nerds.
Chrystal Taylor:
I do want to say, Sean, that it’s very common now to have an additional skills section on your resume. You put them in there. You don’t have to say what they’re from. I’m just saying. Put them in there.
Okay. But before we wrap up, is there any other final insight or things that either of you would like to share with our listeners?
Melika Shirmohammadi:
Just following up what you were talking about, the resumes and putting this on a resume, or taking the examples to a job interview, we are hoping that this research will give that language to gamers to translate what they have learned and be able to talk about it. You don’t have to go into the details about the game and what was going on in there, but to be able to frame it as a skill that you have learned. And you can give examples to a potential employer or someone who you’re having a conversation f or job-related things.
Sean Sebring:
I’m going to take it as a challenge now to write a small story about a project, and it was actually a raid, but just change the language from fighting, and bosses, and damage to work-related things and see how it exactly translates to what a recruiter would want to see as far as the skill set goes.
Chrystal Taylor:
It’s a creative challenge.
Sean Sebring:
Yeah.
Mostafa Ayoobzadeh:
If I may, I want to just share a few words with the recruiters and employers out there and gamers. So for recruiters and employers, we have already been using simulations and work-related games to train employees. Why not we open our mind a little bit and open our horizons a little bit and be more accepting about video games or MMO games specifically, and the skills that people learn in those environments? So specifically in the field of HR, there’s so much more to do and we need to open up our minds towards video games.
And also gamers themselves, I’m guessing that many of the people who will end up watching our podcast and listening to our conversation, they are video gamers themselves. When you go into those environments, first of all, when you come out of a raid, reflect on your learning experience. And maybe you learn some stuff and you can work on it more and translate it to skills that you can use in the workplace. And maybe you can talk about it with other people more openly.
And also, when you are in those environments, be more mindful of people who are there and maybe they also want to benefit from a learning experience, from a learning environment. So, try to give them an opportunity to learn. Try to be mindful of how you speak with other people and how you share this platform with them. So this way, more disadvantage or more vulnerable populations, such as certain minority groups, who are underrepresented not just in the workplace but also in gaming, they be more comfortable sharing the platform with you and learning from their experience being there with you. Those are my final words.
Chrystal Taylor:
Well said. Well, thank you so much Melika and Mostafa, for joining us on TechPod today.
Mostafa Ayoobzadeh:
Thank you for inviting us.
Chrystal Taylor:
Your academic research has been super fun for us to dig into. Obviously, Sean and I had a great time. I think that was obvious. Thank you, listeners, for joining us on another episode of SolarWinds TechPod. I’m your host, Chrystal Taylor, joined by fellow host Sean Sebring. And if you haven’t yet, make sure to subscribe and follow for more TechPod content. Thanks for tuning in.
