Total Engagement

Can the workplace be redesigned to include avatars, three-dimensional environments, and a host of virtual rewards that form newly transparent reputations for you and your team? This grounded and thought-provoking book by Byron Reeves and Leighton Read argues that it is not only possible, it is inevitable.

Massive multiplayer online games (MMOs) are a new cultural phenomenon at the intersection of electronic entertainment and social networking. Borrowing the key design principles from these games can address a host of classic challenges in the workplace including collaboration, innovation, leadership, and of course, boredom.

No longer the sole domain of adolescent boys, today’s best complex social games capture countless of hours of attention from men and women across the age spectrum who are carrying out activities in these entertainment titles that look surprisingly like the same tasks being performed by enterprise information-workers. There is a lot to be learned from the context that makes this behavior engaging, for example: positioning tasks within compelling stories that matter to the player, providing the tools for internal marketplaces where economic behavior replaces command and control, and affordances that help solve the problem of “what do I get when we win” Reeves and Read show how to choose and implement the right elements for your business.

Of course, the psychological power of game design can have both positive and negative consequences for the workplace. That’s why it’s important to put them into practice correctly from the beginning–and Reeves and Read explain how by showing which good design principles are powerful antidotes to the addictive and stress-inducing potential of games.

Supported by specific case studies and years of research, Total Engagement completely changes the way you view both work and play.