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Total Engagement: Using Games and Virtual Worlds to Change the Way People Work and Businesses Compete [Hardcover]

Byron Reeves , J. Leighton Read
4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)

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Book Description

November 2, 2009
Every week, millions of people including many of your employees spend hours playing multi-player online games with a level of engagement they don t bring to work. These aren t just adolescent video games we re talking rich narrative quests with 3-D environments, cool avatars, and compelling goals and rewards. Imagine the value if you could transfer key ingredients of game design and the gamer excitement and focus that come with it to the office. What if your employees could solve customer problems, design new software, or configure better shipping routes working inside a game environment at work?


This isn t just possible, say Byron Reeves and J. Leighton Read; it s inevitable. As global competition intensifies and employee productivity and engagement become more critical, the user experience provided by game technology offers a tantalizing solution for business. This is far more than a quaint metaphor for business and it s way beyond training tools. Implemented in the workplace, elements of games can solve a host of business problems with morale, communication, and alignment all while honing skills like data analysis, teamwork, recruitment, leadership, and more.


Based on extensive hands-on research, case studies, and the authors entrepreneurial ventures, Total Engagement convincingly outlines how games will transform work, from repetitive call-center jobs to high-level teams who must collaborate with members dispersed around the globe. The authors show why you must begin building a game strategy now and offer practical guidelines for how to:

--Select the game design features that can address your company s pain points
--Use avatars to increase engagement and productivity
--Employ virtual currencies to help employees set priorities, share resources, and meet goals
--Implement participant-driven communication systems to facilitate team-building
--Discover untapped leadership skills by shifting collaboration to game-like environments
--Mitigate possible negative effects of game applications at work

Authoritative and provocative, Total Engagement shows you how to become a player to reckon with as the gaming revolution transforms the workplace.

Frequently Bought Together

Total Engagement: Using Games and Virtual Worlds to Change the Way People Work and Businesses Compete + Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World + The Gamification of Learning and Instruction: Game-based Methods and Strategies for Training and Education
Price for all three: $76.32

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Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

This collaboration between a Stanford University professor and a venture capitalist, both geeks at heart, turns out to live up, quite literally, to its title. By engaging their readers via immersion into fictional characters’ work and play, Reeves and Read prove points 1 through 857: that games and virtual reality provide the right kind of business platform to solve common corporate people problems. Case one involves repetitive, boring routine work, as in call centers, being transformed in true-game environments by creating a stage, rules, and rewards that make continuous answering a compelling and intriguing job. Case two involves safety-driven video surveillance workers, when repositioned in a virtual world, becoming more attentive, more involved in the task, and, essentially, more productive. That the likes of IBM, Microsoft, and Sun are already proactively using avatars and games with style sheets as partial guidance should come as no surprise. The real amazement is that by erasing the boundaries between work and play, both these four-letter words can ring with employee passion and commitment. --Barbara Jacobs

About the Author

Byron Reeves is a professor at Stanford University and has authored over a hundred published studies of responses to immersive features of media, including games.

J. Leighton Read is a physician, inventor, successful biotechnology founder, CEO, and venture capitalist.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 288 pages
  • Publisher: Harvard Business School Press; 1 edition (November 2, 2009)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 142214657X
  • ISBN-13: 978-1422146576
  • Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 1 x 9.5 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #306,060 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

4.1 out of 5 stars
(12)
4.1 out of 5 stars
So far, it seems to summarize game mechanics in a very nice way. A. Pandharikar  |  1 reviewer made a similar statement
More importantly, it was downright fun to read. Jeremy Bailenson  |  2 reviewers made a similar statement
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars A Peek into the Future? February 7, 2010
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
I just finished reading the book Total Engagement. It's rare that I read a book that has me wondering if the authors have caught a glimpse of an unexpected future, and that ten or twenty years from now people will be looking back and be saying: that was the book that spotted this crucial trend. Having lived in Silicon Valley for many years, I'm used to having that experience of being exposed to the future ahead of its time. This could be one of them.

The thesis is simple. Millions of people pay each month to participate in massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). I've tried them, and I have friends (and kids) that have been totally sucked into them. They punch a bunch of psychological tickets for humans: the game designers know what they're doing. The book discusses how this is done:

* an epic story line(we're saving the galaxy from the Crumlons)
* clear paths to advancement, with transparency about your skills and performance
* intensely meritocratic societies called guilds that work together in groups to accomplish major tasks
* strong social interactions with other people
* the ability to try, fail and try again rapidly, learning quickly
* the option to try on leadership roles

For many people, these games are where they come alive and truly experience their potential to solve problems, meet challenges and lead a team.

And then they go into the modern workplace, which is frequently as stultifying as these virtual worlds are thrilling. Fail!

Read and Reeves are convinced that at least some smart workplaces of the future are going to adapt some of the ways of the games to more fully engage their employees and become more effective as economic organizations.
... Read more ›
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Total Engagement is totally engaging! August 11, 2010
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Each chapter in this book begins with an interesting short story. The story immerses you into the plot and you want to read the rest of the chapter.

Passionate and enthusiastic employees outperform the average workforce. 3D virtual game environments, to do work in, is certainly the engaging and entertaining way to get work done with high productivity and quality, within organizations.

The book starts with a great introduction with excellent references in first chapter. You will be surprised by who plays and by how much, the topic of the second chapter, along with why these people play the games. Chapter three acknowledges that certain tacit work sucks and discusses corporate problems that games *might* solve (note emphasis). Chapter four describes the elements of best games. The book dedicates a chapter each to virtual currencies, teams, individuals and leaders. Another chapter discusses play and work productivity and suggests a natural convergence of work and play driven by the strong need of engaged workers in a workplace, and improvements in technology in the coming years.

I highly recommend this book. I still have to read chapters 10 and 12, but the authors in chapter 11, caution against the side effects of using games in businesses and concludes - the somewhat obvious - that not every type of work is suitable in a game environment.

Thank you, Byron and Leighton for this excellent resource!
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Game on! Your move. July 6, 2010
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
"...on average many [game] players are physically healthier, work harder, make better grades, earn higher salaries, and are more socially connected than those who play less or not at all." Total Engagement, p. 13

I have always been intrigued with the notion that one's work should be challenging, and at the same time: fun. Seriously fun. So, of course, this book by Byron Reeves and J. Leighton Read caught my attention: Total Engagement: Using Games and Virtual Worlds to Change the Way People Work and Businesses Compete.

The book successfully fueled my "fun notion" with compelling business cases and research showing that gaming is not just for high school boys anymore. [Or grown-up kids such as myself.] If businesses want to compete successfully in today's culture, then we will have to overcome our taboo feelings of "playing games" at work.

I could easily write a paper around this book, but I want to keep this brief - so I'll just share three ideas from the book:

* On why people play games: In short, it's all about achievement, immersion, exploration, competition and socializing. Do you see the correlation to the business?

* On virtual money: One economics professor teaches that "economics is less about money than it is about making choices in the face of scarcity." This principle is demonstrated well in the context of gaming, and aptly applied to the art of making leadership decisions.

* On which large enterprises are already experimenting in the field: Check out IBM and Oracle Sun for starters.

If you are in a senior leadership role in your company or run your own business, I invite you to visit the book's website to read the executive reviews and the excerpts.
... Read more ›
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Totally Engaged November 29, 2009
Format:Hardcover
As I scientist who studies behavior in virtual worlds every day for a living, I was stunned at how much I learned from reading this book. The possibilities for using virtual worlds and games in the workplace are endless, and Reeves and Read do a fantastic job in providing concrete guidelines on how to navigate and leverage the future digital workplace. They combine a hands-on business approach with decades of research about the psychology of media; the result is what is sure to be the canonical text about serous gaming. More importantly, it was downright fun to read.

Jeremy Bailenson
Virtual Human Interaction Lab, Stanford University
[...]
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars Radical Stuff
Not sure whether business will have to be dragged kicking and screaming into making work meaningful for newer generations (seldom was for other generations), but here's the... Read more
Published 25 days ago by A. Walker
3.0 out of 5 stars The book is aimed at anyone interested in the evolution and design of...
The book is aimed at anyone interested in the evolution and design of work, and how game psychology and technology can be applied to business. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Michael Ruckman
3.0 out of 5 stars Some timeless ideas, but many outdated
I'd move along to another gamification book, look at Kapp... this book is a little dated. The book does do a decent job of introducing you to game theory, design principles, and... Read more
Published 4 months ago by J. R. Anderson
3.0 out of 5 stars Worth Reading
Nowadays Gamification starts to be a buzz word. Companies and experts talk about how to use game engines and experience on marketing and business for personal and customer... Read more
Published 5 months ago by C. Torres
3.0 out of 5 stars Good analysis of MMORPG guilds
A discussion of how to use game mechanics to make work more interesting. The book's best feature is its discussion of how MMO guilds and guild raids work. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Erik A. Saltwell
3.0 out of 5 stars Probably a good book if you have never played an MMO or thought about...
If you have ever played an MMO and wondered why work is not as much fun then you will find this book interesting and you will hopefully go play an MMORPG. Read more
Published 19 months ago by A. B. Powell
5.0 out of 5 stars How games and gaming will - and should - change business
This book's title, Total Engagement, is a tantalizing banner, but its subtitle, Using Games and Virtual Worlds to Change the Way People Work and Businesses Compete, is a full... Read more
Published on July 5, 2010 by Rolf Dobelli
5.0 out of 5 stars Good book so far
I did pre-order on this one, because I was looking for one place to read about advances in game development strategies. The book showed up last week. Read more
Published on November 2, 2009 by A. Pandharikar
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