« Is Dubai for real? | Main | Hans Rosling, the great visualizer, to speak at TED »

15 February 2006

Learning from the "New Golf"

Thenewgolf Like many of you, when a new technology strikes my fancy, I try to learn as much about it as possible.  These days I'm interested in how the internet can enable better collaboration within design teams.  But instead of reading white papers, I'm practicing what a few of us have started to call the "New Golf".  In other words, I'm playing a video game called World of Warcraft (WoW). 

With all due respect to Salesforce.com, in my opinion it's WoW that's really cracked the "software as service" subscription business model.   For $15 a month, I can go online with millions of my closest friends and adventure around a Tolkien-ish virtual world full of elves and trolls, dungeons and dragons.  Yeah, it's geeky, but it's an extremely compelling experience... lush, beautiful, entertaining.  Amazing.

So what have I learned?  First, it really is the New Golf: WoW facilitates surprisingly rich social interactions between players.  In WoW I’ve set up meetings, arranged introductions, even asked for a favor or two.  All the things that used to happen at a country club can now occur in this online space, only with an order of magnitude more people and without the limitations of geography or tee times. 

Second, this is the first time that I’ve seen the internet really live up to its potential to enhance the performance of far-flung teams.  It’s amazing what gets accomplished in WoW – complex objectives are routinely solved using a combination of top-down leadership, individual creativity, and emergent strategies.  WoW is a prototyping lab for new paradigms of collaboration.

The most important – and honestly, most surprising – thing I’ve learned in WoW is how it forges genuine, we’ve-been-through-hell-together friendships.  Understand that when we’re online we all sport faux screen names and assume the look of imaginary elves and gnomes and trolls and orcs, so it took me a while to figure out that I was adventuring alongside web gurus like Joi Ito, Don Park, and Ross Mayfield.  In fact, that’s Don, Joi, me, and my pet bear in the photo above. Through WoW, I’ve come to trust these guys in the same way I trust my real-world collaborators. 

We can a lot about the future of work from the state of the art in entertainment. 

Posted by Diego Rodriguez |

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/523823/4188159

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Learning from the "New Golf":

» Dungeons, dragons and deals from Lunch over IP
There is a club out there that has currently 233 members from all over the world and from a variety of backgrounds including a few parent/kid combinations as well as girlfriend/boyfriend and husband/wife combinations and a fairly good spread of [Read More]

Tracked on 20 February 2006 at 12:44 AM

» Diego on We Know from Gen Kanai weblog
Diego, who is a member of the same guild I am in for Warcraft, writes about his perspective on the game for the TED Blog. So what have I learned? First, it really is the New Golf: WoW facilitates surprisingly rich social interactions between players. I... [Read More]

Tracked on 26 February 2006 at 06:57 PM

Comments

This is another fascinating take on how the web is forcing us to redefine our traditional frames of reference. I am very interested in how the economies of these online worlds resemble and interact with our 'real' economy. I've written a number of posts on this subject but more from the point of view of the quantitative-economic factors as opposed to the social-economic factors which you articulate here. Your observations to me underline even more why these games are actually living laboratories for the increasing connectivity that permeates how we live our lives.

Posted by: Sean Park | 16 February 2006 at 01:14 PM

For a completely un-lush but still strangely compelling experience, try Kingdom of Loathing -- http://www.kingdomofloathing.com. It's a sort of ironic take on the online "world" that's still incredibly fun -- and actually challenging. The point is that you don't really need the graphics -- you just need to know that there are actually interesting people out there playing along with you.

Posted by: hk dunston | 16 February 2006 at 03:50 PM

Post a comment

This weblog only allows comments from registered users. To comment, please Sign In.

Who We Are

  • The TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference is an annual event where leading thinkers and doers gather for inspiration. (More at TED.com) The TEDBlog covers the same ground, on a rather more frequent basis.

What We Blog About

Recent Comments

TED Bloggers

What We're Reading

  • Chris Anderson: The Long Tail

    Chris Anderson: The Long Tail
    Wired Magazine Editor Chris Anderson (not to be confused with TED Curator Chris Anderson) has expanded on the thesis in his original article to create a must-read book for anyone remotely interested in business, marketing or communication in the Internet age. It shows clearly how and why millions of new businesses and voices are flourishing in our new connected economy.

  • Daniel Gilbert: Stumbling on Happiness

    Daniel Gilbert: Stumbling on Happiness
    In one of the most brilliant pieces of science writing we've come across, Harvard Professor Dan Gilbert turns our ideas about happiness -- and ourselves -- upside down. Stumbling on Happiness isn't just profound. It's also unbelievably readable and funny. We urge you to give the book a try. It will change the way you think about yourself.

  • Cameron Sinclair: Design Like You Give a Damn: Architectural Responses to Humanitarian Crises

    Cameron Sinclair: Design Like You Give a Damn: Architectural Responses to Humanitarian Crises
    From one of this year's TEDPrize winners comes a book bursting with intriguing -- and often beautiful -- examples of how designers and architects around the world have created innovative housing for those most in need of it. You can't read it without feeling inspired...

Archives

Powered by TypePad