What I’ve Learned About Interacting With People Playing Online Games
Video games are more than just an entertainment sink . Post them online and they might even teach us a few things about how to interact with other people. Here are some of the lessons I’ve learned from online games about interacting with people in real life.
Knowing what you are doing is more important than who you are doing it with.
Earlier, we talked in detail about how World of Warcraft can be a microcosm of real life . However, there is one way this is very unrealistic: everyone shares a common, well-known goal. In fact, dozens. But when you enter a dungeon or a raid, everyone knows exactly who and how to kill. Or at least how to find out .
For those who are not inclined to pay $ 15 a month for something that can easily make a second job, here is the essence of how dungeons and raids work: you start at the entrance to some structure and have to move from beginning to end, where you are. the final boss is waiting. Along the way, you have to kill random bad guys, a couple of smaller bosses and, finally, the main one. Sometimes there aresecondary goals , but for the most part it’s very simple. As the game progresses, players will often go through the same dungeons or raids over and over again, to the point of becoming commonplace.
Although this is an exercise in mechanically stroking the keys, it is still possible to fail. Not because people can’t press buttons fast enough or because they need to practice aiming. How the game mechanics work, if you don’t know what specific move the boss will throw at you, you can erase it in seconds. However, know what brightbad things are not worth standing up to , and you can quickly deal with the enemy.
The only way it reflects real life is that it is much easier for people to work together and achieve a goal when they have the same goal. Of course, we do not always know exactly what this goal is. Some people spend years or decades trying to figure out what to do with their lives . Unfortunately, this is a separate issue. One thing is clear: when you have a goal, it is not always so important who you work with as you think.
You can work great with an average team if you are all on the same page. Or you may be really bad at working with the right people if you don’t have a goal. This does not mean that the people you surround yourself with do not matter – far from it . But before you try to team up with talented people to achieve a goal that you haven’t yet defined, define it . And then refine it .
I used to be in many teams. The best ones are those in which everyone has a purpose and we know exactly what it is. The worst of them are the ones where we are best friends with no idea what to strive for.
Well-defined roles – lubrication on the wheels of the team
Here’s a fun experiment: Find nine randomly selected strangers. Place them in a room and tell them to complete a time-dependent task. They are only allowed to communicate with each other via text messages, and they have at best one minute until it leaves, and sending text messages to each other becomes a luxury they don’t have time for. Would you expect everything to go well? Most people would not do this. That’s just what games like Team Fortress 2 require.
Of course, everyone knows what the trick is. Team Fortress 2 has clearly defined roles for each character. You may not be talking a lot with your teammates when you join the game, but you’ve already communicated what you plan to do as soon as you step in the door. If you are a Heavy, you will shoot and take damage. If you are a medic, you heal people and cheer up the heavyweights. If you are an arsonist, you will burn all the shit and laugh madly.
We can see an alternative anytime you get a dozen people in a room and invite them to brainstorm . Paralysis engulfs the room and no one knows how to go forward. This is the reason why it is so difficult for us to have meetings that are not a waste of time . Instead of getting everyone in a room and asking what to do, highlight people by their talents and ask them to contribute to a specific problem. Make it one person’s job for designing the layout, another for the decorations, and another for giving it a name.
Whether you are a manager, a project leader, or just a member of a team, working with others always involves a little manipulation of others . If your group is not seeing progress towards your goal, start giving people specific assignments. Break the target down into smallest pieces . Assign each task to a specific person and let them know what is expected of them. It’s easier if you are looking for authority, but not always.
You don’t always have to ask permission to help.
“Sorry sir. Someone seems to be pointing a sniper rifle at your head. Do you want me to return fire? ” Chances are, if you’ve heard someone asking you this in-game, this is the last thing you heard before your body hit the floor. When decisions are made in a split second, there is no time to ask permission.
The horrible irony is that in real life we feel like we have a lot of time. It’s time to wait for someone to ask us for help. It’s time to politely ask our boss if he wants us to help with the project (and possibly get rejected). It’s time to wait for someone to come along and give us step-by-step instructions for success. (In the meantime, why not play video games and play pranks?)
When you are in a group, it is natural that you hesitate to act and do something. Video games often do not provide this luxury. If you wait for your (possibly non-existent) “leader” to tell you who to shoot at, the entire team could be killed. However, once you get into such an environment, it becomes pretty clear that self-motivated action is better than indecision.
If you’re expecting something to happen at work, take the initiative and start asking questions. Draft a project you want to work on, or sketch an idea that you have. Don’t worry about wasting effort. Sometimes you can sit for hours at a pitch and get turned down, but it’s worth it when one of your suggestions is accepted. In the meantime, you train – and live your life. If you’re waiting for someone else to come along and tell you how to get the most out of it, chances are you won’t like how it ends.
Communication now will save you a lot of problems in the future.
One of the most frustrating things about playing with strangers online is that you end up pairing up with someone who is much less experienced than you (of course, after being an inexperienced person in a group at first) … In some games, this means you have a good easy target, but if you work together, such as in Portal 2 co-op, playing with someone who doesn’t know what they are doing might interfere with the action. stop. So why not take the time to train them?
Portal 2 features a unique co-op mode in which two players must work together and communicate clearly with each other before taking on a challenge. Time is everything when you throw yourself into space. A handy Ping tool is essential for letting your partner know where you want them to go and when you want them to do something. While some other games might just say “Go!” and throws you into a war zone, Portal 2 requires you to plan everything.
This new concept of communicating your intentions to others helps not only in other games, but also when communicating with people in real life. Shocker, right? Most of us have a habit of assuming that other people know the same thing as we do , or can guess our intentions. They can not. Don’t expect someone to know what you are going to do. Point it out. Don’t get into plans hoping people will support him. Let’s talk about this first.
Such assumptions can destroy a normally functioning group. Whether you need to work with someone on a project, planning an event, or just addressing major relationship issues , a little precaution can go a long way. Ask the people you work with if they understand what they are doing. If you are arguing with someone, use the steel man argument to clear up the misunderstanding before proceeding. The best time to deal with communication problems is sooner rather than later.
There is always someone better than you
Starcraft was easily one of my favorite games as a kid, and it’s the only game mentioned here that I’m going to share. So many hours have been spent playing the original levels and levels of Brood War over and over again. I went as far as creating levels in the Starcraft Level Editor and writing stories about them. I say all of this so that you understand how devastating it was when I started playing Starcraft 2 against real people and I was completely ruined.
Out of respect for his anonymity, I will not name the friend I played with, Zerg dropped my hopes and dreams, burned them in a funeral pyre and brought them to my doorstep in a fancy urn. It was terrible. No, I was not the best player in the world (as evidenced by the fact that I have never played in a stadium in Korea), but I thought I knew this game. How could everything I knew could be so wrong? After all the years I’ve spent playing and training against the computer, how could it be that I’m so inexperienced and so bad at it that someone could wash the floor with me so easily?
Wanting to be the best person in a room is natural. The problem is that if you stay in this room, you will never challenge yourself. From this shameful defeat, I realized that I really am not very good at playing Starcraft against other people. I was just good at playing singles on a hard level that matched my skills.
Nevertheless, even in games where this is not the case, I am constantly beaten by someone. It’s unavoidable. In Starcraft, my friend can usually beat me up because I suck. In Team Fortress 2, no matter how good I am with my trusty Pyro, blowing him up is part of the deal. In World of Warcraft, someone will always beat me in DPS rankings. And here, in real life, someone else’s article will receive more views and better comments than mine. Someone is always better.
It is an endless cycle, but it cannot mean defeat. The moment you stop trying to surpass the person who just surpassed you, you will forever decide your place on the charts. From now on, you will be 111th (or whatever) and never get higher. In fact, you will sink lower because new people will crawl over you to get better, and you will remain exactly the same.
We continue to talk about how important it is to overcome failure because it is one of the most common and necessary parts of climbing this ladder. However, we don’t often say that even success is partial. Even when you are winning, there is still someone who has won even more than you. Until you become the king or queen of the universe, you will meet people who are better than you, luckier than you, or more successful than you. However, their success says nothing about your current situation. It simply means that there are many more things you can do to get better, and that should be reassuring.