Learning about organizational capabilities, structures and strategies from virtual gaming teams

Abstract

A Virtual Team is a concept that has risen with the development of the internet and the gradual evolution of communication technology. Also known as a geographically dispersed team, it consists of individuals with a common purpose, with interdependent performance goals for which they hold themselves mutually accountable. Organizations with virtual teams can have their best members located anywhere in the world either working from home or working as small groups in different offices. Members usually communicate electronically and do not require meeting face to face. The web development has also been accompanied by heavy movement towards user generated content and inter-human connections commonly referred to as Web 2.0. The effectiveness of the applications and services provided increasing with the number of people and quality of people making using of them. This concept has now extended to online computer games with the evolution of the Massively Multiplayer Online Games genre. These games are based on continuous real interactions with real people although in a virtual environment. Furthermore the game play promotes team building with complex game goals that necessitate large strong teams. Such teams often slowly turn into large communities containing hundreds of players. The online communities thus formed become virtual teams that are consistently active and dedicated towards success. They begin to develop intricate team structures, processes, and strategies towards winning. Players are assigned specific roles and are part of specialized functional teams. These communities have become organizations in their own sense; they have become highly dynamic and evolving virtual organizations. An analysis and study of these virtual teams has a unique prospect of understanding the evolution and formation of an organization. Frequent inter- organizational interactions in the game world and the easy access to self made leaders in these organizations make it a unique study on development of leadership, building organizational capabilities and organizational strategy in a dynamic environment. In this study, the popular Massively Multiplayer Real Time Strategy game ‘Travian’ was looked at. A typical Travian game round lasts for 10 months with around 15,000 players. Alliances or Virtual Teams get created consisting of up to 500 players. Travian offers an interesting analogy of Virtual Team formation, leadership in a scenario with a medium term goal and multiple life cycles and real world organizations in general.