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Video chats short-circuit a brain function essential for trust?

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Re: Video chats short-circuit a brain function essential for trust?

#71

Post by munificent »

z3t4 wrote: post #53
tzs wrote: post #36

> In-person encounters are crucial for establishing trust and building successful teams, according to research Sources of many counterexamples: EverQuest, World of Warcraft, Warhammer Online, Dark Age of Camelot, Rift. In all of these games numerous groups of people who have never interacted with each other in person have formed long term successful trusting teams. EverQuest in particular in its first several years r…

Every time i read about how hard it is to manage remote teams i think they have never played a mmo or been in a game clan.

Fair, but surely there is a lot of self-selection bias in this observation.

Re: Video chats short-circuit a brain function essential for trust?

#72

Post by seph-reed »

the-pigeon wrote: post #50
havelhovel wrote: post #44

Before this article influences more discussion, I want to point out that it provides no research relevant to the claim that "video chats short circuit a brain function essential for trust." The only research cited show that face-to-face contact is more effective at soliciting donations than email [1], that non-verbal cues are important for feeling trust [2], something about sunglasses affecting theory of mind, and (i…

Yeah...there might be something to this idea but this article doesn't back it's claims with any evidence.

Things like this always give me a feeling a foul play, but obviously that's just a feeling without proof.

I dearly hope that someday we'll be able to look back and have a realistic view of just how much foul play exists right now. What if someone paid for this narrative without any supporting evidence? What if it was just the product of an idealess reporting team? Who knows... but some day I would love to.

Re: Video chats short-circuit a brain function essential for trust?

#73

Post by ZitchDog »

tzs wrote: post #65
z3t4 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time i read about how hard it is to manage remote teams i think they have never played a mmo or been in a game clan.

Hmmm...I wonder if "manage remote teams" might be the key? At work you'll have your team of engineers, with managers who aren't actually working on the engineering problems themselves. Heck, they might not even be engineers. They are dealing with representing the engineering team as a whole in interactions with other engineering teams, or with non-engineering teams and higher level managers. In every MMORPG I've play…

I agree in theory. Having managers who are also contributing can create an awesome level of trust on a team. In practice, the problem is the "maker's schedule" in software doesn't accommodate time for the constant interruptions of coordination. Swinging an axe is one thing, but software requires large amounts of focused time which is discongruous with management needs.

Re: Video chats short-circuit a brain function essential for trust?

#74

Post by caseysoftware »

At an internal event back in February (in the before times), we had a videographer come through asking questions. She asked me "What did you learn this week?"

My response: "I learned how tall everyone is! On Zoom, everyone is the same height!"

Unfortunately, it didn't make the highlight video. :)

But the serious side of it is that if 100% of our interactions are from the chest up, we lose a ton of body language context and physical expressions. With everyone muted, you miss out on verbal cues too. We're missing layers/nuance of communication but it's hard to tell if those are 1%, 25%, 50%, or 95% of the interaction.

Re: Video chats short-circuit a brain function essential for trust?

#75

Post by theshrike79 »

tzs wrote: post #36

> In-person encounters are crucial for establishing trust and building successful teams, according to research Sources of many counterexamples: EverQuest, World of Warcraft, Warhammer Online, Dark Age of Camelot, Rift. In all of these games numerous groups of people who have never interacted with each other in person have formed long term successful trusting teams. EverQuest in particular in its first several years r…

And then there is Eve Online, which takes estabilishing trust to a new level: https://cad-comic.com/comic/one-of-us/

Re: Video chats short-circuit a brain function essential for trust?

#76

Post by snvzz »

theshrike79 wrote: post #75
tzs wrote: post #36

> In-person encounters are crucial for establishing trust and building successful teams, according to research Sources of many counterexamples: EverQuest, World of Warcraft, Warhammer Online, Dark Age of Camelot, Rift. In all of these games numerous groups of people who have never interacted with each other in person have formed long term successful trusting teams. EverQuest in particular in its first several years r…

And then there is Eve Online, which takes estabilishing trust to a new level: https://cad-comic.com/comic/one-of-us/

EVE is more about not trusting.

You trust, you lose.

Re: Video chats short-circuit a brain function essential for trust?

#77

Post by oblib »

I think there is something to this. I can't quite make the leap to "video chats short circuit a brain function essential for trust." but I do think we miss out on a lot, or maybe some tend to be dismissive.

I think it may be easier to be dismissive in a video chat, but I'd suspect those who are would tend to be so anyway, just behind your back, not face to face in the meeting.

Re: Video chats short-circuit a brain function essential for trust?

#78

Post by 082349872349872 »

munificent wrote: post #71
z3t4 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time i read about how hard it is to manage remote teams i think they have never played a mmo or been in a game clan.

Fair, but surely there is a lot of self-selection bias in this observation.

True, (and my self-selection has been in tech and legal work, where written communication is primary) but phrases from the article such as "essential", "crucial", and "vital" ring hollow when there are obvious counterexamples.

Re: Video chats short-circuit a brain function essential for trust?

#79

Post by tzs »

gamereality wrote: post #61
tzs wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What factors do you imagine would make it so that in, say, classic EverQuest people can form entirely online teams that work well together to accomplish lengthy tasks that require a high level of trust and cooperation that would not also apply to "real life" teams working to accomplish lengthy tasks that require a high level of trust and cooperation?

The stakes in video games are imaginary. Trust between real people in real life is completely different. For soldiers, athletes and even business leaders, the stakes are real and having an in-person relationship makes a difference.

Doesn't that actually bolster my case? If establishing trust is going to affect "real" stakes we've got a bigger incentive to make it work. It should be harder to make it work with "imaginary" stakes because the consequences of failing to establish successful trusting teams would be less.

Also, what is "real" and what is "imaginary"? Time is real regardless of if I spend it on something "real" like work or something "imaginary" like a game.

If I put in 30 hours helping my team on something that I don't actually find fun or interesting because I expect my team will later put in the time to help me with something I do find fun or interesting and my team lets me down I'm just as annoyed at the lost 30 hours if it is a game team as I am if it is a work team. Heck, at least with the work team I still get paid for those useless hours.

Re: Video chats short-circuit a brain function essential for trust?

#80

Post by logie17 »

I think there is a lot more that video apps can do to take the edge off or to make people feel more comfortable in meetings. Right now I think most tools are very rudimentary.

Full disclosure, I work for https://team.video and we're trying to make meetings more enjoyable. Just simple things like having built in agendas, games, and non-verbal feedback I think can go a long way to making a remote meeting way less painful and help build trust among your colleagues.

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