Live data from Hacker News

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

cbc.ca

91–99 of 99 posts

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

#91
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Video games != Real life

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?

For starters people are intrinsically motivated to accomplish video-game tasks while most people are only extrinsically motivated to accomplish work tasks. I'm having trouble believing you aren't being disingenuous.

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

#92
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.

It seems arbitrary to single out video games. How are sports less made up?

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

#93
post #87
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 github.

And IRC, and mailing lists.

I've been wondering how much boils down to introverted and extroverted types. Not long after the office lockdowns started, my work calendar became flooded with optional events sent to every employee. I can only view these as coping events, they serve no direct business need.

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

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It seems arbitrary to single out video games. How are sports less made up?

I think it's more about the near-infinite number of people you have to play with on video games vs in-person sports.

If you blow up at someone during a sports game, there will be real-world consequences for you, eventually you will not be able to play that game at all in your geographic area.

If you yell at people over a computer headset it doesn't matter what they think of you, you can simply move on to the next group of people. Very rarely (mostly at the very top levels) does reputation matter. And at the end of the day you can simply name change and escape your rep.

Interpersonally the stakes are orders of magnitude lower in video games than in RL.

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

#96
post #65
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…

Good insight, the leaders were in the thick of it. I don’t think anyone can argue many facets of society have disconnected leaders. Our politicians mostly are nothing like us, and the results show.

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

#97
post #91
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?

For starters people are intrinsically motivated to accomplish video-game tasks while most people are only extrinsically motivated to accomplish work tasks. I'm having trouble believing you aren't being disingenuous.

People also like to destroy other people's fun and scam them in video games.

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

#98
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.

I don't get it. Whatever you call "stakes" is just a personal goal set by yourself. It is by definition imaginary. An athlete cares about winning in sports competitions because he put a lot of work in it. In other words the athlete created his own stakes and conditioned himself to believe a certain thing is important. I don't care because I decided to not create these stakes for myself and therefore athletic performance is not very important.

The survival instinct is also a stake that living things create for themselves.

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

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems arbitrary to single out video games. How are sports less made up?

I think it's more about the near-infinite number of people you have to play with on video games vs in-person sports. If you blow up at someone during a sports game, there will be real-world consequences for you, eventually you will not be able to play that game at all in your geographic area. If you yell at people over a computer headset it doesn't matter what they think of you, you can simply move on to the next gro…

That's why guilds exist in videogames. You are surrounded by the same people every day just like at a physical company.
Post reply on HN