Massively Multiplayer Online Games as Information System: Implications for Organizational Learning

In this chapter, we discuss the implications of the information systems structures of massively multiplayer online role-playing games to organizational learning that takes place within them or connected to them. The games consist of three interdependent information systems: an information retrieval system accessed by using game content as its keywords, a social system formed by the players, and an expanded system that extends outside of play proper, in the form of experience records like game blogs and videos. By developing their procedural literacies, players learn to analyze the systems and to compare their content and logics to the real world. In-game groups in turn use strategic practices to spread such learning organization-wide, in order to foster efficiency and better content access. By cleverly using briefing, debriefing, and strategizing procedures, real-world organizations too can then learn from these processes, as they free their members from individual learning traps and extend the lessons gained from voluntary gaming into absorptive and adaptive real-world practices.