[tzs]

> 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 required a lot of teamwork to reach the highest level content, with each team member having to put in effort equivalent to a full time job. EverQuest had a huge "death penalty" compared to pretty much every MMORPG since, with a death sometimes wiping out days or even weeks of advancement and preparation. It was designed so that you could do very little solo or even in small groups at the high end so you had to rely upon and trust your teammates.

Later MMORPGs toned it down a bit compared to EverQuest [1], but they still all had things that greatly benefited from successful trusting teams, and those teams formed in all of them.

[1] As did EverQuest itself. In fact, EQ today is actually a quite fun and interesting game to play solo. On a free play account you can reasonably get a character up to around level 50 solo, which was the limit in original EQ, and that solo character will be able to do a large fraction of what had been the high end content back in the day. On a paid account, which opens up access to more abilities, you can easily solo into at least the 80s or maybe 90s (115 is the current max level).

[z3t4]

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.

[tzs]

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 played, the "managers" were players out there on the front lines with the rest of the group. You didn't have someone whose role was to just direct and coordinate what the rest of the guild did, and represent the guild to outside interests. No, your "manager" was right out swinging a weapon or casting spells with the rest of the guild on a raid.

Maybe that's the difference? In a game, your "manager" on a team is just another one of the team who does all the normal things expected for the class of character they are playing and just happens to also be coordinating things. At work, manager is a distinct role very different from the roles of the people they are managing. Perhaps that changes the nature of team sufficiently to make trust harder to build?

[ZitchDog]

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.

[runawaybottle]

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.

[abvdasker]

I think there's a fundamental difference in underlying motivation which probably changes the dynamic. With work most people would rather be doing something else. For a game there's nothing else most people would rather be doing. I can't prove this, but I bet group cohesion and effectiveness is much higher for teams in which the members' motivation is intrinsic (fun) vs extrinsic (money).

[parliament32]

Exactly. If you've ever run an EVE corporation you probably have more business management skills that most MBAs.

[munificent]

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

[082349872349872]

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.

[theshrike79]

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

[snvzz]

EVE is more about not trusting.

You trust, you lose.

[ogrisel]

and github.

[Jach]

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.

[gamereality]

Video games != Real life

[tzs]

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?

[saiojd]

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.

[imtringued]

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

[gamereality]

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.

[tzs]

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.

[SketchySeaBeast]

I think you're vastly underestimating the importance of these games to people. If you're racing to world first for real world fame it actually has material stakes. Eve Online is famous by being able to transfer an actual real world monetary value to things. Real cash prizes can be on the line.

This stuff has real world as well as emotional value. Just because it's a video game doesn't mean it's less important to those participating in it.

[chillacy]

The stakes in pro sports are just as arbitrary and "imaginary" as in games... I know a lot of people who care more about their standing in a guild than in real life. At the end of the day it's still playing out in the brain just as real as any other competition.

[tmh88j]

> For soldiers, athletes and even business leaders, the stakes are real and having an in-person relationship makes a difference.

I've never met the majority of my coworkers in person and we're no less productive than when I work with other coworkers in person. The CEO is entirely remote too.

[imtringued]

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.

[dr0verride]

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

[Domenic_S]

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.

[imtringued]

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