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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.