Rating: 1 of 5 stars
Got Game: How the Gamer Generation Is Reshaping Business Forever by John C. Beck & Mitchell Wade
This book was a big disappointment. Part of the reason for that was basic timeliness; it was published in 2004 and we all know how quickly our world is changing. The entire volume is basically reporting the results of a survey the authors conducted, and that data must have been gathered at least a year before the publish date.
So a lot of the facts are out of date; for instance they talk a lot about what a solitary activity gaming is, and today that’s often not really true. But you can’t blame the authors for the passage of time.
What you can blame them for is creating a divide where no divide exists. The book is written for “Baby Boomer” managers who are wary of hiring “Gamers.” And the authors apparently tag all of us with one of those two labels. You are either a Boomer or a Gamer, and that distinction seems to be based on the year of your birth, with little regard for how you spend your time.
Now maybe my experience is atypical, but I can’t remember a manager ever saying to me “This kid’s resume looks pretty good but we shouldn’t hire him; he’s one of those damned Gamers!”
Essentially the two authors conjured a problem out of thin air, then surveyed a bunch of people and spun their findings to apply to their fake problem, and wrote a book about it all. And apparently then they repeated a process with a second book published in 2006.
Avoid this one. You’re not going to learn a thing from it.
I’ve seen two articles in the past year about hiring gamers. One suggested that gamers who were in charge of raids in MMOs would fit well in leadership roles, and, as many games require a certain amount of multitasking, said that gamers would make for great hires. The other article declared that gamers are a group of slouches who stay up all night chained to their computers and come into work the next day unprepared and unfocused; avoid them at all costs, the article cried.
It’s all a bunch of nonsense. I hate reading these kinds of articles/books. I used to work for my family’s medical spa, and the big trend in spa ownership magazines for a while was to discuss “Gen Ys”: what kind of work environment they require, what their work ethic is, etc. After seeing a similar version of the same article in three different magazines in the same month, I quit reading them.