Collaborating, Gaming, and Toxicity (1000 word blog)

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Collaborating is an important aspect when it comes to just about anything that involves having a group of people together trying to achieve a common goal. Whether it is a small group of two or three people trying to put together some sort of presentation, a medium sized group of players in a video game that get put together that try to win, or a big group of people such as a sports team that are trying to win at the sport they are playing. All these groups or teams have to collaborate in order to achieve they're goals. With these different types of teams comes different ways to achieve success, the teams that I will be mostly talking about are the teams that are made over the internet or "virtual" teams. As stated in the article by Keith Ferrazzi "there's a world of difference between merely working together and truly collaborating with one another". This will come into play later in this blog when I go over gaming and toxicity, and how even if players are working "together" it really doesn't mean they are collaborating, well unless it’s a team that has been together for a while. Continuing with how virtual groups or teams can be successful in collaborating, what is described as a successful team that is where the whole group is more than just a group of individuals, however regardless of the taste it is still difficult for a team to successful. Ferrazzi also goes on to explain how it is extremely difficult it is for strangers who are being put together, from companies who could possibly have different cultural backgrounds to work together. Other issues that come along with having a team that can successfully collaborate is that you have to have people who are willing to put their egos aside and trust one another, which for some people it’s a lot harder than for others.

Image by: Vic (CC BY 2.0)

There are plenty of ways a team can come together to make a successful group, most of these ways have to do with the group working together in more ways than just working on the specific tasks they are given. They can do things such as maintaining some sort of online community or forum where ideas and thoughts from all over can be posted and discussed. Another option for team building that was discussed in the article is to play games together where collaborating with each other will be the key to overcoming the obstacles in the games they play. Such games that can be great for collaborating are games where different members will have to take different roles to succeed. From personal experiences games such as "World of Warcraft" and "Final Fantasy XIV" are great games when it comes to having to be able to do a specific task for your group, but as a whole you need everyone to do their role, or else your group will fail. Here is an example of how a group of people work together in one of these kinds of games.

In this video it shows the importance of each person doing their specific role, as well as being able to communicate with each other in a calm manner. To me this is a successful group that has put in the time and effort to have a good chemistry with one another. If all virtual team can get that kind of chemistry there wouldn't be any goal that would be considered unreachable. 

After talking about how gaming can help bring a group together to become a successful group, this brings be back to the quote "there's a world of difference between merely working together and truly collaborating with one another". I do believe this phrase to be quite sound, the group that I showed as the example of a group working together to beat the boss in the game is an example of a group that to be have truly learned to collaborate with each other. They put the extra time and effort to understand as a group what they wanted to do, and they were rewarded as the first ever group to complete that boss in that game. To me a random group of people would not have been able to pull that off, I also play this game with a "group" of people but, we are more on the lines of merely working together. 

This brings me to the last thing I am going to be discussing which is about we as a community could possibly make gaming a more successful as a collaborative thing, and how toxicity effects the efforts of the people who try to make it more collaborative. I bring this up because for players who are serious about games they play to the point they want to play the game at a high level, they will try to cooperate with the people they play with as much as possible. Sure, it isn't exactly on the same level as being a complete collaborating group, but in an essence, it comes close seeing especially at a high level. However, other players make this difficult as they spend more time being toxic complaining about other teammates because they cannot put aside their egos and work together. Even when companies try to get players to collaborate together to in order to twiddle down the amount of these type of players, because of these toxic players this is difficult as well. An example of this is in the article "Can a video company tame toxic behavior?" where the company Riot made a tribunal system where people can report others for bad behavior. However, because of toxic players also being able to report players, sometimes people who have done nothing wrong will be reported by the toxic players because they are feel that the person deserves it just because they are not playing well. 

For virtual groups collaborating is a must in order to succeed in most endeavors, however the process in doing so can be hard, as well as have lots of obstacles such as people who do not want to cooperate, or in online gaming the toxic player. However, if you are able to overcome these obstacles the group will succeed because each person are encouraged to work together and are able to sacrifice for the success of the team and not just for themselves.

Image by: Yong woo "kenzi' kim (CC BY-ND 2.0)

citations(readings)

Can a video game company tame toxic behavior? by Brendan Maher

How Successful Virtual Teams Collaborate by Keith Ferrazzi