(empo-plaaybizz) Why you need gamers in your corporate environment

I had encountered something at work that involved network latency, so I did some online research to understand latency better. In the course of my research, I checked Wikipedia's definition of lag. The Wikipedia article included an introduction, then an overview...then a discussion of "Lag in Multiplayer Gaming."

I continued my research, and then ran across a thread on an Australian message board with a detailed discussion of problems in accessing World of Warcraft. The discussion included pings, reports of disconnections, and dozens upon dozens of traceroutes. The thread was active for several weeks in March and April 2009.

Why is it easier for me to find network latency write-ups for consumer applications, than it is to find write-ups for business applications?

Perhaps it's because business applications tend to be confidential. (You may have noticed that I refrained from saying WHY I was researching network latency.) While your average World of Warcraft player has no problem posting a traceroute, I seriously doubt that Alex Payne will be publishing traceroutes that involve his new employer.

It's undeniably true that a number of technical issues, from network latency to interface design, have benefited from major contributions of people who play games.

So maybe corporations need to seek people who are interesting in various types of games, since they will have a perspective that can be applied to business issues. Interestingly enough, AMD has a game forum that is devoted to the topic, and presumably gets a lot of intelligence from the forum members that can be applied to improving AMD products. Look at this question:

Im looking to overclock my processor (athlon II X2 240) but it is not supported in my bios (american megatrends). i have a compaq cq5320f with a m2n68-la (narra6) mobo, gigabyte radeon hd 4350 graphics card, nvidia mcp610 chipset.

Can i flash my bios or is there software to download to help with this. please help!!!!

I would hope that processor manufacturers and BIOS manufacturers were following that thread.

So you can argue that companies need to seek out gaming employees and gaming customers to advance their products. Then again, an argument can be made that our technical knowledge is also advanced by pornography, and I don't know that corporations want to actively seek out pornography consumers...

P.S. For a broader view of gaming and the enterprise, see Why Gaming is the Future of Everything.