IBM's Management Games

[CaptStu]

Are we trending towards the virtual office? That may depend on how IBM's latest experiment goes. Forget Second Life, IBM is producing something called Innov8, a virtual world video game that could best be described as "Second Office." And it's coming soon, according to a movie-trailer-like video promotion spotted on YouTube (View It Here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfzR_I9N15k)). It looks like Innov8 is striving to be the ultimate training tool, used to help tech managers better understand the various responsibilities taken on by a business leader, such as running a call center, operating a brokerage account, or processing an insurance claim.

The game's primary purpose is to educate with just a dash of entertainment. The program will be available free of charge to universities around the world, both on the Web and as desktop software. Corporations of course will have to pay something.

More At Business Week (http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2007/tc20070613_838152.htm)

Post text courtesy of Media Post (http://www.mediapost.com/).

[Slack3r78]

This doesn't sound all that disimilar to the Croquet Project (http://www.opencroquet.org/index.php/Main_Page). Croquet is the pet project of Alan Kay (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Kay) of Xerox PARC fame.

If you have any interest in computing whatsoever, you owe it to yourself to go check out the video (http://www.lisarein.com/alankay/tour.html#video) of Alan's Etech 2003 presentation. It's a real eye opener so far as where computing might be headed and, more importantly, where we've actually already been -- decades ago. As the talk is subtitled, the computer revolution hasn't happened yet.

[Xzyliac Noise]

Saw this this morning. Sounds like corporate cheese to me. Second Life was popular because of community first. This sucks all that out.

[Slack3r78]

Having now watched that video, this is nowhere near as cool a technology as Croquet is. Croquet is built very heavily around user-collaboration, which I'm just not seeing in that IBM video.

[digitalErich]

Damn, my mad FPS skills would get me those left over cookies in the conference room everytime. Joe would try to be all sneaky cutting through the copier room but I'd be all like "double jump, circle strafe"...../win

[KingGorilla]

This is an interresting idea. As a hardware company, Lernovo/IBM, I have been very satisfied with my Thinkpad. This fucker is ugly as sin, but it runs like a champ and it is tough as a tank. But what exactly is this? I mean, is it a true game, or is it more like a Second Life/ PS Home, where you just gussy up AIM or IRC?

[Slack3r78]

But what exactly is this? I mean, is it a true game, or is it more like a Second Life/ PS Home, where you just gussy up AIM or IRC?
From the look of things, the latter. There's nothing in the demo video to suggest it has near the level of actual environment interaction that Croquet does. Croquet, for example, allows you to pull arbitrary desktop applications into the network environment and visibly share them with other users. It also uses a portal system for navigation I'm not seeing in Innov8.

[Klade]

Its a computer created office... they can make it look like whatever they want. They could place the entire thing on top of a giant floppy eared rabbit circling an Orange the size of the sun.

Instead they make cubicles.... an office environment so detested some companies have advertised their lack as a selling point when gathering new employees.