Passage Four
I was talking with a senior Public Relations manager the other day about "The Game Trainers" and he expressed much doubt about both the possibility and value of getting senior professionals to play games.
These are serious people with serious jobs, and they are not going to waste time running around like school children,’ he told me. This statement highlighted many of his assumptions.
He also provided me with a golden opportunity to talk about how these "serious people with serious jobs" could actually learn something about themselves, their staff, their company, and their business opportunities by allowing creativity to flow more freely through "games".
His position is not uncommon and it comes from a deep seated misunderstanding of what a "game" is and what it is for, as well as a set notion of what "work" nmst look like for it to be considered of value. It’s not a coincidence (巧合) that the most successful companies of the last decade, including Apple and Google, were all started by college students, and perhaps as a consequence have at their core a spirit of fun， creativity and innovation. Their success has not been achieved through a strict work environment, dull meetings and a 9 to 5 work time. Instead they have flowing and flexible work spaces, a culture of cooperation, opportunities for creativity and relaxed work structures.
The Game Trainers support this innovative and highly productive approach to work by developing games to integrate into the working environment, And so, I said to the PR man, it’s a good thing that they are "serious people with serious jobs", because we also are extremely serious about play, and in today’s environment they simply cannot afford not to play games.