The Business of Free - An Experience Using Online Gaming

Often times many of the professionals and leaders I meet do not really understand the premise of building value by giving away things such as products or services for free. They cite past failures, the overall costs of what they are giving away vs. the intangibles of valuation, or any number of other reasons.

I used to be an avid online gamer running a large in-game organization called a guild. Now in many ways running a guild is like running a company. There was an organization structure which was pretty flat, leader, leadership council, veterans and members. The guild was pretty large, about 150 people at it's peak who were spread out across the globe representing the United States (all time zones), many countries in Europe such as England, France, Scotland, Italy, in addition to other countries like New Zealand and Australia. We all coordinated our communication via in-game chats and voice-over-ip chat clients.

Guilds in online games also share another dimension with businesses in that they want to grow and expand. Not only membership which is fine, but in terms of placing themselves in a winning position within the confines of the game they play. They want to be among the top earners, have a great reputation towards their target market, and above all have fun doing so. After all gamers actually pay money in addition to spending time in these worlds.

One key practice and belief that I used for our guild happened to be the idea of giving back to the community of gamers. This meant a doing a few things:

• Volunteer 8 hours a week to help those in the gaming world with quests, new items or charitable donations. We all remembered what it meant to start from scratch or face ingame hardships. So by helping others we could help ease some of these problems others were facing. This translated into positive reputations with other guilds offering their services to assist in volunteer events whether it be other items, coin donations, or time from their members.
• Donate items or coins to other players. When guild members could do so, they would devote a small portion of their proceeds from their time in the guild to the guild banks. A portion of these would be used to make donations back to the community or give items to those in the game. This again increased the reputation of the guild within the game and increased interest in guild events which helped boost overall guild revenue and morale.
• Being a guide/teacher. Another way the guild gave back was to mentor or guide groups of lower level players for a period of time, such as growing from one level to another, getting through a certain adventure, or teaching them how to progress in their ingame profession/class. Newer players loved the experience since it helped them learn things far more quickly than would have normally been achieved and veterans increased their teaching skills and in many cases created bonds with newer players that lasted outside of the game. Overall guild members became more invested in the guild and with what it stood for resulting in increased performance and participation.

These practices not only increased the pride members had in the guild and what it was doing, it had tangible effects on how the guild operated within the game. We recruited top notch talent who would help with some of the most difficult adventures in the game and bring us through it successfully. Guild income increased not only due to membership size, but because of our participation in the world through successfully completion of key adventure objects and increased donations from the gaming community to our guild.

Another big achievement was that our guild members learned a lot about each other in real life. We were of varied backgrounds, economic groups and social levels yet worked really well without many of us having seen each other. One person was a professional lawyer offering legal advice and counsel to those who needed it. Another person was a counselor helping individuals with tough life challenges. Gamers within the guild and outside the guild talked about how much they learned both personally and professionally such as how to participate with virtual teams that they had never seen face-to-face.

In this setting not only had my goal of giving away things for free helped our guild, but the individuals and gaming community that had participated as well.

The inability to see how things can work from different perspectives is one of the greatest weaknesses of many technical professionals. This is mostly due to an age old thinking that being an "expert" means that being wrong or perceived as not the top of the game is a critical flaw. In fact what instead tell professionals the greatest weakness is not admitting your own. There are many millions of people participating in online games as an example whether they be first person shooters or gaming worlds. The skills these individuals are learning, applying and mastering give such as virtual collaboration both in real time and offline interactions are far superior in many cases to many professionals I have seen in the workplace.

Many business concepts such as doing things for free can be tremendously insightful and revealing in these online games. It is by no means the only way. However those professionals that do not explore alternative views to concepts that have worked in my opinion not only limit their careers but will ultimately end them as they find themselves replaced by individuals better equipped to handle different situations.