Stay tuned for more word on events in your area.
Today’s word: Adhocracy
Hmmm… sounds like one of my favorite game companies. Maybe we need more of them. It also sounds like one of the more notable social movements of recent years.
Let’s try it here first!
Characteristics of an adhocracy:
- highly organic structure[3]
- little formalization of behavior[1][3]
- job specialization not necessarily based on formal training
- a tendency to group the specialists in functional units for housekeeping purposes but to deploy them in small, market-based project teams to do their work[3]
- a reliance on liaison devices to encourage mutual adjustment within and between these teams[3][4]
- low standardization of procedures[1]
- roles not clearly defined[1]
- selective decentralization[1]
- work organization rests on specialized teams[1]
- power-shifts to specialized teams
- horizontal job specialization[4]
- high cost of communication[4] (dramatically reduced in the networked age)
- culture based on non-bureaucratic work[4]
When you have an Adhocracy - who needs a union?
“I will take the turnips.”
It’s funny how much expense we’ve added to content / quest creation over the last decade, despite not really improving the associated game play in many instances.
In EverQuest’s earliest days (1999), I talked to a NPC, received an item, traveled into a nearby zone, and gave the item to another NPC, thereby completing the quest and getting a reward.
Despite being instantly killed by the quest NPC a few times (due to hitting auto-attack while trying to type “hail” in the chat box), failing to get the quest item because my backpack was full, spending 45 minutes trying to find that goddam quest NPC (because there we’re no maps or quest arrows), and ultimately having to make up most of the story on my own (because there wasn’t very much, if any, quest text) —- I had fun.
