The Impact of Cooperative Video Games on Team Cohesion

Abstract

In today’s economy, productivity and efficiency require collaboration between employees. In order to improve collaboration the factors affecting teamwork must be examined to identify where changes can be made in order to increase performance. One factor contributing to teamwork is team cohesion and represents a process whereby members are joined by a common bond in the pursuit of a common objective. A popular social bonding activity sweeping the world is playing cooperative video games. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of playing cooperative video games on team cohesion. Subjects (N=56) were randomly placed into 15 teams of three to four members. A modified Group Environment Questionnaire (GEQ) pretest was administered to determine the initial degree of cohesiveness between team members and to examine a wide cross-section of correlates and cohesiveness. Each team was randomly assigned to a specific intervention length of either one or three weeks with the one week groups playing for one hour and the three week groups playing for six hours. After the randomly assigned length of game play was completed, team members completed the modified GEQ posttest. The results of the posttest were compared with the pretest to determine the effect on the team’s cohesion. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics (means and standard deviations) and a 2 x 2 MANCOVA was used to determine if playing collaborative video games affected the level of cohesion. A mixed design was used as post hoc analyses for each GEQ cohesive factor and indicated that levels of cohesion increased due to the intervention but was not dependent upon the length of the intervention. The results of this analysis indicated that video games can be used as a team building experience to improve cohesion regardless of how long the video game is played.