Communication Skills in Construction Projects and Promoting Them Through Multiplayer Online Games

Construction projects are complex processes that demand high communication skills of all involved stakeholders. Multiplayer Online Games (MOG) are considered to be training environments for meta skills, including communication skills. This study aims to analyze whether communication skills required for construction projects could be trained in MOGs. For this purpose, based on literature research, initially half-hour interviews with construction project experts (N = 9) were conducted aiming at elaborating the problems of communication in construction projects and thus deriving learning goals regarding communication skills. As a result, five typical challenges affecting communication in construction projects were identified from literature and eight learning goals were derived from the analysis of the interviews. The learning goals were examined in focus group discussions with players of the MOG EVE Online (N = 14) to determine whether these learning goals regarding communication skills are also in demand in the MOG and trained accordingly. As a result, each of the learning goals could be trained at least basically through EVE Online. However, as a prerequisite of successful training, players must actively participate and communicate in the MOG. Accordingly, EVE Online might be used as a training environment for communication in construction projects especially for MOG-affine stakeholders in construction projects.