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Should Gaming Worlds Join the Workplace?
destinyland writes "A Stanford professor argues that gaming worlds can keep workers engaged, and advocates elements of World of Warcraft or Second Life to hone workplace skills like teamwork, leadership, and data analysis. An IBM report also argues games like World of Warcraft teach leadership and that 'there is no reason to think the same cannot be done in corporate settings of various sizes.' The professor even suggests putting online gaming experiences into your resume. ('There's just so much that gets done [in a virtual world] that's just right on target with what happens in real business.') And Google's CEO also claims that multiplayer gaming also provides good career training, especially for technology careers. 'Everything in the future online is going to look like a multiplayer game. If I were 15 years old, that's what I would be doing right now... It teaches players to build a network, to use interactive skills and thinking.'"
A year or so ago, I helped my client (a large corporation) look into using virtual worlds and MMOs as platforms for learning and collaboration. I also play MMOs, which helped. And I am familiar with the notion put forth by this professor; companies like IBM have already done some research into the subject. Anyway...
WoW and similar games can indeed hone or help assess leadership skills.... but only with people who already play Wow. For newbies, the time to learn play the game and train up to a level where there are meaningful leadership and teaming aspects (raids) is largely wasted. There are already better business simulations out there that are tailored to business situations. For instance: running a raid organisation is closer to leading a group of volunteers than to managing a corporate team. Different objectives, different leadership style. If you are looking for leadership and team working simulations that can be done virtually, I'd look for existing p&p business simulation games and port them to a platform like Second Life. The big advantage being that such a simulation hardly requires any training to work the simulation itself; after a short newbie obstacle course you can jump straight into the game itself.
Virtual platforms offer a range of possibilities for new ways of learning, especially experiential learning in areas like HSE, leadership, self assessment and team working, but sadly there still is very little training material in virtual environments out there. We're proceeding to roll our own. WoW is far too complex a game and far too removed from business relevant objectives to serve as an effective learning platform.
Putting WoW skillz on your resume? Too early, perhaps. But... if someone is leading a consistently successful raid team, I would readily assume that they have leadership skills worth looking into.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
The same was said about sports. "Leadership... teamwork... initiative... coordination... motivation... blah... blah... etc." And they were right. Up to a point. What I'd like to see commissioned is a study comparing the two: who makes for a better Future Corporate Asshole, the quarterback of the high school football team, or the high school WoW guild leader?
The element of a virtual world that I'd like to see in my RL workspace is a large rail gun out of Eve Online that I could use to convince clients to pay on time...