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World of Warcraft Can Boost Your Career
Hugh Pickens writes "Forbes reports that although videogames have long been thought of as distractions to work and education rather than aids, there is a growing school of thought that says game-playing in moderation, and in your free time, can make you more successful in your career. 'We're finding that the younger people coming into the teams who have had experience playing online games are the highest-level performers because they are constantly motivated to seek out the next challenge and grab on to performance metrics,' says John Hagel III, co-chairman of a tech-oriented strategy center for Deloitte. Elliot Noss, chief executive of domain name provider Tucows, spends six to seven hours a week playing online games and believes World of Warcraft trains him to become a better leader."
It stands to reason that you're learning something when playing a game. It's only a question of how useful that something is in the rest of your life.
Your god may be dead, but mine aren't!
Elliot Noss, chief executive of domain name provider Tucows, spends six to seven hours a week playing online games and believes World of Warcraft trains him to become a better leader."
Six to seven hours a week? There's a term for someone who plays such an excessive amount of online games. Let me see if I can think what it is... Oh yeah. I remember now.
That term is "NOOB".
If you don't have a gearscore over 5.5k you won't get an interview!
makes running a mere business department almost child's play.
politics.
prima donnas.
80% of people are users.
sexual harrassment.
achieving short and long term goals.
managing the sheer logistics of a well balanced guild.
learning to delegate to staff.
etc.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Running (or trying to run) a significant guild in WoW can teach you more about human group dynamics and people management than you could ever want to know :)
This time I spent playing WoW was *incredibly* valuable to me in this regard, and I don't consider that time wasted at all.
G.
...to justify playing an MMO as a leadership opportunity. I wonder if he's getting paid those 6-7 hours as on the job training?
...people have been translating/inventing "lessons learned in the virtual world" to the boardroom for quite sometime. Which is not to say it's not all bullshit.
There's definitely some truth in that. One thing that especially strategy games can teach is to deal with resource constraints and to strike a balance between the different objectives that must be pursued, especially a balance between short-term defensive action and the pursuit of mid-term to long-term strategic goals.
I first heard a manager say this in December 1995. He was one of my business contacts and around that time became VP Sales & Marketing of Germany's largest publisher of dictionaries and language-learning materials. I had done some work on the German version of Warcraft II - Tides of Darkness (PR, marketing, sales, and translation; got listed twice in the game's credits) and I gave copies to business partners like the person I just mentioned. He became addicted to it and told me that when his wife criticized him for spending so much time on the thing, he explained to her that this was basically like management training :-)
At the time computer games weren't online, so except for those who went to "LAN parties" with other gamers, gameplay was a solo mission. Now one can actually practice leadership and diplomacy. But even just the virtual resource management challenge of a game like Warcraft II has value in itself.
When I was running the NoSoftwarePatents campaign years ago, it also felt like real-time strategy in many respects :-) And lots of Orcs to fight against.
Moderation is the key here. Most WoW players that I know do not play in moderation. The time spent playing this game and other Online RPGS is very out of balance with other things that are much more important in life. Such as your marriage, your kids, your job and many other necessary things. If you are single this may not be the case, but you know the point I am trying to make. Please do not get me wrong here, there are those who can play with moderation and more power to you. I myself have done my fair share of online grinding to hit my toons level cap, but I also know that there is a very fine line between healthy online playing and being severely out of balance.
If that's true, then why is everybody I know of who plays WoW or other similar games an overweight unemployed loser?
I would absolutely agree.
I tend to be the follower type, happy to do as I am told rather than the leader type coming up with the big plan, so to get some experience in a leadership role, I started a guild in another game (not WoW, but one that tends to attract more players in the 30+ age group) specifically for this purpose. It was an interesting experience, and I was surprised at how willing people are to take direction from a leader and have the burden of decision making taken off their shoulders. I also learnt a lot about resolving group conflicts and expectation management.
Overall the experience greatly increased confidence in my ability to lead a group. Another thing I learnt was that often it doesn't matter what decision you make - right or wrong - as long as you make one and accept the consequences, rather than dithering and doing nothing.
... the only thing WoW teaches anybody is to learn how to waste money on a game that's less of a game then single player RPG's of years past.
I don't think it matters quite what you're doing (WoW or otherwise). As long as it's a people- and team-oriented, competitive experience, you're going to get something valuable from it.
Don't forget that the infamous intarwebs anonymity occasionally has benefits: like allowing people to try out a leadership role (yeah, with other actual human beings following them!) that they might never get in real life.
I'm pretty sure they've all had better careers because of WoW, and of course the majority of the WoW team HAS a career because of it, so its certainly made their careers better.
I would like to point out however, the rest of us have know that 'games boost your career' for years.
Why do you think people play golf? Its not about liking golf, its a awesome way to get someone drunk and talk about business while in a relaxed setting. You get far more accomplished in this setting than you do in a conference room or office. People let their guard down and feel they can trust someone more in that environment, makes deals far more likely to happen.
Real business happens on the golf course. WoW is just another golf course.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
...to run a domain name provider? Let's face it, they're not exactly curing cancer. People who spend half their lives playing WoW are probably well suited to sitting at computers for hour after hour, pushing buttons that are wired to produce reward or punishment at just the right intervals to keep people pushing buttons. Not that different from a lot of dead-end IT jobs, actually. But I wouldn't equate that with WoW being excellent training for anything else.
Huge suprise. People motivated by in-game rewards of questionable value as a result of grinding, are also motivated by cheap to worthless company 'rewards'. The fact you're grinding together in a group may make it less of a drag than grinding alone, but it's still grinding.
"Elliot Noss, chief executive of domain name provider Tucows, spends six to seven hours a week playing online games and believes World of Warcraft trains him to become a better leader." Love it!!!!
Correlation does not mean causation?
I've probably spent most of my gaming time playing nethack. I wonder if that counts for anything. I've learned not to steal from shopkeepers, you should always know where the stairs are, and that eating cats is a bad idea. Sadly, writing "Elbereth" on your desk won't keep you from getting fired. It does seem to keep the giant ants away, though.
There are 10 commandments: 01)Thou shalt love the Lord Thy God 10)Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.Matt22:34-40
I haven't been on there since the turn of the century.
It can help your career skills! If anyone actaully finds out that you play, it can seriously harm your career. Regardless of what real-life benefits it might confer, it still comes with a huge stigma. This is the main reason why Blizzard recent efforts with RealID were uniformly rejected by the community. Many gamers, especially MMO-gamers, are still in the "closet" to their friends and co-workers.
Whatever happened to "correlation is not causation"? The article is a little short of scientific evidence to back up its claims except for a few anecdotal stories. Maybe it could be that the types of people who excel at WoW, or are drawn to playing particular games, already have these particular traits. The game may help them realise this, but to say gaming can boost your career is just a silly headline to grab attention. Just because the article is talking about a positive effect of games doesn't mean we shouldn't think about this critically.
'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
[rant]
I was very motivated when I started my current job. New skillset to learn, techniques to master, more acronyms and experience to add to the resume. Plus, they were very up front about their policy of "promoting from within." I was overqualified for the job and figured that I would be able to move up quickly to a more suitable position. To me, the job was similar to WoW in a lot of regards; it was a tedious grind, but practice and effort would be rewarded, right?
[gripe]
Not so much. I found out that the company (despite being a major player in the bioscience world) was run with a mindset similar to that of a fast food joint. We are paid to show up, not for the results we produce. Promotions are based solely around the amount of time that you've been in your position, not around your skills or expertise. For example, a coworker of mine with an online bachelors degree in an unrelated field and no job experience outside of her work at this location just got promoted, while I, with an MS in biotech and years of experience before starting here was passed over because she started working there a couple months before I did. To them, the date on the calendar is the only metric of our performance that matters. They won't even give me a better reference for the extra work; corporate policy is that references are to confirm only the dates of employment and the position held; nothing more. And so the grind became pointless, and rather than honing my skills or going the extra mile, I'm now content with simple mediocrity. There's no motivation to excel, and even less motivation to improve things;(those that reinforce the status quo are much more likely to meet with frustration than those who rock the boat).
[/gripe]
Contrast that to WoW, where the skill level of individual players is more readily apparent, and recognition is given based more on skill than on time spent logged in (This of course assumes something more organized than a PUG - a measure that any decent business should easily surpass). So in my experience, the corporate world could stand to be a little more like WoW than they currently are.
[/rant]
Part of the reason I got my current job was because I was a gamer. It was something they were looking for, but only because they all were as well :)
I definitely agree. I learned a lot about social dynamics and the power of leadership through the various guilds and whatnot I have been involved with leading.
And World of Warcraft also now promotes working with essentially random groups of people. Recognize the weakest link, and ducking out before you've wasted too much time in a losing proposition.
However, that part about them being heavily concerned about gaming performance gauges concerns me... when people are gaming the measurements, you're not getting a true representation of the criteria that you really care about...
Perhaps though, this also means that people will be better able to recognize when someone is clearly overrated... Sure, your gearscore may be epic, but you're playing like a noob.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
If it doesn't help you get a job, at least you'll have chicken.
VP Sales & Marketing of Germany's largest publisher of dictionaries and language-learning materials
This is clearly either Duden, or Berlitz. Because of the language-learning side, I'm leaning towards Berlitz, but it's not the first one that came to mind.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
People who play world of warcraft have no lives. This is exactly what certain companies (especially high tech) are looking for. Young employees who will sit down in front of a computer for a million hours without any family or friends to draw them away.
----
Go canucks, habs, and sens!
It's something for your bosses to worry about as something that takes attention away from your job.
It's something that, if they know about it, can cause prospective employers to be biased against you and accept another applicant in your place, even with lesser credentials than you have.
And the employment experience funny?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
If you can harness the boundless source of energy that is the Gold Farmer to do mundane corporate tasks, you can rule the world.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
But please, do not put this on your resume as one of your skills, or as leadership experience. Some people do this, and it generally just gets them laughed at.
When I played WoW, I led a medium sized guild. And yes, it definitely improved my "soft skills", aka people management, leadership, etc. Organizing raids, reducing guild drama, keep em entertained, recruiting new players without making it feel like a job and thousand other things.
Oh, and cram all that into 4h a day at evening max.
On second thought, let's not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.
So that means when I see all these women playing farmville I can say they are in training? Ya know, training for repetitive and boring jobs, like house work, cooking, sectary jobs, and other low paying jobs. hahaha
I think you are missing the whole "Interacting with humans" dynamic.
You can have a brilliantly scripted game, but it will always be just that, a scripted game.
Humans add an element of unpredictability that will keep you on your toes.
After you master the "game", you start to learn what really makes the game tick, the variability of human interaction.
I think that human interaction is what the original article is referring to, and what elevates an MMORPG above a standard RPG.
This is obviously debatable, but I assure you that leadership of a robot (NPC) squad bears very little resemblance leading 4 or 5 humans into the fray.
You can't take the sky from me
This is clearly either Duden, or Berlitz. Because of the language-learning side, I'm leaning towards Berlitz, but it's not the first one that came to mind.
Duden belongs to the publishing group I meant (Langenscheidt).
On a smaller level, running raids is training in team leadership.
You have to know the weaknesses and strenghts of (potential) members while assembling the group and during the fight, you need to "know your enemy", do some tactical planning and serve as a guide before the encounters and you (often) need to give in-encounter commands.
There's also a low level of personality management (especially in Pick-UP Groups) involved and sometimes you have to take hard decisions (like kicking a very underperforming member for a new one).
Wouldn't it be equally as likely that, say, people who are driven to achieve do better in WoW /and/ real life? Actually, I find that MORE likely than the idea that WoW makes lazy people goal-oriented and gives them a personal drive...
http://www.tenjou.net/
Gamers know how to game the system, big surprise. Performing well in performance metrics does not imply you perform well on the job (although "managers" might disagree). It means you know how the reward system works, and can maximise the return on the amount of effort you put in.
...to justify a gamer wasting his life away by accomplishing tasks completely useless to the planet and society.
If you build, you understand. Build something. People skills are soft. Building a guild is a social structure, not a capital good. Building things will become progressively easier. You can start a business around what you produce. Don't just be a player in an existing structure. Build!
Management skills and combat skills have both the same difficulty, hard to train without doing it for real and the risk are often just to big for it to be done for real.
How do you gain leadership experience when no business in their right mind is going to give a kid a chance? Oh we got this project that the future of the company depends on, lets give it to the new guy. See if he got what it takes.
That is why things like taking part in school activities, running the school newspaper COUNT during a job interview. Shows you did more then just sit on your arse, that you can do something. Lead, take charge.
MMO raid leaders and guild leaders are just the new coach of the highschool soccer team.
If you never played these games, or suck at it, it might not be clear, so allow me to illustrate with Lord of the Rings Online, my own waste of time.
Situation: Minstrels are the primary healing class and you can't find any. What do you do?
Answer 1: I sit there for hour after hour spamming the chat channels asking, demanding no screaming for a minstrel.
Answer 2: I look at the classes I have got and adjust the strategy to handle the situation, for instance by relying on captains for healing and asking the DPS classes to trade some DPS for survivability.
Who would you hire? NO, the point is NOT that knowing that captains can very effective healers or that good champions (dps class that dies a lot) can adjust their style to be less squishy makes you a good manager. The trick is that the second answer showed you can be flexible. Work around a problem rather then beat yourself to death against it.
Situation: Level 65, the discussion on whether the game should be more solo friendly.
Person A: Yes, I am a champ and never can find anyone for the very hard stuff I can't just DPS my way through and I am not a member of a kin because they all suck and expect constant hand holding.
Person B: No, I am a captain and finding a fellowship is easy enough, I start by asking in chat channel if someone else needs it, and if I need to I ask for help from my kin and friend list, since I am a captain, I can always summon someone to my side, a really useful skill. And a captain is always welcome since we give nice boosts to everyone else.
Who do you hire for your team? The DPS who can only DPS because everyone is working their ass of the keep him alive? The prima dona? Or the team player, the guy who knows he is best when he works with others to offset his own shortcoming and augment other peoples strong points?
It makes no real difference if it is a MMO, a knitting club or the rugby team. You can tell what kind of person they are by their role in their team. And if you find a person who doesn't play a team sport, doesn't play group games... well smile a lot and get the interview over as quickly as possible because you got yourself a psycho.
Being a successful raid leader means you can make over a dozen people work together who all have their own agenda and who can't be fired. Compared to that, running a multi-national is a piece of cake. Not because leading a raid is the same as leading a business team but because the essential skills have a lot in common. It is what the obstacle course is to real combat. Not the same at all, but the best you can get without actually going to war to train your soldiers. How else is a 16 year old going to get leadership experience? I am perfectly willing to raid with a young kid in charge even if they never done it before. That is how you learn, but have the same kid lead a project at work? No thanks.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
err Trolls.....
Not any more.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
I'll find my frog
Who took my frog /goingtohell
Bonus points for anyone who can guess the name of his Tauren Char
chief executive of domain name provider Tucows
How things change. When I see "Tucows", I still think of "The Ultimate Collection of Winsock Software". But then they started listing software that didn't use winsock... and then people stopped using the term "winsock" at all... and then they created the OpenSRS domain registration service... and now they are known as "domain name provider Tucows".
wow has been so simplified for the masses at this point, that is not the case anymore. they have unfortunatly made the game to easy to please everyone.
>When I was running the NoSoftwarePatents campaign years ago, it also felt like real-time strategy in many respects :-) And lots of Orcs to fight against.
Not to mention all the trolls...
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
lol, yeah it still does.
I can verify this. I've seen people put MMO/Guild Master on their resume. We laugh at them. And as a guild member and a leader in the corporate world I can tell you that while there may be parallels, the one in no way prepares you for the other. Don't put it on your resume. Don't talk about gaming in interviews. Even as a gamer I wouldn't hire you. Why? I know from personal experience 99.999% of WoW players are morons and whiners who stand in fire and cry about gearscore and dps charts, so statistically you would probably be a terrible employee.
is the game I've been playing lately, although I have been suckered into the expansion: VPN: Peerstone of the Kingdom. The odd thing? Not only has it boosted my career, my employers actively support my playing it!
For anyone that thinks WOW and the ilk are nothing more than task missions and time sinks, I laugh at your assessment. You do not know grinding until you've played the entire 12 hour bug hunting mission in one sitting and then jumped straight into the chaotic and twist riddled OD: The Binding campaign (spoiler: It turns out that OD was merely a henchman to the evil, bastard AD!).
#SickNotWeak
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You do some code type stuff that isn't a game because programming has become your video game. At least that's what I explain to the WOWers I meet at work. It's not that I don't like to play games it's just that I like to code more than playing games.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
[citation needed]
Pick-up groups in any mmorpg generally suck. And newsflash the internet is a mirror of the real world.
that is all.
No but you can write it in your hobbies. "Leader of a 25 man team in a popular MMORPG for X years". If they catch on it, you explain how it works, which should be pretty easy because it's probably harder than the job you're going to have. Probably because employees are less likely to quit than guild members.
I think the same can be said for many SIM and/or multi-player games. Especially the ones that give the user a number of variables to manage and control in real time, for real time multi-player games, or else in turns for turn-based games. Even if the variables are "dumbed-down" or distorted, compared to their "real world counterparts", simply going through the exercise of keeping up with multiple things, making executive decisions (right or wrong, make a choice and keep moving), and dealing with the consequences does do a lot to prepare someone for dealing with similar things in real life. I don't believe it auto-magically bestows someone with an MBA, but it does give them an opportunity to face leadership challenges in a controlled and safe manner, and to face many more than they would likely otherwise encounter in their day-to-day "real" lives. Another thing that SIM games do is lets someone experiment with extremes in situations that don't cause actual harm-- except to the SIM's of course, and I think we're safe there until they unionize...
Moreover, I think different types of SIM games are useful for preparing people for different types of real-world situations. While that may seem apparent, I think people often develop "tunnel vision" and only consider the type of game they're currently playing or else have played and may be overlooking lessons that can be learned from other genres. Some SIM games focus on the tactical while others focus more on the long-term strategic. Some emphasize command and leadership "in the heat of the moment" while others emphasize a more wizened approach. Each has its merits and each teaches the players useful lessons that can be applied, at least to some degree, back in their "real lives".
Then there are the various social, interactive, cooperative and/or antagonistic lessons that can be learned from massive-multi-player games. Some games may help players learn how to work cooperatively in a team environment to accomplish a task or a goal. Others may help players develop better socializing skills that can translate to better interpersonal / collegiate relationships in the work environment (how many geeks do we all know who can't even make eye contact in the real world?) And some games may assist a player in honing their diplomatic and negotiating skills.
In the past people used to downplay the possible game versus real-world benefits and synergies that are possible, but I don't know why it should really be all that surprising to anyone really, since the idea of making models, sampling, making measurements, performing statistical analysis, creating simulations-- whether paper or computer-based, have all been classic and time-honored methods of developing an understanding and preparing ourselves to meet some as-of-yet unmet challenge. Going to the moon, for example-- nobody had ever done that before. And yet some method of understanding and preparing the people involved had to be invented and incorporated into the program. And the astronauts and engineers had to do their best to prepare themselves, through practice and simulation, to meet a challenge that nobody on earth had ever faced before them. As the real events played-out, not everything went according to the plans and simulations, but at the very least, they did have *some* practice, and *some* thought previously toward how to best meet their challenges.
There is an old saying that I think applies: "Luck is when opportunity meets preparation."
How better to prepare, if no other method exists, than through simulation and gaming?
Is that my (late)dog communicates to me through my coffee maker. What flaming BS..
Played Ultima Online, Everquest, Anarchy Online, Dark Ages of Camelot, World of Warcraft and Eve Online. EQ & WoW definitely return what you put into them - if you want to treat it as a second job you'll be rewarded. That means show up prepared for rigidly scheduled raids; have all your materials, know all the fights, be at the staging point on time, etc, etc then there's a good chance if you or your guild has some strong leaders and perfectly co-ordinated guildies you'll have the phattest lewt in the game. This is also assuming you're willing to put up with weeks or months of grinding through those raids and not getting anything yourself and watching the good stuff go to players perceived to have more value. So yeah, there's a reason these games prepare you for work: they're exactly like IRL jobs.
In my personal opinion, people start playing these games because of their Skinner-box nature and the immediacy of the low-level rewards; it doesn't take long to get level's 1-10 in any of the games with levels and suddenly the player is hooked on chasing the next "Bing!". They find an online replacement that rewards them in a way real life does not. The irony is that their online success partially equips them with the skills to achieve in real life.
maybe they are just addicted rather than looking out for a challenge...
can be, can be. But I think one thing is forgotten - WoW is still a virtual life AND war-like one. Life is (for most of the readers here) is longer then 2 years and (luckily) not happening in a war zone. WoW teaches skills which are effectively killing companies on along run - fast rewards, win by any price, etc. It is how great american enterprises whent belly up (some of them end up being saved by "users"). I would agree this is great learning experience - but I think skills learned are damaging (on a long run). And, for most yonger players, it is just huge waste of time depraving them from the time to learn/live.
All that guild management taught me is that people, in general, are dicks. Ignorant, illogical dicks
Sounds like this guy... plays WoW...like a BOSS. /dons sunglasses //yeeaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
So next thing you know your employers will look at your history of /guits and deserter buffs to predict whether or not you are hire-able.
After all, we're here to ninja "need" on all their BOE epics anyhow for all the gold it converts to.
Happiness is pwning your manager in PvP.
Old style pen-and-paper roleplaying works for this too. You have fewer people to deal with but you get to see their faces and body language. I would venture that online RPGs may build management skills and pen-and-paper, face-to-face games may build "soft" interpersonal skills.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
The "weakest link" in a group is actually often going to be the person who looks at the group and quickly comes to the judgment that it will fail and then leaves based on metrics like Gear Score or "LOL Pally only has 25khp!" Or quitting because not everyone has the achievement for whatever it is that's about to be done.
That person is basically saying that they are incapable of running a dungeon without everyone being INSANELY overgeared for it and they are not willing to take any risks in an environment where the absolute worst thing you're risking is about 10-15 minutes of your time. Further, they're also poor judges of risk/reward: if you drop out of a random group before a certain amount of time is up, you can't join another random group for a bit, so they traded being in a group that might or might not be good (and losing 10-15 minutes of their time) for DEFINITELY not being in a group (and losing 10-15 minutes of their time).
Finally, though this is not always the case it seems to often be the case, these people are the ones who, when they are on a team they will behave like prima donnas. If it's a tank, anyone who doesn't behave exactly as the tank wants will be votekicked or the tank will just drop group because they can get an instant queue (once their timeout is over). If it's a healer, they'll bitch and moan and possibly drop group, but in any case it's not so great for team cohesion. If it's a DPS role, well, they'll just call people scrubs, and behave like they're incredibly important despite the fact that they can be instantly replaced.
So, if you want a bunch of people who will quit at the first sign of adversity, are lousy at assessing risk vs. reward, are unwilling to take on new challenges or risks, are deadly to team morale and cohesion, and who generally rely on expending VASTLY more resources on a project than the goals of the project merit in order for it to have any "success" then yes, by all means, pick people who's judgment has been "honed" by the random group tool in WoW.
Mind you, I personally like the tool because I'm 99.9% of the time playing a tank, so I have instant queues. I also know how to play tanks well, and can adapt my tanking style to handle teammates who are poorly geared or overgeared (which has its own problems) and of whatever skill level. The only time it gets dicey is if I have a bad (read: does not know how or is unwilling to manage their heals effectively so minimize the windows where a string of unlucky numbers can cause a wipe) healer, but even then I'll take a minute to ask them if they want advice to make things go more smoothly.
I will say that in general, guilds in WoW are not really my favorite thing, BUT I have learned some valuable lessons from being guilded and having to manage that:
- Don't have preconceived ideas of how people might behave or how mature they might be based on demographics. I've had remarkably mature teenagers in guilds where the 45 year olds behaved like colicky infants most of the time.
- Many people say things quickly that *can* be taken in a bad way and lead to an argument. Instead, take a moment before getting angered and ask them what they REALLY meant, because most people aren't actually hostile dickbags - they're just poor communicators.
- Any reward allocation system, regardless of how fair it seems on paper, regardless of people agreeing to bide by its rules, will be complained about the first time those rules work against one person's favor and towards another.
- In a performance based environment, it helps to have concrete displays of performance metrics and to provide small incentives to encourage competition between people who are in the same role. Do not make the incentives TOO big because then you will have people screwing others to get their win.
- People who are inflexible are almost always going to drag your team down. The inability to adapt to new situations or take failure as a learning experience is a HORRIBLE trait, and unless there is some kind of massive and nearly impossible to replace positive that kind of person brings to your team, dump them if they can't change their ways after getting feedback.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
Eff that, I'm not handholding some n00b that doesn't know the quest. We shouldn't be letting n00bs in the guild in the first place. I'm busy farming l00ts biatch.
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
While gamers can have some good attributes in the workplace such as better computer skills, ability to google better etc. their are drawbacks as well. 1. Talking frequently to coworkers about this magical item or that Troll class etc. 2. Scrolling through guilg boards all day 3. Playing games after work instead of studying for certifications, working more or doing something more beneficial to society in general. 4. Come into work tired because they have been up all night questing etc. 5. All work seems boring and takes so much effort compared to what they can do in a game. 6. They always seem to think they can do what "they" wnat to do rather than what the business needs. Essentially doing whatever "work quest" they want. Basically I view excessive gamers in the workplace like potheads who are consumed by thier addiction and use any means to justify how it helps them. Acouple years later these losers have spent hundreds of hours on something and have nothing to show for it in real life. I doesn't seem to bother them though as they just move on to thier next fantasy game. BTW I play games too...
However, that part about them being heavily concerned about gaming performance gauges concerns me... when people are gaming the measurements, you're not getting a true representation of the criteria that you really care about...
In many companies that IS important. I've worked a few places where it was far more important to appear successful than it is to actually be successful.
The most relevant example I can think of is way back in my phone support days. We had a ton of metrics - Average calls/day, Average calls/hr, first call resolution rate, % time spent on hold between calls, etc. That last one almost got me fired. I averaged about 70 calls/day with a 5-6 minute average call length and something like 70% first call resolution (this was before every call center had remote control capabilities, so it was support based purely on what the user was describing, and that was really high).
The call center average was something like 45 calls/day and a 10-12 minute per call average. While I was spending the same amount of time per call on hold in between calls finishing up filling out the tickets, the same amount of time per call multiplied by more calls = higher percentage of time on hold.
Some people in management didn't quite get the math and overall picture and wanted me fired. I wasn't meeting all of the metrics that were set and that's what mattered. Fortunately others managers did get it and fought to keep me employed while warning of me the numbers game and working with me to present the numbers that people wanted to see.
Successfully negotiated the auction of 300k worth of precious and rare items in trade chat. Gained the title "Explorer in WoW. Completed 2000 drop quests without drooling on my keyboard. This shows my curiosity and tenacity in getting the job done no matter how long it takes. I think my greatest achievement in WoW was finally realizing what a waste it was to spend time doing video games when there are more important fish to fry like doing what I needed to do about this being unemployed.
www.Migrainesoft.com - Computer giving you a headache? We can fix that!
know from personal experience 99.999% of WoW players are morons and whiners who stand in fire and cry about gearscore and dps charts, so statistically you would probably be a terrible employee.
Congratulations. You are statistically a terrible employee.
FFXI is probably be a much better choice than WoW. WoW is pretty casual compared to FFXI, though FFXI has slowly been adding things to make it require a little less hardcore. In WoW, "raids" are the reason to get people together, but a signifcant amount of FFXI content still requires a group of 6 or more to get anything done, and if it's "old" content, you have to rely on what you can get in a pick-up group.
However, the recent update just nerfed the worst offender, the Chains of Promathia missions, where all 6 people had to be on their A-game for 2-4 hours to get through many of the fights. Now as long as you have level 75+ characters available, you can duo through all but the last few fights. I had just finished them all about 2 weeks before the update, and I think it helped me a lot in terms of getting organized to get a job done.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Video games are a very active form of entertainment. Compared to TV which pushes the viewer towards and alpha state, video games boost the beta. This means that your brain is very active and focused on the task. World of Warcraft, just being a game is going to produce a higher level thinker (no pun intended) and critical thinker. Since WoW is a very social game, you get training on how not only to interact with people, but how to interact with them in a way that pushes you towards the same goal. A manager would love a trained WoW raider in his team. Give him a task and he will definitely play well with others while striving for the win.
I think that this can apply to any guild in any MMO...
"Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet." General James Mattis
From the article: "I anticipate in the not-too-distant future this will be as standard a part of your resume as where you went to school."
John Smith
Graduated from (somewhere) University; Degree in (something).
Captain of the (somewhere) University Debate Team.
Guild Leader of NO FAT CHICKS on Burning Blade, ICC achievements include, but not limited to, Kingslayer, Glory of the Icecrown Raider.
Whoopie!
No yesterday, no tomorrow, and no today.
LFM 10-man C#/.NET project. Need 2 devs, 1 QA. Must have 5k GS. PST with achieves.
See and I have a problem with this. In my law within social dynamics classes I was the only person in 8 years to get 100%(4.0gpa) in the course. Why? Because I've run a guild, learned how to balance everything, use the cores required for being a good leader, and knowing how to delegate tasks. And when asked by the professor who used to be a police inspector, and has more 1:1 person time then most people will ever see in their lives why I did so well, I pointed it to the freaking game.
The people who laugh at it, are 15-20 years behind the times. You along with other posters are there, nothing to be ashamed of. Getting old, well it ensures you become inflexible and set in your ways.
Om, nomnomnom...
I know from personal experience 99.999% of WoW players are morons and whiners who stand in fire and cry about gearscore and dps charts, so statistically you would probably be a terrible employee.
You're contradicting yourself to the point of making your estimates accurate. You've combined the noobs (stand in fire) with the leets (gearscore/recount). With the oblivious and the uppity all together in one group, I'm less than surprised that there's no one left.
I'm also underwhelmed to find that you can point to a group as large and diverse as 'WoW players' and find extreme examples of bad behavior.
What does mildly surprise me is that you're both oblivious to the fact that this applies to any large group AND you're allowed to hire people. That contradiction is a bit hard to swallow, but I guess that's probably not too strange in the corporate world, is it?
Considering the amount of time required to actually develop leadership skills in an MMO such a WoW, it would be more beneficial to spend that time improving face-to-face people skills instead. As long as the goal is to advance your career, anyway.
It depends, of course, on the company you're applying to. It could be seen as a valuable asset by someone who understands its the same thing as being the head of your local computer club or LUG or whatever.
But there are certainly a lot of old (or even young) people still perpetuating a stigma against video games, who would laugh and throw your resume in the trash. That's ok, it evens out - there are plenty of us who also throw out THEIR resume for being old, doofy, and stupid.
QQ
I play wow, and I do interviews for potential hires - and even I would roll my eyes at someone listing World of Warcraft as work experience. Why? Because its not even remotely professional. That and your resume has to be read by HR ladies who most likely don't play, and would honestly think of playing video games as childish.
Now if I asked what your hobbies are and you mentioned it - I think that would be a valid place to talk about it :).
Good example on how this would probably pan out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUKUHjBhb2Q
Yea there's no way he's playing at the top of the spectrum...more likely he does a few instance runs, the weekly and pvp.. Not enough time to do decent raiding
THE closest I put to that on my resume is Network Admin of my university's gaming and media server, which to be honest was quite a feat to get permission for. The school did NOT want a student admin.
Good-bye
It seems somewhat obvious that, hour for hour, it's more useful than watching TV, and less useful than pursuing a hobby with a shared skill set. Of course, some jobs (e.g. management of juveniles or people that act that way) share a skill set with WoW. OTOH, your hobbies shouldn't be about your career, a concept that not every interviewer seems to grasp.
Getting old, well it ensures you become inflexible and set in your ways.
Too bad you missed the lessons on life and respect. Congrats on getting 100% in a course, but that is not an indicator that you're going to do well in the workplace, or anywhere else...it's just one data point. Just remember that all us old foggies have been there and done that, and you're standing on the shoulders of giants.
Just another day in Paradise
Don't talk about gaming in interviews.
About half of the people I work with have heard or have played Starcraft, and are interested in Starcraft II. Quasi-same thing for WoW. If they laugh at me because I bring it up when they ask about my hobbies, they're fucking idiots, because they're also laughing at themselves. Maybe the guy who hired you was an uppity get-off-my-lawn moron, but the bosses I've had weren't.
You stick it in your hobbies, not as one of your skills or as past work experience, obviously.
Boss: WHY THE HELL DID YOU MAKE THIS MISTAKE AGAIN?
Employee: Sorry boss, didnt notice.
Boss: A SORRY DOESNT FIX ANYTHING, -50 DKP
Employee: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Said Employee suddenly 100% more productive.
Had exactly the same thing happen for me a few years back. 5 minutes of aftercall/wrapup work at the end of each call, but got through more calls than others by being better at my job. Was left with a higher percentage of aftercall (translated as non-productive) work at the end of the day than the idiots taking 3 times as long to complete calls.
I was working for a UK government department.
Is this a rhetorical question?
I started a guild in another game (not WoW, but one that tends to attract more players in the 30+ age group)
Care to mention which game this is?
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You'll probably find, however, that most people (not all) in hiring positions are 15-20 years behind the times themselves, or have focused on career to the exclusion of having time for hobbies like computer gaming.
So 'the times' themselves are really 15-20 years in lag. MMO gaming has really only been around for ~10 years, so it'll be another 5-10 years before this kind of quality gets any significant level of recognition.
I'm thinking in 10 years there will probably still be the same kind of MMO involvement (and I'll be level 230 in WoW), and this kind of thing may be a little more commonplace, however, when random person X is applying for a professional job, odds are this person will have a lot of relevant qualifications to that specific job.
Odds are small, however, that this person will be one of the few that is a guild leader in an MMO (Even assuming half the people in the world play MMOs, which is a huge amount, I can't find a figure online, but there's about 7 billion people in the world, and 11 million WoW accounts, meaning that less then 0.2% of the worlds population plays WoW, I figure when you factor in age demographics of people applying for jobs, and add in other MMOs you might get that up to 1 or 2% chance that the person plays an MMO.
I'm also assuming that less than 1% of MMO players are leaders of significant guilds, which brings us back to something like 1/1000 job applicants (and I think that is very generous) would have any sort of gaming experience that helps them do their job. Assuming every one of them put it on their resume, most companies would see this rarely, if at all, as compared to 'relevant qualifications' they'd see in the majority of applicants.
I guess what I'm trying to say is: I doubt it will ever be relevant, especially when you consider the odds that the hiring individual has firsthand knowledge (or even anecdoral) of the value... I thinking when it all comes down (and if the math were accurate) it'd be a proverbial '1 in a million' chance that guild leadership (or similar) factored in to a job application.
"lt;dr" is the correct response to most of my posts.
But please, do not put this on your resume as one of your skills, or as leadership experience. Some people do this, and it generally just gets them laughed at.
Perhaps the people laughing are just doing so because they are brought up thinking gaming is a waste of time, or just a fun activity that has no other meaning in life besides entertainment. There is probably not much to learn about real world activities in a corporate environment by spending 16 hours a day playing Super Mario Bros. 3, but MMORPGs like World of Warcraft or Guild Wars are entirely different. You're not just playing a game where you have complete control over the situation (if you jump on the Goomba, the Goomba gets squished). You're interacting with perhaps hundreds of people, with different levels of skills and abilities, who all may or may not be working toward the same goal - a goal that one single individual may not be able to complete on his own.
In a game like WoW, you can track the stats and abilities of your guild members, decide who is good at what and where they should position themselves or what each person should be doing in a raid to get the best possible outcome. In a software development company, you can track the skills and abilities of your team members, decide who is good at what and which types of tasks (hardware interface code, design documentation, GUI design, networking code) each member should be assigned so you can produce the best possible piece of software. It's not about just running out there and swinging a sword at the bad guys for hours on end.
The same skills in WoW could be brought to sports. Lead a football team to victory by positioning each player where they best fit and tracking metrics from this. Should leadership in sports not be used in a resume?
Having a smoking section in a public restaurant is like having a peeing section in a public swimming pool.
What a commentary on management: managers who insist on managing by the numbers but can't do math! Clearly it's average absolute time between calls that matters, not the percentage, as the percentage measurement rewards those who spend more time on calls and penalizes those who spend less -- a perverse result if there ever was one. Whoever decided to use that metric is the one who should be fired.
Your god may be dead, but mine aren't!
I've been making this argument for years, but for pornography. The wrist exercise improves my typing speed and helps prevent repetitive stress injuries while playing WoW. Which in turn enhances my leadership skills. Hence, watching porn improve leadership skills.
Leeroy Jenkins for Senate!
You're an exception then. Saying you were a guild leader puts you into the same category as those who say "sign my petition so I can make my guild, you can leave after if you want". Guild has nothing at all to do with leadership.
Now a "raid guild" perhaps. But even there, the vast majority of raiding guilds are drama guilds run by micro managers. The ones who are most successful tend to have people who scream and shout if you do things wrong, and the better they are the more elitist they become. Bad leadership qualities. Now occasionally there is a good leader, but these are exceptions.
You can learn great leadership in WoW without ever being an official leader or being delegated a role.
Overall, putting this on your resume is like saying you were a school club president. Maybe it matters, and maybe it does not. If something that isn't professional or academic experience is listed on your resume, then you must be able to defend this in an interview, explain how it applies, give concrete examples of how you demonstrated the skills to solve problems, explain how it is relevant to the position you're applying for, etc. That's where so much of this extra stuff on resumes fail, because it usually turns out to just be resume padding that doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
Merely placing it on a resume is pointless. I also think that the absolutely horrid reputation that raid and guild leaders in WoW have, that over time people will downgrade this more as they realize what it actually means. It's going to be really hard to prove that you're not just like the dork who did a gear check on your interviewer last week.
Manager: "Well Mr. Johnson. It says here on your resume that you have 'braved the badlands of the Eastern Kingdom, conquered the Mountains of the Outland, and braved the depths of the Zul'Gurub in order to defeat Hakkar the Soulflayer, the corrupted god'".
Applicant: "Yes, that's right."
Manager: "And you feel that this qualifies you to be an assistant manager at The Foot Locker."
Applicant: "Yes."
Manager: "....We'll be in touch."
Grinding makes you a better slave to the grind
*sigh*
I remember well the game of putting people on hold and still on the line while I write up the ticket instead of letting them go, dragging out the call and wasting their time just so I wouldn't get yelled at.
Respect is earned, not given. Much like cookies are baked, and don't grow on trees. Which is ofcourse another issue with too many people these days. RASPECT MAH! Life exists in a circular system, leading to basic conformity. No. You're right getting 100% on a course doesn't prove much in a workplace, however when you're already moving from the workplace to a course, and vice versa it does.
I'm am old foggie, I can just see the forest with the trees in front of me. And realize that the world has changed.
Om, nomnomnom...
Wait. You mean people actually believe not putting club presidencies on your resume? Is a good idea. I guess they don't teach how to write cover letters these days giving concrete explanations of the skills you hold either.
Om, nomnomnom...
I've never related tanks directing every aspect of a fight to micromanaging before, but your post really brought out that sort of idea to me.
I've really only played DPS through the random queue, and as such, I knew that I was instantly replaceable. But then I practiced on Anarchy Online, that provided actual loss for a death, (originally especially.) Wipes seriously sucked, you lost experience, and your stats were diminished by some 75% for ten minutes. You learned your role, and you did it well, and if your team started to fail, you made sure that you protected yourself. And heaven help you, if you let your healer die, they likely were going to bail on the team (not like he could heal for ten minutes after the death anyway).
My reference and experience in the random group feature of WoW is mostly from my friend, who has an 80 of every single healing class in the game. She is a healer, and she knows healing. She knows that after a two or three wipes, that her team is not going to do well, and she needs to leave.
This isn't about being a prima dona, although when she gets a tank who starts trying to "micromanaging" her, she starts to expect things are going to suck. Just as you noted.
And I think I was trying to point out the "razor edge" in the random group feature... in some ways, it teaches you to succeed with diverse input. Namely, not only when everyone is super overpowered for the task, but when people are simply sufficient to the task.
But as you pointed out, people who demand overgeared to make everything easy become apparent, and we can I think all agree that these people have learned bad habits.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
However, that part about them being heavily concerned about gaming performance gauges concerns me... when people are gaming the measurements, you're not getting a true representation of the criteria that you really care about...
In many companies that IS important. I've worked a few places where it was far more important to appear successful than it is to actually be successful.
Perhaps you didn't get my point, which is totally fair. What I was attempting to say is that it was a bad feature of MANAGERS to guide themselves based on purely objective measures.
If you are making company decisions based solely on metrics, then you are doing things wrong.
Yes, there's a game, and yes, especially in call centers these metric games guide everything you do, but speaking as someone who worked sales at an inbound call center, when we pulled in metrics to enforce performance, the people who gamed the system (dropped non-sales calls as early as possible, and filed non-sales as transfers so they don't count against metrics, etc) got "better" even though they were the worst employees.
That's what I'm talking about... people who game the system reduce the total quality of work, rather than using the metrics as a backdrop. You cannot measure directly how much good work the employee is doing, you're measuring indirect values. But when those indirect values become the goal of work, people will target those indirect values, rather the actual value you want to target.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
This is clearly either Duden, or Berlitz. Because of the language-learning side, I'm leaning towards Berlitz, but it's not the first one that came to mind.
Duden belongs to the publishing group I meant (Langenscheidt).
LANGENSHEIDT... Now that I see the name, I'm totally reminded, and I'm like "duh".
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
Yep, I did misunderstand you then. I took your OP as "that's not how business works" rather than your intended "that's not how you should want your business to work".
I think micro-managing in WoW groups is not limited to tanks (and, in fact, a good tank should NOT micromanage - just get involved when people aren't doing their "jobs" rather than tell them how to do what they're already doing well, you know?)
And I definitely wasn't trying to say that there's no valid reason to leave a team - just that in the vast majority of cases, the people making the cost/benefit analysis are doing so under REALLY poor circumstances.
Leaving a group before they've had a chance to show good or bad = dumb choice because you *will* have the same consequences as if you had a bad group. Leaving a group after 3 wipes, unless you were the cause of the wipes, is probably a good idea unless you're learning content (in which case wipes are expected) because 3 wipes has almost certainly cost you more than just leaving in the first place would have. For tanks and healers (who have generally pretty quick queue times) this is almost always gonna be a no-brainer. For DPS, who on some servers/battlegroups might have wait times over 30 minutes, this could be a case of bird in the hand vs. 2 in the bush.
Personally, I'm with you on the random group feature being most fun when people are on par (or, better yet, less than on par, gear-wise) to the content: that's where you can actually see a meaningful difference from skill. When people are at or slightly above the gear threshold, the only difference skill will make is how quick you burn everyone down or how little healing you need, or how little thought needs to go into an encounter. That's not very fun to me - I prefer to get my butt kicked when I'm playing games (or at least have getting my butt kicked be possible) because then at least I know I'm playing at or above my level :)
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
Yes, respect is earned, but your disrespectful comment was juvenile. Please don't take it as an insult...read what you wrote, and understand why it was appears that way. Are you really an old foggie? I'm 51, and would bet from your writing that I've got a good 20-30 years on you.
FWIW, I've done the whole WoW thing too, and while I agree that there are social interaction skills necessary for good guild leadership, I see precious little that translates into real world practical usage...and I deal with people (mine and our customers) for a living.
Just another day in Paradise
Yep, I did misunderstand you then. I took your OP as "that's not how business works" rather than your intended "that's not how you should want your business to work".
Ah yes. :) I figured. Good that we were able to clear that up. I'd hate to look like an ivory tower idiot denying the reality of the world as it is.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
I always thought the bar at the bottom of WoW was the experience bar. Who would have known that it is the "Performance Metrics" bar!
I hear once you hit mid-management the gate to the Outlands opens and you can unlock an epic blackberry.
The fact people are playing WoW automatically removes the "random" part of "random groups of people". You are getting random groups of like-interested people, random groups of people willing to devote several hours a week to a game, random groups of people who think gnomes are really neat.
I don't see where he ever denied being a terrible employee.
Also he said he's a gamer, not necessarily a WoW player, and that WoW players specifically are 99.999% morons.
Eh, it's a text based communication. Misunderstandings happen all the time.
I should also mention, I just assumed young, not an idiot. Back in the day I thought businesses were successful due to good leadership guiding the current hard workers and the hard work of those leaders when they were building the company up from the ground rather than the combination of ruthless backstabbing and sheer dumb luck resulting in success in spite of bad decision after bad decision that all too frequently seems to be the case.
Wow is made for the average consumer. You know the ones, who are too stupid to actually do a little studying on what they consume?
So ya, i guess it would make it perfect for jobs.
Be seeing you...
The game was Entropia universe, aka Project Entropia.
http://www.entropiauniverse.com/
Basically a glorified poker machine - you can theoretically play for free if you are happy to wander around in your orange noob jumpsuit forever, collecting dung and "sweat" from animals which you can sell to other players that need the stuff to improve player bought land areas and for making a kind of mind essence for doing psionic type abilities. There are no quests - though there are various special hunt events etc you can participate in if you can raise the coin to buy the beacon that start it. To really enjoy playing the game you have to deposit USD which have a 10:1 to the in-game currency, Project Entropian Dollars aka "PED". YOu can also cash out - convert the in-game currency back to USD, with the option to also get a debit card you can use like a regular bank card in the real world.
Ammo costs money & so do repairs on your gear, but the ammo spent in killing mobs is recycled into the "loot pool" which basically gives a random payout when you kill a mob - typically less than what it costs to kill the creature, but occasionally a lot more. If you are lucky you get a really big jackpoy (um I mean loot drop) and the biggest winners are announced in the "hall of fame".
I got turned off the game because of this element, and frankly, because it was pretty boring without any quests - but the other players were great - good to talk to and generally a mature attitude all round. The in game market is very intense - more like a real stock market, because there is real dollar value on everything that it bought and sold. Some savvy players are able to support their hunting habit with just in-game trading, but frankly, for the amount of effort it takes to get ahead of the game, you might as well be investing in the real stock market, or just work an extra hour overtime and deposit that in.
The society (like a guild) I started still exists - "Antipodean Army" - and is now run by Serica who has much more time to play the game than I ever could afford.
I forgot to mention - The game is actually pretty fun to play in the early stages - it's one really huge world, with all players in the one world, not split into multiple servers like WoW is.
The game makers make money from repairs, which are relatively cheap - the jackpot money comes from money you spend on ammo, so on average in theory, it should only cost you repair money to play.
The trick is to play efficiently - you can buy a rocket launcher and the best armor money can buy (several thousand real USD) and go hunting hte biggest stuff, but you will be so unskilled you will miss a lot and take more damagem so your returns will be very poor.
Also if you go using a rocket launcher to hunt the equivalent of bunnies, you will certainly kill them (massive overkill actually) , but the ammo cost will be prohibitive compared to what any potential drop is that a bunny would drop, so you have to match up your skill with a suitable weapon you can use efficiently, and hunt creatures you can kill without taking too much damage, and without doing massive overkill on the creature, which wastes money.
I ended up having a quite complex spreadsheet to work out the kill odds and average drops so I had a better idea of what I should be hunting, and what I should be using in the way of weapons. I think most other players do a lot of heavy analytics like this too, unless they have money to burn and want to just run around blowing stuff up without worrying too much about being efficient.
There's also mining and crafting too, which works on a similar system. eg. you can be crafting say, some kind of shirt, which might use $1 worth of materials, and be able to sell for an average of $0.90, but sometimes you will craft 10 shirts but only use 1 short worth of materials, if you have good enough skill and luck.
I should also mention, I just assumed young, not an idiot. Back in the day I thought businesses were successful due to good leadership guiding the current hard workers and the hard work of those leaders when they were building the company up from the ground rather than the combination of ruthless backstabbing and sheer dumb luck resulting in success in spite of bad decision after bad decision that all too frequently seems to be the case.
AHAHHAHAHAHahahahahahahahahaa.... Oh, I don't think I were ever that naive... my parents raised me on far too much skepticism to be a true believer in corporate ethics.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
Thanks for the info. I was hoping its gameplay might be different than every other MMO out there, but it seems way too derivative. Gear, quests, loot... been there, done that.
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Until more research is provided, I would question the validity of such a loosely based correlation. For starters, did anyone happen to figure for any sort of link between the types of occupations being filled by those who are exhibiting measures of "success" due to playing World of Warcraft? There could be an argument claiming that many in IT fields who have been successful in their occupations were previously or are currently successful in playing World of Warcraft. However, it could simply be that many working in IT professions are more prone to playing video games, particularly more popular titles such as World of Warcraft.
Coming from a psychology background, there should be a study taking place to help with fact checking. I could reason that maintaining basic social skills in a pyramid structured hierarchy does help in on a basic interpersonal level; however, there is little research supporting claims beyond that.
The current research on gaming, particularly excessive gaming (exceeding 30 hours a week), can actually have negative influences and condition the individual to become more prone to habit forming behavior. While behavior patterns in gaming do have similarities compared to substance abuse/dependence, both on psychological and bio-medical levels, the behavior cannot be classified as an all out addiction. FPS games have been suggested to be linked to mild-moderate improvements in hand-eye coordination. The “gaming as an addiction” research out there is quite incomplete and it is too soon to tell without further research if gaming carries any long-term psychological/sociocultural benefits.
Do you have an scholarly research available?