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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."
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.
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.
... 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'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
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.
Having played something like 5 different MMORPGs over the years, with the exception of the teenagers I have yet to come across any unemployed team member in any of the guilds I've been with. For those that have pictures, none is fat. (I myself make about 5x the average income in where I live and am not fat)
I can only think of a couple explanations for the disconnect between what you are saying and what I see:
- You are lying, probably for shock reasons - i.e. you're trolling.
- I'm in the EU zone and you are in another area and the demographics of players is different.
- You yourself are unemployed and usually play at core work hours when anybody with a job will not be online, so everybody you cross paths with is either unemployed or an below work age.
- Personal self-selection: maybe the type of person you get well enough and for long enough with to be told what they do is the kind of people that tend to be fat and unemployed.
I currently live in the UK and I'm sure that if I frequented the local pubs during work days at the core working hours, I pretty much would only come across (fat) unemployed people.
Quest failed: you did not pick up "Sarcasm" and "Hyperbole".
Please start the quest again.
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.