World of WarCraft player make better employees, says researcher
According to digital culture research John Seely Brown, World of WarCraft players make better employees than even a MBA student from Harvard.
In a Big Think YouTube video, he believes that the playing massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG) not only fill up a person with passion, but also sharpen their skill to work as a team and collaborate to accomplish goals of demanding nature.
Brown said that a high World of WarCraft player has a potential to perform better at a corporate level than a student who has acquired his degree from Harvard University.
Brown said that most of the time, it is the gameplay of Blizzard’s popular MMORPG that comes under the spotlight in discussion, instead of the social life on the edge of the game. Which reveal the capability and potential of the players in the real world.
“To understand these massive multiplayer games like World of Warcraft, do not think about it as just game play, but look at the social life on the edge of the game,” Brown said.
He said that their in-game nature of the players benefits their real-world attitude and makes them a real asset for their employer.
“When we look into the social structures and the knowledge capability, refining, and generation capabilities of this guild structures, there is something going on here,” Brown said. “Now, these are not just self-organizing groups. Basically every high-end
guild has a constitution. The leaders of these guilds also have to do dispute adjudication all the time. They also have to be willing to say, 'Let's measure ourselves.'”
Another reason cited by Brown for having faith in the potential of the World of WarCraft players to become good employees was their continuous self-analysis and the reactive measures taken by them to overcome any shortcoming, rather than waiting for the
employer to point out their mistakes and push them to improve their performance.
One more reason cited by Brown for recommending World of WarCraft players to employers was that the passion and curiosity possessed by these players can come in handy to the company that they work for.
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