May 6, 2008 -
So your family thinks that you'll never amount to anything because you sit around in your bathrobe all day managing your World of Warcraft guild.Maybe. Maybe not.
According to an article in the Harvard Business Review, you could be modeling the coming wave in leadership styles. The lengthy, multi-page piece is definitely worth a read, but here are a few snippets to whet your appetite - and maybe help keep the family off your back:
A lot of work will be done by global teams... that are assembled for a single project and then disbanded. Collaboration within these geographically diverse groups will, by necessity, occur mainly through digital rather than face-to-face interaction.
What on earth will leadership look like in such a world [?] ...the answers may be found among... Eve Online, EverQuest, and World of Warcraft. Despite their fantasy settings, these online play worlds... in many ways resemble the coming environment we have described and thus open a window onto the future of real-world business leadership.
True, leading 25 guild members in a six-hour raid on Illidan the Betrayer’s temple fortress is hardly the same as running a complex global organization... [but] don’t dismiss online games as mere play. The best ones differ from traditional video games as much as universities do from one-room schoolhouses...
Comments
Being a graduate with a BS in Management, I see alot of parallels between MMO guilds and real-life business organizations.
I've been in an online guild for a little over 10 years now, and leading it for the last 3. I'm a senior Finance guy in my day job, and I reckon the guild takes more skill juggling people and personalities than my office team.
It's definitely a great skillset to pick up.
I knew my obsession with gaming groups would pay off someday.
Really, I surprised that it would take so long for people to draw the parallels; The actual activities that people are taking part in are vastly different, but you have to do a LOT of working with people and managing conflicts.
I learned alot about leadership and managing people while playing and running a MUD, and now in WoW.. but, unlike being the captain of a casual sports team or a member of a real life club, mentioning this to a potential employer only gets me funny looks.
I don't, but I do use it mockingly when someone royally f-'s up.
~~All Knowledge is Worth Having~~
More than one player heads an alliance of a thousand+ players spread across multiple sub groups. Each sub group has different focuses and different internal structures.
If the alliance holds sovereignty in any territory there is a huge amount of work involved in keeping it. A complicated logistics chain is needed to keep Player owned Structures fueled and operational. When you add combat operations and command to that pile, its becomes a nightmare with a huge amount of burnout. It usually takes a strong personality to keep corps within the alliance from outright fighting.
Even a small industrial corp needs products from mining, research, salvaging, and moon harvesting. These can be acquired in corp, or bought at one of the major trade hubs. Its not uncommon to see corps negotiate supply contracts with other corps. Then you have to find a market to sell your products, then you have to transport them.
Huge amount of work.
That's called linking back or some such thing, what gamezone is doing. I've used it to link back to articles on GamePolitics as well.
Ignorant people, good thing we will be leading them or they would be bible thumping and fear mongering their way right into passing traffic.