Today's Gamers, Tomorrow's Leaders?

slash-sa writes "Video games have become problem-solving exercises wrapped in the veneer of an exotic adventure. In today's fast and rapidly-changing business environment, the strategic skills they teach are more important than ever. From realistic battlefield simulations to the building of great nations, from fantastic voyages through worlds of mythology to conquering space, "Generation G" could well offer the answer to unlocking great 21st century strategists and leaders."

Same shit, different generation

[Pojut]

Just like the squares are the ones from the hippie generation that are in power, the lamers are the ones from the gamer generation that will be in power.

You know, the kinds of kids whos parents idolize people like Jack Thompson and Hillary.

Re:My problem with this...

[witte]

> ...see if I can do stupid stuff and get away with it.
That's a good summary of an average working day, actually.

Re:played online games much?

[Anonymous Coward]

You might joke but WoW can offer excellent leadership training.

I ran a guild from launch to the end of AQ. I learned a huge number of things about:

*People, in an environment where you get extremes of behaviour to learn from.

*Making people do what you want with _no_ authority of any sort and active resistance a lot of the time.

*Smoothing over the routine problems of any organisation compounded by crap communication tools and no face to face meetings.

Basically it is exactly like being a project manager but more difficult in almost every respect. Expectations are high, resources are limited, your success depends on a bunch of external dependancies, and because it's on the internet behaviours are magnified by a factor of five. In real life you office probably has wierdos - but they hide it. In WoW the wierdness is there to see and so you can learn how to identify and deal with it.

These days I run a $40m project with a 60% subcontract value. It's a piece of cake compared to being a good guild leader - for a start if I lose all $40m there is less drama than if a screwup loses a shot at a legendary item.

Re:That's all well and good...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, they do train that. How people perceive you is very important. Does EJ's guild recruiter see you as the asshole who is good at playing and they want to invite to their guild to farm up some illidan loot, or do they see you as the asshole who is a nub and can't fight his way out of a wet paper bag? Surprise, both examples are the same guy, and he doesn't know shit about the game, but he was in some other guild and made friends with someone from EJ, now he's in EJ, mashing a skill rotation macro (like 90% of the rest of the players in the world could do) and being praised, all the while acting like a total asshole. If he'd been in some other guild, or never met said EJ guy he'd just be some twerp posting on the forums about how awesome he is while everyone makes fun of his 1300 rated 5v5 arena team. Image is everything in MMO games. EVERYTHING. Everyone with a brain already knows this.

Life's not a videogame.

[happy_place]

I remember when these same stories and arguments were being made for Table-top RPGs... yet I don't see much in terms of "leadership" touting the hours they played D&D. Though once we got out of Mom's basement... turns out there were all kinds of interesting reallife problems to solve.

Not to mention, with enough healing potions I was invulnerable... :) Videogames may teach some virtues, but they teach a bunch of crap too... if you're not gonna get all up in arms and pretend it doesn't teach violence or turn you into a High School shooter, perhaps we should shy away from the reverse of that argument... cuz they're both basically equivalent. --Ray

Depends what you mean

[Moraelin]

Well, I'm going to assume that that's just a verbose way of over-dissecting something. That you're not literally playing your game like that, nor literally thinking like that during a game. I haven't met you, I don't know what your play style really is, so I'm going to give you that benefit of the doubt. No need to assume the worst from the start, and all that.

Because, no offense, anyone who literally play the game while thinking about it as setting goals and evaluating performance, and thinking of their team mates as "there has to be consequences for people who are complete flakes"... *sigh* there is no nice way to put it, so I might as well be frank: those are the deranged sociopaths that ruin every last drop of enjoyment for everyone else.

Let's make a couple of things clear:

1. it's just a game. We're all there to have fun. That is the _only_ goal. Getting your MC gear or whatever else is just a prop, not the goal. If you got your prop, but noone had fun in the process, then you've utterly failed the real goal and missed the whole purpose of the exercise.

We're not at work, trying to meet some deadline within a budget. We're there to have fun. We're there to forget the stress of RL, and of dealing with clueless PHBs, and with arbitrary deadlines, and with all that crap. The _last_ thing I want there is some self-appointed PHB to turn a game into the same RL crap that I'm trying to escape from.

Trying to impose deadlines and goals and performance reviews there, is as fucking stupid as doing it when going with your friends at the pub. Do you set goals like "we must go through 100 pints today at all cost" there too? Do you do performance reviews and punish the flakes who drank too little? I should hope not, because it would obviously be just the most idiotic way to ruin everyone's enjoyment at that pub. Then, what madness or idiocy would posses someone to do the same in a friendly online game?

2. Noone is really my boss on a MMO. Sorry. Someone may think that being t3h gr3at guild leader makes him some sort of management, but truth is, that's at most a helper function, with at best advisory powers. It doesn't actually give him much right to tell anyone what to do.

I let some guys tell me what to do at work because they pay my wage. So essentially I sell my work and time in exchange for some money. That's how capitalism works.

That relationship just doesn't work that way in WoW. Unless someone wants to pay me my consultancy fee for my time there, that is. Be warned that it's not cheap, though.

Seriously. If I have to do what someone else tells me, and be subject to performance reviews and pep talks, then that's no longer playing the game, that's _work_. I'm essentially working for that guy, then, instead of having fun. It's only fair that he pays me, if he expects me to work for him.

Briefly, I've seen too many guilds in too many games that plain old sucked, and/or eventually disintegrated because a few people didn't understand point 1 or point 2.

Of course, they often ended up going hand in hand. The ones who didn't understand point 1 and obsessed about finally achieving a bunch of bits and bytes instead of having fun, often ended up grudgingly tolerating a wannabe PHB who didn't understand point 2, in the vain hope that it'll lead them to their precious reward. But then again, sometimes they happen separately too.