WoW and the Development of Business Skills

I missed this article when it first came out, and there's not really data to back it up, but Wired makes the case that playing World of Warcraft can make you a more desirable job candidate. There are things about this statement that I wouldn't dispute.

Anyone who's played WoW for a long time will tell you that there are two key ingredients to successful game play: managing interpersonal interaction and problem solving. In WoW, you need to group with other people (5, 10, 25 or 40) to successfully accomplish many goals. If you don't know how to communicate effectively, it causes problems. If you don't know how to work well with others and not do everything your way with utter disregard for standard strategies and roles, it causes problems. If you're a dick, no one will group with you again. Sound like any office environments you know?

Playing WoW allows people to develop these skills. It also really calls on players to prioritize and problem solve on the fly. If a typical strategy for taking down an extremely difficult computer player in the game (a "boss" in WoW parlance) isn't working, then just repeating that strategy isn't going to fix things. You'll continually fail. You and your team needs to figure out how to do things differently and, ultimately, more efficiently (as there are limited resources at play &mash; you don't have unlimited health, you can't cast spells forever, your armor and gear deteriorates over time, bosses go berserk and become unstoppable after a certain amount of time). On an individual player level, you have to adjust priorities on the fly. For example, I'm supposed to heal the main tank (the one taking the most damage), but if things are going bad for someone else (say, someone who does a lot of damage) I need to heal them because without their contributions to damage, we'll never accomplish our goal. But if I don't heal the main tank, then he may be in trouble, so I have to adjust my priorities on the fly, choosing the most opportune moment to fire off a heal to others while also making sure I'm taking care of my main job: healing the main tank. If you can't adjust priorities on the fly, under pretty intense pressure, then you're not going to serve the team well, and you won't reach your goals. Again, sound like any office environments you know?

I really think that those without these skills (or a deficiency in these skills) do develop them, in part, from playing WoW. I know of a lot of older (age-wise) players who take younger (age-wise) players aside and let them know when they're communicating poorly or acting selfishly because they want to see them (and the teams they are on) succeed. Of course there are dicks in the game and there are people who blindly follow them because they don't think they can do (or deserve) better. But just like in real life, if you treat people well, they'll return the favor.

So can playing WoW make you a more desirable job candidate? Indirectly, perhaps. I doubt if I'd ever ask anyone if they played WoW, and if I did see "Guild Leader" on their resume, I'd probably ask them about it (being a guild leader is often a tough and thankless job — but that's a whole other post). Their responses about leadership, responsibility, and adapting to change would be what really mattered.