Jan 17 2009
The Ongoing PR Scam About Raid Leaders
I imagine some of you have read a few of the articles from the last year or so where writers try to draw comparisons between raid leading in a game like WoW, and management in the business world. I seem to recall the Wall Street Journal even wrote about it. I must admit, every time I read an article like that it strikes me as a pile of BS. The ONLY place I have ever heard this tripe is in a few scattered articles that could easily have been bought and paid for by Vivendi. I have never read anything of the sort in a respectable business publication (WSJ is respectable, but as a daily it can freely include random garbage articles).
Why Are They Perpetrating This Fraud?
So the question is why? Why further such an absurd claim. I have a theory:
If you can make the repetitive actions in your game feel like they have a real, worthwhile purpose, you can reduce the guilt level people feel about wasting their life in your game. If you can accomplish that goal, people will be less likely to ever decide they are wasting their life in your game and resubscribe. The same thing happens at Wikipedia. Editors think they are contributing to a modern day Library of Alexandria, so you get people who ruin their real lives (don’t go interview for jobs, don’t take care of themselves, etc.) and spend 10-15 hours a day editing articles.
So, what’s my point?
1) As effective as it might be, I think this is an irresponsible way to go for any game developer. Tricking your customers into ruining their lives is unethical.
2) Stop kidding yourselves, people. Leading raids does not actually tranlsate into real business skills, and no employer is ever going to be convinced otherwise.
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I completely agree. All a raid leader does is gain information from the internet. They then go on to tell everyone else (who were too lazy to read it themselves) what to do and how to do it.
I would be interested in some more information on these ‘wiki-editors’. Seems like an interesting topic to look at.
Good raid leaders have many qualities that are highly sought after: soft skills, organizational skills, leadership qualities in general.
One of my best friends in WoW and most admirable raid leaders I ever had was a retired officer of the German Bundeswehr (=Army). He had a talent to figure out how to motivate people to play together and recognize their strengths and weaknesses.
OK, now some guys try to train future managers by letting them play WoW. Reminds me of these shows where billionaires give silly tasks to yuppies in which they can prove their abilities.
The issue is, while there is no doubt that some qualities of a good raid leader in WoW are shared by good managers does not mean that being a raid leader and becoming better at leading a raid makes you a better businessman, too.
People learnt their social attitudes and got their traits already before they started playing WoW. I doubt they would have developed them if they were too absorbed in raiding.
But there are even more absurd advertisment hypes out there. Close Combat: Modern Tactics is supposedly used for the tactics training of US Marines. I tried it myself, I giggled… no comment.
I am not sure if the guys really got paid for this… it could also have been a typical manager training business-brainfart.
But there is this kind of customer deception, no doubt. On TV, on the net, everywhere. In Germany a infotainment science magazin often shows reports how fascinating the production of various meat products is. They are sponsored by the flesh-producing industry, funnily.
What is REALLY amazing is that WoW has such a good press. Compare it to EverQuest: There were groups “wifes vs EverCrack” and the common opinion was the guys waste their lives in virtual worlds. World of Warcraft is EverCrack on steroids, and though they try to make it more casual friendly, they want to keep their players paying and playing, of course.
Sometimes you read about the negative effects of online gaming, but in general it is much more accepted than in the beginning, and the press praises WoW to the heavens. You do not want to scare away your readers, so report favorably about a game that many readers play.
Write something critical about WoW: The basic principle is addiction and it is a remake of the stone old EverQuest formula, and you will even receive flak from WoW players.
No doubt that Blizzard makes great games, but I think their real talent is making their games and themselves look even better…
I don’t think that being a raid leader is a fast or good way to get any skills but I believe that we learn from most of the things that we do in life and someone who have done tons of officer work in WoW must have aquired a few skills they did not have before they started. They would have learned more with one month of officer training at the army or some buissiness class but I am sure they got some skills they can use.
As a leader training it might work as well. The normal trick seem to be to take people out of their normal environment and get in some unusual situation where they have to work together to make things work. I am sure WoW can be used here just as well as blindfolded Lego building and all the other strange exercises that have been developed.
As a last note I would love to hear what choices you have made in your games to work against “1)” in your post where you mention “…Tricking your customers into ruining their lives…” and if your games differ to WoW in such a way that people might learn something useful from playing your games.
“If you can make the repetitive actions in your game feel like they have a real, worthwhile purpose, you can reduce the guilt level people feel about wasting their life in your game.”
THAT. Hit the nail on the head.
I’m gonna go ahead and subscribe to your blog.
- Kelly
http://conventionfans.today.com
What an absurd concept. I’m glad you posted about it, Cambios.
Just speaking from experience: I was serving in Korea (Army) when WoW came out, and most of the guys in my company played WoW on the same server and started a guild. When we began raiding MC, we organized/operated with absolute zero leadership. It was simply yell at Bob Harrington (the guy who read the strats) to tell us what to do next. There are no counseling, mentoring, ethical, or pragmatic lessons to be learned from a game. It’s silly to think otherwise.
-WitchKiller