Saturday, March 7, 2015

VIDEO GAMES: MORE THAN A GAME

-      -  Virtual Worlds, Real Leaders: Online games put the future of business leadership on display

-      -  Leadership in a distributed world: Lessons from online gaming




In modern-day world, there has been an enormous increase in the number of virtual world gaming users. As a result, millions of people from all over the world, nowadays, play online games, sharing, collaborating, competing, and communicating with each other. Among those people, it would be somewhat easier to find a leader-capable caliber than from real work volunteers simply because leadership skills do get applied into gaming world where excellent players recruit, influence, organize, and perform flashy skills. Although gaming world would not be an ideal work place for the future, famous PH.D. Byron Reeves from Communication at Stanford University said, “They presage one possible future for business, one that is open, virtual, knowledge-driven, and comprised of a largely volunteer or at least transient work face”. 

Among various types of online games, MMORPG is superior in making good type of leaders. First of all, MMORPG stands for massively multiplayer online role-playing games. It provides millions of users a unique and spacious place, the playground along with entertaining services. Each player can even represent one’s own characteristic through one’s avatar, customizing it into one’s own taste. Secondly, in those massive playgrounds, each of millions of people interacts with each other bonding crews and systematically communicating in order to conquer difficult tasks. These types of collaborative efforts can definitely have a positive influence to our real life society. 

Of course there has been a lot of criticisms toward gaming society having related to real life business. This is because it is too early to assume that a good leader for a specific occasion in virtual world can perform equally in real life business, which requires physically meeting people and executing in front of them. Furthermore, leaders in online gaming world tend to be leaders just temporarily. They do not expect to have royal followers because they are ready to follow anytime soon.

Comparison of both gaming’s and corporate world’s leadership characteristics has shown that the characteristics from both world are as valuable to become a good leader, while the importance of those behaviors were shown to be slightly lower for the gaming world. This is mainly due to the fact that modern day business is becoming faster and more competitive phase than ever, which resemble online gaming community.

Collaborative behaviors are to be said the most important behaviors in both corporate and gaming society. Especially in virtual environment, where leaders do not get to meet other players face-to-face, good leaders need better reasons and stability to earn others mind to play with. Communications mostly through chatting would require more communicative skills to become a leader.


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