World of Warcraft
Gaming the world
February 14, 2009 Filed in: The real
world
If it seems your children live in World of Warcraft
as much as in meatspace, there’s still hope. :-)
Playing for profit
(Economist, August 26, 2008) and Play games with your resume
(Washington Post, February 6, 2009) both posit
that the skills developed as a successful WoW
player could directly translate into success in
the business world: ‘"showing that people are
developing and applying all kinds of useful
skills in World of Warcraft--data collection and
analysis, collaboration, planning, resource
management and even team management." Remove the
"WoW" identification from the place of
employment, and all of these accomplishments
look fantastic on a résumé.’ Cool, no?
And check out some stats about these virtual worlds (Mother Jones, May 21, 2007): 20 million people as of two years ago?? And who these folks are (ars technica): “A new research study out of the US reveals that gamers are more likely to socialize and generally earn more money (read: have more epics) than nongamers. They also go out on more dates.”
Finally, this just in: Science gleans 60TB of behavior data from Everquest 2 logs. “Thanks to a partnership with Sony, a team of academic researchers have obtained the largest set of data on social interactions they've ever gotten their hands on: the complete server logs of Everquest 2, which track every action performed in the game.” Putting the privacy implications aside (hard to do, I know - do you have no expectation of privacy in this virtual world? Or did you sign it away when you joined?), there may be some very interesting stuff here.
And check out some stats about these virtual worlds (Mother Jones, May 21, 2007): 20 million people as of two years ago?? And who these folks are (ars technica): “A new research study out of the US reveals that gamers are more likely to socialize and generally earn more money (read: have more epics) than nongamers. They also go out on more dates.”
Finally, this just in: Science gleans 60TB of behavior data from Everquest 2 logs. “Thanks to a partnership with Sony, a team of academic researchers have obtained the largest set of data on social interactions they've ever gotten their hands on: the complete server logs of Everquest 2, which track every action performed in the game.” Putting the privacy implications aside (hard to do, I know - do you have no expectation of privacy in this virtual world? Or did you sign it away when you joined?), there may be some very interesting stuff here.