Ever gain any workplace relevant knowledge, skills, or abilities through gaming?

[belfpala]

Many other hobbies actually consist of learning new real-world skills, or getting physical exercise, or challenging yourself in some way. Even other games sometimes do this. Not so with MMOs. And yet at the same time the genre tends to breed the most deluded, self-important people in the entire gaming world.

I'll agree with this. I've been stuck on google or wiki for the last few hours. I was looking up what I might need if I want to go into knife/sword forging, varieties of olives, then best ways to remove foot smell from shoes, and a couple hours later I was somehow reading about orchids.

I can't say job-useful, but I'd rather do that than wipe on a raid boss for those same hours.

[mgarsi2]

I'll agree with this. I've been stuck on google or wiki for the last few hours. I was looking up what I might need if I want to go into knife/sword forging, varieties of olives, then best ways to remove foot smell from shoes, and a couple hours later I was somehow reading about orchids.

I can't say job-useful, but I'd rather do that than wipe on a raid boss for those same hours.

This is an interesting point you bring up belfpala. Passive learning vs active learning.

True, information gathering will earn you a knowledge increase over wiping on a raid boss all night. However, learning is also accomplished through failure (what not to do). Eventually (hopefuuly) that raid boss will die, and what usually happens when you kill the raid boss once after 800 wipes? The next week, the raid goes in and kills it within 1-3 pulls(usually). Why? What changed in a week? Did something develop? Maybe better coordination, communication? Maybe nothing? That's what we're here to find out :-).

[Simulacrum]

Well, if you wipe 800 times then go on to farm it from then on, you've just conditioned yourself to the fight, learning very little in the process. I'm pretty sure flies could be conditioned to kill raid bosses through that process... if they could operate a computer, anyway. You then probably go on to wipe 800 times on the next boss as well. I mean, I know there are some guilds that apply this process to successfully compete at the top in terms of progression, but they also tend to have massive burnout rates sustained mainly by their status as a 'top guild' constantly supplying them with fresh recruits to burn through.

More impressive are the guilds that wipe 8 times on that boss, then go on to farm it. I think the main difference there is (given that the raiders themselves are at least fairly competent) the guild leaders. There are tons of different theories on how to best get a raid to kill a boss. The 'brute forcing' is one way. The polar opposite would be something like expecting everyone in the raid to learn the encounter by heart before they even make a single pull. I read the best guilds in the world are supposed to be composed almost entirely out of people that do this, which is why they're so successful, but I've never been a part of one that dedicated so I couldn't attest to that.

God, I fucking remember it now. The guild leaders of past. Some good, some bad. The worst ones, though, were the ones who'd spend fucking 30 minutes before every fight explaining everything in detail. Talk about taking all the fun out of raiding. Always struck me as pointless, too. People just phase out during all that shit. Ain't nobody gonna remember that.

My preferred approach was always one of more gradual adaptation; quickly explaining the first mechanics encountered before simply pulling the boss, fully expecting a fast wipe, the purpose of which is simply to give the players first-hand experience with whatever mechanic just killed them. It's much easier to explain to people how to handle something after they've experienced it; just talking about some abstract mechanic that people haven't seen isn't very effective in my experience. Then I explain the mechanic in sufficient detail that people understand how to survive it, and quickly go over the next mechanic before pulling again. Now we survived the first mechanic, but wiped to the second one. Repeat the process until the fight has been overcome. Of course, it's a little more complicated than that; different roles focus on different mechanics, sometimes you can get a handle on several mechanics in one go, or take several attempts to handle just one, etc., but that's still the gist of it. Imo., this is the best way to keep a raid fun: Have people constantly playing the fucking game instead of listening to the raid leader explaining shit, while reliably making progress towards the goal.

Then there's the managing of people. There are always different people in every raid, or at least there always have been in every raid I've been in. And some are usually better than others at the game. Those are the ones you give the more important tasks; those you make handle flying between nests, or dancing on runes, or controling the construct, or whatever; the stuff you don't expect the less competent members to handle, at least not as quickly as you expect the better ones (who you can usually rely on to instantly grasp most mechanics; too bad you can't fill your raid with these, eh) to handle it.

Man, that reminds me of vehicle fights. Those are always so annoying to deal with, if you have a raid with lots of people who aren't great at the game. Especially if the vehicle is introduced late into the fight, and there's no time to prepare. All of a sudden, after a 8 minute bossfight, you have your most mediocre raid member end up inside the vehicle that they need to control properly to keep you from wiping, and they just press wrong hotkeys, or fail to understand how the energy system works, or stand in the wrong position for what their now-changed role demands... and then the wipe is so fast that they may not even have learned anything from it, and it's likely that not everyone in the raid even got to experience it, so the next time it happens it may happen to someone new, who may also not learn much from it... always hated vehicle fights because of this. They're the only fights where I think it's worth it to dedicate a lot of (incredibly boring, but sadly necessary) time to explaining how a fight's mechanic works before you get to it.

If they're gonna do that shit, they should at least do it like Ulduar; by letting people mess with the vehicle outside of the bossfight itself, instead of just throwing them into the deep end. Yeah, having ot figure out like 4 buttons and the accompanying 2-3 added mechanics isn't a lot, but you'd be surprised how bad a lot of people are at handlving novel situations in the heat of the moment. A lot of guys just freeze up.

I mean... there's lots that goes into leading raids, but I've rambled enough already... I definitely reject the premise that "MMOs are awful" though, that many MMO players (especially ex-MMO players) seem to entertain for some reason.

Sure, they can be awful. You can just log on daily to do your, well, dailies, before mindlessly grinding some mobs, or whatever, in the process never encountering anything that challenges you or even makes you think in any way... but that's not the only way to play MMOs, and imo. playing them that way kind of defeats their purpose. Playing an MMO at a relatively high level can teach you a fair bit about how to properly manage and relate to groups of often very different people. Or you can fuck it up and learn nothing from the experience. Not like the game is built like a classroom, to teach you this stuff; you have to figure it out for yourself. But if you have the capacity to figure it out for yourself, MMOs give you a very nice setting in which to test out your theories, in an environment where doing so doesn't cost anyone anything other than some of their spare time and maybe some hurt feelings.

And I would agree that WoW is in a bad state right now. Honestly, the best part was when we still had 40 man raids. Organizing that shit was fun. Exhausting, but fun. Man, we had a proper bureaucracy set up to handle the DKP and organize who got to participate in which raids and making sure people had time to farm consumables and such. These days, most people don't seem to even bother with DKP anymore, with the way loot rains out of the sky. No more raiding 3 months without looting a single item from the entire raid even though you're still wearing several blues, because there hasn't even dropped enough loot to outfit even the most hardcore raiders yet, nevermind the less dedicated ones.

And the drama... man, such drama. It was incredible. I remember one case, where we had a mage who'd saved up enough DKP to buy two different staves back-to-back, over two raids, even thoughs several other people would've gotten huge upgrades from that second staff (where as for him it was a minor upgrade), but he got the second staff as well (and refused to give it up, and we couldn't just kick him 'cuz he was so well-geared at that point that he couldn't be replaced) because the loot-manager at the time didn't realize he already looted a staff and so awarded it to him since he had the most DKP. It was delicious.

But those days are long gone... and I doubt anyone's gonna be making a game that brings it back anytime soon.

Shit, I'm still rambling. Well, that was my last 15 minutes at work well-spent, no doubt.

[mgarsi2]

Well, if you wipe 800 times then go on to farm it from then on, you've just conditioned yourself to the fight, learning very little in the process. I'm pretty sure flies could be conditioned to kill raid bosses through that process... if they could operate a computer, anyway. You then probably go on to wipe 800 times on the next boss as well. I mean, I know there are some guilds that apply this process to successfully compete at the top in terms of progression, but they also tend to have massive burnout rates sustained mainly by their status as a 'top guild' constantly supplying them with fresh recruits to burn through.

More impressive are the guilds that wipe 8 times on that boss, then go on to farm it. I think the main difference there is (given that the raiders themselves are at least fairly competent) the guild leaders. There are tons of different theories on how to best get a raid to kill a boss. The 'brute forcing' is one way. The polar opposite would be something like expecting everyone in the raid to learn the encounter by heart before they even make a single pull. I read the best guilds in the world are supposed to be composed almost entirely out of people that do this, which is why they're so successful, but I've never been a part of one that dedicated so I couldn't attest to that.

God, I fucking remember it now. The guild leaders of past. Some good, some bad. The worst ones, though, were the ones who'd spend fucking 30 minutes before every fight explaining everything in detail. Talk about taking all the fun out of raiding. Always struck me as pointless, too. People just phase out during all that shit. Ain't nobody gonna remember that.

My preferred approach was always one of more gradual adaptation; quickly explaining the first mechanics encountered before simply pulling the boss, fully expecting a fast wipe, the purpose of which is simply to give the players first-hand experience with whatever mechanic just killed them. It's much easier to explain to people how to handle something after they've experienced it; just talking about some abstract mechanic that people haven't seen isn't very effective in my experience. Then I explain the mechanic in sufficient detail that people understand how to survive it, and quickly go over the next mechanic before pulling again. Now we survived the first mechanic, but wiped to the second one. Repeat the process until the fight has been overcome. Of course, it's a little more complicated than that; different roles focus on different mechanics, sometimes you can get a handle on several mechanics in one go, or take several attempts to handle just one, etc., but that's still the gist of it. Imo., this is the best way to keep a raid fun: Have people constantly playing the fucking game instead of listening to the raid leader explaining shit, while reliably making progress towards the goal.

Then there's the managing of people. There are always different people in every raid, or at least there always have been in every raid I've been in. And some are usually better than others at the game. Those are the ones you give the more important tasks; those you make handle flying between nests, or dancing on runes, or controling the construct, or whatever; the stuff you don't expect the less competent members to handle, at least not as quickly as you expect the better ones (who you can usually rely on to instantly grasp most mechanics; too bad you can't fill your raid with these, eh) to handle it.

Man, that reminds me of vehicle fights. Those are always so annoying to deal with, if you have a raid with lots of people who aren't great at the game. Especially if the vehicle is introduced late into the fight, and there's no time to prepare. All of a sudden, after a 8 minute bossfight, you have your most mediocre raid member end up inside the vehicle that they need to control properly to keep you from wiping, and they just press wrong hotkeys, or fail to understand how the energy system works, or stand in the wrong position for what their now-changed role demands... and then the wipe is so fast that they may not even have learned anything from it, and it's likely that not everyone in the raid even got to experience it, so the next time it happens it may happen to someone new, who may also not learn much from it... always hated vehicle fights because of this. They're the only fights where I think it's worth it to dedicate a lot of (incredibly boring, but sadly necessary) time to explaining how a fight's mechanic works before you get to it.

If they're gonna do that shit, they should at least do it like Ulduar; by letting people mess with the vehicle outside of the bossfight itself, instead of just throwing them into the deep end. Yeah, having ot figure out like 4 buttons and the accompanying 2-3 added mechanics isn't a lot, but you'd be surprised how bad a lot of people are at handlving novel situations in the heat of the moment. A lot of guys just freeze up.

I mean... there's lots that goes into leading raids, but I've rambled enough already... I definitely reject the premise that "MMOs are awful" though, that many MMO players (especially ex-MMO players) seem to entertain for some reason.

Sure, they can be awful. You can just log on daily to do your, well, dailies, before mindlessly grinding some mobs, or whatever, in the process never encountering anything that challenges you or even makes you think in any way... but that's not the only way to play MMOs, and imo. playing them that way kind of defeats their purpose. Playing an MMO at a relatively high level can teach you a fair bit about how to properly manage and relate to groups of often very different people. Or you can fuck it up and learn nothing from the experience. Not like the game is built like a classroom, to teach you this stuff; you have to figure it out for yourself. But if you have the capacity to figure it out for yourself, MMOs give you a very nice setting in which to test out your theories, in an environment where doing so doesn't cost anyone anything other than some of their spare time and maybe some hurt feelings.

And I would agree that WoW is in a bad state right now. Honestly, the best part was when we still had 40 man raids. Organizing that shit was fun. Exhausting, but fun. Man, we had a proper bureaucracy set up to handle the DKP and organize who got to participate in which raids and making sure people had time to farm consumables and such. These days, most people don't seem to even bother with DKP anymore, with the way loot rains out of the sky. No more raiding 3 months without looting a single item from the entire raid even though you're still wearing several blues, because there hasn't even dropped enough loot to outfit even the most hardcore raiders yet, nevermind the less dedicated ones.

And the drama... man, such drama. It was incredible. I remember one case, where we had a mage who'd saved up enough DKP to buy two different staves back-to-back, over two raids, even thoughs several other people would've gotten huge upgrades from that second staff (where as for him it was a minor upgrade), but he got the second staff as well (and refused to give it up, and we couldn't just kick him 'cuz he was so well-geared at that point that he couldn't be replaced) because the loot-manager at the time didn't realize he already looted a staff and so awarded it to him since he had the most DKP. It was delicious.

But those days are long gone... and I doubt anyone's gonna be making a game that brings it back anytime soon.

Shit, I'm still rambling. Well, that was my last 15 minutes at work well-spent, no doubt.

This is very informative! I'm going to respond to each point when I have more time. I just wanted to let you know that I've seen your post and I'm not ignoring it .

[Bosen]

WoW taught me to be more organized and got me interested in processes and systems.

[Deleted]

English language skill is the most important one.

Other than that, knight cavalry tactics or building self-sustaining fortifications without blind spots might not have much to do with regular workplace skills...

[belfpala]

English language skill is the most important one.

Other than that, knight cavalry tactics or building self-sustaining fortifications without blind spots might not have much to do with regular workplace skills...

Never done office chair jousting to defend your cubical?

[mgarsi2]

WoW taught me to be more organized and got me interested in processes and systems.

Hi DomesticViolence. Nice examples! Hope you had a chance to take the survey .

[Al Gorefiend]

No none whatsoever.

[mgarsi2]

No none whatsoever.

That's fair too.

Hope you had a chance to take the survey Humbugged. We need participants with a variety of view points to establish variance .

- - - Updated - - -

English language skill is the most important one.

Interestingly enough, we're getting a lot of this. Stay tuned to see what we find!

[mgarsi2]

Really appreciate everyone that participated. We're in the process of coding all the data, and will let all the participants know what we find .

[mgarsi2]

Brothers and sisters of Azeroth!

Thank you so much for participating in our survey. We have finally sorted through all the data (Total of 689!!!!!) and we are ready to move forward with our analyses. In the meantime, we will be randomly choosing the winners of our prizes from the participants who fully completed the surveys through a random number generator. In addition, we will also contact everyone that fully completed the surveys to share our findings!

Finally, The Workcraft Lab team presented on the topic titled "Acquisition of KSAO’s Through Online Games and Virtual Team Collaborations" in Anaheim, California at the annual convention of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology. It was a major success!

We will be sharing all of this with the WOW community via Facebook, twitter, and youtube in the near future.

For now, I wanted to let you know that we haven't forgotten about you, and that we will be in touch!!!

[Blobfish]

Many fine examples of WOW Players becoming CEOs in Real Life

This Gentleman started a $1 Billion start-up after playing WOW everyday

I took a year off and played World of Warcraft. Every day. I would pat the kids on the bottom every morning, send them to school and then I would dominate as an Orc Warrior.

That’s because in 2006, Hohman quit a fabulous job as president of Hotwire to do nothing but play the game. Full time. For a year.

“I learned from playing WoW about community. It was the first time I really felt part of a online community. I’d be up the morning and be excited to see my guild. Isn’t that nerdy?” he laughs.

An online community has different characteristics than a real-world one, he discovered.

“There’s a space and time ‘shift,'” he describes. “A ‘real’ community is governed by normal rules of space and time, but online is not. It happens across all hours of days and night and across all parts of the world.”

http://www.businessinsider.com.au/ho...assdoor-2015-5

[Cricket22]

Me personally? Not So much.

But I have a nephew who taught himself how to read at the age of 4, just so he could play "Zelda Twilight Princess" all by himself. His parents wouldn't let him play "Resident Evil" at that age though, and kept the game locked in a cabinet. Until one day, when they caught him downstairs, secretly playing it at 3 in the morning. He couldn't unlock the cabinet, so he unscrewed the hinges.

He entered kindergarten with a 3rd grade reading level.

I gave him a nice gaming laptop when he was 9 he could use my steam account. A week later his parents called to inform me that he hacked my passwords, and had removed all my parental controls.

He's 12 now, jumped ahead several grades, and is now modifying drones.

I'm a little afraid of him.

[Piglord]

Gaming taught me how to call someone a twatwaffle.

[mgarsi2]

Many fine examples of WOW Players becoming CEOs in Real Life

This Gentleman started a $1 Billion start-up after playing WOW everyday

I took a year off and played World of Warcraft. Every day. I would pat the kids on the bottom every morning, send them to school and then I would dominate as an Orc Warrior.

That’s because in 2006, Hohman quit a fabulous job as president of Hotwire to do nothing but play the game. Full time. For a year.

“I learned from playing WoW about community. It was the first time I really felt part of a online community. I’d be up the morning and be excited to see my guild. Isn’t that nerdy?” he laughs.

An online community has different characteristics than a real-world one, he discovered.

“There’s a space and time ‘shift,'” he describes. “A ‘real’ community is governed by normal rules of space and time, but online is not. It happens across all hours of days and night and across all parts of the world.”

http://www.businessinsider.com.au/ho...assdoor-2015-5

This is absolutely a great share Aussiedude. Thank you!

- - - Updated - - -

Me personally? Not So much.

But I have a nephew who taught himself how to read at the age of 4, just so he could play "Zelda Twilight Princess" all by himself. His parents wouldn't let him play "Resident Evil" at that age though, and kept the game locked in a cabinet. Until one day, when they caught him downstairs, secretly playing it at 3 in the morning. He couldn't unlock the cabinet, so he unscrewed the hinges.

He entered kindergarten with a 3rd grade reading level.

I gave him a nice gaming laptop when he was 9 he could use my steam account. A week later his parents called to inform me that he hacked my passwords, and had removed all my parental controls.

He's 12 now, jumped ahead several grades, and is now modifying drones.

I'm a little afraid of him.

That...is...AWESOME!

- - - Updated - - -

Gaming taught me how to call someone a twatwaffle.

This is very important as well...now you know when and where to use twatwaffle, and when and where not to lol!

[The Casualty]

I think any place that has opportunities for interpersonal interaction has the potential for benefit. I've seen folks network on places like FF14, Eve Online, and even this forum for employment opportunities. Just because there is a game involved doesn't mean that business can't take place or friendships arise.