gameshogun™

Thanks to this post for the following article.

You Play World of Warcraft? You’re Hired!
Why multiplayer games may be the best kind of job training.
By John Seely Brown and Douglas Thomas

In late 2004, Stephen Gillett was in the running for a choice job at Yahoo! - a senior management position in engineering. He was a strong contender. Gillett had been responsible for CNET’s backend, and he had helped launch a number of successful startups. But he had an additional qualification his prospective employer wasn’t aware of, one that gave him a decisive edge: He was one of the top guild masters in the online role-playing game World of Warcraft.

Gaming tends to be regarded as a harmless diversion at best, a vile corruptor of youth at worst. But the usual critiques fail to recognize its potential for experiential learning. Unlike education acquired through textbooks, lectures, and classroom instruction, what takes place in massively multiplayer online games is what we call accidental learning. It’s learning to be - a natural byproduct of adjusting to a new culture - as opposed to learning about. Where traditional learning is based on the execution of carefully graded challenges, accidental learning relies on failure. Virtual environments are safe platforms for trial and error. The chance of failure is high, but the cost is low and the lessons learned are immediate.

Read more »

In a recent study by Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) shows that adults spend more time playing games than teens, which is startling (to some degree).

• Women outnumber men due to high rate of online games between the bracket of 25-34 years of age, which contains the largest concentration of female gamers, about 29% of the age bracket.
• one-third of adult gamers spend 10 hours or more per week playing console or PC games compared to just 11 percent of teens
• 11% of teen gamers play PC or console games 10 hours or more week
• more and more 12-14 year olds spend more time gaming than 15-17 year olds
• 58% of homes with consoles consider it their primary game platform
• 25% of adults used handhelds in the last 6 months
• 64% of adults play alone
• 55% of adults play online
• 5x more teens are playing mmogs than adults especially women
• 77% of teens used handhelds in the last 6 months
• 78% of teen males play online games
• 58% of teen females play online games

Read on for the Press Release

Read more »

Another interesting post from RICH GAUTIER this time it’s about Online Games and Productivity. Could it be… true? Is your productivity level - be it in your work, family, life achievements, and other areas/aspects of your life, going down because of Online Gaming?

Survey Question: How many hours a day do you spend accessing the Internet? I didn’t even have to think before reaching for the pull-down list and choosing the maximum answer (40+). It’s a simple question. I live on the Internet.

Read the full article here: Are Addictive Online Games Destroying Productivity? - newsvine.

(PS. newsvine will be opening to the public on March 1, 2006 Wednesday)

I’m not surprised but it is very interesting to see and to know that the executive circles are jumping in the bandwagon (as they term it) of online gaming by playing and joining a guild in today’s most played online game - World of Warcraft^TM.

Read more: World of Warcraft is the New Golf.