Project Lore

With the U.S. economy pretty much in the tank over the past half-year and unemployment at nearly 9 percent, the future of the workforce is on the minds of many. And for some, WoW plays a role. Last week, TIME (as in the magazine) put out a special feature - a kind of top-10 list of sorts on "The new work order." It counts the ways that the workforce of the future will change. The feature remarks:

Though unemployment is at a 25‑year high, work will eventually return. But it won't look the same.

Inevitably, technology was at the top of the list of items that will change the workforce. As was business ethics, declining job benefits, delayed retirements and a turn toward female management style. But buried within a section on Gen X taking control of the workforce, I was surprised to find this nugget:

Rob Carter, chief information officer at FedEx, thinks the best training for anyone who wants to succeed in 10 years is the online game World of Warcraft. Carter says WoW, as its 10 million devotees worldwide call it, offers a peek into the workplace of the future. Each team faces a fast-paced, complicated series of obstacles called quests, and each player, via his online avatar, must contribute to resolving them or else lose his place on the team. The player who contributes most gets to lead the team — until someone else contributes more. The game, which many Gen Yers learned as teens, is intensely collaborative, constantly demanding and often surprising. "It takes exactly the same skill set people will need more of in the future to collaborate on work projects," says Carter. "The kids are already doing it."

While it's not what I would call the perfect game synopsis, I think author Anne Fisher does a pretty decent job of explaining a basic point of the game to audience members who probably have never played. But more to the point: is the perception of gamers, and specifically those of us who play WoW, changing? We've seen arguments similar to this recent one. Way back, we've heard from some who argue that playing WoW is good leadership experience and teaches project management skills. And just on Wednesday, I saw a post from the newly redesigned and renamed WoW.com (formerly WoW insider) about a college student researching how people interact in WoW and other online games. But we've also heard from the negative side. About six months back, Juggynaut told us about a forum poster who said that job recruiters intentionally avoided hiring people who play WoW.  And that spurred a whole slew of comments from our dear readers, from those of you who had heard similar sentiments to those of you like Shaun, who I think summed up a lot of our feelings when he said, "Has this giant bag of douche ever heard of over-generalization?" But I'm feeling optimistic after this story from TIME. For one, it's a pretty major publication with a positive outlook on WoW. With all the misconceptions about gaming out there, it's good to hear that someone gets it, at least a little. And for two, the statements from Mr. FedEx CIO highlighting WoW finally are put into context: These life lessons that WoW provides are ones that will be valuable, even needed, in the future workplace:

The Gen X managers ... will need to be adept at a few things that earlier generations, with their more hierarchical management styles and relative geographical insularity, never really had to learn. One of those is collaborative decision-making that might involve team members scattered around the world...

So, how do you think WoW could change the job market place of the future? Or perhaps you have the opinion that all this is overblown, and it won't affect anything? Either way, it's an interesting conversation and a debate that, I suspect, won't end anytime soon.

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