What Employers Could Learn from MMOs

I met many “lazy” people who play MMO (massive, multiplayer, online) games. They will obediently sit for hours (some for twelve hours or more a day every day) and play their video game.

These games strike me as insufferably repetitive. You perform a mindless task via the press of a few buttons on a keyboard, collect points, rinse, and repeat.

I noticed that I hold something in common with other people who find these games impossible to stomach.

Just as I possess goals in the form of quotas (pages written, pages edited, pages read, hours spent at the gym), other people who cannot seem to find a use for MMOs possess busy schedules that rewards them with a sense of accomplishment, a sense that they earned something.

I find that people who grow addicted to MMOs rarely work a job that grants them this sense of satisfaction. This leads me to believe that human nature demands that we accumulate towards a goal.

MMOs grant that accumulation. Experience points allow a player to level. In-game gold allows a player to purchase new equipment for her avatar.

Even the least social person becomes social in online video games.

Even the least dependable gamer arrives for in-game missions. Their guild mates trust them.

This all provides irrefutable evidence that people want a function in a society, work to perform, and goals to accomplish. We want quests, a sense of purpose. When we cannot find them in real life, we turn to alternative sources of purpose.

If a gamer spends weeks to upgrade a fake skill in a fake world, shouldn't that same gamer work as hard for a real skill in the real world?

Why do so many people who work so seriously and so hard at video games fail to direct that same motivation towards real life?

Perhaps, if I never experienced the poor treatment I received as an employee, I never would’ve wanted so badly to go into business for myself.

I recall bosses who tried to cheat me out of my final paychecks.

A gamer would quit a game the second that their game cheated her or him of their hard earned reward.

Gamers expect to receive everything that the captains of their guilds promise in return for contributions to sieges or dungeon crawls.

I cannot recall how many times employers found some barely legal (if at all) loophole to withhold from me the overtime pay I deserved.

Members within an online guild work together. Everyone performs her or his part. No cap exists as to how many guild members may level. Everyone who works for her or his reward receives it.

Real life coworkers might try to backstab each other while they compete for a raise or promotion that only a limited number of them may acquire.

Employers ought to take a hard look at loyal, hardworking gamers. It seems they could learn much from them about human motivation.