Gaming and Resumes

Picture of the ST.A.R. Alliance

In my résumé I have some parts, which wouldn’t exist if I wouldn’t work in the field of gaming. Working as a journalist in gaming, writing on a book about eSports, however, I am still struggling with the fact that I was a leader of a team of people who was one of the best in the game of World of Warcraft, in Germany we were under the Top 20. In review, this was an intensive job with everything from recruiting, guidelines, payment, training and finally leading in a really delicate way. All this in a world, which could change rapidly – in a blink of an eye. In that time I was a CEO of a team of 60 High Potentials, in general this sounds great!   until I say “video-game”. After that argument the HR-person will think, I have less concentration at work, my life-center will be at the video game and I will have a sleeping disorder. This will stamp you in Australia and you probably won’t get the job.

In this article –in spite of all prejudices –  I want to try to show you that a so-called guild-leader of a successful guild has already some tools for leading a team. Every company has to have a vision that fits, the same thing is valid for a guild. This vision contains the general target of guilds, e.g. be the best on the server and the time amount they want to spend to be the best. The best guilds in the world are “working” every day of the week up to six hours a day. However, this length of time is only in case of new content, what you can compare with a new project or a tournament where only the fastest ones get the price and the honor of calling themselves first!  With this vision on mind a great amount of time will the leader be spending on get the right people and this is even harder for a guild-leader than the HR-people, because normally you don’t have a face-to-face interview and nowadays with this background you can change your name easily and (although it is illegal) you can buy a whole character at an auction-house.. But nevertheless after an online-interview and everything, the question arises, does this “worker” fit into the “company”? Especially as these “workers” will also spend a huge amount of leisure time together;  or otherwise you will soon have a formation of  groups; and this is a common reason for failure of a guild and leads to the confrontations which the guild leader has to resolve. For success the players have to be at their best for over six hours and in case of failure, it is often the mistake of some few people. In order to get progress the leader has to find a way of criticizing and not allowing to escalate a possible confrontation of other players. You have to remind, that on some nights the players fight for their target the whole night long and the amount of tries can be easily up to 20, this arises frustration and human mistakes. This is a dangerous situation and demands skills in delicate leadership. In the companies’ world a way to motivate people is the payment and in a changed way this is the same in the guild world; and this compensation  is varying as much as possible and every guild has its own way. However the common currency for the system is the so-called Dragon Kill Point (short: DKP). Players can get points for time, for success, for getting necessary stuff and many more ways and thereby use these points to buy items. It is important to establish a way to motivate the player to work for the guild. Furthermore, the guild leader has to check the finances of the guild. Real finances like costs of web-server or voice-server and in-game finances, and finally, to assure the long-term success of the guild and, if necessary, look for fusion-partners (e.g. summer time is always a difficult time).

Every point listed here can be researched at length  and will be published in future articles. The purpose of this article was to show that a good guild leader has the tools to adapt to a leadership position in a „real“ company and, therefore, my guild-life and of everybody else should be in my and everybody’s résumé as a positive sign for your future employee.