I have heard tell of people putting Guild leadership on their resumes, and so I was intrigued when Elizabeth wrote about the Seriosity study applying skills learned in MMOs to leadership in the business world. The study, done by IBM in partnership with Seriosity, explains that the environments that players inhabit within MMOs expose them to a variety of elements that can translate well to business. "If you want to see what the business leadership will look like in three to five years," says Dr. Byron Reeves, "look at what's happening in online games."
First they list incentive structures, the concept that if I get a reward at the end of a task I will be more motivated to complete it. This is definitely something we see in the MMO, largely with the quest rewards we are given, but also with the idea that we are pretty much rewarded with some sort of tangible item (or gold) for every accomplishment made in the game. This holds true in the real world as well. I know from personal experience that if workers are offered a bonus at the end of a project they are more likely to do better work, with greater speed and accuracy, regardless of if they receive the reward at the end or not.
