lessons from WoW

Five years ago, game designer and world-class Street Fighter player David Sirlin wrote an essay on the harmful lessons that World of Warcraft teaches its players, namely: that you are more entitled to success if you've been trying for a long time than if you're skilled at the task; that problems you can solve merely by adding more brute force manpower are more rewarding than those requiring personal expertise; that you can only belong to one social community, which will be antagonistic toward all others; and that investigating novel approaches to a problem is unwise since it usually draws disciplinary action.

Three years ago, screenwriter and director John August took a different approach in Things We Think About Games. He listed seven WoW lessons applicable to real life: finish partially completed tasks before starting new ones; some tasks are long and boring yet still necessary, though don't fixate on them since they're not the goal, just the means; a cycle of experts helping newcomers who then become experts is a good thing; break broad goals into discrete, trackable steps (and then track them!); it's impractical to accumulate material posessions endlessly; and planning out your life to the smallest detail before moving forward drains it of excitement.

Game designer Jane McGonigal also speaks of the game mostly in a positive light in her book Reality Is Broken, which makes sense, since she's examined in detail how WoW motivates its players. According to her, the game teaches that preparing for an event is as important as what you do during it; that practice is required for success; that multi-person tasks are best approached by assigning specific roles; and that being sociable and helpful with other people is easy and rewarding.