Gamers aren’t usually perceived as people fit for professional work since employers think of them as slackers since all they do is play games so that would mean their gaming life would interfere with work life.  Which most employers interpret as minimal or no work productivity at all.

But did you know that players of massive multiplayer online role-playing game can be assets to companies?  Putting it in your resume may actually help you land a job.  I know you think I’m talking crazy right now but hear me out.

SiliconANGLE’s resident gaming expert Kyt Dotson created and published a video and wrote an article over the weekend based on a study done among MMORPG players in workplaces that proves these gamers actually hold great leadership skills among others.

In a study done by Dr. Depoina Xanthopoulou from the University of Crete and Dr. Savvas Papagiannidis, discovered that leadership roles and cooperation in MMORPG games translated to transformative leadership effect in their work.  The month-long study was done on 79 employees, who are MMORPG gamers.  Below is the abstract of the study:

“In this 1-month, longitudinal study we examined how participating in massively multiplayer online role-playing games affects users’ real-life employment. For 79 employees, we tested spillover effects from gaming to work in relation to active learning and transformational leadership. Furthermore, we investigated the moderating role of game performance in these spillover effects. Results of hierarchical regression analyses showed that active learning spills over from game to work only under conditions of enhanced game performance, while bad performance reduces this effect. Furthermore, results supported the direct spillover of transformational leadership, as well as the boosting effect of high game performance in this spillover effect. These results provide further insights with regard to spillover processes, and suggest that virtual games may be of relevance for the development of new organizational training techniques.”

In an article on Huffington Post, Dr. Papagiannidis relates how a gamer’s MMORPG life affects his work life.  It was stated that most activities in MMORPG are quite similar to the task done at work.

“From collaboration to meeting targets, team work to resolve complex missions, strategic planning, allocating resources, to recruiting new players to form groups, there is a clear link between the skills needed to enjoy a good game performance, and the real corporate world. For this reason, the players who have had to manifest good leadership skills and gaming behaviours to succeed in MMORPGs, were more likely to see these characteristics spill over from games to their real work-life. This spill over effect was particularly evident when combined with high performance standards in the game,” Dr. Papagiannidis said.

Aside from that, he also noted that if gamers noticed that their avatar is behaving in a certain way, and the results of missions are positive, there’s a huge chance that the gamer will adopt his avatar’s behavior in his workplace in order to improve work output.

But Dotson pointed out on his article that though the sample population was ample, the length of the study, which is one month, is a bit short to be able to show long term benefits of being an MMORPG gamer.  He also stated that the study is more focused on showing how virtual worlds are conducive to foster leadership training and team cohesion skills over the short- and mid-term.  It also should be taken into consideration that MMORPG may have different effects for guild and raid leaders who spent years playing the game and dealing with a large group of team members.

“In my experience, guilds can often last quite a long time and expand their reach beyond single games sometimes moving from games such as World of Warcraft to Guild Wars 2,” said Dotson.  “In these moves the leadership and management aspect of keeping a guild together changes dramatically; and the administration and management of a guild may change hands several times with hierarchies and lieutenants appearing and disappearing from conceived roles.”

Dotson suggest a more lengthy and longitudinal study to be able to prove that there are long-term benefits in the workplace for MMORPG gamers.  And as an anthropologist, he wants a study to extend its scope to the “ethnography of guilds in virtual spaces to show how they carry skills obtained in their virtual lives into their local social lives.”

So if you’re applying for a job, don’t be afraid to tell your potential employer that one of your assets is being an MMORPG gamer, just be sure you can back it up with the study done regarding the effects of it in the workplace, so they won’t think you’re crazy.