Gaming leads to Leadership

The article "Exploring game experiences and game leadership in massively multiplayer online role-playing games" talks about how in-game leadership in MMORPGs can affect real life leadership. The authors, YeiBeech Jang and SeoungHo Ryu, surveyed 820 South Korean MMORPGers and did a study on the data they gathered.

They found that the people who played the games in groups were more likely to take leadership roles than those who preferred to play the game alone. They also found that those people who took leadership roles in-game were more likely to take leadership roles in real life.

On top of that, they found that among those who took leadership roles in-game, there was no significant difference in gender. Both men and women were equally likely to take a leadership role. The authors noted that "this [was] an interesting finding. Despite many people's stereotypes of males as dominant leaders and females as obedient followers in Asian cultures, this result acclaims that cyber worlds offer more chances of experiencing leadership regardless of gender." (YeiBeech Jang, SeoungHo Ryu)

At the end of the article, the authors made the point that MMORPGs could be used in the classroom to teach students leadership skills. Also, companies could use them as a cheaper alternative to the leadership trainings that many companies pay a lot of money to have their employees go through.

Of course there are flaws, as with everything, but the authors made some pretty good points about how leadership in-game can positively affect one's leadership in real life.