Take me to your leader: A deep dive into leader roles in World of Warcraft raiding guilds
Mansikkamäki, Teodora (2023)
2023
Master's Programme in Game Studies
Informaatioteknologian ja viestinnän tiedekunta - Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences
This publication is copyrighted. You may download, display and print it for Your own personal use. Commercial use is prohibited.
Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2023-05-18
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202304244280
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202304244280
Tiivistelmä
Building upon an existing theory, the New Theory about Leadership in MMORPGs (Prax, 2008), this study underlines the most common roles of leadership in raiding guilds in World of Warcraft (WoW). The results help to give an overall idea of what roles a leader within the popular MMORPG is expected to fulfil, directly or indirectly. The results help blur the line between game and real-life leadership by showing that they can be easily applied to corporate or business leaders as well, giving the opportunity for further research into how MMORPG leadership skills can be implemented in the real world and how these games can serve as training grounds for future leaders.
The main assumption of this study was that there would be additional leadership roles that could be added to the theory based on previous research and over 10 years of development within the game. For this purpose, eight long form interviews with guild leaders were interpreted using thematic analysis and used to update the existing theory and formulate the results. The pool consisted of both professional and casual guilds and thus provided an overall view of the situation.
The results revealed additional information related to how leaders approach leading their guild and how much importance they place on trust. Results point to trust being a big part of decisionmaking for guild leaders, as well as forming both in-game and real-life relationships with the members they lead. Moreover, a profile of the successful WoW leader was formed, using previous research and my own findings, all pointing to WoW being a useful tool in teaching and testing leadership skills.
The main assumption of this study was that there would be additional leadership roles that could be added to the theory based on previous research and over 10 years of development within the game. For this purpose, eight long form interviews with guild leaders were interpreted using thematic analysis and used to update the existing theory and formulate the results. The pool consisted of both professional and casual guilds and thus provided an overall view of the situation.
The results revealed additional information related to how leaders approach leading their guild and how much importance they place on trust. Results point to trust being a big part of decisionmaking for guild leaders, as well as forming both in-game and real-life relationships with the members they lead. Moreover, a profile of the successful WoW leader was formed, using previous research and my own findings, all pointing to WoW being a useful tool in teaching and testing leadership skills.