APPARENTLY, sharing your devotion to games like World of Warcraft (WoW) and EverQuest with a headhunter isn’t necessarily the best way to score a new job.
Earlier this month, a technology reporter recounted a conversation between himself and a recruiter friend on gaming message board F13, in which the latter said a client had told him to avoid candidates who play WoW.
This conversation has since spawned dozens of follow-up articles from sites like the BoingBoing to the Times of London.
Many of the biggest fans of these games are, unsurprisingly, indignant over the alleged discrimination.
What may be surprising, however, is the number of gamers who have acknowledged that there is basis for such employer behaviour, going by their own gaming experiences.
For many of us who grew up playing games like WoW, EverQuest and their ilk, the heart of the issue – that hardcore gamers who play all night and then surf gaming sites in the office often don’t make the model employees – really isn’t a huge surprise.
This doesn’t apply to everybody, of course.
I’m sure there are some truly casual online gamers who play 20 minutes a day from the time they click “sign-up” to when they hit the “quit” button - although I’ve yet to meet such a player in 15 years of online gaming.
And yes, there were periods when I was playing far too much myself – making me a less-than-ideal candidate for operating heavy machinery or calculating complex mathematical formulas.
Do I regret this?
Well, I certainly could had used the time I spent collecting magic swords and gold improving my Mandarin or exercising.
But it wasn’t all wasted time, and studies have shown that online games like these can teach skills from leadership to project management.
Well, I don’t know about leadership and project management, but my computer skills definitely went up several notches trying to learn how to play MUDs (multi-user dungeons, the text-based predecessor of online games like WoW).
More recently, I learned something of the psychology of stock market trading, via playing the virtual economy in games like EverQuest 2, to the point that my character was, for several months last year, the fifth richest character on his server. Hopefully, this learning will translate to real life gains in the stock market IRL (in real life).
But the most important lesson I learned while dragon-slaying is self-control.
I’ve gone to the addiction abyss and hurled myself in - and managed to climb back out again.
That day - over a decade ago today – was when I finally realised how addicted I was and quit for good.
"For good" didn't last very long, however, and I eventually picked up gaming again.
But online games had lost the strangle-hold they had over me.
And I suspect the lessons I’ve learned from that episode will stand me in good stead when confronted by other lures life throws at me.
Read the full report on employers attitude towards gamers by Chua Hian Hou, Level 72 Templar, in The Straits Times today.