Leadership Style in World of Warcraft Raid Guilds Patrick Prax Uppsala University Box 513, 75120 Uppsala, Sweden Ekonomikum E 335, Kyrkogårdsg. 10 +46 765 543 446 [email protected] ABSTRACT leader. In MMORPGs players are required to work in teams This study shows how guild leaders in World of Warcraft and to organize in self-governed groups to be successful (WOW) and leaders of real life organizations compare in [4,5,11]. While most players are simple members of those terms of leadership style. This comparison is used to shed organizations, there are also leading figures who take the some light on leadership in Massively Multiplayer Online responsibility to organize and govern these groups of Role Playing Games (MMORPGs). 12 interviews were players. In this paper the main interest lies in leadership in conducted, six with leaders of successful WOW raiding successful PvE (Player versus Environment, in contrast to guilds and six with leaders of various real life Player versus Player, PvP) raiding guilds where leadership organizations. The Leadership Grid was used to analyze is given by the game mechanics to a single guild leader and compare the different leadership styles. The leadership which raises expectations of a more institutionalized style of the guild leaders can be described as “Janus-faced”. leadership here than in other player organizations. This It uses both “County-Club Management” putting human institutional leadership as it appears in MMORPGs is a needs first and “Authority-Compliance Management” rather new phenomenon and especially leadership style focusing on efficiency and results depending on the seems to be a central point for the success and failure or the situation. To secure the success of the raid a leadership survival and death of guilds [11]. In their paper Reeves et. style with focus on results is used during the actual raid. al. argue that leadership in real life organizations is During the every-day life, outside of the actual raid, a changing due to ICT and that it is becoming more like leadership style concerned about human needs is chosen to leadership in MMORPGs[9]. They make the point that be able to solve social problems and build strong social MMORPGs have sophisticated communication structures relationships using only digital media for communication. enabling the players and leaders and that the future work places could feature similar communication technologies. Keywords They go even one step further saying that players of these Leadership, MMORPG, World of Warcraft, Guild, Virtual games will demand the well-designed communication Community, Collaboration, infrastructures they know from their gaming experience in INTRODUCTION their work life and thus create a need to adapt these Jane McGonigal, in her “Gaming can make a better world” structures. This outlook on the relevance of leadership in speech on TED.com, made the point that “the average MMORPGs motivates this investigation of the leadership young person today in a country with a strong gamer style in raiding guilds culture” has spent as much time in games as in school.[7] Aim She goes on to ask what exactly the gamers are learning in The aim of the paper is to characterize the leadership styles this “secondary line of education” to become good gamers of leaders of successful WOW raiding guilds by comparing and while she goes on discussing the merits of gaming in them with the style of leaders of various real-life general this paper is focusing on one aspect of gaming organizations in terms of focus on productivity or on the which is leadership. One type of games, MMORPGs, have needs of people. given rise to an interesting leadership figure, the guild THEORY The Leadership Grid Nordic DiGRA 2010. DiGRA © 2010 Authors & Digital The Leadership Grid is a useful model for visualizing and Games Research Association (DiGRA). Personal and discussing leadership styles [2]. It uses two numeric scales educational classroom use of this paper is allowed, from one to nine, the first one showing the concern about commercial use requires specific permission from the production and the second one showing the concern about author. people. A high number represents a significant concern. A complex team-based task within MMOs and requires a leadership style with the values 1,9 would put results and certain amount of individual discipline and teamwork.”[11] production far in the background, shown by the value one Only leaders of guilds ranked among the 100 best raid of the first number, while being extremely concerned about guilds in Europe (with one exception, the guild council of people illustrated by the nine as the second digit. See the “Schwingen des Phoenix”, more about that below) were following figure (Figure 1) for an example of the leadership interviewed. The guilds were ranked after their success in grid. the PvE content according to how much of the content they played through and how fast they managed to do so[12]. All the guild leaders interviewed are German. The guild leaders interviewed were the leaders of Myth, Harlequins, the guild council of “Schwingen des Phoenix”, Affenjungs INC, Nero and Unleash. The guild “Schwingen des Phoenix” is not among the most successful raiding guilds. However, it was included in the interviews because it opened the possibility to talk to a whole guild leadership council of five players at the same time. While not providing information about the top raid guilds it highlighted things about the setup of guild leadership even in the other guilds that were taken for granted there thus deepening the understanding of the leadership styles by providing a contrast picture. The organizations of the real life leaders ranged from public service Figure 1: The Leadership Grid agencies and non-profit media organizations over to small Blake (1985) [3] creative private businesses and workshops to big industrial The leadership grid is useful for comparing leadership companies and the military thus including leaders from styles online and offline by assigning numerical values to many different backgrounds to get as many leadership different styles. The weakness of the leadership grid is that styles as possible for the comparison. it only has two dimensions of leadership, concern for The informants were one leader of a Swedish municipal people and for production. It can be argued that leadership organization (Monica Fagerström), a Swedish air force styles consist of more than that. However, the leadership mission leader (Patrik Stensson), a Swedish Media grid provides a good starting point for a comparison along company CEO (Peter Mattsson), a German industrial these two dimensions which can then become the basis for service company manager (Jürgen Tiekötter), a German better and more detailed analysis and explanation. workshop owner (Michael Dzygoluk) and the station manager of Uppsala’s student radio (Emil Öberg). METHOD This study used semi-structured interviews for data RESULTS collection. The interviewees were asked to describe their Leadership In-Game tasks, duties, responsibilities and experiences the way they Explaining the similarities and differences of leadership perceived them. The leadership style in specific situations styles used by WOW raid guild leaders and real life leaders was a focus of the interviews. The author is a member of a it is necessary to summarize briefly the different leadership casual raiding guild. He uses personal experience from that situations of guild leaders. It has shown in all six guilds that to help the data collection and interviewing. the leadership style of guild leaders changes dramatically Choice of Interviewees dependent on the situation they are in. That means that As the aim of the paper is to understand how institutional there are two modes of leadership styles, one of them leadership in in-game organizations, guilds, works. A raid is occurring in the actual raid and one outside of it. a 10- or 25-member team event “that typically last between Leadership style in Raids 2 and 8 hours and require a heavy dose of management and “It is insanely complex. You have to be there all the time intricate coordination of player roles. A raid is the most and be aware of thousands of things simultaneously and in addition you gets messages from 24 others…you run on motivate their players and try to make them feel that they adrenaline.” Guild Leader of Harlequins are moving forward. All guild leaders described the leadership style in raids as “Sometimes it is important to explain to the people that we oriented toward results. It is a rather clear “Authority- are not so far away from a kill even though we wiped again Compliance Model” that has the value 9,1 in the Leadership at 90%.” Guild Leader of Myth Grid. Part of the description of the “Authority-Compliance However, also this is done with the outlook of raising Model” in the Leadership Grid is an organization “in such a peoples’ effectiveness. Frustrated players are not as good way that human elements interfere to a minimum degree.” and the feeling of hitting the head repeatedly against a brick This is also a good description of the leadership style and wall and dying to the same boss over and over and over the aim of leadership in raids. The raid was depicted as again, as it has been the case at some point in many guilds, oriented towards results and everything that stands in the is described as a very problematic situation for a raid and way of that is eliminated. its leader. Three of the interviewees used a certain boss, The guild leader of a raiding guild is not necessarily also M’uru, as an example. M’uru was extremely hard to beat as the raid leader. However, all the guild leaders in this study even a small mistake by a single player could result in a were also the raid leaders.