“19 year-old gamer becomes mayor”
So the headlines have been blazing about 19 year old John Tyler Hammons (Wikipedia entry) is the “gamer elected mayor”.
Coverage: GamePolitics.com, Yahoo games, Yahoo news, AP, G4TV
I did a bit of searching but couldn’t find a particular gaming reference but it immediately brought to mind the IBM study with Seriosity on “Virtual Worlds Real Leaders“. This is great reading – (get the full report .pdf here) and I believe there will be a lot more of these gaming parallels given the impact and reach of games on young and old alike.
Some of the folks who participated in the IBM report were presenters and attendees at the Virtual World SIG and these kinds of topics were things I spoke about at both Virtual Worlds 2007, and at NASA Virtual Worlds in Jan. 2008. The notions (or theories/findings) that the gaming environment can generate leadership is encouraging. At least, gaming trains users in online collaboration by default, and we’ve realized that “work is an MMOG” along the way from the SIG presentations.
The fact that so many headlines are running the “gaming” angle on the story just might bring the concept to the mainstream discussion. Can’t wait to see what develops around it.
- Bob K.
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