It's definitely an interesting question. Games like WoW can be excellent simulations of how to maintain morale in high-stress situations, which is basically what management in the startup world is all about. As a guild leader, you're thrown into the fire of needing to balance a personal touch and sensitivity for each individual team member's needs, against the general goals of the organization. And it's a situation where a growing leader can try different leadership styles and see what works without causing a real-life organization to sink into the ground. Worst case, some people are disappointed, but everyone picks up the pieces.
You learn to use analytics tools (like worldoflogs.com which creates performance graphs based on raid event data) to be able to go up to people and say "hey, I think you can improve by trying X" without making things personal... much like agile startups use data-driven approaches ("velocity" and other metrics) to compartmentalize interpersonal relationships and team performance. With loot distribution, you learn that transparency and trust are key, and that you can set yourself apart in the community as an organization people want to be associated with. You learn how to recruit, how to hire, and even how to fire. And you learn to overcome the stress of making mistakes.
That all said, in order to be at the level where you're leading and learning these lessons as a leader and not a follower, the time sink is necessarily huge. Is the benefit worth the reward? Not for people who already have opportunities to get this experience in "meatspace." But I'd like to think that as technology improves, coding becomes widespread... people who are educated on leadership with the next generation of MMOs will naturally shift towards starting their own startups, and they'll be more successful because of their MMO experience. It's a scalable education system, and as other posters commented, everyone needs fun.
WoW, of course, is optimized for addictiveness, not optimized for teaching these lessons in the shortest amount of time possible. I never played America's Army, nor have I done much research on it, but it seems like at its best moments it became such a leadership training environment. There's a lot of room for exploration of this space.
You learn to use analytics tools (like worldoflogs.com which creates performance graphs based on raid event data) to be able to go up to people and say "hey, I think you can improve by trying X" without making things personal... much like agile startups use data-driven approaches ("velocity" and other metrics) to compartmentalize interpersonal relationships and team performance. With loot distribution, you learn that transparency and trust are key, and that you can set yourself apart in the community as an organization people want to be associated with. You learn how to recruit, how to hire, and even how to fire. And you learn to overcome the stress of making mistakes.
That all said, in order to be at the level where you're leading and learning these lessons as a leader and not a follower, the time sink is necessarily huge. Is the benefit worth the reward? Not for people who already have opportunities to get this experience in "meatspace." But I'd like to think that as technology improves, coding becomes widespread... people who are educated on leadership with the next generation of MMOs will naturally shift towards starting their own startups, and they'll be more successful because of their MMO experience. It's a scalable education system, and as other posters commented, everyone needs fun.
WoW, of course, is optimized for addictiveness, not optimized for teaching these lessons in the shortest amount of time possible. I never played America's Army, nor have I done much research on it, but it seems like at its best moments it became such a leadership training environment. There's a lot of room for exploration of this space.
Further works:
http://www.academia.edu/1317272/Leadership_Style_in_World_of... - plots a spectrum of leadership styles and how different guilds display those traits
http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2009-01-14/how-world-of-... - a bit of a stretch, but has some interesting ideas