Addicted to games? Read this if you're looking for a job.

Are recruiters growing wary of gamers?
Resume-rewrites-r-us

By Mike Smith


Putting a bullet-point-friendly spin on your leisure activities is a time-honored resume-writing tradition. All that time playing Diner Dash? "Experience in working in a fast-paced environment." A Solitaire addict? "Focused and goal-oriented." Lead a raid party in World of Warcraft? "Managed a 40-strong team of experts." A 20,000 Gamerscore on Xbox Live? "Demonstrated track record of success." But in the future, you might want to think twice about being too up front about your Bejeweled skills on job applications, as some recruiters are actively avoiding gamers. Over to Tale, a poster on gaming site f13.net's forums, who claims he was told by a recruiter that "employers specifically instruct him not to send them World of Warcraft players." According to the unnamed recruiter, "...there is a belief that [World of Warcraft] players cannot give 100% because their focus is elsewhere, their sleeping patterns are often not great, etc." We'd be lying if we said we hadn't had the odd bleary-eyed work morning after a long night's gaming. But what about those media reports about game leadership experience teaching management skills? Tale reports the recruiter just hook his head.

You may or may not put much stock in the words of a mostly-anonymous forum poster, but true or not, he's got a point. As the job market gets tighter, anything that might hint at a candidate's shortcomings just doesn't belong on a resume. And on that note, if you'll excuse us, we have some rewriting to do.

That's sad. There is nothing wrong with enjoying games if you posses the ability to turn them off and reginize the differenct between fiction and reality. Yes, games can become very addictive, but so can reading, television, sleeping, eating, taking baths and anything else for that matter.

Despite the fact that placing first on Midnight Club LA does not make you a world class driver, it can have positive effects if handled properly. Not all games have positive impacts in your daily life, but some can. Surgens are finding that if they spend a few minuits playing certain video games before surgery can increase focus and hand-eye cordination.

Does this mean that playing WoW for four hours a day will make you a better person? No, though this is widely believed by many "elitest" gamers. Status and abilities in a game does not make you better in any regards in life that anyone else, but it can help shape a more positive you.

I am a third generation gamer with time spend on first and second gen and all subsequent gens, giving me a very long resume of games and styles played, and I know that many of them have positivly effected me. Despite the fact that I had my own trouble with game addiction, leading to nightmares and hilusinations, I managed to balance my life over time and came out a better person that before. It's a terribly difficult things to balance something so addictive, but those who descriminate agenst gamers are basing their actions on rumors and false impressions.

Personally, I truly hate those people who hear scattered stories and believe it to not only be absolute fact, but that it applies to everyone. Those who can look beyond that and see that not all those who play games are crazy addicts who would kill for a new game, they have my respect. If someone asks, I'll tell them a detailed history of games and all that I've seen, heard and played over the years. If they think less of me then they wern't someone I wished to be close to or work for.

People like Jack Thompson who believe the worlds problems stem from video games should take a look around the world THEY created. Guns wern't created by video games, war wasn't created by games. Murder, violence, addiction and the slime of the world have existed for thousands of years before video games were even the faintest dreams. These people, the ones who have destroyed the forests, poisoned our water, killed off species and people like pollen in the breeze, they are the cause of the world problems. Games are one of the millions of problems that spin the web of our own destruction. Eliminating video games won't make the world a better place, we're too far past that point. Twenty years in the history of the human race is a spec on the constant shame that we've wrought on the world we've been given.