Online role playing games have also evolved into so-called MMORPG (Massively multiplayer online role-playing game) games these days. Over the past weeks I had the chance to talk to people playing and producing MMORPG games and realised that there is an interesting CSR angle to these kind of games.

MMORPG games such as World of Warcraft, Star Wars TOR  obviously are a lot of fun to play but they also enable its players to develop their social skills as well. Social skills such as working together in your team, called your “clan”, in order to reach a certain goal is just one example of how players are indirectly developing skills within these games. These games have some many interesting social facets these days. Truly amazing.

And this is just the beginning. MMORPG games will become a lot more complex and more popular over the next years. This is why companies producing these games will have an ever-increasing social responsibility towards their customer, the gamer. This social responsibility in my view is massively undervalued at the moment. In a way this industry is in a similar situation to the lottery industry and its discussion about responsible gaming  years ago.

Take the time to watch this video from TED below by Jane McGonigal called “Gaming can make a better world”. For me this talk opened up a whole new way of thinking about the potential of the MMORPG games.