Economics with World of Warcraft

I started one other project yesterday, the one we're doing just for fun, some students and I - to learn more about Economics while we (anyway) play World of Warcraft.

Just like some of my students I play WoW (I actually met my wife Tulipe in that game) every now and then, just to relax. Some came by and suggested me to have a course using WoW as a tool with the explanation "if you anyway believes in learning through a game (Minecraft) you should test WoW (as we know you play)..."

For a few weeks I've tried to set this course up. On one hand gather motivating students and on the other hand get support, help and motivated colleagues to help me. Learning through a game is so new ideas that students are often skeptical and teachers get terrified. I also feel that many teachers would see me fail with those projects just to prevent prevent the development of new pedagogical and/or didactic solutions.

My second try to get one of the teachers of Economics to help me was a real success. He thought the project itself sounded so interesting that he didn't thought about the money. His enthusiasm yesterday surprised both the students and me and while he has no interest to play the game self he told us he wants to do his very best so they can learn as much as possible. He even appointed himself mentor during the project, which surprised me because we havn't talked about it and I don't know if there's money to that, but he said he wants the experience more. It's such a joy when you find someone who thinks like that.

Besides Economic skills, and key competences for life long learning, there will also happen a lot with the group. At the moment there's first, second and third years students and six different classes/areas, in total 13 students and me playing. I'm trying to have all participants answer questions about group dynamics and expectations as well as doing The Bartle Test of Gamer Psychology.

As mr E (Economics) never have played any computer games, we started to show him the game. I opened the Auction House, he glanced at it and immediately began to draw parallels to the stock exchange. The learning process had started...

As our guild has been set up, 

we now also have our rank system working. The Our guild reflects a real company so now we have a board of directors, players who have invested their savings in the project. There is an operational management team consisting of the CEO and management team, Last but not least: employees. 

CEO and management team now have to come up with our mission, what we want to be good at? That thing we are going to develop the next weeks. 

We also talked about introducing incentive pays, you earns 50% of the profit and the other 50% goes to the company (guild).

Corporations are not a democracy.