Obama’s FCC Transistion Team Co-Chair is a Shaman

Last week, President-Elect Obama appointed two net neutrality advocates to co-chair his FCC Transition Team. One of them, Kevin Werbach, who is an assistant professor of legal studies and business ethics, also happens to play a game that you all might be familiar with, World of Warcraft. Checking out his personal blog reveals not only his Armory Page, but also a few interesting tidbits about his experience with the game.

According to the armory link given on his website, he is a level 70 Tauren Shaman specced Resto. Now, at only level 70, it seems like he’s been a little too busy outside of the game to do much leveling since WotLK came out, but we’ll forgive that. In a blog post from 2006, he writes about his experience of being in guilds, “Joining a guild transforms the experience of playing a game like WoW. The guild becomes the reference point for your in-game experience, and group activities — planning raids, exchanging information, sharing resources, chatting — become as much a focal point as the content created by the game developers.”

If his armory page didn’t convince me, that post (from over two years ago) defnitely told me that Werbach gets the MMO thing. I’ve had people ask me if I’ll ever “beat” World of Warcraft, which really shows the difference between those who play and those who don’t. Sure, I may kill Malygos or eventually Arthas, but leveling and killing bosses is just part of the experience. The rest is about the interaction you have with other players and the experiences you have along the way.

I, for one, and happy to see that people who have a better understanding of how the internet and games work are making their way into positions that may actually affect policy. What are your thoughts?