According to Wagner James Au, Werbach plays WoW and is in two guilds with multiple characters (though one imagines he doesn't exactly have time to raid), while Crawford gets her kicks in the virtual space of Second Life. Their interest goes beyond what the games are worth as software, though - Werbach sees games like WoW as models for future software development:

"What [Warcraft] does," he continued in that post, "is provide an incentive for people to develop new software and ideas for collaborative production. Many of those ideas will translate to other group activities, including those within the business world. I think MMOGs will be, at a minimum, a significant testbed for these new technologies, because users see a direct benefit and are willing to experiment with new things."

Unsurprisingly, this perspective extends to virtual worlds like Second Life, which has been an important component in Werbach's Supernova technology conference. On her own blog, Professor Crawford, a board member at ICANN, also counts herself "a huge fan of Second Life" for the way it lets users retain IP rights to their content (though she confesses to difficulty when it comes to moving her SL avatar around.)

So the next time you're in Azeroth and trying to decide whether or not you should gank that hapless Gnome, you might want to stop and consider the fact that you might be about to waylay the new boss of the FCC. Or maybe he's that Hunter in your party who never dismisses his pet before jumping down off a ledge.

LFM White House?

(GigaOM via BoingBoing)