I’m not sure how to start off without sounding terribly cliche, so I’ll just be frank. Games are wonderful teachers. I started playing games at the naive and vulnerable age of eight, when I first discovered Pokemon Blue on Gameboy Color. I remember my older brother had the older Gameboy “Pocket” (reserved for MASSIVE pockets), which didn’t have a colored display. Interactive video games had a unique impact on my young psyche, I would ignorantly wander through exclusively scripted sequences of dialogue and battle, not a care in the world. I didn’t need to be aware of the algorithms that dictated what happened in-game, I didn’t need to know *exactly* what X ATTACK was used for, all I was worried about was one thing: being the best Pokemon trainer ever.
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It gave me something to work for, a goal that had clear requirements to succeed: Collect all the badges, beat the Elite Four, kick Gary’s ass, and “catch’em all”. Easy enough that it never seemed impossible, but certainly challenging at some points for just your average eight-year-old. How many hours did I spend trying to achieve my goal of being the very best, like no one ever was? How many times did my mother yell at me for stealing batteries out of the TV remotes to fuel my passion? Some may see an unhealthy hobby, but gamers only see undying dedication to succeed.
Needless to say, I was never the best, and I never got close to catching all of the Pokemon. I managed to beat the Elite Four, and that loser Gary; that was enough for me before graduating to a more… sophisticated genre. I started playing real-time strategies more than Pokemon, eventually phasing it out of my sphere of interest. My first RTS was Westwood’s Command and Conquer. Again, the premise was simple, but it appealed to my growing mind. I was forced to micromanage specific units, each of them having their own unique strengths and weaknesses. I needed to make decisions on the fly to beat opponents, I was getting more and more interested in fast-paced play.
First-person shooters teach a number of useful skills that can be applied to life, if you’re patient enough to get good at them. Decision-making and risk management are two things I took from long years of playing earlier Call of Duty titles on Xbox, and later Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and Battlefield 3. In addition to mechanical skills, predicting movement in enemies and managing safety margins is vital to racking up insane killstreaks. Being able to predict how others think is invaluable in human interaction, you can avoid meaningless friction and leave better impressions.
The most important life lessons I’ve ever taken away from playing video games would be from my adventures in World of Warcraft. Raiding with nine other people let’s you learn a lot about teamwork and working with people you might not always see eye to eye with. Doing Arena meant dealing with high pressure situations, and often defusing conflicts between less patient teammates. I apply these teachings every day when i’m with coworkers and friends, making myself a more considerate person as a whole.
This is only scratching the surface, what other values might I have internalized over the years in front of the monitor and television? I guess the romantic way to put it would be that it doesn’t matter, and we should love who we are regardless of how we came to be. Educational games aren’t very popular because their objective is… well… education. Introduce children to games that encourage critical thinking with aesthetically pleasing rewards and it will have the same, if not greater effect.
Cheers.