The Game of Life – Skills We Can Learn from Gaming

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

Video games are more than meets the eye. They are mainly utilized for entertainment, but several titles teach lessons through storylines and gameplay. As a result, an invested player may gain more than they expect. One noteworthy example is actual real-life skills, which creators increasingly include in video games. They may be less realistic recreations of everyday activities, but they provide a valuable base for gamers to use and grow.

Since the first gaming consoles decades ago, playing video games has been seen as a time-wasting activity with little value. Recent research, however, shows that online gaming can help you learn vital abilities. In addition, there is mounting evidence that you may use problem-solving and leadership skills learned from video games to land a job and improve your career goals and ambitions. With this in mind, here are eight valuable skills learned from gaming.

1. Strategic Planning – Video games are becoming increasingly sophisticated as players want more planning and strategy in gameplay. This is also a handy life skill. Seeing a problem from all sides and anticipating your opponent’s moves will help you thrive in both your professional and personal lives.

• Manual Dexterity – Controller-based games can be very beneficial to your hands. Researchers discovered that those who played video games were faster at performing complex processes and made 37% fewer mistakes than those who did not. Particular video games have also been utilized in physical therapy to assist stroke patients regain control of their hands and wrists.

• Teamwork – It is your responsibility to guarantee the safety and well-being of your teammates, whether you are playing multiplayer social simulation games or survival games. Like in traditional sports, players learn to cooperate with others, form new relationships, and become better communicators. Even though players are under a lot of pressure during gameplay, they learn how to stay calm and assist one another. These abilities will come in handy when you manage projects or interact with coworkers later in life.

• Logic – Most video games necessitate some logical thinking. Players must think about their next best moves in light of the current situation and the instruments at their disposal that they can use to their advantage. We build a habit of making better decisions when we practice thinking on our feet and keeping calm, collected, and logical in challenging situations.

• Perseverance – Everyone knows that the best games are ones that are difficult to play. Defeating that ‘difficult’ boss or obtaining that ‘ultra-rare’ achievement feels like genuine achievements. That dopamine spike teaches us tenacity and personal accountability. The pleasure our brains experience teaches us to focus our actions and assists us in controlling the conditions around us. Such lessons are easily applicable in the actual world.

• Empathy – Emotionally charged games that tug at your heartstrings have been some of history’s most pioneering titles. These games force you to connect with the characters and put yourself in their shoes, even if their tale isn’t yours. Sometimes you are given an option for which there appears to be no right or incorrect response. These scenarios encourage the growth of a player’s empathy and compassion.

• Concentration – To succeed, the scenarios in video games necessitate the player’s total attention. Therefore, distractions such as phone calls, messages, and social media are turned off to focus on the task at hand. In a commercial setting, interruptions can reduce productivity and make staff less efficient. Thus having an employee who is used to focusing entirely on their work is a tremendous asset to profitability.

• Literacy – Video games with a strong narrative focus can help people learn languages and improve literacy, even by introducing them to vocabulary they may not have heard before. Classic point-and-click adventure games are a prime example of this. You have to read the dialogue between characters to grasp the tale and, in many cases, understand culturally particular terms and humor.