This may sound weird, but gaming isn't all just fun and games. I'm sure you already have your mouse over the close tab button, but just bear with me for a minute. Gaming is more than just fun and games, it can improve the fundamentals needed to cope with situations in real life. Something that people don't even realize could be improving their social skills and attitude could be doing so in big strides.
Really think about gaming from a different perspective. One example I am going to use massively is World of Warcraft. This game has taken over my life before, I'll be the first to admit that. I stopped playing just as Legion hit and even now I feel the need to play it sometimes. But when I look back, especially as I used to run a guild and at the same time I was raid leader for our raid team at the end of the Warlords of Draenor expansion, who ended up 13/13 normal and 13/13 heroic (We were a casual guild so never touched mythic, the hardest difficulty in the game. I did however raid mythic with another guild). I look back at it and think about the amount of organization that was involved, the amount of teamwork that went in to every boss. Analyzing when things went wrong, talking to people about how they could improve and unfortunately asking people to sit out when they continually were not performing at the level we needed them to.
People may not realize it, but running a guild is like running a group of people. You make sure that everything they need is available to them, you replace the people who aren't performing for people that you feel could be capable of helping the team. You work together as a team to take down the toughest creatures and share in the glory and loot that drops off of them. You have to recruit the people to actually start a raid team (Selling your guild to people and why they should join you over other guilds). The amount of thought and organization put in to a guild and raid group is more than people probably think.
Another type of game that can improve someones real life skills are games like Farmville. Remember that game? The game that blew up on Facebook around 2009 and everyone suddenly took up their lives to grow their crops. Well a game like that can become so time consuming because its a game based on time management. Whether you put a crop down that took 30 seconds because you knew you would be there to harvest it, or put grew a crop that would take 12 hours because you were about to go to sleep. There are quite a few of these types of games on mobile and on PC. If you looked at the people that were always harvesting their crops in 2009 you would think they were wasting their lives away. What about if you replaced crops with that essay you have due in this weekend? Would you look at them like they were wasting their time? It's not a huge difference between putting that crop down to grow, and opening the word document to write essays about something you are passionate about. Both of these things can be viewed as fun, and both should be viewed that way. Who doesn't want to have fun when thinking about the things they love? If virtual rewards are something that makes someone keep playing a game, why couldn't it be applied to real life?
What about First Person Shooters? They are just aiming at someone and killing them, right? Well it all depends on how you look at it. Is the person shooting other people just doing it for fun? Probably. But how did they turn and kill someone in one shot after hearing just a few footsteps? Would you notice something like that if you had headphones on? Is this teaching people to have more spatial awareness and improve their hearing? In particular if you think about a game like Counter Strike, a game where you play as either a terrorist or a counter-terrorist. The objective of the terrorists are to blow up one of the two bomb sites and of course the counter-terrorists are trying to stop that from happening. Like World of Warcraft, you need an organized team of people (Even if they can all be strangers that have never met before) to be able to either attack or defend the objectives. On top of that in games like Counter Strike, it creates an environment where decisions have to be made quickly. If someone on your team is killed, maybe you should rotate to the other bomb site, or maybe you should make it seem like you have but instead stay on the same one. The decision has to be made in an instant, which means that if the situation arises in real life, that person will be accustom to making those split-second decisions and therefore have an easier time with it.
There's one more example that I want to use that I feel is important to this subject. This isn't a exactly a video game, although many video games have aspects of this game included. Dungeons and Dragons. The role-playing game. I have played D&D a few times and every time I have enjoyed myself. I feel that a game like this needs a lot of thought and also time (Campaigns can last as long as the dungeon master and players want to keep playing). The dungeon master has to put time and thought into creating a campaign to begin with. It takes creativity and intelligence to create the situations the players will encounter on each adventure they take. Dungeon masters must account for any possible situation the players will want to go in to. If the players run in to a sleeping dragon and attempt to climb over it (Yes, I have suggested this personally. My dungeon master very heavily suggested against it so I ended up not going through with it), then this must be accounted for, and the situation must be ready to be put on to the players. At the other end, the players must also account for every possible outcome and perhaps think of different tactics to tackle a particularly strong monster. Maybe they should attempt to charm the enemy into not attacking, or intimidate to the same effect. They can choose to sneak behind the enemy and stab them in the back for extra blindside damage. Every single possibility can be considered by players and they can choose collectively what is the best course of action. I feel that when deciding on a lot of things in real life, the possible consequences should be considered and any other possible and perhaps less consequential options should be considered too. D&D players do this in their minds every time they play. Maybe it makes it easier to do it outside of the game too.
Maybe, just maybe these games and many more are not just harming people in terms of applying things they learn in games in to real life situations. Maybe it's actually improving them, and maybe if certain aspects of real life were treated more like a video game, it would cause those procrastinators that would prefer to play a game than to do their essay to want to do the essay, because it would feel a bit more like a game.
Make sure you guys comment what you think about this below, lets start this discussion of more positive press toward gaming.
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