Seven Games of Highly Effective People

edwilli writes "There is an interesting piece on the Windows XP site entitled The Seven Games of Highly Effective People. It's a look at how games can improve your living and social skills, while still not allowing you to have a life. " While the piece itself is pretty fluffy, he links to Got Game?, a book about how gamers are shaping business. For more on this, check out Social Effects of Electronic Interactive Games, and this page of research papers compiled by The ESA.

except for that time-sink factor...

[ghostlibrary]

I think the paper misses the time-sink factor. Yes, Rise of Nations can hone skills, but when you play it until 3am and miss your 8am meeting because of it, that's not terribly effective.

Similarly, I think Tetris is responsible for more lost productivity than any other single cause.

I'm dubious about touting our game-playing as a plus while applying for jobs, for similar reasons.

It's a fine line between proving and honing skills, and 'wasting' time using those skills instead of earning almighty dollars. How do you get good at a game without spending lots of otherwise productive time?

Only so far you can 'hone the saw', to steal from Covey.

Re:except for that time-sink factor...

[slashjames]

I would think Solitare causes more lost productivity than Tetris, just because it's bundled with Windows.

Synergize?

[nharmon]

I'm sorry, but any article telling me to synergize isn't worth the electrons it came to me on.

I think...

[Otter]

...that if there's a lesson to be drawn here, it's to credit Steven Covey for identifying keys to success of sufficiently general relevance that they're applicable to games as much as to business. It's not that there's anything magical about games.

Hmmm, posting here doesn't really qualify as a "highly effective" habit, though. Back to work...

WARNING

[Dark Lord Seth]

Article contains the word "synergize" and thus instantly became bullshit.

A South Park episode would be more enlightening then marketing-speak...

I'm amazed that Slashdot readers haven't ....

[Tye_Informer]

jumped all over this. The article is very specific,
One important way people today are learning these success habits, believe it or not, is by playing computer and video games on Windows and game consoles!
Only Windows or game consoles. Those of us that use Linux for our games are not effective at all. (Actually, the time sink factor does go into that, so it might be true.)

Re:I'm amazed that Slashdot readers haven't ....

[brilinux]

Those of us that use Linux for our games are not effective at all.

With the amount of time that I have spent playing Nethack instead of doing work (like right now, when I am playing Nethack, reading e-mail, and posting to Slashdot from a Linux cluster instead of studying for my 21259 exam tomorrow, I would say that he might be right, although there is a Windows port for Nethack.

Wow.

[cjpez]

What an incredibly worthless article. Words can't do it justice.

windows?

[akwash79]

What about us DOS people?

Re:windows?

[sspiroff]

You can get Nethack for DOS too. http://falconseye.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]

Misread

[Comrade64]

I misread the description....I thought it said:

"...how games can improve your

lying and social skills..."

He missed the big one

[eyepeepackets]

It is called "Escape from Microsoft" which has to be the best productivity enhancing game of our time. Seeing how much time and effort my peers and superiors waste in their constant and vain attempts at keeping their MS OSs working, perhaps _that_ game should be entitled "Escape from Hell."

Judging from the increasingly hostile attitude towards Microsoft these folks are rapidly developing, I think they will manage to escape eventually.

Thanks Microsoft! That is where we need to go today and tomorrow.

Solitaire

[Creepy]

I was so hoping for him to mention Solitaire, then realized that's what I play when I don't want to get anything done :)

Doom indeed...

[Gallvs]

... helps you sharpening the saw [wolf3d.co.uk]

Wrong Seven Games

[uncoolcentral]

Mr. Prensky clearly didn't have much of an "effective" focus group if those MicroSoft games and time-sinkers are supposed to represent... anything other than a thinly veiled ad.

I'd load the list with real time strategy titles, and toss in a few turn-based, with *maybe* a couple of other genres to round it out. (Say maybe a FPS and a RPG.)

What would you put on your list?

Standard post hoc fallacy here

[Anonymous Coward]

Once again, we're confusing correlation with causation. Or so I thought from reading the article.