Does Playing Video Games Improve Your Workplace Performance? (bbc.com) 25
"Businesses are waking up to the skills gamers can bring to the workplace," argues the BBC, adding that "Even the military is hiring gamers."
"The ability to assimilate information, react swiftly and co-ordinate actions whilst remaining calm under pressure are often attributes of people that are good at gaming," a Royal Air Force spokesperson tells the BBC. Those skills are part of what the RAF is looking for "in a variety of roles. Skills acquired through gaming can be very relevant to certain areas."
"There are plenty of soft skills that gamers can utilise in a professional setting, such as teamwork, problem solving and strategic planning," says Ryan Gardner, a regional director with Hays recruitment.
They also interview the man who told Kotaku that "If you're playing EVE Online you basically already have an MBA." Matthew Ricci tells the BBC he stands by the sentiment -- and Eve players might understand why. Often made fun of in gaming circles as a "spreadsheet simulator", the economy of the fictional Eve universe is driven by real market principles. If you want to build a new spaceship, the raw material has to be mined by another player. Manufacturing costs come into effect, and commodities fluctuate in price based on demand and haulage distance.
Mr Ricci, who had always dreamed of being the boss of his own company, ran an in-game corporation comprising hundreds of players. Eventually, he realised he could transfer his skills to real-life business -- instead of doing it for free. He restructured Zentech, once a taxation vehicle for his father's business, and it is now in its fourth year helping international brands enter the Canadian market... He credits his success to his family, his obsession with running his own business -- and "a damn good company in Iceland that made a damn good game".
The BBC also spoke to a radiotherapy physicist who says old-school games like Palace of Magic, on his father's Acorn Electron [released in 1983] not only exposed him to computers, but encouraged a competitive streak which he believes translates to his work today. "When creating treatment plans, the aim is to optimise the radiation dose to the tumour and restrict it as much as possible to healthy surrounding tissue and organs... Most videogames are essentially puzzles to solve," he says. "And problem-solving is a big part of my job."
"There are plenty of soft skills that gamers can utilise in a professional setting, such as teamwork, problem solving and strategic planning," says Ryan Gardner, a regional director with Hays recruitment.
They also interview the man who told Kotaku that "If you're playing EVE Online you basically already have an MBA." Matthew Ricci tells the BBC he stands by the sentiment -- and Eve players might understand why. Often made fun of in gaming circles as a "spreadsheet simulator", the economy of the fictional Eve universe is driven by real market principles. If you want to build a new spaceship, the raw material has to be mined by another player. Manufacturing costs come into effect, and commodities fluctuate in price based on demand and haulage distance.
Mr Ricci, who had always dreamed of being the boss of his own company, ran an in-game corporation comprising hundreds of players. Eventually, he realised he could transfer his skills to real-life business -- instead of doing it for free. He restructured Zentech, once a taxation vehicle for his father's business, and it is now in its fourth year helping international brands enter the Canadian market... He credits his success to his family, his obsession with running his own business -- and "a damn good company in Iceland that made a damn good game".
The BBC also spoke to a radiotherapy physicist who says old-school games like Palace of Magic, on his father's Acorn Electron [released in 1983] not only exposed him to computers, but encouraged a competitive streak which he believes translates to his work today. "When creating treatment plans, the aim is to optimise the radiation dose to the tumour and restrict it as much as possible to healthy surrounding tissue and organs... Most videogames are essentially puzzles to solve," he says. "And problem-solving is a big part of my job."
The most likely gaming skill you'll be using is (Score:5, Insightful)
grinding, for hours, and hours, and hours. For little or no reward.
Re: (Score:2)
And then you realize that it's cheaper to just buy those services from Asia.
Re: (Score:1)
grinding, for hours, and hours, and hours. For little or no reward.
If you have to grind for a long time then you are doing something horribly wrong. It's time to "git gud"!! --- Looks around to make sure no one is looking and runs for cover. ;-)
Re: (Score:2)
Good gaming, means carefully studied analysis of the game with relatively little mental efforts, to figure out the game developers errors and gaps that make the game easier to defeat, learning the developers game design patterns, quicker to learn, easier to play and readily winnable. Best difficulty adjustment to desired mental activity, just a trickle whilst thinking about other things or highly focused to distract from other thought. How the game works, how your mind works, good gamers, play lots of diffe
I learned how to manage people while playing DAOC (Score:3)
DAOC (Dark Age of Camelot) was a MMO back in the 2000's similar to World of Warcraft. I was in a top PvP guild on the Palomides server called Insurrection. Insurrection was only ~12 people and to properly farm for the good end game items it was necessary to link up with the other top guilds on the server. I routinely ran dragon / dungeon raids of 40-60 and learned how to coordinate large groups of people toward a set of goals and then divide the spoils (as well as keep those who didn't get loot interested in the next raids).
I used that skillset to start to manage small teams at startups, then larger teams, and finally I was running 200-500 people across several teams @ Zynga during its heyday.
Re: (Score:3)
Zygna was a scam and spyware company. Congrats I guess.
Re: (Score:1)
...And here I am, a fairly successful man, with a paid-for house, paid-for car, with a flex-time job which allows me to have plenty of free time and work from home, and I also happen to be a gamer. :)
But don't let that stop you from making up your own abnormal definitions
Re: (Score:3)
Me too, but my Mom paid for my house and car and I work from her basement.
Re: (Score:3)
Well, it was EvE that taught me how to game society.
And judging by your hate for "gamers", I guess you were one of those I gamed.
Trouble is people mgmt skills alone are not enough (Score:4, Insightful)
While the gamers were grinding away, building reputation, learning the quirks of their game environment, they were not learning anything about software tools, how banks work, how retail works, what's important for oil and energy companies etc etc.
I've had to recruit many people over the years and you can boil it down to 3 factors that the recruit could have:
1 Do you have knowledge, experience, skills to do the job I want (ie programming, security, testing, databases or whatever)
2 Do you have prior experience of my industry
3 Can you get on with people
Having all 3 is great.
You can get away with just 1 and 2 or 1 and 3 but just having only one of these 3 attributes is no good.
People might say, I'm an expert manager and I can manage anyone in any subject area, but in reality they struggle when judgment calls involve details rather than "big pictures"
EVE Online (Score:2)
they were not learning anything about {...} how banks work, how retail works, what's important for oil and energy companies etc etc.
With the sole exception of software tools, that's literary the kind of knowledge that you need to master for playing EVE online, the second example in the summary.
It simulate a virtual world with *a fully functioning economy*. CCP Games have actually hired economists to help them build their world.
It's not a *pew pew pew shooting enemy spaceships* game, it's a complete simulation were you need to have economics skill and understand the market in order to build your fleet.
Military (Score:2)
The military also hires high school dropouts. I wouldn't read too much into that.
Tea bagging: only vital work skill (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes (Score:1)
I do some of my best thinking when I am playing video games. It exercises the mind, simple as that.
Absolutely (Score:3)
It certainly worked for me. Then again, I'm a videogame developer...
Certainly not, just the opposite (Score:2)
depends (Score:2)
depends on the game - you're not going to build real-world skills playing pew pew twitch centered adrenanline games nor sports games that only give you skills in wiggling your thumbs.
These games he's talking abot tare the MMOs and the huge empire building ones that are massively more complex to think about and play. The ones that take years for a game.
Trouble is, even the most complex trading empire building game is still child-simple compared to the real world, you don't gain real skills that matter, just
No Respawn? (Score:1)
We'll see how well that Respawn feature works if you or your troops die.
Workplace (Score:2)
So... games that are simulations of combat are good for people seeking careers in the military.
And games that are a simulation of an economy are good for people seeking careers in a different fictional world that pretends to simulate an economy.
I’ve tried testing this thesis (Score:3)
But whenever I’ve been playing video games, my boss invariably comes into my office and tells me to get back to work.
Transfer of learning... (Score:2)
...is THE main objective of all education & training. Those of us working in education & training who read the research on transfer understand that TFA is a load of bollocks. Why do I say this? A group of subjects are trained & then practise on a video game. They get good at it. Change just one or two parameters so that the game play is slightly different & suddenly, the subjects aren't good at it any more & the have to re-learn how to play it, taking almost an equal length of time to ac
nothing new, is it? (Score:2)
The game American Army was released just for this purpose, if a remember correctly, the army saw this already a long time ago. I can only imagine it getting more important as all weapons are dronerized.