Sumail Hassan, a Dota 2 player having a net worth of around $3.6 million, made history in 2015 by winning The International 15 Dota 2 Championship and becoming the youngest person to have ever won a million US dollars in gaming price money.
Sumail is just one of numerous individuals who are now pursuing video gaming as their full-time profession. The stigmas that once heavily surrounded the words “video gaming” have largely faded away. In fact, videogames are now being adopted by organizations in an attempt to train their workers.
The United States Department of Defense put marines, soldiers, and sailors in a variety of simulations to prepare them for disaster scenarios. Cold Stone Creamery uses a videogame that trains its employees on the perfect amount of ice-cream that should go in each scoop.
To see the extent this unorthodox form of training is effective, Dr. Traci Sitzmann at the University of Colorado Denver Business School analyzed 65 studies and data from 6,476 trainees. It was found that the employees who were trained through videogames exhibited 14% higher skill-based knowledge and 9% higher retention rates.
Let’s delve deeper and explore how exactly videogames help us master everyday skills by putting their underpinned features into use.
Attention and Vigilance
The cornerstone of attention and vigilance is Visual Spatial Attention.
Without making it sound too geeky, Spatial Attention can be thought of as the ability of our brains to select an area in space and interpret information out of it.
PUBG, which is all the rage of the present time, involves quite a lot of visual-spatial attention. Players are expected to spot enemies in a field that stretches miles and where things appear tiny in a far distance.
A 2012 review shows that action-based video games improve visual attention and could improve our driving ability. Not only that, athletes and military professionals could increase their performance if they incorporate action-based video gaming sessions in their routine.
So, it makes sense to infer that playing action video games helps us get better at activities that involve focusing on a specific element in a field of distractors.
Reading and Phonetics
As strange as it may sound, playing videogames can actually help your reading abilities!
In one study, a group of dyslexic children was separated into two further groups. One played an action videogame while the other played a more laidback kind of game. It was found that the former demonstrated tremendous signs of improvement.
In fact, research shows playing videogames for as little as 12 hours could yield more improvement in dyslexic children than they would have from any other therapy.
But here’s the catch: finding an age-appropriate action game for kids is not easy.
Rope Ninja by unlimited gamez Mo is a great place to start with. This action-packed game is a fun and challenging one that just requires timings and concentration to get a hang of it.
And by the way, this is just one of many amazing games that you could get on this platform against a very nominal subscription fee, so do check it out!
Patience and Perseverance
A major chunk of our routines entails scenarios that we give unnecessary attention to, thereby derailing from our true goals.
According to a study conducted in 2009, videogames train us to avoid taking impulsive actions and respond to appropriate situations only.
Have you ever noticed that whenever a beginner plays an action game, two things happen usually: either they respond late to the target and get knocked out, or they respond on time but overdo with the fire button?
Videogames teach us how to master the right timings, together with emotional control and accuracy. But this doesn’t stop here!
Videogaming tests our limits and pushes us to keep persevering through repetitive actions. No matter how much we suffer loss in the games, we keep coming back to conquer missions.
That is exactly what life requires!
Games train us to take on the real-life challenges the same way. In other words, each time life knocks us down, we get up once more, ponder what didn’t work for us, and keep striving towards victory.
Thanks to technological advancements, many modern games make use of data analytics and utilize our in-game habits to tailor scenarios for us that are both challenging and fun so that we hang in there until we succeed.
Multitasking abilities
If you happen to be a working mother, “multitasking” must be an old enemy for you. Checking emails, doing household chores, all the while keeping a check on your kids is a household definition of multitasking.
That said, a typical day at the office for managers is no less intensive. Many report to have experienced responding to workplace conflicts, scheduling meetings, delegating tasks, a troubleshoot ongoing issues, simultaneously.
Likewise, in a full-fledged gaming moment, you could expect a player to be keeping a track of enemies, coordinating with the team, keeping the health bar optimum, and interpreting the ongoing situation, while running against the clock.
In an experiment, it was examined how video gaming affected the performance of individuals in Multi-Attribute Task Battery (MATB)—a test related to aircraft piloting that involves keeping target centered using a joystick, track fuel levels, respond to lightings on the instrument panel, and communicate on the radio.
While one group served as a control group, the other was told to play videogames 5 hours a day for 10 weeks. It was found that the latter outperformed the other group.
This explains that videogames serve you as a great way of honing your multitasking abilities so that you find no trouble doing a bunch of real life activities together.
Ending Remarks
It might be counterintuitive to think but we’re not far from the time when video gaming would provide a competitive edge in job applications.
Given the amazing ways video games help us prepare for real-world skills, they are now beginning to be recognized by recruiters.
A word of advice though — if you simply write in your resume that you’re a video gamer, chances are it won’t make much of a difference. However, if you go on explaining how a particular gaming experience helped bring out the best in you, it would definitely do wonders!
On your part, keep playing video games and keep evolving into the best version of yourselves, and do share with us how video gaming has helped you boost real-life skills.
Also read about: Best 5 Ways To Make Money By Playing Video Games
