Video Game Life lessons Part 1

A few years ago, a friend got me addicted to watching video game playthroughs and Let’s Plays of them. (A Let’s Play is a player commenting during gameplay.) I’ve gotten to see quite a few games that I’ll never get to play. I get to see some that thwarted my childhood efforts. Plus, there are quite a few games from consoles that I never knew existed.

One thing that I hear quite often is “How was I supposed to know that?” or “That’s STUPID! How’d they expect people to figure THAT out?”

Gee, I dunno. How about these little life lessons called ‘trial and error’, ‘patience and determination’ and ‘developing problem solving skills’.

Ever since video gaming exploded in the 80s, people have complained about all of the bad things that video games are; too violent; too sedentary; waste of time; non-productive; too difficult; ect; ect; ect & totally BS.

Actually, video games are full of life lessons. Sometimes they’re more useful than the supposed ‘life preparation lessons’ taught in school.

These days, we’re familiar with such lessons as

“Beware the plumber.”
“In medieval times, women regularly fought in wars, wearing armor that afforded them equal protection to suits of plate mail worn by men, despite only covering about 3 inches of skin.”(1)
“Property destruction, theft and mass murder are not only acceptable, they’re encouraged through rewards and required to get to the next level.”
“Everyone is a stupid NPC (non player character) except for you.”

Mainstream as they are, I have a few other ‘real-world applicable’ lessons in mind.

There’s a long 40 year+ history behind video games. Obviously, all of the life lessons can’t be covered in one post. So, let’s just start with the early years.

During the 70s and early 80s, video games didn’t end. Literally, there was no real end to these games. Except for the occasional bug corruptions around level 255, games were just the same 4-9 repeating levels. With each cycle the AI (artificial intelligence) moved faster to create more of a challenge for the player.

What life lessons did those repetitive cycles teach?

Pattern recognition and memorization – Many games had patterns to each of the enemy AIs. With a little patience, those patterns could be memorized. Knowing the pattern makes defeating an enemy easier.
Patterns are everywhere; from numbers to words to human behaviors. Dictionaries use an alphabetical pattern. Knowing the pattern allows you to skip around the book to find what you need more quickly. Even the simple act of counting is a pattern of 0-9 cycles. As you grow up, you memorize the pattern of things like a 9-digit phone number, 16-digit cards and various other things. Even a street address is a pattern.
Identifiable disease patterns allow doctors to develop working treatments. Behavioral patterns help therapists figure out how they can best motivate a recovering patient. You always thought teachers had eyes in the back of their heads? Nope, they just memorize their students’ patterns. After a few years, they just know when to expect things and from whom. Like it or not while student faces change each year the behaviors remain the same. Even leaders stay in control by recognizing patterns and taking advantage of them.

Crowd Navigation – Most of the early games featured masses of enemies against one player. No matter how many times the player cleared the screen, foes always returned with about 60 of their buddies. Still, the player hitched up their pixels and cleared the screen again.
Life is full of crowds. From traffic to stores to school and work hallways, you’ve got to get through the crowd to reach your destination. Granted, you can’t just destroy them or hit them. If Frogger was your teacher, you’ve learned to observe the crowds and dodge your way through.

Repetitive cycles – Get used to it, kid. Each weekday, kids go to school, sit in classes, do assignments and leave. Each year, it’s the same thing only with higher grades of information. (And there’s the whole ‘growing up’ thing. I suppose you could call that a difficulty setting increase.)
After school, you’ll be in the adult world of ‘a job’. 10 to 1 you’ll be going to some office, store, or other location, to do the same thing on a daily basis…for the rest of your life.

Working for Points - In the 70s/80s, games were played for fun and high score bragging rights rather than a good ending. Games were replayed to get a better score and higher bragging rights. It’s really as simple as that.
Welcome to the reason for which you work; a paycheck. If you work hard or smart enough, your paycheck gets bigger. A bigger paycheck means better stuff.

These are a mere few of the ‘life lessons’ from video games. Don’t worry, there’s more – a whole lot more. But that is for another post. Seeya next time!

Footnotes:
1. (2008) 101 things we've learned from videogames The wisdom of our favorite pastime, applied to real life http://www.gamesradar.com/101-things-weve-learned-from-videogames/