Gamers spend a considerable proportion of their lives justifying their hobby. This is not the way Things Should Be, of course. No form of media or entertainment or hobby should force its enthusiasts to become apologists. But such is the way of things.
Gaming, to some, still has a reputation of being an adolescent male-dominated thing. And sure, there are plenty of male adolescents out there playing things. But the whole thing is so broad and diverse now that absolutely anyone can get involved on one level or another. And by getting involved with gaming, there are some valuable life lessons that can be learned. And I’m not talking about the old faithful, “hand-eye co-ordination”.
Patience is a virtue
If there is one thing I think that gaming has taught me above all else, it’s the fine art of patience. Specifically, I’m of the opinion that RPGs in particular have taught me this.
RPGs are all about delayed gratification. There’s always that next step to strive for, be it gaining another level, saving enough money to buy the Super Death Blade (only to discover it’s not as good as your current sword) or beating a difficult boss.
It’s not just that though. Games like Phoenix Wright with lengthy conversational sequences are reminders that it doesn’t have to be action, action, action all the time. Granted, this kind of thing doesn’t appeal to everyone, and there are people out there who skip every cutscene (and annoy the hell out of me, because I like cutscenes, unless I’m seeing it for the forty-seventh time) but it’s a Valid Lifestyle Choice for many gamers.
Whatever you may think of crap like FarmVille too, it’s obvious that in most cases, these people are displaying patience, too. Unless they’re the sort of person who actually spends money on playing those games, in which case they deserve to be fleeced out of every cent they pay to the Shinra Corporation… sorry, Zynga.
Perseverance is also a virtue
Commitment to completing a task is often one of the most difficult aspects of motivating oneself. It’s easy to get halfway through a project, feel like you’re not achieving anything and give up. Through the awesome experiences I’ve had through many games, I’ve learned that a difficult journey often leads to an amazing destination. Take Persona. Both Persona 3 and 4 are 90+ hours long. That’s a significant time investment. But the conclusions of both stories were so great that I was happy I’d spent that time playing.
Practice makes perfect
Both the epic Geometry Wars 2 battle the Squadron of Shame had upon this game’s first release, and the drunken Joe Danger night my friend Sam and I had a short while back are great examples of this. If at first you don’t succeed at something, try it again. And again. And again. And again. And… (repeat until you’re top of the leaderboards by a comfortable margin)
RPGs are again symbolic of this. The longer the characters play and do the same things, the better they get at them. Sure, in most cases levelling up doesn’t actually mean the player’s skills have necessarily got any better. But the characters have. Sad old nerds like myself can pretend that they’re levelling up when they get better at doing something.
Where am I?
I have an excellent sense of direction. I attribute this to two things: firstly, getting drunk a lot at university, finding myself at friends’ unfamiliar houses, and somehow always managing to get home without being killed or bumraped. And secondly, playing a lot of Wolfenstein 3D and Doom when I was younger. Wolfenstein didn’t have a map at all, and Doom‘s automap wasn’t particularly clear. As such, players quickly learn to find their way around by following visual cues and working out where their eventual target is.
To this day, whenever I visit a new city, I actually quite like to get lost for a while to get a feel for where everything is. Also, shoot Nazis.
Creative solutions
This sort of thing is particularly apparent amongst gamers of a certain age who grew up with adventure game logic. How else would I have figured out that I could fix a Sega Saturn controller using nothing but a screwdriver, a piece of toilet roll and a bottle of cheap vodka? Or that the appropriate way in which to remove the ludicrously-difficult-to-remove cover on the light in my bathroom was to use a stepladder and a teaspoon?
There’s an argument that watching The A-Team or MacGuyver could produce similar results. But I attribute my particular possession of this quality to adventure gaming.
So there you have it. Gaming is awesome.
I realise that by posting this I’m somewhat guilty of being one of the gaming apologists I mentioned at the beginning. But whaddayagunnado?
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It sounds to me like someone needs to catch up to me on the Perfect Dark leaderboards 😉
OH DOES IT NOW? You make a good point, sir. I recall getting rather angry with your times on that damn first level. You weren’t even using the famous glitch. Oh no. That’s going to bug me all day now.
Don Woods here,
I wonder if you developed patience from playing games, or if you were naturally able to concentrate for long periods and thus enjoy the deferred gratification found in RPGs? I have played a few RPGs in my time and I have not learnt patience. I will, for example, skip through any conversation that doesn’t provide me options to consider. I don’t believe that I am a slow learner, but I do think that I naturally get bored easily.
Do games teach you skills? Or do you enjoy games that require the skills that you have?
On a side note, no game has taught me more that the Civilization series.
You make an interesting point, Mr Woods. That’s an interesting perspective to consider. You may well be right; however, there was a time when I didn’t understand RPGs and didn’t have the “patience” to learn them. Perhaps that was a side-effect of being young and stupid rather than not having the skill of patience, though. I couldn’t say.
Civilization is certainly a great teaching tool, though any student who writes a paper on how George Washington kicked Montezuma’s ass while Queen Elizabeth watched and laughed is probably in for an unpleasant surprise.
My brother used to be the best player of Sim City 2000 in his office when he first started working in journalism. The reason? He had A-level Geography and no-one else did.
You didn’t put enough “and again”s in the “Practice Makes Perfect” bit.
I set my Pac-Man CE score with a few weeks of non-stop playing. Also, you are holding the X-35 wrong. That should be something else that you learned “How to make an argument about anything/everything on the Internet.”
I so am not holding the X-35 wrong. You’re only saying that because you’re an X-36 fanboi. The X-36 sucks and u r toatlly a faggit 4 lyking it lol!!!
Urgh. I feel dirty. And not in a good way.
That reminds me, actually, Jeff… do I have you on Xbox LIVE/PSN? I’m not convinced I do. “sonicfunkstars” is me. Some git got to AngryJedi first, despite it being open EVERYWHERE else on the Internet.
Love this article, Pete. And you made me fork out for Comic Life. I’ve tried a number of different template progs, but the simplicity and ease of use in CL is luvverly, innit!
Keep up the good work!
Comic Life is the bom-diggle shiznit mac-daddy, whatever that means.
Did you go for regular or Magiq flavour? Magiq is buggy but has some awesome tools.