TIMING
Gaming has been teaching us timing ever since Super Mario Brothers, and it's honestly one of the skills that many folks use on a day to day basis in some form or another. Good timing is essential to living in the world especially when it comes to transportation of some kind. If you drive, you have to time your pace based on various traffic lights that change their orientation every few minutes. If you're walking, you must time the same lights and make sure you don't get hit by that on coming car should you happen to be jay walking. If you're taking a bus, you must leave your home within a certain amount of minutes to make it to the bus stop in time.
When these mundane, every day actions are described and put under the microscope next to video gaming, it's even difficult not to think of them as a game. From Super Mario Brothers all the way up to the Uncharted series, there have been several lessons in the importance of timing in video gaming over the years. Not only does it make life a little bit more interesting to think of these tasks as matters of timing, but it simply makes you better at performing the occasional task in your life that requires flexing that brain muscle. Practice makes perfect, no matter how you slice it.
MORALITY
Many people think that video gaming is all about blowing things up and hurting people. Honestly, in this day and age with the advent of technology and the ability for anyone to obtain any sort of knowledge they desire on any subject they find interesting it surprises me how few people are willing to do a little bit of research and find out that for years gaming has been reinforcing ethics and morality to it's devotees. With the advent of games like Fable and Mass Effect where decision making effects the story and the traits of your character, the consequences of being an a**hole can really make an impression on a player.
While it's true that morality is something that is passed down through with authority figures and interaction with ones peers, video games as a whole have done plenty over the years for the notion that there is value in being the good guy. Games like Harvest Moon take the concept of community and the benefits of making friends and sew it into the fabric of the game while subtly reinforcing these ideals into the players brain. Yes, plenty of games preach the opposite message. However, going all the way back to the glory days of the NES with games like The Legend Of Zelda, the overall theme for the majority of games was and still is to be the good guy. That's got to count for something, right?
PERSEVERANCE
Life is not easy. Sometimes things can get so difficult that all we want to do is call it quits, cash in our chips and call it a lifetime. In the video game world, that attitude can be lead to a lack of accomplishment. If we gave up every single time things got hard, we'd never feel the satisfaction of getting to the next area or level up our character to take on another challenge. This sort of determination can certainly drive someone to press on and continue to pursue their goals despite whatever obstacles are thrown in their path.
Many video games feature different difficulty settings, and several gamers who consider themselves to be "hardcore" tend to gravitate towards more extreme ones. No matter how many times they bite the dust during the adventure, a real gamer will always find away to overcome the challenge. This is a valuable trait which is not to be undermined. Someone who will painstakingly trudge through any particular challenge or a hardship until he or she has succeeded is definitely going to be more adept at overcoming other adverse elements in his or her life. Video games can indeed be a great measure of an individuals resilience.
What do you guys think? What other things have you learned from years of video gaming? Leave a comment and be sure to check back for more gaming news right here at www.fanboysanonymous.com
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