Embrace knowledge like a true Slumdog Millionaire

I’ve been playing computer games for almost my whole life. Probably that’s one of the reasons I ended up talking about skills learned through gaming when I met a CEO of a big gaming company. It was an interesting discussion and turned out they had even done research on the topic. [1] [2] [3]

If I think about myself, the early games taught me English (games such as Sierra Online’s Police Quest series and King’s Quest series) as I tried to play them with the help of a dictionary. Next, I grew inherently interested about how computers work as I tried to free up conventional memory and still get the sound card to work in more advanced MS-DOS games.

So even though the games themselves weren’t necessarily very educating, they still taught me skills I’ve since used extensively in my professional career. Now I use English on a day to day basis and the deeper-than average computer skills have been invaluable not just on a personal level, but also in helping the small teams I’ve worked in as I have been able to solve even relatively complex problems ranging from hardware and network issues to collegial tech support.

As computers and consoles have evolved, the games have evolved as well. I recently wrote a blog post on how massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPG) teach remote management and how those skills could be put to use in an organisation. But there are a ton of other skills games teach. I’m in the progress of gathering a long-list of skills that different game types teach (at the end of this article), but I think one of the big questions is that of why we should be interested in the first place.

How breadth of knowledge is changing the world

The world is becoming more and more complex and the skills needed to achieve results / thrive in this world are changing. As Perttu Pölönen writes [4], first machines replaced us in the fields and suddenly strength and good physique weren’t among the topmost skills. People flocked to factories, until machines surpassed us in assembling and manufacturing finer things. People then moved on to offices to utilize their knowledge and intelligence, but now, at the advent of Artificial Intelligence, our knowledge can’t beat the current computers and it isn’t something that we should claim as our unique selling proposition.

The more skills we have, the more likely we are to be able to apply cross-functional understanding in solving problems. For example, the best coder will undoubtedly have trouble creating a killer program unless she knows about the rationale of the business, the industry, it’s application and the programs’ user base.

We usually first learn through schools, colleges, universities, then we gain skills through our working career and probably even some certified training that we or our employers arrange for us. But to truly master a wide spread of skills, we should pay a lot more attention to skills individuals learn outside the formal education and work. Like in the movie Slumdog Millionaire, the protagonist wins the main prize by being able to relate his experiences and the learnings from them, even though he lacks a formal education.

You’ll find my list of skills acquirable through gaming below. It is still work in progress and I’ve most likely forgot and missed a lot. What skills have you learned through gaming? You can add your own as well through the form below.

And guess what? I’ve learned a ton of skills outside of gaming as well. The importance of articulating the learnings from various sources is the topic of my next post.

The list of skills:

STRATEGIC GAMES (eg. Civilization, Plague inc, Panzer General)
• Long term planning
• Strategic agility & innovation
• Organising
• Time management
• Priority setting

MANAGEMENT GAMES (SimCity, Factorio, Football manager)
• Strategic Agility & Innovation
• Organising
• Planning
• Time management
• Priority Setting
• Optimize processes
• Managing through processes & systems
• Intellectual horsepower

MMORPG
• Team working skills
• Planning
• Execution
• Managment
• Motivating others
• Negotiation
• Managerial courage

FIRST PERSON SHOOTERS (Counter Strike)
• Reaction time
• Planning
• Team working skills
• Scenario thinking

[1] Bergstrom, Kelly, Carter, Marcus, Woodford, Darryl, & Paul, Christopher (2013) Constructing the ideal EVE Online player. In Sharp, J, Pearce, C, & Kennedy, H (Eds.) Proceedings of DiGRA 2013: DeFragging Game Studies. Digital Games Research Association DiGRA, United States, pp. 1-16.

[2] Bakamo EVE Effect Research 2019

[3] EVE Effect Research (November 2019, 759 respondents)

[4] Pölönen, Perttu (2020) Tulevaisuuden Lukujärjestys, Otava