8 ms·

I credit RuneScape with teaching me the value of delayed gratification and basic economics. I credit competitive Halo 3 with teaching me team building and strat

by drooby 4y ago

I credit RuneScape with teaching me the value of delayed gratification and basic economics. I credit competitive Halo 3 with teaching me team building and strategy skills. I credit StarCraft with training my mind to travel at warp speed. Honestly. My video game experience was instrumental to my success so far in life. This is not surprising to me.

XorNot 4y ago
Civilization 1 was my introduction to world history.
- dchichkov 4y ago
  /s I credit Civilization 1 as well. Or should I credit my parents who had PC/XT at home when the price of PC/XT was that of 3 new (soviet) automobiles? /s
- wing-_-nuts 4y ago
  I sunk a decade into civ 2. Oh man, the memories. I wish gog would acquire rights to release that abandonware with soundtrack and everything. Running it yourself requires running it on top of win3.1 in dosbox now days, and it's still janky. I would legit pay $60 for a perfectly working copy.
ericmcer 4y ago
In the same boat and it is great until I run into a more complex multi-faceted problem, pick a solution and end up 30 miles down the road before I realize I need to backtrack and try a different one. If my childhood had more books and boredom I might have the patience to spend longer in the planning stage and less enthusiasm for the drinking coffee and pounding out a solution stage.
- throwaway09223 4y ago
  Mine had a lot of books and boredom. I rarely regret just getting things done. Excessive planning is a much larger issue. I find it's usually better to just do something twice rather than spend too much time thinking about it.
  - ducktective 4y ago
    Same. I suffer from analysis paralysis.
  - shandor 4y ago
    I've been thinking this a lot lately. One absolutely fantastic upside for just getting it done is that even if you have to redo it from scratch, you have so much better real-world understanding of the problem space. I'm inclined to think that this applies to majority of the things we do, but is often brought up regarding building products in the idea that one should build the first prototype quickly, just to be scrapped so the final solution can be built from clean slate, benefiting from all the knowledge the prototype helped us gather. Most often, in my experience at least, the knowledge one gains from actually doing the thing (even badly) surpasses anything that could have been gained with excessive planning. To actually work, genuine effort including some planning is definitely needed, but I don't think that's too high a bar. At least not when compared to the skills and knowledge one would have needed to achieve the same success with "just" excessive planning up front.
    - northernexposur 4y ago
      My experience is that this works for following semi-intuitive man-made flowchart type activities (e.g. fixing a car). For truly novel endeavors with high-risk (e.g. if the risk is breaking something irreplaceable), the planning is essential.
- amalcon 4y ago
  My two biggest childhood hobbies were reading and video games. Frankly, grand strategy games like the Civilization series and simulation games like SimCity taught patience and planning much more effectively than any of the books. What the books taught me was how to write clearly, if with a somewhat unorthodox style. Turns out that's extremely important for a software engineer.
ALittleLight 4y ago
I learned one of the most valuable lessons of my life from RuneScape. My brother and I, playing for years, had amassed something like 100k gold between the two of us. We wanted more gold and were reading a guide online about to get it. The guide recommended a simple process of buying and selling coal in a kind of arbitrage trade. My brother and I were torn if we should try it, reasoning that if it were so easy to make money then everyone would do it. But, on the other hand, the guide seemed like it should work. In the end, we just followed the guide, and it worked exactly as promised. In literally a day we 10x'd our RuneScape gold to well over a million and had basically unlimited funds from running the coal trading arbitrage the guide described for as long as we played the game. It's hard for me to put this lesson into words exactly - but it's something like if something seems like it should work explore it and find out if it does. But also something like "Don't discount something for being too obvious." This has helped me in my career where it seemed like there were obvious opportunities for something that were in front of me so I just did the obvious thing and wound up getting richly rewarded for it. This kind of idea was on my mind in most of major life decisions too.
- calchris42 4y ago
  Many times, the best solutions are very simple. These often seem obvious in hindsight, but were at the time either non-obvious or dismissed prematurely.
- wbc 4y ago
  way to figure out the efficient market hypothesis and why it could be wrong at such a young age!
- alexchantavy 4y ago
  What was the scheme? Buy coal certs at 800 per and sell at 1k?
  - ALittleLight 4y ago
    I've forgotten the exact prices at this point (I want to say buying mid-20's per and selling mid-30's but that may be complete misremembering). The basic idea was hanging out in the dwarf mines where people are mining coal and giving low offers on coal, with a promise to increase price if they can sell in quantity (and in certs). Then, just turn around and sell the certs, once you had a lot of them, at a higher price in Varrock town square (or similar). One other reason we thought this wouldn't work is that it seemed to us buying in large quantity should get a discount - bulk discount, right? But that wasn't the case. It was cheaper, per unit, to buy hundreds of coal than tens of thousands.
diceduckmonk 4y ago
> I credit RuneScape with teaching me the value of delayed gratification I credit RuneScape with teaching me to write Java code to write bots to do the work involved with the delayed gratification. Then eventually created a GP selling business online. Also led a PvP clan and ran a PHP forum for it. The RuneScape metagame was where I acquired real-world software development skills.
- wswope 4y ago
  Learned Java as a first language to write bots back in 2009. Present day, I’m 1.5 yrs into writing a market analysis/flipping site for OSRS, and it’s been a great way to play with time-series stuff, sysadmin, and front-end. Gotta credit a good chunk of career success to RuneScape as well.
  - shoemakersteve 4y ago
    Something like ge-tracker? I always thought it sounded fun to work on something like that, but also a ton of work for a game I'd probably be bored with way before I'd be able to finish anything tangible. I'm guessing there's decent potential for profit though, so that might be a good motivator.
    - wswope 4y ago
      Yep, same basic premise as GE-tracker with higher detail visualizations and fancier stats/feature engineering on top. Flipping to max cash became a pandemic hobby of mine, so I started off with a handful of homerolled spreadsheets/Jupyter notebooks to cover blind spots that I felt GE-tracker was missing, and eventually decided I could make a better version of the same recipe on my own.
gloryjulio 4y ago
Same here. I credit competitive gaming scene for teaching me all kind of skills. I was never a sports guy. But when I start to watch how ppl train, compete, strategize and work in a team, I realized that so many meta attributes are crucial for one's success
sn0w_crash 4y ago
SC2 is probably the most likely to produce entrepreneurs. H3 taught real social skills and teamwork.
- drran 4y ago
  Engineering games, like Contraptions or bridge buildings, were helpful for me. Roguelikes produces explorers and risk-takers.
- ZephyrBlu 4y ago
  I was a Master SC2 player and strongly disagree with this. SC2 is heavy on execution and ops, which are not good 0 -> 1 skills. SC2 also has very short feedback loops and no long term consequences. The things I will say it has going for it is that it has an extremely steep learning curve and you have to grind. Though many other games also have these attributes at a sufficiently high level. The reality is that most people who are very good at video games wouldn't be able to maintain the long-term discipline or focus to run a company, nor be able to handle the responsibility of leading a team.
mrwh 4y ago
I credit Civ I with my almost failing my GCSEs, but I guess I did okay in the end. But then I have in the decades since avoided games I could happily play all night :).
zbobet2012 4y ago
I credit eve online with teaching me how to run complex and effective counter intelligence operations but I've yet to use it in real life :(. On the other hand how to inspire people and the importance of operational doctrine has been massively important. Also spreadsheets..
- Aeolun 4y ago
  EVE online taught me how CEO’s feel when one of their minions starts talking to them, and they have no idea who the person is, nor who hired them. Also the value of realtime market information.
  - Silverback_VII 4y ago
    EVE online taught me that you can be CEO while being unemployed and living in a crappy appartment.
- Ntrails 4y ago
  > Also spreadsheets.. The best skill in life
- awestroke 4y ago
  This is hilarious to me. I love reading about eve, but I can't imagine ever having enough free time for it
wheelerof4te 4y ago
I credit Age of Empires 2 for teaching me about managing an economy and medieval history. I credit Age of Wonders for teaching me what strategy really means. Lots of other great games helped me build my English skills, most of all The Legacy of Kain series.
- d3athjest3r 4y ago
  And Age of Wonders taught me that building a Wonder always let's you win. But I also yet have to find an opportunity to use it. Maybe I will build one in my garden and WIN!!!! I just need a 1000 wood, 1000 Food, 1000 Gold!!!
- Aeolun 4y ago
  I have a vague memory of playing ‘Uprising’ and having no idea what the flavor text on the screen said. Somehow I made it work.
- seventhtiger 4y ago
  I used to play a lot of RPGs on the gameboy, but my English was still not good enough so I avoided reading. Sometimes I had my gameboy and a dictionary and I'd translate NPC dialogue one word at a time. I remember Final Fantasy 1 on gameboy had a surprisingly open world and I could walk all over the map, and it had random monster encounters. I'd be fighting a lengthy turn based battle about every 20 steps, and it could be way above my level, and I was completely and utterly lost! I spent so much time on that game. But I never progressed far into the quest. Playing it as an adult I realized one random NPC says there's a hidden cave to the east, and if you never read it's pretty much impossible to find. Similarly in Pokemon, bumbling through caves in the dark until I go out the other side through sheer luck and grit. Turns out the move Flash just lights up the cave.
  - dalkvist 4y ago
    I had a similar thing happened with Zelda for the original Gameboy. There was some mobs in one of the first dungeons, that needed to be killed in a particular order, written on a plack. I spent months on and off trying everything, but it took a older friend borrowing it until I got past it.
agumonkey 4y ago
Some games do but I've seen people roam aimlessly in FPS~ games (say assassin's creed, GTA), without even much fun, to the point I was questionning the potential benefits. Later in life I also realized how 'real life' is a lot subtler than it appear. Using a weapon, being far out in the woods, crafting tools .. which are all things I did in video games but had no relation to the real life versions. Makes me curious to try runescape though
hardware2win 4y ago
Games showed me simple way on how to get better at things - just do it everyday, either practice or read about it watching eSports showed me how big difference mentality and attitude makes
thesz 4y ago
You should credit your parents with allowing you to have so much free time and good nutrition.
- sexy_seedbox 4y ago
  Or in most cases, it's parental neglect with both parents working full-time jobs with barely enough time to take care of themselves?
  - thesz 4y ago
    From what do you infer "in most cases"? What are your statistics?
    - omniglottal 4y ago
      Parental availability has been steadily declining for decades - the same decades where video game usage took the place of other activities. You can do your own research. If it's difficult to get hard data, use soft data and draw inferences, but don't invalidate what data we clearly have and from which plenty of valid use can be extrapolated.
      - Tao3300 4y ago
        No one else gamed with their parents? No one else games with their kids? My anecdata disagree with the causal link you're suggesting, fwiw.
  - wing-_-nuts 4y ago
    Books and video games were my way of being 'out of sight, out of mind' as a kid. Sadly, the less interaction I had with my parents, the more peaceful my life. I loved being left alone during the summer time.
stefs 4y ago
i credit the original sid maiers pirates in teaching me at least some english, you swashbucklers and cutthroats.
rmbyrro 4y ago
I'm happy you got all of that from video-games and in no way I'm advocating against video games for everyone. But, in my life, I credit sports for everything you said. With the added benefit of a healthy neurology and biology in general. Something video games - and the digital world, as a whole - have been demonstrated to be detrimental. I mean, by serious studies.
- Retric 4y ago
  Studies don’t investigate something as complex as the total impact of video games or anything else in all contexts. You get individual studies of the impact in terms of say specific reflexes or some aspect of depression for some subset of games, but you would need a comprehensive set of studies for every single context to build a holistic picture which we simply don’t have. Occasionally it’s enough to find major downsides such as with smoking’s really negative health impacts and say it’s not worth it. But for most things, including video games, there isn’t a single overwhelming downside just some negatives and other positives. People want a black and white world where they can say “_ is good/bad,” but in the real world meat, carbs, video games etc isn’t that simple they are good and bad at the same time. Many people would be better off by reducing meat and carb consumption but that doesn’t mean a worldwide ban on consuming them is a good idea.
  - rmbyrro 4y ago
    > Studies don’t investigate something as complex as the total impact of video games or anything else in all contexts. Why not? What's the purpose of saying it's good for cognitive performance if cognitive performance isn't tested seriously? Try at least two or three dimensions of it. Outside the video gaming context of course. Otherwise just say: video gaming is good for getting better at video gaming. That would be an honest conclusion.
    - Retric 4y ago
      > Why not? Because there are simply far to many variables involved. On one dimension you have type of game, but that variety impacts everything else. Mario Party and Call of Duty for example may impact peoples emotions differently. Tetris and StarCraft are both test actions per minute in a different way which may mean different things for reflexes etc. Hours per week are another dimension, someone spending a few minutes per day playing Wordle is obviously different than someone who only works a part time job to have more time for their MMO addiction. Finances is another dimension with actual free games being well free but some people spending their life savings on loot boxes in “Free to Play” games. Degree of socialization is again varies wildly with a surprising number of marriages starting from MMO’s but single player games obvious don’t have that. Exercise is another with some people getting a real workout playing beat saber and others getting embolisms from sitting to long with their addiction. Etc etc.
znpy 4y ago
I credit Quake Live / OpenArena for teaching me anger management.
brooksbp 4y ago
Quake III Arena / QuakeLive training for mind warp speed and hand/eye coord.
raindropm 4y ago
I credit - AoE for laying the groundwork of my love of history and archeology. - Skyrim for making me finally learn how to create 3D art, which I still do as profession today. - All those weird Japanese games that tell you that you don't have to conform to the predefine notion of what should and shouldn't be videogames. Of course it doesn't replace real learning. It's hilarious when some gaming-addicted argue that 'videogames made me smart! see that research!' Hell no Bob, smart people out there spend most of their time learning and play videogames just occasionally.

by drooby 4y ago

XorNot 4y ago

Civilization 1 was my introduction to world history.

dchichkov 4y ago
/s I credit Civilization 1 as well. Or should I credit my parents who had PC/XT at home when the price of PC/XT was that of 3 new (soviet) automobiles? /s
wing-_-nuts 4y ago
I sunk a decade into civ 2. Oh man, the memories. I wish gog would acquire rights to release that abandonware with soundtrack and everything. Running it yourself requires running it on top of win3.1 in dosbox now days, and it's still janky. I would legit pay $60 for a perfectly working copy.

ericmcer 4y ago

In the same boat and it is great until I run into a more complex multi-faceted problem, pick a solution and end up 30 miles down the road before I realize I need to backtrack and try a different one. If my childhood had more books and boredom I might have the patience to spend longer in the planning stage and less enthusiasm for the drinking coffee and pounding out a solution stage.

throwaway09223 4y ago
Mine had a lot of books and boredom. I rarely regret just getting things done. Excessive planning is a much larger issue. I find it's usually better to just do something twice rather than spend too much time thinking about it.
- ducktective 4y ago
  Same. I suffer from analysis paralysis.
- shandor 4y ago
  I've been thinking this a lot lately. One absolutely fantastic upside for just getting it done is that even if you have to redo it from scratch, you have so much better real-world understanding of the problem space. I'm inclined to think that this applies to majority of the things we do, but is often brought up regarding building products in the idea that one should build the first prototype quickly, just to be scrapped so the final solution can be built from clean slate, benefiting from all the knowledge the prototype helped us gather. Most often, in my experience at least, the knowledge one gains from actually doing the thing (even badly) surpasses anything that could have been gained with excessive planning. To actually work, genuine effort including some planning is definitely needed, but I don't think that's too high a bar. At least not when compared to the skills and knowledge one would have needed to achieve the same success with "just" excessive planning up front.
  - northernexposur 4y ago
    My experience is that this works for following semi-intuitive man-made flowchart type activities (e.g. fixing a car). For truly novel endeavors with high-risk (e.g. if the risk is breaking something irreplaceable), the planning is essential.
amalcon 4y ago
My two biggest childhood hobbies were reading and video games. Frankly, grand strategy games like the Civilization series and simulation games like SimCity taught patience and planning much more effectively than any of the books. What the books taught me was how to write clearly, if with a somewhat unorthodox style. Turns out that's extremely important for a software engineer.

ALittleLight 4y ago

I learned one of the most valuable lessons of my life from RuneScape. My brother and I, playing for years, had amassed something like 100k gold between the two of us. We wanted more gold and were reading a guide online about to get it. The guide recommended a simple process of buying and selling coal in a kind of arbitrage trade. My brother and I were torn if we should try it, reasoning that if it were so easy to make money then everyone would do it. But, on the other hand, the guide seemed like it should work. In the end, we just followed the guide, and it worked exactly as promised. In literally a day we 10x'd our RuneScape gold to well over a million and had basically unlimited funds from running the coal trading arbitrage the guide described for as long as we played the game. It's hard for me to put this lesson into words exactly - but it's something like if something seems like it should work explore it and find out if it does. But also something like "Don't discount something for being too obvious." This has helped me in my career where it seemed like there were obvious opportunities for something that were in front of me so I just did the obvious thing and wound up getting richly rewarded for it. This kind of idea was on my mind in most of major life decisions too.

calchris42 4y ago
Many times, the best solutions are very simple. These often seem obvious in hindsight, but were at the time either non-obvious or dismissed prematurely.
wbc 4y ago
way to figure out the efficient market hypothesis and why it could be wrong at such a young age!
alexchantavy 4y ago
What was the scheme? Buy coal certs at 800 per and sell at 1k?
- ALittleLight 4y ago
  I've forgotten the exact prices at this point (I want to say buying mid-20's per and selling mid-30's but that may be complete misremembering). The basic idea was hanging out in the dwarf mines where people are mining coal and giving low offers on coal, with a promise to increase price if they can sell in quantity (and in certs). Then, just turn around and sell the certs, once you had a lot of them, at a higher price in Varrock town square (or similar). One other reason we thought this wouldn't work is that it seemed to us buying in large quantity should get a discount - bulk discount, right? But that wasn't the case. It was cheaper, per unit, to buy hundreds of coal than tens of thousands.

diceduckmonk 4y ago

> I credit RuneScape with teaching me the value of delayed gratification I credit RuneScape with teaching me to write Java code to write bots to do the work involved with the delayed gratification. Then eventually created a GP selling business online. Also led a PvP clan and ran a PHP forum for it. The RuneScape metagame was where I acquired real-world software development skills.

wswope 4y ago
Learned Java as a first language to write bots back in 2009. Present day, I’m 1.5 yrs into writing a market analysis/flipping site for OSRS, and it’s been a great way to play with time-series stuff, sysadmin, and front-end. Gotta credit a good chunk of career success to RuneScape as well.
- shoemakersteve 4y ago
  Something like ge-tracker? I always thought it sounded fun to work on something like that, but also a ton of work for a game I'd probably be bored with way before I'd be able to finish anything tangible. I'm guessing there's decent potential for profit though, so that might be a good motivator.
  - wswope 4y ago
    Yep, same basic premise as GE-tracker with higher detail visualizations and fancier stats/feature engineering on top. Flipping to max cash became a pandemic hobby of mine, so I started off with a handful of homerolled spreadsheets/Jupyter notebooks to cover blind spots that I felt GE-tracker was missing, and eventually decided I could make a better version of the same recipe on my own.

gloryjulio 4y ago

Same here. I credit competitive gaming scene for teaching me all kind of skills. I was never a sports guy. But when I start to watch how ppl train, compete, strategize and work in a team, I realized that so many meta attributes are crucial for one's success

sn0w_crash 4y ago

SC2 is probably the most likely to produce entrepreneurs. H3 taught real social skills and teamwork.

drran 4y ago
Engineering games, like Contraptions or bridge buildings, were helpful for me. Roguelikes produces explorers and risk-takers.
ZephyrBlu 4y ago
I was a Master SC2 player and strongly disagree with this. SC2 is heavy on execution and ops, which are not good 0 -> 1 skills. SC2 also has very short feedback loops and no long term consequences. The things I will say it has going for it is that it has an extremely steep learning curve and you have to grind. Though many other games also have these attributes at a sufficiently high level. The reality is that most people who are very good at video games wouldn't be able to maintain the long-term discipline or focus to run a company, nor be able to handle the responsibility of leading a team.

mrwh 4y ago

I credit Civ I with my almost failing my GCSEs, but I guess I did okay in the end. But then I have in the decades since avoided games I could happily play all night :).

zbobet2012 4y ago

I credit eve online with teaching me how to run complex and effective counter intelligence operations but I've yet to use it in real life :(. On the other hand how to inspire people and the importance of operational doctrine has been massively important. Also spreadsheets..

Aeolun 4y ago
EVE online taught me how CEO’s feel when one of their minions starts talking to them, and they have no idea who the person is, nor who hired them. Also the value of realtime market information.
- Silverback_VII 4y ago
  EVE online taught me that you can be CEO while being unemployed and living in a crappy appartment.
Ntrails 4y ago
> Also spreadsheets.. The best skill in life
awestroke 4y ago
This is hilarious to me. I love reading about eve, but I can't imagine ever having enough free time for it

wheelerof4te 4y ago

I credit Age of Empires 2 for teaching me about managing an economy and medieval history. I credit Age of Wonders for teaching me what strategy really means. Lots of other great games helped me build my English skills, most of all The Legacy of Kain series.

d3athjest3r 4y ago
And Age of Wonders taught me that building a Wonder always let's you win. But I also yet have to find an opportunity to use it. Maybe I will build one in my garden and WIN!!!! I just need a 1000 wood, 1000 Food, 1000 Gold!!!
Aeolun 4y ago
I have a vague memory of playing ‘Uprising’ and having no idea what the flavor text on the screen said. Somehow I made it work.
seventhtiger 4y ago
I used to play a lot of RPGs on the gameboy, but my English was still not good enough so I avoided reading. Sometimes I had my gameboy and a dictionary and I'd translate NPC dialogue one word at a time. I remember Final Fantasy 1 on gameboy had a surprisingly open world and I could walk all over the map, and it had random monster encounters. I'd be fighting a lengthy turn based battle about every 20 steps, and it could be way above my level, and I was completely and utterly lost! I spent so much time on that game. But I never progressed far into the quest. Playing it as an adult I realized one random NPC says there's a hidden cave to the east, and if you never read it's pretty much impossible to find. Similarly in Pokemon, bumbling through caves in the dark until I go out the other side through sheer luck and grit. Turns out the move Flash just lights up the cave.
- dalkvist 4y ago
  I had a similar thing happened with Zelda for the original Gameboy. There was some mobs in one of the first dungeons, that needed to be killed in a particular order, written on a plack. I spent months on and off trying everything, but it took a older friend borrowing it until I got past it.

agumonkey 4y ago

Some games do but I've seen people roam aimlessly in FPS~ games (say assassin's creed, GTA), without even much fun, to the point I was questionning the potential benefits. Later in life I also realized how 'real life' is a lot subtler than it appear. Using a weapon, being far out in the woods, crafting tools .. which are all things I did in video games but had no relation to the real life versions. Makes me curious to try runescape though

hardware2win 4y ago

Games showed me simple way on how to get better at things - just do it everyday, either practice or read about it watching eSports showed me how big difference mentality and attitude makes

thesz 4y ago

You should credit your parents with allowing you to have so much free time and good nutrition.

sexy_seedbox 4y ago
Or in most cases, it's parental neglect with both parents working full-time jobs with barely enough time to take care of themselves?
- thesz 4y ago
  From what do you infer "in most cases"? What are your statistics?
  - omniglottal 4y ago
    Parental availability has been steadily declining for decades - the same decades where video game usage took the place of other activities. You can do your own research. If it's difficult to get hard data, use soft data and draw inferences, but don't invalidate what data we clearly have and from which plenty of valid use can be extrapolated.
    - Tao3300 4y ago
      No one else gamed with their parents? No one else games with their kids? My anecdata disagree with the causal link you're suggesting, fwiw.
- wing-_-nuts 4y ago
  Books and video games were my way of being 'out of sight, out of mind' as a kid. Sadly, the less interaction I had with my parents, the more peaceful my life. I loved being left alone during the summer time.

stefs 4y ago

i credit the original sid maiers pirates in teaching me at least some english, you swashbucklers and cutthroats.

rmbyrro 4y ago

I'm happy you got all of that from video-games and in no way I'm advocating against video games for everyone. But, in my life, I credit sports for everything you said. With the added benefit of a healthy neurology and biology in general. Something video games - and the digital world, as a whole - have been demonstrated to be detrimental. I mean, by serious studies.

Retric 4y ago
Studies don’t investigate something as complex as the total impact of video games or anything else in all contexts. You get individual studies of the impact in terms of say specific reflexes or some aspect of depression for some subset of games, but you would need a comprehensive set of studies for every single context to build a holistic picture which we simply don’t have. Occasionally it’s enough to find major downsides such as with smoking’s really negative health impacts and say it’s not worth it. But for most things, including video games, there isn’t a single overwhelming downside just some negatives and other positives. People want a black and white world where they can say “_ is good/bad,” but in the real world meat, carbs, video games etc isn’t that simple they are good and bad at the same time. Many people would be better off by reducing meat and carb consumption but that doesn’t mean a worldwide ban on consuming them is a good idea.
- rmbyrro 4y ago
  > Studies don’t investigate something as complex as the total impact of video games or anything else in all contexts. Why not? What's the purpose of saying it's good for cognitive performance if cognitive performance isn't tested seriously? Try at least two or three dimensions of it. Outside the video gaming context of course. Otherwise just say: video gaming is good for getting better at video gaming. That would be an honest conclusion.
  - Retric 4y ago
    > Why not? Because there are simply far to many variables involved. On one dimension you have type of game, but that variety impacts everything else. Mario Party and Call of Duty for example may impact peoples emotions differently. Tetris and StarCraft are both test actions per minute in a different way which may mean different things for reflexes etc. Hours per week are another dimension, someone spending a few minutes per day playing Wordle is obviously different than someone who only works a part time job to have more time for their MMO addiction. Finances is another dimension with actual free games being well free but some people spending their life savings on loot boxes in “Free to Play” games. Degree of socialization is again varies wildly with a surprising number of marriages starting from MMO’s but single player games obvious don’t have that. Exercise is another with some people getting a real workout playing beat saber and others getting embolisms from sitting to long with their addiction. Etc etc.

znpy 4y ago

I credit Quake Live / OpenArena for teaching me anger management.

brooksbp 4y ago

Quake III Arena / QuakeLive training for mind warp speed and hand/eye coord.

raindropm 4y ago

I credit - AoE for laying the groundwork of my love of history and archeology. - Skyrim for making me finally learn how to create 3D art, which I still do as profession today. - All those weird Japanese games that tell you that you don't have to conform to the predefine notion of what should and shouldn't be videogames. Of course it doesn't replace real learning. It's hilarious when some gaming-addicted argue that 'videogames made me smart! see that research!' Hell no Bob, smart people out there spend most of their time learning and play videogames just occasionally.