Lessons Learned from Gaming

[Hadoblado]

Relevant background thread: Cog's epiphany

Games are about learning. They're like drugs or masturbation, hijacking our neurological infrastructure to make us reproduce an enjoyable action that wasn't 'intended'. Except the outcome isn't homelessly jerking off into a cardboard box under a bench, it's understanding. Fuck but I do love games.

Evolutionarily, games convert excess energy into proficiency, allowing idle moments to lend themselves to a real fitness advantage. But now they're frowned upon. When I tell my mum that I'm not a gamer, I'm a lifelong learner, she kicks me out of the shed and tells me to get a job already. But fuck her amirite?

Seriously though. Kids don't want to learn, but you can't stop them gaming. Why are we fighting them on this?

So without further ado, this thread is dedicated to discussion of the benefits of gaming. Specifically, what game teaches you what and how. Despite my light tone, this thread is in the psychology section for a reason, so let's talk about the learning more than the gaming shall we? It can be exploratory so long as it's not sold as scientific gospel. The essential question is, what games would you teach your children for the purpose of teaching them something?

 

[Hadoblado]

Magic the Gathering:

Spoiler

Semantic reasoning, creativity, probability, contextual relevance, how markets work, pragmatic simplification, fantastical vocabulary, art appreciation, design.

Magic is just a beautiful game. You are given a very large number of options, some restrictions, then you're left to your own devices to figure out how to best overcome an undefined obstacle (your opponent). It has so many facets, once engaged, it's impossible to ever be bored again.

Semantic reasoning:
A card tells you explicitly what it can and can't do. Sometimes imbalances are retconned, but for the most part, you have absolute information on how a card will work. It's not 'well it feels like it can't do this so I probably shouldn't'. It's not common-sensical. If the card says X, and another card says if X then Y, and a third card says if Y you get infinite mana, you get the infinite mana, even if it doesn't really make sense when you consider what the theme of the cards are actually doing. The words are followed to their logical extreme, just like real life/sarc.
What's good about this is that you're rewarded for real thinking. When life punishes such behaviour with its no nonsense attitude "listen to what I mean, not what I say", Magic rewards you for it. Even if a card looks absolutely useless, chances are there is a some way to make it do something it wasn't intended for. Most of the best cards in magic read "why on earth would you want to do this?" until properly utilised.

Creativity:
The typical way to win a game of magic is to summon monsters and then beat someone to death with them. But there are so many stratagies that diverge from this plan if only you can find them. It's not uncommon for me to look at a deck from an unfamiliar meta and not understand for quite some time how it's supposed to actually win. The last time this happened it was literally a card that had 'you lose the game' as part of its cost, that was vital in the plan for winning it (they forced an opponent to copy the losegame spell, then played another spell which prevented themselves from losing the game for that turn).

Another strategy that initially caught me off guard is called 'turbo fogging'. You increase the rate at which both people draw cards, make sure the cards that you draw prevent combat from killing you, then wait for them to run out of cards in their deck (while having some recourse for preventing this happening to yourself).

There's no point in going through an exhaustive list of established strategies to prove that there's still design space, so I won't. But there is (design space that is). The best players are all innovators. Net-decking works but can only get you so far.

I can't really convey the feeling you get when a new card is released and it feels like your head is exploding from all the possibilities.

Probability:
At every level, you're dealing with probability. What's the chance I draw this by the time I want to cast it? What's the chance my opponent lets me do it? What's the chance it sits in my hand doing nothing because its utility is limited to particular gamestates (like having mana amirite)? What's the chance this effect 'hits' given the structure of my deck? What's the chances the deck this card is good against is across the table from me? What's the chance I fail to draw a land if I don't mulligan? What's the chance this card goes down in value after I buy it, losing me money?

Do away with petty concrete perceptions because Mother Magic will teach you they're nothing but an inconvenient (though comfortable) illusion. Chess teaches determinism (which I hope to get into in another post), while Magic teaches Bayesian probability. Good players think in 'lines' or 'strings', each representing a meaningful probability of a yet unresolved potential (usually what you or an opponent draws next). Yet while there is luck in magic, you do have a lot of control and the better player usually wins. There are losses where I can say with absolute certainty there's nothing that could have been done better, but they're more rare than people'd have you believe. Accepting that you can't win'em'all and dealing with that level of uncertainty is a valuable lesson in itself.

Contextual relevance:
Magic has a lot of formats. Current supported formats include pauper, standard, modern, legacy, vintage, draft, and sealed. When a new set comes out, you look at a single card and can literally see (in order from least powered formats to most powerful:
- Rubbish in sealed
- Usable but limiting in draft
- Meta-shaping in pauper
- Trash in standard
- Staple in modern
- Meta-shaping in legacy
- Sees play in vintage

(delver of secrets is the card I'm talking about, I don't actually play most of these formats so I may be a little off).

Anyway, what I'm trying to say, is the value of a card is in what it can theoretically do, rather than what it will do immediately. This rewards a level of abstraction uncommon in most games, that is blatantly undervalued IRL. This is the kind of thinking used to fight personal bias (the first thing that comes to mind is the fundamental attribution error. Many, many cards saw no recognition until there was a meta or format that rewarded the thing that that particular card did. In fact, it's a pretty safe assumption that many cards still await their time in the limelight while their talents go unrecognised.

How markets work:
I've been devoting myself to comprehending the forces behind the online magic economy in my spare time, and this shit is nuts. Both supply and demand are driven by so many seemingly irrelevant variables. I'm currently playing a 'stocks' game with a friend, investing hypothetical currency to see who can better predict the market. I'm doing well (up 60% networth in under a month), but there is so much that catches me unprepared it blows my mind. Cards will be one cent one day and two dollars the next. Some prick with a no doubt chiseled jawline played it in some tournament I didn't watch and everyone goes nuts. One card banned in one format and half my cards plummet in value while the other half triples. Not to mention the discrepancies between the online economy and the paper one, or the difference in prices between identical cards from different sets. People conduct buyouts with seeming regularity (there's a big debate as to whether this actually has any impact or not), and the effect of the media is ever present. The market is another complex layer to an already complex game.

Pragmatic simplification and evaluation:
Simplification is a skill. Too much and the world is binary, too little and it's kaleidoscopic. Some people advocate non-simplification of the world, aspiring to comprehend it in its every facet. These people don't understand how perception works. Everything you perceive is many times more complicated than a mind can comprehend at once. Thinking can be reduced to functional simplification. Magic makes you good at it. There are thousands of cards in magic, not all of them are entirely unique. Many are variants of a previous theme that function a shade differently. A player who can think in terms of equivalence without falling into the trap of dismissing real potential. When is drawing a card similar to putting one into play? When is killing an opposing creature the same as gaining life? Why is putting a creature on top of their library (where they'll just draw it again) so much more powerful than putting it back into their hand? Why are 'draw a card' and 'take an extra turn' such valuable things to have printed on your card? Why is a red spell with 'draw a card' on it better than an identical blue variant?

I won't go into some of the finer points like art appreciation. I'm sure other TCG's have similar levels of value in some if not all these areas, but Magic remains among the very best I've played, even if it's more expensive than God.

 

[Cherry Cola]

playing world of warcraft or any mmo gives you a clear view of most of humanity's faults allowing for healthy disillusionment

 

[Architect]

Games are a way to sandbox or containerize your consciousness. Humans like to do this - watch a show, read a book or have a good conversation are all examples. Computer games are a good diversion, I've played enough over the decades, but in small or moderates doses. The issue I have with computer games is that the rewards are intrinsic for the most part. You get more pixels (or sounds) for your work. You don't generally get much more.

Whereas the reward for reading a book (for example) is you'll usually learn something new (no, I've never played a game that ever really taught me something significant), or a conversation where you get a new personal bond (or the opposite). In this way playing computer games is like masturbation as you said - it personally feels good but doesn't really make any difference in your life, except ephemerally.

Non intrinsic games (much of life really) has higher risks and higher rewards.

 

[Cherry Cola]

games greatly increase the scope of your sense of aestheticity, you are able to imagine more stuff, the settings of your dreams are influenced; additionally, each game provides the player with a quest to come up with some sort of mental schemata which can include a bunch of probabilities and stuff and intuitions, ie they train you at problem solving, its been proven that people who aren't english natives get better at english playing games

stuff i learned from games are in a lot of my schoolwork

however, nowadays I play less and I think the rewards mostly intrinsic. I do enjoy trying to master a competitive game though, think that gives a little bit more than just an intrinsic reward. Because you train your finger dexterity and coordination as if though you were learning to play some kind of instrument when you have to learn some of those consequtive 1-5 window frame inputs while keeping track of your opponent, needing to constantly pick the right option and execute it perfectly, plus you're constantly mindgaming your opponent as well, it's just a lot of stuff going on at once, I get sweaty playing smash bros because of how intense it is, despite sitting completely still it happens consistently

I'd probably be better of doing something else, or rather definitely, but still i think there are gains, even now, not so much from casual lazy braindead gaming, but if you play games to deconstruct systems, strategize, analyze, min-max, master execution, utilize metacognition, etc, then surely it keeps the brain in shape, albeit not to the extent of say litterature.

 

[QuickTwist]

OK, so this is going to sound pretty nerdy on my part and I would just normally assume I would be ridiculed for sharing this, but whatever.

I have never really had any ability to gauge things socially. By that I mean I don't know how I should act and that causes me to be nervous around people I don't know really well unless it is just given that there is trust between myself and another person.

I found that playing role playing games allowed me to look at things from a different angle. Rather than thinking that I would say something that I would automatically be shunned or ridiculed for, I found myself looking at things in a way where I could choose what I wanted to say and how what I said would have an impact on the person I was talking to. Obviously the effect is not as extreme as giving a ten word line and having that person love you without fault like it is in a video game, but the basic principle is the same -people have things that they are going to react either favorably to or negatively to. There are also things like probing people for information. If you come across the right way, people are more likely to tell you things that they might not other wise.

If I look at the conversations I have in the way where I have choices on what I say and how I present myself it allows me to predict to some degree (however small) what to expect from a person. This is something I learned from playing video games where there are dialog choices and a gauge that measures how people react to me.

So, there it is.. as nerdy as it sounds, playing video games has actually helped me know more what to do in social situation.

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

I found games to be great motivations to learning a language, I can honestly say I've progressed past the crucial step with english thanks to playing games. From then on it became easy enough to browse the internet and learn myself without any aid.

These days I'm playing japanese games to do the same, I enter immersive consistent worlds and narratives with voice acting and I learn individual words or sentences while memorising the letters/signs.

I'd have to say that games aren't well optimised for learning and there are many games that don't offer many options to improve, I'm very interested in the genre of educational games and what those can do to incentivise learning in people who lack intrinsic motivation for something.

Look at all the people who don't learn from games and just enjoy them, I think there are different types of people who can benefit from gaming experiences to varying degrees, even when presented with the same medium and complexity, it's not the way to go for everyone. I think what's the most important for an educational game is the introduction of "flow", once a player is in this state, their mind is very open and ready to solve challenges creatively and to improve in the process (flow is one of the basic principles of game design and it helps). The second important thing is the game's elements somehow requiring the player to understand them and most importantly their applicability to real world has to be significant and their complexity uncompromising.

I think the area where games can help the most is memory, learning historical facts, new words or languages, or new information. The remaining benefits lie in engaging the brain and keeping it fit.

--

You bring up the example of magic. I think it is a poor learning aid, sure there are new mechanics and probabilities to understand, but once a player grasps those basics, there's almost nothing new to learn, they just need to constantly reapply the same rules to new cards. It could help with learning some english words for some time if the player was inclined to understand the rules and their cards.

Chess is an example of a memory game, it requires memorising successful positions and calculating chains of conditions, again, once a player understands how to calculate conditions, lines of action, they have little new to learn and just need to improve what they already know to near-machine like potency. The greatest chess masters remember up to around 15 moves of each opening, remember all important endgame positions and necessary moves to achieve equality or superior position. The most creative processing and calculation occurs in the foreign regions of the middle-game, though it's mostly pure conditional calculation based on already familiar sets of rules that don't change. It's like brain excercise, but it's not learning.
Chess also helps with spatial memory, visualising situations and objects and visual intelligence in general.

In this regard I'm a fan of Go, it's an abstract strategy game like chess, with much more complexity to it despite having much simpler rules. It relies on similar principles but adds more lateral aspects of deciding which moves score the most points in given situations, it also requires a much more in depth perception of space and positions that are initially isolated from one another and begin to create a whole.

--

I think the benefits of games aren't unique. Those same things that make learning in games possible and exciting exist in various daily activities. How about learning survival at a scout summer camp? You could say it's a game too, but then you could say that anything can be a game from the perspective of game theory which I thoroughly endorse.

Seriously though. Kids don't want to learn, but you can't stop them gaming. Why are we fighting them on this?

I don't think fighting is a solution here. "Parents" should look at games and see what they do well, they are addictive, inspiring and engaging, why can't they be like that? They can and I think it's crucial to make most teaching activities for kids just as fun and addictive as games can be.

Many games are a waste of time and don't offer much learning potential, they also rarely help with understanding the real world situations and social interaction that are crucial for children's well-being.

The essential question is, what games would you teach your children for the purpose of teaching them something?

Instead of restricting myself to games, I'd aim to make every learning experience as fun and engaging as games are.

Tabletop role-playing games are a very malleable medium that includes social interaction, creativity and problem-solving. It's a great example of making challenges and experiences fun.

I'd also give them a few memory/language focused games in foreign languages to chew on for reasons mentioned.
There are many learning aids for programming and other sciences such as colobot or minecraft educational edition, so those could be good options to substitute as "smarter" entertainment.

 

[Tannhauser]

I think games are addictive because they represent a version of reality which is very pleasurable to the human mind for a specific reason: we like predictability and control of the environment, that things follows certain rules and that we have a complete understanding of the world (I suspect many religious concepts arose from this propensity). We hate uncertainty and that completely incomprehensible things happen. Games have the property that everything happens within the confines of its rules and setting, which can make you feel powerful.

I actually think this is the weakness of games as a means to learning – it makes you good at the game but not at handling the complexity and uncertainty of the real world. However, there are games which I think model such complexity quite well, for example my favorite game of all time: poker. Every poker hand is completely different than any hand you played before, there are millions of variables, including human behavior, and very interestingly – your own cognitive and psychological biases. You learn how to focus on making probabilistically good decisions and not the outcome, and you learn how randomness prevails everywhere in our lives.

 

[Pyropyro]

I remembered learning my QWERTY typing techniques by playing Mavis Beacon games, Mario teaches typing and my all time favorite: Typing of the Dead (because the best way of killing zombies is strapping a keyboard on your chest).

 

[Alias]

Video games can teach a lot, really. Some more than others. I like to think that video games are great to have, as long as you don't get carried away. I don't think video games should be opposed, just moderate your time for health purposes. Quite a few games are great for the physical; hand-eye coordination, reflexes, detecting movement.

Team Fortress 2 teaches, well, teamwork. There's loads of variety, and it mixes decision making, skill, responsibility, and mostly fun.

 

[Happy]

I'm pretty sure my 1000+ games of Rocket League have heightened my spatial awareness considerably.

 

[Intolerable]

Escapism. Purely that which allows you to be whatever you are not, to be where you could never be, to do whatever you could never realistically do.

It's a good thing. It absorbs enormous quantities of our time and keeps us from leaping off tall buildings thinking we're Birdman or some such thing.

I'd personally like to see the gaming industry continue to grow, continue to raise the production bar and continue to become more immersive and more adult as time goes on.

Too many games for kids. Not enough for an aging gamer population IMO. That's the biggest problem with the gaming industry today is not recognizing that their demographic is getting older.

@Tannhauser - some of that is subjective. I think objectively speaking we like predictability in our real world but in our entertainment unpredictability can be a pleasure. Some games are based entirely on unpredictable events and draw a fanbase for that experience. Think gambling.

 

[Haim]

I think games are addictive because they represent a version of reality which is very pleasurable to the human mind for a specific reason: we like predictability and control of the environment, that things follows certain rules and that we have a complete understanding of the world (I suspect many religious concepts arose from this propensity). We hate uncertainty and that completely incomprehensible things happen. Games have the property that everything happens within the confines of its rules and setting, which can make you feel powerful.

I actually think this is the weakness of games as a means to learning – it makes you good at the game but not at handling the complexity and uncertainty of the real world. However, there are games which I think model such complexity quite well, for example my favorite game of all time: poker. Every poker hand is completely different than any hand you played before, there are millions of variables, including human behavior, and very interestingly – your own cognitive and psychological biases. You learn how to focus on making probabilistically good decisions and not the outcome, and you learn how randomness prevails everywhere in our lives.

I think people should clearly separate the old type/meaning of games to the modern games which have a world in them, a new word other than video games need to be made.The seconds main point is about the game world, there aren't much rules in some of them such as minecraft(especially the more earlier versions), the old meaning of games doesn't contain them.
Video games(second meaning) are about entering and exploring a world, sure you can learn things in this new world or not.What can you learn?depends on you, you can use them as a material for new ideas, you can create things in games, you can develop the mind, or you can mindlessly shoot things(they are bad, the game said so!) which help learn strategy(?)

 

[Tannhauser]

@Tannhauser - some of that is subjective. I think objectively speaking we like predictability in our real world but in our entertainment unpredictability can be a pleasure. Some games are based entirely on unpredictable events and draw a fanbase for that experience. Think gambling.

There is a difference between randomly distributed payoffs and uncertainty. Start a casino where it is unknown to the customers what they can win, with what probability (if any at all) they can win, and what rules actually apply, and see how well people actually like uncertainty.

 

[Architect]

Team Fortress 2 teaches, well, teamwork. There's loads of variety, and it mixes decision making, skill, responsibility, and mostly fun.

Yes on the fun part (though TF2 isn't my favorite), but you also learn teamwork by working on any project with a team. Plus video game teamwork is different from the variety of other teamwork you deal with in life. The hardest lesson is learning to deal with somebody who rubs you completely the wrong way, but sits next to you so you smell their farts and incessant chatter.

I'm not in the games-are-evil camp, but nor do I see the huge benefit in them. I put it at a 60% benefit.

 

[Intolerable]

There is a difference between randomly distributed payoffs and uncertainty. Start a casino where it is unknown to the customers what they can win, with what probability (if any at all) they can win, and what rules actually apply, and see how well people actually like uncertainty.

Powerball.

The odds of winning are astronomically high - 1 in 292,201,338.

Yet people run out every drawing to spend money on tickets. They play not because they think they'll win but because the uncertainty gives them a bit of a high for a few hours before the drawing.

It again is escapism. For a brief moment in time no winner is declared so you are free to assume your ticket is the winning ticket.

Yeah, some people blow wads on it but those are the people paying the stupid tax. Spend 2 bucks and dream for a bit. It can be good for you!

 

[ZenRaiden]

Sim City series was pretty good. It lets you be creative.

I like such games.

First person shooter games. Teaches you how to outthink the opponent. Like counter strike 1.6. Tactics are important. Timing, learning new skills how to use weapon to your advantage etc. Each new round the opponent will use a different tactic to win and you always have to come out on top if you want to win.

 

[onesteptwostep]

I think one thing I learned was patience. When I was younger I usually played games aggressively, usually in the RTS genre. But now I usually enjoy the game by itself, using different styles and mastering them. Different styles add new dimension to games I think.

On a sociological level it's fun to round up new players and leading a group. Clans and communities were a thing for me for a good while. One time I got a bottle of chocolate vodka from one of my clanmates on my birthday ^_^

 

[FlorisV]

Lessons are different per game.

Most games, when challenging enough, have taught me persistence...to keep trying after failiing. This is my biggest gain from gaming.

Other lessons can be to learn to feel more, like the David Cage games have taught me, creating immersive movielike experiences like Fahrenheit, Heavy Rain and Beyond 2 Souls.

Others are to keep looking for optimalisations, like RPG's. Or to not be overwhelmed by loads of information as you have the choice to ignore it.

And some learn me more about my own personality and nature, like when playing Knights of the Old Republic, hated to play the Dark Side and when playing Mass Effect 2 I was obiously more like the Justicar than her naughty sister.

 

[Feather]

I was obsessed with playing madden online. I wanted to create a defensive stradegy that could cover the entire field.

What I learned - was the importance of composure.

Now everyday my number one goal is to keep composure no matter how bad stuff looks. Life it seems wants to test your composure each day and try to move you off the mark with fake bullshit.

Also now I trade the stock market primarly just to learn about and inspect my degree of composure. I that tendency to loose composure is how you loose in the market and keeping it is the only way you can win I think.

Also if you meditate and have aggressors attack or try to rattle you - composure IS the totatlity of your ability to have influence on the situation.

So, I think anybody who can master composure in games has a leg up in other aspects of life.

 

[Alias]

I'm not in the games-are-evil camp, but nor do I see the huge benefit in them. I put it at a 60% benefit.

I agree, there are plenty of ways where gaming can go wrong. I don't play many games at all, I prefer to keep my focus to a few.