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When Gaming Trains You For Work
ac514 writes "Parents should review their education before punishing their children. BBC wrote 'Video game skills and a good poker face online are becoming essential job qualifications in the financial markets, with recruitment drives assessing potential star traders in online gaming exams'. I knew some day these extra hours would pay off."
It worked for the Last Starfighter.
stuff
Its easy as hell to keep a poker face online. Why do you need to train for that?
Learn lisp today!
Excuse me! Online games isolate you! You can cry, kick and cheer, then reply to the email in ballanced, calm words. But if they call and ask you for a face to face meeting, where's your computer-trained poker face?
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Any job openings for first post? ;)
:)
But seriously, most finance traders are utter sleazeballs and assholes so the internet and multiplayer games should be good training for them.
Maybe lawyers too?
this comment is provided "as is" and without any express or implied legibility or congruity [...]
I know I play Solitaire at both places
I don't know if playing games has helped me much, but I know for sure that my game development hobby got me at least one job.
:)
I went into the interview with a CD-ROM of all of my past programming work, including a few of my partially completed game projects. When they asked me, "What qualifies you to be our programming guru?" I showed them my games, and they asked me when I could start! I think they understood that game programming is inherently quite complex, and that if I could make spaceships swarm and attack in real-time, I could probably handle the optimization of their relatively simple business applications. And they were right!
Anyway, that's my story
Visit the Game Programming Wiki!
The traders are just a tip of the iceberg, with the advent of the generation of people who expect instant response to things, the skills of analysing data and leaping to right conclusion most of the time is going to be a major requirement in all fields that deal with humans.
The gold standard in training should involve proficiency in both GTA3 and Leisure Suit Larry.
Remember the visions of the future we had decades ago? We saw the future as a place of nothing but leisure for humans, while our machines did the work for us. We would spend our time playing games, instead.
But it looks more like a Slave Plantation Future, one where even our leisure time has to be dedicated to preparation for work. Gee, I wonder what happened?
eat shiat and bark at the moon
With the experience Simcity's given me over 10 years, I should be a shoe-in for a real mayoring job! Where do I start?
While growing up, my mom used to tell me that I'd never learn any useful skills by playing video games. Now that I have multiple sclerosis, and cannot work, some of those skills are essential in my daily life.
What use is being proficient with a joystick? Well, when your main means of locomotion is a power wheelchair, being able to manoever sure helps. Being able to judge speed/distance relationships helps, too - both skills fine-tuned in video game parlours.
Life sometimes throws us a curveball, and there's no way to really predict exactly what skillset might be useful at every point in time. Video games are just another skill. Arguably more common than, say, brain surgery, but then, just how many brain surgeons does the world need?
Lemon curry?
Just added my ladder rankings to my resume.
Seth: Damn! Interceptors up front! FORM UP! Have assault frigates attack the flanks, keep a missile destroyer near the heavy cruisers in case bombers fly by! Protect the mothership! FOR HIGAARA!
Co-worker: Once I find the idiot who hired you I'm going to strangle him...
Seth: Shut up or I'll TK you.
Somehow I doubt that will work...
Hate me!
The military has used gaming to identify potential recruits for some high value jobs and Google is famous for using puzzles and games to indentify individuals they might want to hire.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Hire enough compulsive liars, and the people that are promoted will be the slickest players of the bunch. How long does it take those people to rise to the top? 10, 15 years? You can bet we'll have another wave of Enrons just about then.
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
The company where I now work were downsizing and I was hired because of my propensity to TK in team games.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
My vision of these guys is that they spend their entire days sitting in front of a terminal trading strictly on the numbers.
That being said, most business people need advanced interpersonal skills. That can also be improved with the right kind of computer games. When I taught high school (back when a 386 was a worthy computer), I ran the 'hackers' club. Our computers were networked within the lab and there were a few games that could be multiplayer. The rugged individualists eventually learned that the other guys who cooperated always beat them. They didn't become skilled negotiators but they did learn that they need the help of other people to succeed. I thought that was a worthwhile improvement.
Financial Market Job Qualifications...
1. Being able to parrot in-house analysts information, using words like "paradigm" and "fundamentals" while keeping a straight face and hoping noone asks for definitions
2. Being able to locate a topless or gogo bar within ten miles of any client's office or home when making a housecall
3. Being able to polish off an eight-ball without taking off your $150 YSL tie
4. Being able to "max blast kudos to everyone"
5. Believing that Gordon Gecko was the hero of Wall Street
6. Unlike a used car salesman, who will sell his grandmother a lemon, you must be able to sell your grandmother a car that doesn't even exist, and manage to rip her off again when she comes back to complain.
7. Being able to profit on both turning your client's $10,000 into $100,000 and when you turn $100,000 into $10,000
8. And finally: Having a GED as your highest level of education, and still call yourself a professional with a title of "Executive Vice President" - as if you are a Wharton MBA.
No seriously, stock brokers are the lowest form of life in the galaxy. While there are a small handful of exceptions (Certified Financial Planners who are also training Economists or accoutants), most don't give two shits about their clients, their coworkers, their boss or their current firm. They fly around more than IT people and stealing their firm's intellectual property is both tolerated and expected (firms have routine court cases against each other for the practice of using stock brokers as mediums to move high value clients around the block).
If you can read the newspaper, use online stock analysis tools and place your own orders, you are much better off doing it yourself. Brokers don't have any specific understanding of any market or industry, they don't do their own valuations or formulas and they rely on the same advice that is mostly publicly available for free - and if you have an account with E*Trade or others, you can get the same quality tools that stockbrokers have for free. All they care about is writing tickets, and they don't care if you make or lose money, either way, they get paid.
On the subject of online poker, TillerMan, once a top-ranked Warcraft 3 player, stopped playing Warcraft as a "pro" gamer and became a poker player instead, where he apparently now makes several times what he used to as a "cyber athlete".
Apparently gaming can teach you the skills you need for a very small portion of jobs, but there's little chance of it keeping you employed.
You could change options like price, delivery & support. The app had algorithms that scored your bid against the rest. The points for technical capabilty were determined from previous trials & fixed.
It was scheduled for 2 hours, with half hour extensions if there was a change by one of the top 3 in the last 5 minutes. The business would be split by the top 2 bidders -- we were trying for the #2 spot to maximize our revenue.
At the end (after half a day of this game!) we were surprised to find we were in the #1 spot. The company that we had expected to come out on top, that had been for most of 12 hours, didn't get any business. We found out later that the guy at the keyboard had had a heart attack and they dropped to #4.
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." --Napoleon Bonaparte
Uh ... Free Trade? Global Economy?
... some machine be doin' it for you, oh woe."
"In the Year 2525, if Man is still alive, arms and legs have nothin' to do
Boy, they sure got that one wrong.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Arguing on Slashdot has certainly helped me deal with the developmently challenged people that email me saying, "I can't get my email to work".
Helps in job interviews so you can read the interviewer's notes while he's writing them.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Yell out...
No bitch!
There: Something at a specific location.
Their: Owned by someone.
Please make sure your english compiles.
When laparoscopy was first developed, the surgeon would peer directly through a rigid fiberoptic laparoscope to visualize structures within the body, both for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. Nowadays, we just stick a video camera over the eye-hole on the laparoscope, and watch the pictures in real time on an attached monitor. The hardest part about learning laparoscopy is training your brain and hand so that regardless of the orientation, you can move the instruments in your hand such that they travel onscreen in the direction you intend. It's like using a mouse in three dimensions, but with the additional difficulty that moving the mouse "up" in physical space won't necessarily translate into one's instrument moving "up" on the monitor (and within the patient's abdomen). Once you get the hang of it, it's second nature, and you don't even think about the disconnect between what your hands are doing, and what the instrument is doing onscreen.
Even before this study was released, I realized that perhaps by playing more video games I could become a better laparoscopist, with the video game controller forcing my mind to overcome the disconnect between my hand movements and the movements of instruments on the monitor. Alas, I've never been into video games. I sold my copy of Halo because I could never get past the first level. Now my Xbox just chugs happily along as a media receiver.
The points they were probably trying to make come up later in the article:
Those three skills are probably the most important ones that would cross over. The last point is particularly often overlooked, since in poker (much like in the stock market) making the "right decision" doesn't always mean you win every time, because of the influence of random chance. Your opponent can play horribly and catch the one card left in the deck that gives him the win, but his strategy was still a losing one even though he "won" this particular time. Hence, unlike people without this background, poker players are already trained not to be results-oriented, but to be strategy-oriented (focusing on "given the information I had, did I make the right decision") instead.I can't believe how many people are willing to sacrifice their every day life for more money/prestige/profit???
:)
I mean, when i'm not at work, I DON'T WORK. While some people are so lame at work that they should get extra training, some others are doing everything they can after regular work hours to train more and be more competitive.
I officially declare that what i do in my spare time is for my own enjoyment (less the dish cleaning but enjoyment isn't easy when your kitchen is home to 132 rare insect species...)
I just think that we are heading straight into the burn-out generation. I work hard every weekday, many people do. But i think the whole category of people obsessed by performance and money is going to be burning out sooner or later. They can have twice the money i got, the peace i have at home is priceless. I don't have a luxury appartment and can't afford a luxury car but having the possibility to spend time with friends is priceless. People can keep their cash and pseudo standing in business suits. I'm sticking with friends.
This said, i think video games are one great way to have fun! I play on my gba SP everyday after work when i do the 40 minute bus ride to home. Oh and i want a Nintendo DS. Playing Animal Crossing anywhere is bound to be one of the leetest thing ever
100% of statistics are wrong.
First off, these 'employees' are really day traders who are paying a commission to get access to the firm's software and hardware connections into the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. They're not real employees in any sense of the word. The more "employees" this Geneva Trading attracts to its company, the more money it makes.
What better marketing angle to exploit than 'people who are good at video games can make tons as traders?' You get a bunch of suckers in there who are told they're great and they blow through their cash. The only beneficiary is Geneva Trading. These kids aren't investment bankers or anything even close.