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."

Comments

Hey...

[krymsin01]

It worked for the Last Starfighter.

Re:Hey...

[TAGmclaren]

seriously though, there have been benefits identified for kids playing games:

Report 1; warninig pdf

Schwartz (1988). He set out to compare customary teacher-based tutoring of reading and comprehension with practice on a set of computer games derived from analysis of the reading process. 24 primary school children were selected, who were of average intelligence and who were 18 months or more behind their peers in reading comprehension. The children were split into two groups and assigned to teacher-based tutoring or to a computer game training group where they received practice on four computer games. Training in both conditions focused on word decoding and phonics. The study found that almost all students improved their reading comprehension test scores after training, although the poorest readers made significantly greater gains in the computer game condition than in the teacher training condition

study 2 - warning pdf:

"Marble Madness" and effects on spatial skills: A study of 61 children, ages 10 to 11, compared the effects of two computer games on the development of spatial skills--the cluster of skills required for children to visualize and manipulate objects or images in their minds.1 Practice on Marble Madness was found to reliably improve the children's spatial performance, while practice on Conjecture, a computerized word game similar to the TV show Wheel of Fortune, did not. The children playing Marble Madness used a joystick to guide a marble along a three-dimensional grid, trying to keep the marble on the path and prevent it from falling off or being attacked by intruders. After playing the game, children were found to have improved their ability to anticipate targets and visualize spatial paths. ?"Concentration" and effects on iconic skill: A cross-cultural study carried out in Rome and Los Angeles examined the effects of playing a computer game on the development of iconic skills--the skills that enable people to read images such as pictures and diagrams.2Researchers found that after playing the game Concentration on a computer, undergraduate students offered more diagrams in their analysis of an animated simulation of electronic circuits, whereas those who played the game on a board offered more verbal descriptions. ?"Robot Battle," "Robotron," and effects on visual attention skills: A study compared the effects of computer game expertise on college students' visual attention skills, the skills required to keeping track of several different things at the same time--not unlike a pilot keeping track of a row of several engine dials simultaneously.3 Researchers measured participants' response time to two events at two locations on a computer screen, where one target icon appeared more often than another. Predictably, participants who were expert players of Robot Battle (scoring above 200,000) had faster response times than participants who were novice players (scoring below 20,000). But after five hours of playing the game Robotron, all participants responded significantly faster to the target at the low probability position on the screen, demonstrating a causal relationship between playing a computer game and improving strategies for keeping track of events at multiple locations.

So there's more than just getting a job - there's actually advancing mental development.

Hmm

[n54]

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? :)

Gaming at work, gaming at home

[Anonymous Coward]

I know I play Solitaire at both places

I'm still wondering...

[88NoSoup4U88]

I'm still wondering why I didn't get through that last job interview though...

.

... it might have been that I yelled 'OMFG, YO FREAKIN' CH34T0R!!!!!oneelevenone!" at the end of it...

Game programming (hobby) got me a job

[theluckyleper]

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 :)

There are actually many places where games helpful

[luvirini]

The fact is, the way our world is getting more and more computerised and at the same time getting shorter and shorter in attention span and quicker and quicker in requiring responses, the skills of quick analysis of things and then acting on them is getting important in many things.

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.

Based on the Traders I know...

[Anonymous Coward]

The gold standard in training should involve proficiency in both GTA3 and Leisure Suit Larry.

Re:Poker

[luvirini]

The online pokerface they are talking about is the skill to act cool and not let your emotions run away in your actions. In a way is is actually harder when you do not "see" the other players.

Whatever happened to our "Future of Pure Leisure"?

[Cryofan]

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?

Whoa....

[FusionDragon2099]

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?

Work? Try "life."

[MsWillow]

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?

Oh yeah, ought to work....

[Dark Lord Seth]

Co-worker: Hey Seth, the other development team managed to convince someone into giving them full access to some of our resources...
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...

They're not the only ones

[HangingChad]

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.

Worked for me

[Timesprout]

The company where I now work were downsizing and I was hired because of my propensity to TK in team games.

Not listed - Essential Job Qualifications....

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Can't stay in the game

[Japong]

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.

Online real-time RFQ responses

[mikewas]

One of our customers setup an online site for vendors to bid on supplying them with telecommunications equipment. Vendors' equipment had previously been qualified froom a technical standpoint.

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.

I know slashot helped

[teamhasnoi]

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".

bad use of words

[nodwick]

Its easy as hell to keep a poker face online. Why do you need to train for that?

I thought the same thing when I first read the summary. It seems like a poor choice of words, since obviously you don't have to worry about giving away information through your facial tics or whatever online.

The points they were probably trying to make come up later in the article:

"It's the discipline of not getting too emotional about your transactions, and also the mathematical ability to keep track of numbers, as in card counting," said Ms McDonnell.

"It helps to determine if people are bluffing, trying to make the market move one way or another," she said.

"Poker-playing managers will be used to asking, 'did I play that right?'"

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.