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Seven Games of Highly Effective People
edwilli writes "There is an interesting piece on the Windows XP site entitled The Seven Games of Highly Effective People. It's a look at how games can improve your living and social skills, while still not allowing you to have a life.
" While the piece itself is pretty fluffy, he links to Got Game?, a book about how gamers are shaping business. For more on this, check out Social Effects of Electronic Interactive Games, and this page of research papers compiled by The ESA.
I think the paper misses the time-sink factor. Yes, Rise of Nations can hone skills, but when you play it until 3am and miss your 8am meeting because of it, that's not terribly effective.
Similarly, I think Tetris is responsible for more lost productivity than any other single cause.
I'm dubious about touting our game-playing as a plus while applying for jobs, for similar reasons.
It's a fine line between proving and honing skills, and 'wasting' time using those skills instead of earning almighty dollars. How do you get good at a game without spending lots of otherwise productive time?
Only so far you can 'hone the saw', to steal from Covey.
A.
I'm sorry, but any article telling me to synergize isn't worth the electrons it came to me on.
Hmmm, posting here doesn't really qualify as a "highly effective" habit, though. Back to work...
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Article contains the word "synergize" and thus instantly became bullshit.
A South Park episode would be more enlightening then marketing-speak...
Hate me!
jumped all over this. The article is very specific,
One important way people today are learning these success habits, believe it or not, is by playing computer and video games on Windows and game consoles!
Only Windows or game consoles. Those of us that use Linux for our games are not effective at all. (Actually, the time sink factor does go into that, so it might be true.)
What an incredibly worthless article. Words can't do it justice.
Al Qaeda has ninjas!
What about us DOS people?
If you are reading this, then you are one of those people whom I just can't take seriously.
The article is hosted on microsoft.com. What do you expect? Macintosh computers are also not mentioned, though both Mac and Linux (and all other platforms) games would deliver the same purported benefits.
Mostly I was just disappointed that it wasn't a list of seven games (or even genres of games) and the benefits they give. It's not even a list of seven benefits (I count at least 8) with examples of games that provide them. It's just capitalizing on the success of the "Seven Habits of Highly Effective (People|Teens|Goldfish|etc.)" books. Oh well: like I said, it's on microsoft.com, so capitalizing off of name recognition (or anything they can find) is to be expected as well.
As for the article being "invalidated" by the use of the word synergize: synergize is an appropriate word, it's just highly over-used in "pop psychology." The article is valid, although not news to anyone who plays games already. It's mostly intended to convince adults that playing games is good, and as something to point to as an excuse when your boss catches you playing online poker on company time.
-Jacius
It is called "Escape from Microsoft" which has to be the best productivity enhancing game of our time. Seeing how much time and effort my peers and superiors waste in their constant and vain attempts at keeping their MS OSs working, perhaps _that_ game should be entitled "Escape from Hell."
Judging from the increasingly hostile attitude towards Microsoft these folks are rapidly developing, I think they will manage to escape eventually.
Thanks Microsoft! That is where we need to go today and tomorrow.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
I was so hoping for him to mention Solitaire, then realized that's what I play when I don't want to get anything done :)
... helps you sharpening the saw
I'd load the list with real time strategy titles, and toss in a few turn-based, with *maybe* a couple of other genres to round it out. (Say maybe a FPS and a RPG.)
What would you put on your list?
Once again, we're confusing correlation with causation. Or so I thought from reading the article.
BTW, could you send me the slides from Friday's client presentation? I need to update the ROI figures. GAME ON!