Slashdot Mirror
Today's Gamers, Tomorrow's Leaders?
slash-sa writes "Video games have become problem-solving exercises wrapped in the veneer of
an exotic adventure. In today's fast and rapidly-changing business environment,
the strategic skills they teach are more important than ever. From realistic battlefield simulations to the building of great nations, from
fantastic voyages through worlds of mythology to conquering space, "Generation
G" could well offer the answer to unlocking
great 21st century strategists and leaders."
If these people are the best and brightest we are fingered. play WoW sometime and you'll see.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Congratulations, you made it to the Senate.
Unlocking funds.
Congratulations, you made it into the White House.
Unlocking interns bras.
Congratulations, you became president.
Unlocking WMD.
liqbase
welcome our pasty-white girlfriend-less overlords.
Maybe video games teach problem solving skills, but equally important in the business world is paying attention to things that aren't an orgy of colors. In the end problem solving only comes after analysis, and video games aren't teaching that.
_____
Thank you.
The idea that you can train someone to disassociate the "person" from the "target" is well known and well applied in the modern military. Especially in the modern American military where nighttime raids are carried out in pitch darkness with only moving infrared blips representing the fleeing victims of computer-guided missiles, such disassociation has reached a very high level.
By getting kids into games earlier, and especially into games which allow multiple "lives" with very little cost for respawn, we can teach them to better separate their feelings towards others from their actions.
I can see only good things for military planning and warmaking coming from this.
Yet for some reason after only 11 comments the dicussion is already focused on these... what does this tell us about the slashdot readership?
OTOH, I for one welcome our BFG-toting million-polygon new overlords.
Hmph, I might change my title from Services Director to Services Masterchief.
"... and more and more now there are all kinds of electronic goodies available" -- Pink Floyd 1972
Calling your enemies dogs and infidels, inferior beings who deserve to die because God said so? That has worked very well in the past and is still actively used.
Getting your own side to view the enemy as less then human, yeah lets blame that on the americans and video games, it is not like that hasn't happened since mankind decided there was US and THEM.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Agreed. The idea that you'll learn to problem-solve from gaming might be a bit off. Besides the save/reload thing you mentioned, there's the fact that games usually have you solve problems using set methods. There is a set way to solve a puzzle, and there's a set way to kill the monster.
When you have to solve real problems, you start to figure out that there aren't clear solutions laid out for you. Usually, there isn't "a solution", but instead an infinite number of possible partial solutions, none of which solve the problem entirely, all of which introduce new problems, and none of which are all that certain to work. You just have to pick the one that you think is best, and hope that your judgement is good.
I'd agree that puzzles are good for keeping your brain active. I'd agree that games can help teach strategy. But as for problem solving skills, often enough you need someone who can "think outside the box" (I know it's a cliché, but it's true!). Games usually teach you specifically to think inside the box and follow the set rules, so I'm just not so sure it's good training for problem-solving.
Or were you already a leader type?
Cause and effect, did WoW make you a good leader because you were a succesfull guild leader OR where you a succesfull guild leader because you were already a good leader?
Winning the olympics improves your condition, why yeah, but some might say that having an excellent condition comes BEFORE you win the olympics.
I must admit, I like PUG's (Pick up groups, grouping with strangers) because they can be a lot of fun to see how different people play. You get some amazing idiots. The biggest I am currently faced with is pulling in Lotro. The hardest quests in Lotro don't require pulling, you are clearing an area, not trying to kill X of Y. Since the enemies are either far enough apart to not alert each other, OR so close you pull everything anyway, the best attack is to charge in with melee.
There is another reason for this. In LOTRO hunters are NOT good at melee. They are very good at damage, in fact they are the primary nuke class. This means that if a hunter pulls and criticals that the guardian (tank) has a hell of a job getting agro back. Meanwhile the minstrel (healer) has to spam heal to keep the hunter alive, creating even more agro.
Worse, most mobs in LOTRO consist of melee AND ranged, YOU CAN'T PULL RANGED, they simply shoot back. Ranged damage is often far more lethal, especially since a lot of people are incapable of spotting it. Most guardians can see it if a enemy starts beating up the support players but are unable to spot if they are being killed very fast by a hail of arrows.
Worse, the guardian and champion who both like enemies to be clumped together now got to pull the melee of the puller, then run to the archer to force it in melee mode, hoping the melee stays on them
DO NOT PULL
DO NOT PULL
DO NOT PULL
It is fun to see the players that know this, who have managed to learn that NOT all games play the same and when a certain tactic should be used and when it should not.
But I very much doubt that MMO's can teach you this. The reason? I seen to many player who sucked at level 1 and still suck at level 50. The good ones just stay good.
You can see a similar thing in IT, while the number of people who grow up with computers is on the increase, the number of people who actually know how they work is decreasing. It is getting almost impossible to hire developers who REALLY understand programming. I have had to deal with programmers who didn't even understand basic logic. They could use it, but only as long they got it right by accident, they could not spot bugs introduced by logical errors. The most bizarre case had to do with 0 == false. That does NOT mean 1 == true. Even if you accept that it sure as hell don't mean true == 1.
Let me just confirm my suspicion with you, do you in real life before you started working take the leadership role in say your class? A club? I think so.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Great Britain Representative: That "AssMan24" is just a pathetic camper! Look at him! Camper!
Russian Delegate: In Soviet Russia Base Camps You! Hahaha... I AM THE ASSMAN!
US Appointee: Fucking nubs, you better turn on teh ha40rs cuz I'm gunna pwn you all next round!
UN President: Hey! No talk of hacks! I'm demorecording this and it will be reviewed. If I see any sign of cheating your entire team will be banned from competition!
Yep... it's going to happen.
There are only 10 kinds of people in the world. Those that understand binary and those that don't.
Chess has been a popular metaphor for war, life, strategic thinking, etc. for centuries, but I don't recall many national leaders drawn from the ranks of the Laskers, Capablancas, and Fischers.
Football (both U. S. and Rugby) are often thought to be good training for leadership. Arthur Wellesley, first Duke of Wellington, famously did not "The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton," but even if he had, I don't think there's much evidence for correlation between football prowess and skill at national leadership.
As with football, to the extent that video gaming is ubiquitous among today's youth, it is vacuously true that our future leaders will probably have played video games, with varying degrees of skill.
But in seeking our future leaders, one might just as well look to today's [ cell phone users | Harry Potter fans | bottled water drinkers ].
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!