As a kid, playing video games was one of my favorite activities. Though my parents made sure screen time was limited to play outside, my brother and I would make the most of the time button mashing on our various gaming systems. From playing Silkworm on the Commodore 64 with my brother
, Contra on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) with my aunt, to Metal Gear Solid on the Sony Playstation with my best friends, my entire upbringing had video games as a major part of it. Now as an adult, it’s harder to find time. A friend once told me that adulthood is being able to afford all the games you want without the time to play them. Not this year. In 2023 I'm setting video game-playing goals the same way I'm setting reading goals in Good Reads.Aside from it being a joy or fun activity, playing video games provide a lot of benefits I never realized until I was older—similar skills in the field of creativity and building. Whether you play Candy Crush on the iPhone or have a den dedicated to your PC gaming system, let’s uncover some of the skills and habits you accrue by playing video games.
Technique and heuristics
Having great technique is what leads to mastery: the basketball player practicing her free throws or the violinist getting his cords perfect. This is equally important for the designer drawing vectors or the developer writing loops repeatedly. Playing video games improves motor skills in how you react to what you’re viewing with how you control.
In first-person shooter games, your ability to maneuver with precision is what differentiates you. This type of rigor in repeatedly improving like getting better at design tools to construct interfaces. Learn Figma shortcuts like learning combos in Killer Instinct to increase your effectiveness.
As you play different video game genres, you develop heuristics—exactly like software patterns. Good first-person shooters today have mechanics and patterns derived from their predecessors. If you played Quake many decades ago, you likely could play Fortnite. Last week I downloaded Final Cut Pro to edit a video and it was because of my familiarity with Adobe After Effects and iMovie that I was able to get started quicker.
Understanding graphics and development
When I think about it, video games were the first pieces of software and interfaces I experienced. It turns out Altered Beast was simply a graphical user interface of a program I was playing. If you recall the days of web design with sliced assets or creating sprites instead of vectors, you likely spotted how games were created.
It wasn’t many years later after playing Quake when I realized entering cheat codes in the “console” was for the purpose of debugging the software!
Persistence
One of the worst moments of my life was the wretched Turbo Tunnel level in Battletoads—an impossibly hard motorcycle course where one wrong move you smash into a concrete barrier. F*ck this level. As I was on the brink of throwing my console in the garbage can, I decided to try one more time…two more…30 more…until I got past it. Huzzah!
You’re going to need persistence in a world of iteration and re-trying. If you can beat this stupid Battletoads level, you can overcome being rejected by 50 VCs when fundraising or iterating on feedback.
"People say you have to have a lot of passion for what you're doing and it's totally true and the reason is ah is because it’s so hard, and if you don't, any rational person would give up. It's really hard, you have to do it over a sustained period of time." —Steve Jobs
Persistence is what will make you continue to fundraise after 50 rejections from venture firms. If you can beat that stupid level in Battletoads, you can raise your seed round.
Understanding systems
Video games are systems thinking at the core. In the PC game Diablo, the RPG had a bug that allowed you to duplicate objects. I remember visiting an Angelfire site that showed you how to reproduce this interaction. I certainly don’t condone cheating in video games, but the ability to identify how systems work and take advantage of it is a skill in itself.
Collaboration
Any game you play that has a multiplayer component has some level of communication necessary. Nothing requires communication like a raid, a type of mission common in Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) games such as World of Warcraft or Destiny. Everything gets more complex as you put more humans together to work on a shared goal, and a raid is no different.
One memorable gaming came from playing the first Destiny with my friends from Seattle Xcoders. I joined their clan as a Neophyte and realized how much a large mission like this required communication, alignment, and good execution—sound familiar?
Resource management
For the project leads and people managers out there, it's basically like being good at Real-time Strategy (RTS). Some of my best management skills came from playing StarCraft II and Command & Conquer Red Alert—the need to balance where to invest, direction to give, and take care of them. Being able to resource manage, move teams around and strategize are key ingredients to leadership.
Developing interactive experiences
Video game interfaces seem light years ahead of software when it comes to immersive onboarding. They teach you how to understand the world and mechanics in a matter of minutes in a fun and interactive manner.
I admire game designers for their thoughtfulness in helping a player get started and leveling them up over time as the game gets more difficult. When you work on authoring tools that enable people to create, this same type of world-building concept resonates. That’s why I’m so excited to read this book, Collaborative Worldbuilding for Writers and Gamers.
Achievement unlocked
My friend Lesli once said to treat life like a video game. Playing video games helps you build skills, build persistence until you overcome obstacles to achieve your goals. Happy gaming.
Tweet of the week
Andy Sparks posted this timely tweet about video games as well. Some great insights in the thread that inspired some of the aforementioned points.
Hype links
Collection of what I read and related to this week's post
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Making App’s Onboarding as good as Video Games by UX Planet
Mastery for generalists is now on my blog for free. If there are other posts you recommend that should be free, let me know as I want to make key posts available regardless of the paywall
The youngest sibling always has to play as the stupid jeep!