#6 Hand-eye Coordination
Hand-eye coordination is the ability to use your eyes to guide the movement of your hands. This is done when you're playing a game, looking at the screen and moving your character without looking at your joystick.
Learning hand-eye coordination enables you to perform tasks like reading music while playing an instrument, playing almost any real life sport and driving a car while fidgeting with the radio without crashing into a pole.
Is that a divot or a small dog?
Having good hand-eye coordination is good but it helps if you have decent health, reflexes and motor skills. Otherwise no matter how in tune you are with the ball headed your way, you will never hit or catch it with anything but your face.
The added bonus of hand-eye coordination is that it helps kids convince their parents to buy them games. The thought of their kid one day taking this skill out into the real world makes parents easy targets for shelling out $50 regularly so that their little athlete can train indoors where it's safe.
#5 Business Skills
The dress code for today is gamer casual
With the downfall of the economy and numerous CEOs going to jail or the morgue there's a lot of openings for people with business skills.
Anyone who's played real time strategy games should be picked for a position ahead of someone who spent four years in business school learning how to be out of touch with reality.
A typical strategy to conquer the protoss or any other race in Starcraft (and eventually Starcraft 2) is to outmine them. The better you are at managing your resources(money), the better you'll do against everyone else.
So to start you learn to hire a few interns(Probes/Drones/SCVS) and use them to bring in money on a regular basis. Then once you have some cashflow you hire some recruits(marines) and go scouting for other areas that have money for the taking. Then you expand to a new, richer area before all the resources in your first area dry up.
You use your forces' strengths against your opponents weaknesses and charge the way onto victory (3 mansions and a super model wife).
#4 Physics Skills
Many games are starting to use real-world physics. Wind velocities are needed for snipers, gun recoil must be accounted for and correct angles are needed for bouncing a grenade off a wall into another room without blowing yourself up.
With your knowledge of physics you can make your next snowball fight extra devastating as you throw a snowball seemingly off course into a roof, causing 5 pounds of snow to come crashing onto your little brother as he laughs and says "Missed me."
It can also help you with your actual physics homework by letting you "work out your problem" using some NPCs as target practice.
#3 Typing
Typing is an extremely useful skill and a high WPM looks good on a resume for any job. It used to be that to learn typing you would have to take a course on it or use software like Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing where you would spend hours honing your skills through boring exercises typing nonsensical phrases.
If you play games then you're already a typing expert. Most games have hotkeys, keys that you can press instead of mousing over a section of the screen. In game this saves precious seconds. But to make sure that you throw a grenade instead of jumping you have to know each hotkey and be able to press it as fast as possible. Eventually you know where each and every letter is on a keyboard. While another guy is clicking on the build icon and then the factory button you went pressed b(uild)-> f(actory) and are already 30 seconds ahead of him in the game.
You also learn to type from an in-game chat system. You have to be fast to tell a team mate to watch out. If you take to long to type it out then you're stuck until you finish making yourself an easy target for the enemy to line up a headshot and crouch over your dead body, teabagging your corpse.
Mavis Beacon: Tea bagging free since '93
If a typing teacher were ever to teabag the slowest typer in class you could be garaunteed two things.
1) The teacher would be fired
2) The student would become the world's fastest typer
#2 Teamwork and Leadership
You've probably heard the flawed view of gamers as anti-social miscreants. But that's just bullshit from people who don't know a green drop from a purple one.
MMORPGs and team FPS games teach more about teamwork than any weekend retreat where you fall back and your mates catch you ever will. You also won't have to spend 3 hours discussing your feelings.
In a clan or a guild you can develop actual friendships and do raids not just for the gold but because it's fun doing things with your friends. You also learn that you have a specific role to play in the group. The healers stay back and help while the tanks run in and draw fire. Each team member may have a different task but everyone is important to the group's survival.
Far right guy's task? Random photo captions.
You've learned through harsh experience that running past the team to show your mad skillz only results in your virtual death and the team shaking their heads.
If your clan leader is doing something stupid you learn how to show them a better way of doing things while not sounding like a usurping asswipe. This skill alone will help you out in any job where your boss is an idiot which, sadly, is a case in many of the entry level jobs.
#1 How to tune out Obnoxious people
It's a given that in every type of game there are going to be jackasses. Some people act like idiots for fun, others do it because it's a way to pass the time between bashing their heads into the wall.
The lesson in tuning out an online obnoxious, anger filled jackass that has a penis that goes from A to Z on a keyboard is usually learned by trial and error.
You're in a game and someone calls you a noob, you call them fat. They call you noob again, you call them uncreative. They call you noob once again and you snap and go on a five minute obscenity-laced tirade. You get kicked from the game, they don't and they wait for their next target.
No matter what you do you won't beat a jackass in a war of words. They will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.
Pictured: The maturity level of the average teenage gamer.
So, after a lot of grief you realize that ignoring them robs them of their power and you tune them out and don't take anything they say personally.
You take this into the world and become the guy everyone calls laid back and easy going. Nothing phases you. You take the punishment and ignore it and eventually the jackass at work goes on to bug someone else. You look cooler, get promoted more often and get married to a cheerleader.
Well, maybe not all that. But at the very least you become less stressed about any insults thrown your way.
poohead(10 months ago)
What's with all the starcraft references? that game fucking sucks, not to mention is 11 years old. move out of mommy's basement, get a job, buy an upgraded computer, and play a game from this fucking millenium.
Hatred(10 months ago)
Go play wow poo cause that game is ohhh so much better I'm assuming is what you think
John Davis(10 months ago)
WOw, that is some pretty cool stuff dude, well done!
RT
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David(10 months ago)
I would add sense of direction and navigation skills to that list -- anyone who grew up navigating the similarly textured rooms and hallways of games like Doom (and, god forbid, the massive 3d landscapes of Descent) couldn't help but develop an ability to identify landmarks, memorize paths, and read a good old map to find their way around.
e-ska(10 months ago)
I have to agree with David video games are great at teaching navigational skills as well as problem solving. I mean how else was I suppose to beat Metroid (on any platform).
IrkeanB(10 months ago)
Poohead is the jackass he described.
Shiv(10 months ago)
Cool list but games to much, much more for you. Check out my blog.
junyul(10 months ago)
the comments like below are exactly what we should use to practice the #1
IrkeanB(10 months ago)
To practice to urinate?
Eli(10 months ago)
This could'nt be anymore true but the limits are endless as to what gaming can teach us. Too bad the media will only label us in such disparaging terms as loser and geek to name a few and to make things worse is if a gamer kills, its video games that did it.
wiseman(10 months ago)
grow up and get into the real world...
Jackass-ness(10 months ago)
poohead seems to be one of those jackasses they mention under #1.
No matter what you say, he's still gonna beat you with his experience in jackass-nes.
Winston C.(10 months ago)
Apparently poohead has not heard of "Starcraft 2"... its a Starcraft for this "fucking millennium". So the game references are relevant, jackass.
Anyhow good list. Could add the ability to plan ahead. To succeed in many skill based games (RTS,FPS,etc) you have to plan several steps ahead as you have to do in real life.
gotroot(10 months ago)
wow poophead, "that game fucking sucks, not to mention is 11 years old. move out of mommy's basement, get a job, buy an upgraded computer, and play a game from this fucking millenium."
all i can say is go kill yourself, you soulless fag,
i guess what you consider to be " upgraded" is hello kitty island adventure, but w.e with your faggotry.... again..
end yourself
Bystander(10 months ago)
Keep dreaming, nerds. No one is ever going to want to see how many hours you have logged on your XBOX/PS3/WHY on your resume, and the Special Forces are NOT going to knock on your door to recruit you to save the world because you kick ass at Call of Duty 4.
You'll just get fatter, lazier, and further from your last lay.
Gregg(10 months ago)
Well thought out and informative. You've stated clearly a bounty of positive effects of gaming. I enjoyed the article.
RisingPun(10 months ago)
Yeah, it sure would be ridiculous to expect a correlation between army video games and interest from the actual army.
Also: http://www.AmericasArmy.com/
anonymoose(10 months ago)
@RisingPun
And of course all they do is play videogames, right? I think passing all the other physical training might have something more to do with recruitment.
Soldier - hikes, jogs, does pushups, weight training, does field training, marksmanship, plays AmericasArmy
Full Time Gamer - eats Doritos and Twinkies, leaves large imression on couch, has sore thumbs.
Douchebag...
Malcolm Christiansen(10 months ago)
^^^ You look like you missed your exit for "The Point" (Pop. Everyone But You.) You can probably get there if you make a U-Turn in Cluetown, but I hear they don't much care for idiots around there.
Annie Moose(10 months ago)
Why are older video games horrible again? One of the best videogames of all time came out in 1998... and it's still pretty amazing.
I'm talking about Half Life of course. Even Starcraft can't compete with that.`
Jonathan(10 months ago)
I love to piss off people in games. Thats why I play them. I think its sad how upset people get. :o Don't be angry at us because we are having more fun than you. :)
/HL971(10 months ago)
Many things to learn from this
AssultTank(10 months ago)
This is a great article, and while there are more items I could add to the list, I think the ones you have here are the biggest ones.
But if you ever do a part 2 some skills you may want to include are
Thinking quickly and adapting
Navigation
Problem solving
and Dedication to the task at hand.
I wish there were more articles casting us gamers in a positive light like this one.
Scipio(10 months ago)
Great article, but one question. Why is marrying a cheerleader a good thing?
Stunt(10 months ago)
A gamer cheerleader might just be fine ;op
annonymous(9 months ago)
you are rit? idiot?
Sk8er N1nJ4(9 months ago)
Way to steal from www.cracked.com; any Digg or Stumbleupon users block this article stealing trash site.
vu(9 months ago)
i play halo 3 so i definatly agree with #1.
John Vegga(9 months ago)
That part with the penis from A-Z was hilarious. At first I thought it meant from A-Z as in the alphabet, but when I saw "on the keyboard", that made my day.
AnimechaX(8 months ago)
I feel he put the Starcraft references because it was....and still is believe it or not one of the best RTS games out there.
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Well, maybe not all that. But at the very least you become less stressed about any insults thrown your way.
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You take this into the world and become the guy everyone calls laid back and easy going. Nothing phases you. You take the punishment and ignore it and eventually the jackass at work goes on to bug someone else. You look cooler, get promoted more often and get married to a cheerleader.
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In between gaming with his hundreds of girlfriends, Malcolm writes at The Last Gaffe.
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you need to get a grip and get over yourself, because dude: it's just a game.
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I feel he put the Starcraft references because it was....and still is believe it or not one of the best RTS games out there.
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Go play wow poo cause that game is ohhh so much better I'm assuming is what you think
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the comments like below are exactly what we should use to practice the #1
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anyone who grew up navigating the similarly textured rooms and hallways of games like Doom (and, god forbid, the massive 3d landscapes of Descent) couldn't help but develop an ability to identify landmarks, memorize paths, and read a good old map to find their way around.
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Too bad the media will only label us in such disparaging terms as loser and geek to name a few and to make things worse is if a gamer kills, its video games that did it.
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Typing is an extremely useful skill and a high WPM looks good on a resume for any job. It used to be that to learn typing you would have to take a course on it or use software like Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing where you would spend hours honing your skills through boring exercises typing nonsensical phrases.
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