"Red velvet lines the black box"

Many employees, who have entered the workforce in the past few years, may be displaying some heightened business skills at a young age from playing video games throughout their childhood and teen years. The current generation entering the workforce is the first to represent a trend that will not reverse itself in the future. I wanted to inform you of this trend and some of the skills that are developed by playing video games.

Imagine a Friday Night Strategy Meeting

Every Friday night I and a few of my coworkers from branches around the country hold virtual meetings in our respective living rooms. We connect via the internet as a team and talk strategy. How are we going to beat the competition? What new methods might we implement this week? What are some of the strategies that brought us this far as a team? What is everybody’s role on the team? These questions are answered as we attempt to capture the enemy’s flag and bring it back to our base in a video game we play.

Strategy for Success in Video Games

A recent article in Sky Magazine references the book Got Game: How the Gamer Generation Is Reshaping Business Forever and the data in the book that indicates that “gamers are smart, savvy new thinkers who are climbing the corporate ladder using the same problem-solving strategies they used to come out winners in games.”

Creativeteachingsite.com indicates that ten specific skill sets are widely necessary for success in many games. Some of these translate directly into our day-to-day business. We must use skills such as Logical Thinking, Observation, Problem Solving, and Strategy Planning every day to succeed.

In an article by Daniel Rubin, the Sydney Morning Herald described the idea this way:

Children who go online to play the World War II shooter fantasy Medal of Honour: Allied Assault might last all of 14 seconds if they just hit the Normandy beaches with guns blazing. To succeed, they must come up with a plan – either by typing messages or talking through headphones to teammates whom they may have never met.

The article goes on to add items such as Ethics, Persistence, and Morals as some of the other virtues that videogames can offer their players.

A Lifetime of Business Training

Chip Luman, the HR Vice President at Charles Schwab, is one executive who believes in gamers. "The people who play games are into technology, can handle more information,can synthesize more complex data, solve operational design problems, lead changeand bring organizations through change," Luman said in the San Jose Mercury News on May 17, 2005.

Perhaps John Seely Brown a former chief scientist of Xerox Corporation, who also studied the effect of playing games on the development of workplace skills, summarized it best: “Skills that you don’t teach people directly are an inherent part of these games.”

Being an avid gamer myself, I can see the benefits of playing video games in my own life. I can see myself developing leadership skills in some scenarios. I can see myself being too defensive, offensive or reckless in certain scenarios within videogames...definately reckless.

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