Gaming as a Skill

As you may or may not be aware of, there is a lot of debate and going back and forth among the people of our society on the concept of people gaming, what gaming does, and how it affects us.
There's a lot of ways to try to answer this abstract question, but I feel there's only one facet of it I can really cover well.
I'd like to talk a bit about the talents that individuals learn from playing games. I will give specific examples, and more general ones to give you a good idea of what I'm getting at.

This topic was inspired by Jane McGonigal's TED Talk about how gaming can make a better world.




I often have heard of children, teens, and even adults who receive a lot of criticism for their enjoyment of games. I've heard a lot of responses from skeptical individuals toward these people that sound like this:

"There's so many more productive things you could be doing."

"When will these ever help you in the real world?"

"It's unhealthy for you, you should be playing outside."

"This won't help you get a good career!"

Imagine that you hear things like this each day, and you constantly receive this skepticism and ridicule from people who don't understand what makes gaming such a beneficial activity. You would not feel very good about gaming at that point. I'm sure if you're anything like me you'd tell them you don't care and continue playing the games. Good.

Games teach a lot of valuable skills and lessons. These skills and lessons are able to manifest within our material world, regardless of if they manifest well in the digital world. I'll use myself as an example of this, to better illustrate my point. I will use several game examples for each skill I learned from playing games, and explain how it taught me that skill.

One of the skills able to be obtained easiest from games is the skill of cooperation. Cooperation doesn't seem like a hard skill to learn, but given the competitive nature of society in a lot of dynamics it can be pretty grueling to try and be the team player.
The games that taught me cooperation are far and wide, but I will list five of the biggest influences on this element.

1. Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn
2. World of Warcraft
3. Minecraft
4. Halo 2
5. Warframe

These games are all pretty different from one another in terms of gameplay. But each one helped solidify the element of cooperation within my mind for achieving my goals. Each of these games have trials and obstacles within them to guide a player and show them the power of working together. Whether this was online with other players, or offline with a team of different characters, it still taught the same important dynamic of the strength of teamwork.

The second skill I learned from games was leadership. Oftentimes it is not understood how someone can become an effective leader. But in games, we as gamers witness characters in the story who are powerful leaders, as well as witness other players who lead their teams well. Through this observation, or participation in leading others within a game, we learn how to lead an effort with others better than normal.
The games that taught me this skill the best would be the following:

1. Counterstrike: Source
2. World of Warcraft
3. EVE Online
4. Runescape
5. Neverwinter Nights

There were a lot of people I met along the way in these games and a lot of teams I led or was a part of throughout my experience. I rarely ever encountered someone leading a team badly. There are plenty of games nowadays that rely more on teamwork and leadership than these games do. I'm mostly referring to the giant influx of MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) games such as League of Legends, SMITE, Heroes of Newerth, DOTA, etc.
Through the playing of these games, I've learned a lot about how to effectively manage working alongside or above others. I can manage workflow better. I can give better feedback and help the improvement of those I'm leading more effectively.

The last skill I'll address here, and probably the most important one, is friendship. I learned how to communicate, bond, and interact with people easier through playing games. The ability to bond with people and make connections is probably one of the most important skills in today's society. We are constantly at a need to expand our network, to get our name out there, and to show people that we are interesting and worth spending time with.

I won't list any games for this last skill since I can barely think of any games that don't teach this skill that I play. I think every game teaches this, or at least encourages the player to develop this skill. I have so many friends I make just from playing games that I never have a lack of people to talk to or interact with.

You hear often in our society about people who can't work with others, who can't lead effectively, and who don't have any friends. Wouldn't this world be better if everybody obtained these skills?

Atomize

After talking about game design and different dynamics of it within the last few months, it seemed pertinent to then put up a rough draft of a game I thought up personally.
The game is called Atomize, it's a top-down 2D puzzle game with the potential for story dynamics and (in the future) user-created levels for others to play through.

At the current stage of fleshing out the game, it only has a linear level design with complex, yet simple, puzzles to navigate through with the character: Atom.
Atom has no dialogue in the game, and essentially the dialogue of Atom is more displayed through its actions in the levels.

I did my best to make some of the puzzles thus far defy normal human intuition, and so far most of those who have tested it have taken quite some time to figure out the easy ways of getting passed the puzzles.

There is a lot I'd like to add to this game, but for the moment its physical system (collisions, hit detection, doors/gates) are in a clunky developmental stage, and I need to make a lot of improvements to the feel of the game so that it's possible to make the game more forgiving in terms of some of the earlier levels and puzzles.
I will likely continue updating this blog with any continued progress I make on Atomize.

For now though, it's back to the internet, to search around for GML methods to help the game feel smoother.

The Outsider

Title Screen

Backstory - Zombie Outbreak! Surprise! Some guy managed to make a safe city-like place where survivors gather and now they do the best they can to stay alive. One of these things is creating a group known as the "Outsiders" people who venture beyond the walls in order to help keep water/electricity going and gather food or other supplies. Most "Outsiders" need to be agile and able to do the task assigned to them. "Outsiders" select one person to be their contact for back at the city. This is a personal decision that each "Outsider" makes themselves. It's been about a year and a half since the beginning of the real outbreak (when things really started rolling downhill).

You play as: Richard - Only child, both parents died at the hands of zombies. In order to cope with how shitty things are, he ends up turning everything into a joke and becomes an asshole to everyone! He's very self-centered and is very good at what he does: hunt and kill zombies. He's very agile and dependable for these missions, hence why he became an Outsider.

Zombies - They're zombies. They shamble and some jog (no runners though)... depending on how recently they've been infected/turned, the faster they are, with "joggers" being very recently infected. Most, however, are "shamblers" at this point due to it being a significant amount of time since their turning. It's been speculated by the Dr. that zombies have this natural predatory instinct towards humans and animals close to humans (cats, dogs, etc.). They don't need to eat but eating seems to rejuvenate them (make them revert to an earlier stage of post-infection allowing them to run faster). They don't feel anything but seem to react to sound and sight and, in rare cases, smell.

While still early in development, I hope that, in time, The Outsider will become much more complete so I can have something under my belt to be proud of!

Genders, Culture, and the Gaming Community

          Having recently watched one of Anita Sarkeesian videos I've noticed something very strange about her video. She does point out that games do tend to have gender stereotypes and tropes fairly often, but she never actually talked about what we, as the community and developers, can do about it.
          One theory I had about it is that it stems from our culture. The way we perceive women, games, and how those two are "supposed to be tied together" all comes from the way we grew up with them. I think that one thing we can do, as a community, to stop the mass tropes and stereotypes from being a problem is to stop making it a problem and topic for our children. If they don't automatically think of make-up and the color pink associated with girls, then they (should they become developers) will stop thinking that girls should be defined by these characteristics alone.
          Another theory I had was to stop using gender as markers in games altogether. I'm fairly sure that the developers will still be able to let the gamers know who is what gender based on factors other than pink bows and make-up. Such as with the koopa kids in the Nintendo+Mario universe, letting the developers use names, attitude, and even name pronouns such as "he" and "she" could be used to help distinguish gender without the need for stereotypes or tropes.