The relationship between Online Marketing and Videogames
I just remembered an article I read several days ago about the ban on "violent" video games in Venezuela, you can read the article by a Venezuelan blogger that was published in Boing Boing at the following link: Venezuela bans violent video games.
I was thinking about the issue raised by the writer of the article about the skills that one acquires since childhood playing video games and the truth is that I felt very identified since although today I play little and nothing, years ago it was my favorite activity and I still keep that affection towards the classic games of my childhood.
I am not going to talk about political ideologies or about the "effects" caused by "violent" video games because it already seems too clichéd to me, but I am going to talk about skills acquired through video games and then they can be applied to professional life.
1- Analysis of data chains to solve a problem.
This is used on a day-to-day basis and is vital in any profession to always be at the forefront, one needs the ability to analyze previous data to plan strategies for the present and future accordingly.
If something is not working ... why is it not working? what can be changed to make it work? where this error?
In video games we constantly receive strings of auditory, visual, semantic, numerical data, etc. that we should interpret in real time to figure out what action to take as soon as possible in pursuit of a goal.
If we see that in Mortal Kombat our enemy has very good special abilities to defend himself from air attacks, even the smallest child realizes that he should attack him from the other side using the abilities that his character possesses ... and many people seem to forget that ability of analysis over the years.
That analytical skill that is applied to solve the problem of how to defeat the enemy character is the same that is used in areas as diverse as: medicine, marketing, economics, education, etc. The only thing that varies is the nature of the data string.
2- More problems? YES PLEASE!
When we like a video game, it is difficult for us to throw a tantrum due to the fact that it gets complicated or unforeseen problems arise ... in fact that is something Very funny!
If you really want to be good at what you do, no matter what it is, it takes industrial amounts of perseverance and commitment to what you do, the passion it takes in a difficult video game to get to the end is the same that I experience when I am trying to achieve a difficult work goal.
Even if we don't want to in life, new unforeseen problems will always arise, it is better to face them with a challenging face and a smile than with fear and anguish.
3- Teamwork
I remember when we got together to play games with friends in cooperative mode, each one of us played the role that we had to fulfill with perfect synchronization and strategies were put together according to the real and virtual abilities of each one.
These friendships last to this day and that sense of cooperation came off the screen, since we always help each other in what we can, personally I also like to transfer that cooperation system to business and work activities.
If companies and governments organized as well as we do to win over Twisted Metal's final bosses, there would surely be fewer problems.
4- My first statistics lesson was not at school
Playing Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger along with other RPGs and some RTS I found a taste for numbers that turned into HATE when it came to grabbing a boring equations book with no specific objective.
The life points of my enemies are numbers, my attacks have numerical value, my abilities have percentages of probability of being effective and all these values are influenced by several external factors at the same time ... several things to take into consideration to choose the best play possible.
My taste for probabilities arises from there, Although the final result partly depends on chance, it depends even more on the ability we have to foresee the different possible outcomes and what actions to take in case any of them occur ... very similar to what happens every day in real life, right?
These games allow us to apply concepts of statistics and probabilities with a clear and specific objective as well as being very fun.
5- The most important of all… I have fun!
As much as there are so many positive points in video games, the most important thing is always the ability they give to have a good time, the friendships that I made by the simple fact of meeting around a Nintendo with friends of a friend last until today.
Although this is totally debatable, in my personal experience I can say that I am not a violent person at all (unless we are at a concert, but there is an agreement between those present hehe) and I think part of that is that video games taught me that violence is better enclosed within a screen than outside of it, ideally it only belongs to the realm of fiction.
And I say goodbye with a very good Buddhist phrase that I read after having formed this mentality and I am surprised that there have been people with the same mentality centuries ago:
«The master in the art of living does not distinguish between playing and working, he simply pursues his vision of excellence in everything he does, leaving it to others to decide whether he is playing or working. For him he is always doing both »
This article ended up being long and very cursive, if you got here, thank you very much and I hope for some comment on the subject either in this post or twitter.
