Week 6: Class Reflection

The (rather heated) discussion in class about gaming made me think about the fact that, while I'm thoroughly convinced that gaming skills have a transferable merit in other areas of life, I can't justify that out of my own experience. Because I'm not a gamer. I just know a lot of them, and I have watched their interactions and culture like a sneaky anthropologist hiding in the bushes. Except I was mostly reading Anna Karenina while sprawled on someone's dorm room bed, or nagging my brother to please please get off the damn headset because it's dinner time, or sitting at the bar in the middle of my undergrad campus while people played Rock Band and Call of Duty and Magic: the Gathering around me (my school was fantastically odd), or snarling at my roommates for hijacking the wifi so they could have a LAN party. So... I know some things about gamer culture, and I sort of know how the games work. But I've never had any particular interest in playing them. To delve into just why, then, I find McGonigal's assertions so convincing, I asked those same friends who gave me glimpses into the games.

So... anecdotal evidence, but still evidence. If the gamers are convinced things are transferring, I'm inclined to believe them. Besides... at one point my little brother was making as much money winning Halo tournaments as I was working (part-time, admittedly) at an actual job. As a final anecdote, here's his response to me asking whether he feels like his gaming skills transfer to other parts of life (he is too cool to answer Facebook posts):

On whether it impacts his "real world" interactions:

"Definitely hinders my academics, mainly because of the time wasted. Socially I would say it helped me, I mean I have made some pretty memorable friends I would not have met otherwise. And I would say I am more open and expressive when I talk online also but that doesn't translate into real life too much."

On how the game skills changed his approach to other things*:

"Well a big part of my skill was how strategic I was. And I used to play with a timer to time different things on the maps that would benefit the team and whatnot. So basically I was more efficient than anybody else even if they were just better in terms of raw skill or whatever. when playing halo was pretty much the only time I would be like the leader of something, or in control to be able to affect the outcome of a game, that is the only time I had to learn any real leadership skills. So I think I still have many habits that stemmed from that. I am always trying to do things more efficiently and improve timing or whatever there is to improve.

Since it consumed so much of my life from age 13-18 I would say that is where I picked these things up from."

*This is the longest text message he has ever sent me, and probably more words than I have heard/seen him produce at once in about ten years. Some punctuation has been added for clarity. Also: my brother is the best.