I’m pretty sure that we’ve all heard the typical parental speech about how you shouldn’t spend so much time playing games. It’s frustrating to hear! You know that there’s a lot more to the game than what someone on the outside can see. We have spent thousands of hours on end developing skills and homing in mechanics that allow us to pop off and hit those sweet, sweet highlight clips. Surely all of that effort translates elsewhere in life, right? Well, yes it does, and it’s interesting to see how gaming can actually prove beneficial in a professional context.

Let’s talk about that.

One thing I feel it’s important to discuss first is how gaming is very different to the stereotypical image represented in South Park. Obviously, anything in excess can be negative, and I’m not saying that gaming cannot have any negatives. But if you look at how it’s being embraced as a profession, you don’t need to look much further than Red Bull. Ever since 1989, the energy drinks brand have associated themselves with athletes of the highest calibre. Look at names such as Neymar and Max Verstappen, you know they’re not messing about. With this in mind, Red Bull’s 2006 signing of the Halo player David Walsh was an unprecedented move. It challenged many people’s perceptions of what an athlete is. Fast-forward to today and look to the Red Bull high performance centre in Salzburg and you will find professional gamers among the ranks of high tier traditional sports athletes, all of them being provided with physical, mental, and nutritional guidance to help them to perform at the best of their abilities.

Coordination, decision making, information analysis and multitasking.

‍Unlike football though, we deal with *a lot* of information coming in and out very quickly. Getting into a big fight whilst you’re trying to avoid the storm surge in a game of Fortnite and coordinating everything successfully involves a large number of decisions and evolving information with very little time to think about each option. This ability does translate to the real world as well. Gamers tend to be very competent at information analysis, being able to process intel quickly and act on it efficiently. Multitasking across multiple monitors is a great example of that. We are able to process these kinds of workloads with ease, and this is reflected in the tendency for gamers to have higher than average levels of digital literacy. It makes sense that people who spend a large amount of time on a computer are good at using computers. Being able to combine the above factors with a high performing setup, such as an Alienware X15 or Aurora R13 of which are both powered by Intel Core 12th gen processors will further increase the efficiency when developing coordination, decision making, information analysis and multitasking by offering you a flawless experience when learning.

Achieving efficiency and communication

‍A heightened level of digital literacy seems like it wouldn’t really be much of an advantage moving into the professional world, but you’d be quite surprised by how many people struggle to understand basic troubleshooting processes or how to optimize the tasks that they perform daily. Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V are basics in our lives, but if you go into an office environment, you’ll still see people swearing by their good old right click and paste, and it’s little tricks like these which help us to do our jobs in a more efficient manner. 

So much so that at my old job, my boss intentionally went out of his way to hire gamers for high level admin roles as we could process a lot more work than an equally qualified candidate, and we communicated between ourselves in a succinct and coherent manner. Now sure, not all of us in gaming have good comms. Solo queue ranked in any game and that much is immediately apparent. But we have learnt to filter information into what is useful, and what is rubbish, and how to offer it to colleagues in a way that is useful for them. Much like offering up a flashbang in CS:GO to your teammate to clear out an angle in front of them, concise communications lead to better teamwork that is mutually beneficial for all parties involved.

"As an in-game leader for the Bravado CS:GO squad, I continue to elaborate the importance of clean and precise communication, especially when you’re in the heat of the moment. Similarly, I’ve found that my team-mates communicate more efficiently and effectively outside of the game, in whatever work environment or study group they’re involved in and believe that gaming has played an important role in building effective communication skills in whatever we do."
‍- Slowye, Bravado Gaming CS:GO Captain and in-game Leader. 

Problem solving

‍Now think of all the times you’ve googled a walkthrough for a level that you’re stuck on, or how much time you’ve spent learning a boss’s attack mechanics to figure out how to counter them. This very active engagement in problem solving is something that shouldn’t be overlooked. Competitive gamers are well familiar with the idea of demo reviews, where you watch your own gameplay back to analyse what you did well and what you can improve on, then takings these learnings into their next games or into reviewing a pro demo to see how else they could approach a situation that they’re struggling with. This natural inclination towards self-improvement and growth in difficult situations carries through to the real world as well, where you’re well versed in taking a step back and analysing the problem and how best to solve it. Assessing uncertainties and using the information you have to solve a problem on-the-fly is tricky, but it’s also something that us gamers do on the regular.

"Whether it be a demo you need to review, analyse your opponents or perform a simple SWOT analysis in order to get the upper hand at a large tournament, all these developing factors simultaneously help you build you, as an individual in the real world. Whether it a competitor analysis, a problem you have to overcome or even as something as simple as reflecting in your own performance, definitely allows you to build a bigger and better you, no matter the situation."
- Tuna, Bravado Gaming Middle Eastern Valorant Player

Cognitive Development

‍There’s a definite positive correlation between gaming and cognition, which is really cool to see honestly, more and more we’re seeing studies coming out providing evidence of this and disproving all the “gaming rots your brain” tropes. Having real world benefits from gaming just goes to show how an active form of entertainment is different to sitting on the couch and watching TV, when last did an episode of Game of Thrones help your work life? The effects of the rise of the digital world and gaming is still yet to be fully understood, but knowing that it looks to be beneficial with the studies that have been conducted so far is a huge plus for all of us gamers. 

Conclusion

‍Gaming can be a great source of entertainment as well as an educational platform for the development of skills that are applicable to the real world. We always try to gamify laborious tasks to get them done, but we often forget that the tools we need to improve our craft in the digital battlefield have already been gamified for us. Next time you find yourself making a quick decision with friends, asking a colleague for a pdf, or even just figuring out how to get around some road works, ask yourself how you might have thought about it differently because of games, and I’m sure that the answer you come up with will be fascinating.

About Bravado Gaming

^{Bravado Gaming is a Middle East & African premier esports organisation and gaming lifestyle brand serving home to some of the best competitive gamers throughout select countries in divisions such as CS2 and Rocket League. Working with world-leading brands Alienware, Intel, and Dell Technologies, Bravado continues to grow from strength to strength as they work on continuously telling inspiring stories and developing all ecosystems of the gaming industry. You can learn more about Bravado at our about page.}