Video games serve many different purposes in our life. They can entertain us, help us relax, develop and strengthen friendships and, most importantly, teach us valuable life lessons. While most of the time, these virtual worlds are dismissed as a mere pastime for the young or immature, the lessons they teach us can mark the lives of those who play them.
Once you get past the initial frustration of new challenges, games are essential in teaching the necessity of persistence and patience. As you progress, you begin to understand that losing is part of the experience and that you can only really lose by giving up, the game will continue to be there offering you a chance to try again and do better. And as you continue to return to it with a fresh mind, you slowly improve, handling increasingly difficult tasks and challenges with increasing ease. This is also true in life and highlights how important it is to just keep pushing. Whether it’s your education, job, fitness, or mental health, if you slowly take the time to improve, your life will too.
2. Teamwork.
When playing alongside someone else, strategy is essential as the tasks tend to be more complex and don’t always have a clear path immediately. Just like in life and work, you have to survey your surroundings and try multiple options, many of which will fail, before you can properly progress.
More often than not, multiplayer games also test your relationship with the partner you play with, for better or for worse, and teach you (painstaking) patience.
3. Financial Management.
More games than not have some type of economic system. This means that a key part of your gameplay involves accumulating money or rewards in order to exchange them for objects in market, increase skills or unlock rewards. This is a critical skill in the real world and, if you refrain from using cheats, teaches you to not exceed your expenses, how to manage resources and how to find a multitude of innovative and creative ways to earn more. It is undoubtable that this lesson applies to the real world and, if learnt correctly, aka without cheating, can help you employ financial strategies in your real life to ensure a more stable financial future.
The truth is, there are endless life lessons to be found in games. Whilst you can read hundreds of articles like this one, the most important lessons are the ones you find yourself or perhaps even the ones which find you.
