Researchers who gathered in Boston for the American Psychological Association convention detailed a series of studies suggesting video games can be powerful learning tools — from increasing younger students’ problem-solving potential to improving the suturing skills of laparoscopic surgeons.
Here is my list of 5 things I learned from an MMO:
1. Don’t stand in fire. (Thanks, Dol.)
2. Following someone, and then leaving to do something else will result in injury, embarrassment, or death.
3. Growing up is all about learning new things and trying out new talents and abilities. But when you hit a certain age, all you want to do is get better stuff to wear and buy nicer rides.
4. Always carry a rock in your pocket that you can rub to get home quickly.
5. If you ever get stabbed with a sword, or hacked with an axe, you only need to sit, drink, and eat.
There is one rule that MMOs teach us:
Sometimes there is a fire. Don’t stand in the fire.
This is a good base for any young mind!
I agree. Editing the post now.
If only everything on that list were true for real life… especially eating to regain health.
On a serious note, after playing some of the old school mmorpgs where roleplaying was actually a part of the game rather than hack and slash or npc controlled quests, I learned a lot about organizing group events, leadership, councelling, and today all we really learn is how to have a thicker skin and how monotonous routine work for little or no pay is a good thing.
Thinking of it that way, I can understand why these training tools came out of communist places like china and slave market work places like korea/india.
I could be wrong about china, korea and india. I’m just going off what I hear on the news about nike.
Basic economics.
The answer I would tend to give is “It depends what you mean by smarter”. The notion/idea of intelligence is rather fluid, numerous experts on the area do not agree what actually constitutes intelligence. Of course some people will say that IQ is a measure of intelligence but IQ is merely a measure of how accuratly certain types of test are able to be performed.
In the interests of IQ playing any sort of computer game in my opinion, will improve IQ. In games there is a very large visio-spatial component coupled with a problem solving aspect.
I agree with PurrNaK in that leadership and councelling skills can be learned but remember there is an emotional component to these skills which is is lost even when interacting with others over the phone/skype or whatever.
One thing I’ve leared from MMO’s is: If you don’t like somebody then turn him into a sheep.
6 you can let the Chinese do the hard work for you.
Even picking on just one person can aggro a whole world of hurt.
FREAKY – I saw this guy (Gruul’s son?) last night for the first time (8 hours ago) – Now it’s on the EL front page.
/end off topic-ness.
Coming up next: Can bees think? A new study indicates that no, they cannot.
6. All mages are Irish: Fight, drink, fight, drink, fight, drink…