Bad at games

Almost every time an article appears on game based assessments there is at least one reaction sounding something like 'I'm bad a games' and sometimes a 'I don't like games'.

I've stopped replying, but the answer to the first is by definition: no you're not.

You cannot be bad at games

Being bad at games would make you utterly without talent and everybody has talent. You are bad at some games, we all are, and you believe that is the type of games that people are talking about.

Type of games

When we are talking about games most people think shooting games, maybe strategic roleplaying games or perhaps Fifa soccer. These three already need different skills to excel. Where in games like Fortnite and Call of Duty reaction speeds are essential, Mincraft is more about spacial awareness and there is a lot of strategy and teamwork involved in World of Warcraft and if you start playing Command & Conquer it's more about planning and strategy.

But there is also Scrabble, or Wordfeud that's all about knowledge of words. Rummikub where you need pattern recognition, fast switching and information processing speed. Sudoku is about pattern recognition. Many card games require memory and anticipation and games like Carcassonne and Catan are a lot about strategy and planning. Monopoly is about strategy and negotiating skills.

And yes, I know there is much more involved in all of these games, all of them require many different skills, I'm just listing the primary ones there. And all of them have a luck component in it as well, otherwise they wouldn't emulate life, right?

Emulating life

Because that's what games do, the emulate life. Or aspects of it. That's why they are such good predictors of skills that you might need in a job.

And game based assessments are not just games like fun games are. They are tailored to the tasks at hand. So if it's linguistic knowledge that is tested, for example for an editor, there are tests to find all the words and others that measure if you know what they mean, by testing if you know a synonym.

You are not bad at games

You are not bad at games. You are bad at what you think games mean, but not at all of them. You are bad at some, or many, games. We all are. The perfect human doesn't exist. You might not be good at things you think you are good at (because your family, friends and colleagues are even worse) and you might be great at things you thought you were mediocre at (because your friends, family and colleagues are even better).

But nobody is bad at all games.

Bas is a professional snoop in the world of recruitment and HR technology. He's tested dozens different modern assessment tools and is willing to test any that will let him. He's also been researching the Digital candidate experience in the Netherlands for over 15 years.

He organises events like?Digitaal-Werven ?(Dutch) and?webinars .