How I got into Gaming and 3 Lessons I Learned from it

This article was originally published by Ava Dobreva COO at Knuth Concepts.

"When I was a kid, I loved games. And I hated losing. I used to put a lot of effort into figuring out how to win, at all costs. I followed the ‘No rules rules’ principle: I followed the rules very dilligently until I had to break them to win. It’s easier to apologize than to ask for permission.

This was one of my very first lessons games taught me about life.

I used to play chess with my grandmother. She taught me how to play chess. Over time, I was growing up and my mind was becoming sharper, she was aging and her mind was playing games with her, so I started winning consistently. I was around 13 when I won my 67th game in a row, so I called it quits and stopped playing chess.

I considered it a mount conquered, a challenge completed, and I dived into another game.

This was one of my very first lessons that games taught me about myself as a person.

Towards the age of 17, I entered the world of adults - I started working, so I stopped playing games. I had important mounts to conquer, where, unlike in games, I couldn’t make mistakes. At least not without paying time and money to fix them. In chess, I just set up the chessboard again.

Fast forward to 2022, I started playing games again. Video games (think Call of Duty, Minecraft, etc.). From the perspective of an adult professional, here are the 3 most important lessons video games taught me, from the perspective of an adult professional:

Lesson #1 Games are a low-stakes environment - you can test, fail, lose, die, and it will all be over when you restart the game.

A bit of background on why this is so important for me: prior to joining Knuth Concepts, I was in charge of building one of the largest centers for treatment of young people with disabilities in my country. I was the joint point of several private, government and non-government stakeholders, and I had no margin for error. The tiniest error meant a disaster of its own. This is how I taught myself to be a perfectionist.

A couple of years later, the project is finished and operating, and I have a different type of work. I have to be brave in testing things out, seeing what works and what doesn’t, and experimenting. From the perspective of a perfectionist, you bet I’m having trouble doing that.

That’s where games kick in, and science fully supports that.

From a?neuroscience perspective,? ‘games are an opportunity for the brain to start to explore different roles that people take, how they work as individuals and as pairs, and in larger groups. And to do that in a low-stakes environment. You wouldn't want this to be worked out on the battlefield or when searching for food or in some high-stakes environment’...?where you’d end up losing your job, wasting too much time on a dead-end project, or wasting resources.

So, lesson No. 1: I can experiment and fail in a game because a game is a low-stakes environment.

Lesson #2 In a game, I learn a lot about myself and the other players, both on personal and professional levels. You are the player you represent.

I started playing a shooter game called Valorant. I love this game. It is not as realistic as Call of Duty (Call of Duty feels like I’m inside a Netflix blockbuster, it’s thaaaat realistic).

In Valorant, we have 4 groups of agents based on personality types, and?20 agents?with different skills and superpowers within those 4 groups - Initiators, Duelists, Controllers and Sentinels. I guess just like everyone else, I tried playing with agents from all the 4 groups. Naturally, you find the agent that’s the best fit for you and tend to stick to it. Because to some extent, this agent’s personality reflects your own personality.

I play with?Viper,?from the group of the Controllers: we slice up dangerous territory to set our team up for success. And I identify with it to a great extent. I don’t attack right away, instead I sneak around like a snake, deploy toxins in strategic areas to confuse the enemies, and create toxin walls to hide and protect my teammates.

I tried playing with an agent called Sage - Sage is a peaceful agent who doesn’t harm others with her abilities. She instead heals our team and can revive killed teammates. For that purpose, she always has to be close to the team (can’t heal & revive from a distance). I instead go to corners others don’t go to, and I’m usually away from the team, playing in a more individualistic manner, and taking down enemies strategically before joining the team. I want to make sure we won’t be attacked from unexpected places. I played several times with Sage, and I can’t identify with this agent. That’s not who I am.

To sum things up, in games I discover my ways to be a better player and my ways to be a worse player. But also, I discover that my teammate tends to cheat to win (there are so many cheaters!), that another teammate is extremely rigid about the rules, and another one is extremely rigid about the way he organizes the game. I can also tell who is a brute-force player and who is patient to win. Most importantly, I can very early on see who is a more strategic, tactical or operational player.

Now, you might be wondering why that is important, since a game is a game, and reality happens outside of games.

Here’s why:?according to neuroscience, games are a low-stakes environment, and in a low-stakes environment you can roam around and explore. There is learning in this exploration. And at a biological level, the part of the brain responsible for that is the prefrontal cortex. And because you get one prefrontal cortex (you don't get a prefrontal cortex just for play), the personality you show in a game is often who you are outside of the game.

So, lesson No. 2: In a game, you can get to know someone waaaay better than if you spent hours upon hours sitting together on Teams meetings.

Lesson #3 Games empower neuroplasticity

Why is this important?

“Neuroplasticity – or brain plasticity – is the ability of the brain to modify and re-wire itself. Without this ability, any brain, not just the human brain, would be unable to develop from infancy through to adulthood or recover from brain injury.”

A gamer-buddy (@A.S. Diego Andrés Acosta) shared?this video?of a 69-year old gamer who recommends games to every senior out there. According to studies, games improve seniors’ memory and lower the risks of depression.

Now, that’s not a point I can myself vouch for because I can’t immediately see the impact of games on my own neuroplasticity, but I was curious how that works, and neuroscience has?something to say:

“There are very, very few opportunities in life to explore contingencies in this low-stakes way (games) that engages neuroplasticity, the prefrontal cortex. And because there is information to learn about yourself and others during play, you start to open up the prefrontal cortex circuits.Play is powerful at making your prefrontal cortex more plastic, more able to change in response to experience.Play is about testing. It's about experimenting and it's about expanding your brain's capacity. And that's through early in development, and it's throughout the lifespan.”

So, lesson No. 3: Games are a portal to neuroplasticity. Games prime my brain for learning, evolving and staying sharp.

Now, why is this whole thing about gaming relevant about us as a company?

Until two months ago with my team we used to meet every Wednesday afternoon and just chat and have coffee (virtually). You know, bond and spend time together.

We figured no one was excited about these meetings. We all felt them like another chore on the calendar. So we started meeting in Minecraft and Call of Duty.

That changed a lot. Meeting in the games added another dimension to how we communicated and what we knew about each other. It also added quality to the quantity of time we spent together. We are going through my three main points in this write-up together, as a team, in a shared learning and exploration environment. Win-win.

This made us a better team. Although gaming might sometimes be perceived as ‘waste of time’ and ‘I hate video games and don’t see myself playing’, there is a lot of value in playing games in the enterprise.

What do you think about this?

Are you a gamer? What is your experience with games? I’d love to learn about it! Please leave a comment."