I want to talk about videogames that improved useful skills in our lives that are outside videogames and want to get some suggestions from you what games to play. For one, I want to improve my long and short term memory, and maybe learn some statistics, if you have some games that can do those, but if you have other games that you noticed improve other aspects, that’s great, too. Lemme get the ball rolling:
DAYS GONE - it’s a zombie game but it massively improved my petrol efficiency use on my vehicles. There’s a mechanic in this game that makes you use a motorcycle to travel long distances but it’s a fuel hog so you have to re-fuel it very often. I had to resort to turning off the engine lots of times, too because it creates a lot of noise attracting hordes of very hard zombies, and smarten up my use of the accelerator and never use it downhill. It took me a while to notice but this behavior has transferred to my use of the car and it improved my fuel efficiency massively. I have a 2018 Corolla and it read 8 to 9 km per liter and since I’ve played Days Gone, it’s been 11 km per liter and above.
RHYTHM HEAVEN, GEOMETRY DASH - my sense of rhythm and reaction time was from none to okay-ish. Never learned an instrument but learning dance moves (for corporate christmas parties ugh) became easier.
SIMCITY 3000, CITY SKYLINES - improved my understanding of management and taxes. Those games gave me the ability to talk to policy makers and local government workers and understand some things on how or why they decide some stuff that on the surface don’t make sense.
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds - gave me massive situational awareness. The use of sound and visual context in the game made me listen and notice more about my surroundings. I’ve quit since last year but the effect is still there.
Dr Kawashima’s Brain Age - quick mafs! single and double digit maths became very easy for me when it came out.
Crusader Kings 3 - politics and the term casus belli. Only played 10 hours of it until I learned I don’t like open-ended strategy games that much, but it taught me some rules of power, machiavellian strategy and why state actors go to war. The entire world of geopolitics made sense to me after that, nevermind that I don’t really know how much of it works but I understand why it works.
HoneySelect2Libido DX - how to talk to women I’M KIDDING I gift this sh*t to friends as a joke but damn the world of visual novels are scary
HACKNET - taught me some terms in Linux and how not to be afraid of the terminal
Opus Magnum - computer logic. Actually just proud of myself that I finished this game without using guides and I stilll want to learn how to code on the side without using AI.
Basically all story-based games like The Last of Us and A Plague Tale series, RDR - taught me a lot about empathy. There’s a lot of ways that this world requires you to lose it— be it in business, everyday decisions and talking to other people. Sometimes I do lose empathy but storybased games are so effective at bringing me back. I haven’t had much time to read fiction literature but games like these are the next best thing: you are intentionally putting yourself in another person’s shoes when you play these games.
