Boost Your Career with Video Games

I read an interesting article last week on Forbes.com, “How Playing Videogames Can Boost Your Career.” Here at Plimus HQ, with so many gaming companies as our customers, we look at game playing as industry research.  But, for most companies, playing games while on the job is taboo. In fact, it’s increasingly common for companies to track their employees’ computer usage, sometimes even blocking access to social gaming sites on the work computers.

According to Forbes, companies are beginning to notice that employees who have played online games during their youth are actually excelling at a higher rate than their non-gamer counterparts.  “We’re finding that the younger people coming into the teams who have had experience playing online games are the highest-level performers because they are constantly motivated to seek out the next challenge and grab on to performance metrics,” John Hagel III, co-chairman of a tech-oriented strategy center for Deloitte, told the publication.

Organizations like Deloitte are noticing a similarity in gaming and behaviors at work. Sources in the article indicate that by playing online games, users can develop dispositions that are extremely valuable in the corporate setting.  Many online games have trial-and-error processes that require players to become accustomed to and subject to loss, failure and frustration and how to learn from the experience.

Perhaps surprisingly, these games can also spur entrepreneurship. In 2004, 22-year-old David Storey bought what was reportedly the most valuable virtual object – a virtual island in the online game “Project Entropia” – for what some called a foolhardy $26,500. But David may have the last laugh: Today he makes more than $100,000 a year from fees he charges those who hunt on his island during the game.  Being a virtual property owner, David told Forbes, taught him more about business than he ever expected to learn from a game.

So the next time you’re thinking that your company’s  young employee who spends his evenings stuck in front of into his home computer playing an immersive and engaging fame  isn’t going to amount to much – think again. Soon enough, he could be leading the pack. Check out the Forbes article, it’s a fascinating read.

Charlie Born,

Head of Marketing