Big Brain Academy

No doubt you’ve heard a parent, a friend, or a politician suggest that games are a waste of time, merely a mindless activity. I’d argue that games are exactly the opposite. Long, sometimes difficult console and computer games actually turn the acquisition of knowledge into pleasure — and it wouldn’t be fun without the learning. What’s more, the skills learned often spill over to the real world in ways you already use but don’t realize.

Games often make you think like a scientist. Whether you’re selecting the right tactic for a boss battle in Gears of War, navigating a track in Dirt, or capturing territory in Command & Conquer 3, gameplay is built on a cycle of “hypothesize, probe the world, get a reaction, reflect on the results, re-probe to get better results.” That’s also a cycle typical of experimental science. Games also lower the consequences of failure for that cycle: When you fail, you can start from the last saved game or checkpoint. You’re encouraged to take risks, explore, and try new things. That’s crucial for creative problem-solving in the real world, too.

Shadowrun elevates "It's good to play together" from marketing slogan to life lesson.

But learning goes deeper in the best games. There, problems are well-ordered — that’s why we have level design, after all — so that getting past earlier obstacles will lead to hypotheses that work well for later, harder problems. In these games, you practice a set of challenges until you’ve achieved mastery. Take Heavy Weapon on Xbox Live Arcade — first, you learn to target and move while blasting enemy aircraft. Before too long, the game throws a new type of problem at you — bombers that come at you with new attacks, satellites with different behaviors, and an end-level boss — requiring you to rethink your previous strategy and ratchet up your skills to a new level. In turn, that new mastery is itself consolidated through repetition (with variation), only to be challenged again by something new in the next level of the game. This cycle of consolidation and challenge is the basis of developing expertise in any domain.

Annihilate, adjust, adapt — Heavy Weapon is a model of skill mastery.

Along those lines, good games try to stay within, but at the outer edge, of the player’s “regime of competence.” That is, they feel “do-able” but challenging. This makes them pleasantly frustrating, leading to a mental “flow” state for human beings. Flow occurs when people feel fully immersed in what they are doing; where they feel focused, energized, and fully involved. It’s a good place for your brain to be in general, and good games tap into that state of concentration very effectively.

Games encourage you to think about not just isolated events, facts, and skills, but entire systems that incorporate all of the above. In games like Catan, Gears of War, or the PC strategy title Rise of Nations, you need to think how each action you take might impact your future actions and the actions of the other people playing against you. Now substitute your game’s priorities for a monthly budget, a board meeting, or a romantic relationship.

For that matter, games encourage you to explore thoroughly before moving on — to think laterally, not just linearly, and to use such exploration and lateral thinking to reconceive your goals from time to time. Those are good ideas in a world full of high-risk complex systems — whether that world is Cyrodiil or Cincinnati.

Learn Cyrodiil by exploring Cyrodiil. By why stop there?

And while Xbox Live’s tagline says “It’s good to play together,” that may be more true than the marketers know. Games recruit “cross-functional teams” just like modern high-tech workplaces. In World of Warcraft, each player must master a specialty, since a Mage plays differently than a Warrior, but they must also understand enough of each other’s specializations to coordinate. Same goes for Shadowrun, where Dwarves and Trolls use very different specialties in tandem to achieve a common goal. In both games, the core knowledge needed to play is distributed among a set of real people, much as in a modern science lab or high-tech workplace.

All these features let you, the gamer, recruit good learning for fun — and noticeable results. Someday we may see the same methods adopted in schools, as educators explore the benefits of gaming’s interactivity. Reading, writing, and Rainbow Six could be the best way to learn.

James Paul Gee is the Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies at Arizona State University. He’s also the author of What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and LIteracy and Why Video Games Are Good for Your Soul.