My entire life growing up I had to listen to my parents telling me that one day I would have to grow up and stop playing video games. What they didn't realize was that I was actually learning how to be a well-rounded adult from playing video games. PARENTS JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND! This is how video games prepared me for adulthood.
Persistence
How I Learned It
Video games these days are incredibly easy. When you start a game in today's world, you pretty much are guaranteed to win it eventually. NES game were nearly impossible to beat. If you wanted to beat one, you had to spend hours and hours trying to perfect every single jump. If you didn't play it so many times that you had every single jump memorized then you probably haven't beaten any NES games.
Why It's Important
Being an adult is really hard. Everything costs money and the only way to get money is to try to get money every day. If you give up and stop trying, then you'll wind up living on the street. Even worse, you might have to sell your XBox. Pretty much the only reason I have a job is so I can keep buying more video games.
Time Management
How I Learned It
A big part of growing up for me what figuring out how to spend the maximum amount of my free time playing video games. It was a delicate balancing act between school, home work, chores, music lessons, sports, and after school clubs. If I didn't plan carefully then I wasn't going to get to fit any video game time in to my schedule. Video game time was more precious than any other time so I had to use it wisely.
Why It's Important
As an adult, you have to be able to plan a schedule. You don't want to be the person that constantly late or even worse the person that flakes because they forgot. Everyone hates that person. Adults know how precious their time is and they get really mad when other adults waste theirs because they don't know how to manage their time. I know it makes me really mad if someone's a half hour late to something that I'm meeting them at. I could have been playing Call Of Duty for that half hour instead of sitting here sipping on slowly chilling coffee.
Being Detail Oriented
How I Learned It
The only thing greater than beating a game is getting 100% completion. Technically, if you haven't found everything in a game then you haven't beaten it. You have to scour every inch of every map to make sure you've found absolutely everything you can possibly find. It's a thankless job, but someone's got to do it. That someone is me. I am the King Of Completion!
Why It's Important
The work force is extremely competitive. You have to work quickly, but you also have to work accurately. No one wants to hire someone who constantly misses important things because of carelessness. King Mogbor of Tondgulch isn't going to put up with that and he's king of the slime people. Why do you think Steve the Department Head at your job would have any lower standards than the slime people? He wouldn't.
Completing Menial Tasks
How I Learned It
Roleplaying games are awesome because you get to create a character and legitimately feel like you are part of an awesome fantasy universe. The only thing that sucks about roleplaying games is when you have to complete some dumb boring fetch quest. It just didn't make a lot of sense to me at the time. I just killed a dragon. Why do I have to go deliver a letter?
Why It's Important
It's important to do stuff that makes you happy. But not everything you do is something that will make you happy and you just have to deal with it. Being an adult means you have to run errands all the time. Errands are al of the things that your mom used to do for you like laundry. If you have to go to a laundromat then make sure you find one that has some sweet arcade games.
Cooperation
How I Learned It
Video games are fun to play alone, but almost all of my best gaming memories involve playing with other people. There's something about working together to complete a hard co-op level that makes the game that much more fun. The people don't even have to be in the same room. They could be on the other side of the world. If you've never known the joy of totally taking down the opposing team in a squad based shooter then you haven't really lived. The flip side of that is you have to be able to play well with others and not hog all of the treasure.
Why It's Important
Cooperation is basically the foundation of our entire society. As a species, we have an advantage over other species because we are able to work together to complete a common goal and then share in the spoils of that goal. Taking down Thyrm the Giant in WoW gives you the exact same feeling that cavemen got when they took down a wooly mammoth.
Do you hope you die before you get old? Let me know on twitter @zachlunch or in the comments below!
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