Skills you learned or honed because of a game.

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It is held that about 10000 hours of doing are needed to become an expert in something that is not entirely new. At the same time I have seen observations that many playing games as a hobby easily have such time investments but the question then becomes what useful skills might they have. While truly high level skills might be debated there are an awful lot of lower level ones that are unarguable. For instance I have met many only know how to truly use a map today (I first used a GPS in anger some 20 years ago, they got popular not long after that) because of games.
Similarly on computers themselves. While I may not have lacked an interest in computers it was not that which saw me learn networking but wanting to play Carmageddon with my friends, and as the thing used [long list of profanity removed] IPX networking and it thus saw whole bunch of other troubles to sort first. If you have similar such things then please share.
A few years back there was a news report going round that a guy had learned to do emergency wound care thanks to the America's Army game.
Similarly many of the simulator games that got popular the other year do fairly well for it; an anecdote from someone I know that runs a car garage was that mechanic simulator had seen one of his customers far more able to articulate their problem than the average one.
It need not be at such a level either; all those hours of Tetris might have made you a master packer, did some reference in a game spark an interest in something maybe historical, did playing a computerised version of an activity see you take it up in real life (the skateboard boom of the late 90s and early 2000s very much owing a lot to the first Tony Hawk game), or maybe a game just got you to think about space and forces more than you had previously?

It is of course taken as a given that we are all master gunmen thanks to mouse controls and twin analogue sticks. Though more seriously Goldeneye really did teach me to be ultra observant for security cameras.

This is one of a new series on GBAtemp that considers mechanics in games, game design, concepts in games and related topics. Previously we have discussed games on the PS4 and Xbone that will stand the test of time, games that got better after launch, cancelled games and shuttered devs, and story canon in games. We have a long list of things to cover in the future but guest spots and suggestions are welcome.
 

GothicIII

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Reflexes. Goddamn reflexes... I was in vacation and caught a very tiny and fast crab while it was pitch dark. They can run really fast! I just saw it from the corner of the eye and immediately catched it by hand without realizing first what it was. Very strange experience and definitely came from gaming.
 
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Cyan

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Speaking (at least reading) english !
Reflexes and logic
Visual memory, or is it the other way ? I'm good at navigation and positioning myself on a map because I have good visual and spacial memory?
learned a little of japanese
Made (semi) friends here and part of something I like, I can be me without acting. though, it's not a skill I learned.
don't know, that's the first things I though, maybe there are more.


What it did wrong : broke me socially, I guess?
 
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leon315

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English! i learned how to use old heavy English dictionary;
now thanks to Overwatch i learned how to speak properly or even swear toxictly in English too!
 
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Issac

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English, for sure.
One of my strongest memories was when I was playing Mario 64. The Christmas after it's launch, and I had to watch the intro time and time again because I never got a star, and therefore never saved. Eventually I got going, and when I got to the first water level, and the star hint was about a "manta ray". I picked up a thick dictionary, and looked up that word and finally figured it out. This was when we had 56k modem internet, so I never looked anything up online.

That way I then looked up every word I came across, to help me find the way forward.

Ah, the memories.
 
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Noctosphere

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English, for sure.
One of my strongest memories was when I was playing Mario 64. The Christmas after it's launch, and I had to watch the intro time and time again because I never got a star, and therefore never saved. Eventually I got going, and when I got to the first water level, and the star hint was about a "manta ray". I picked up a thick dictionary, and looked up that word and finally figured it out. This was when we had 56k modem internet, so I never looked anything up online.

That way I then looked up every word I came across, to help me find the way forward.

Ah, the memories.
I learned a bit of english with one of my favorite NES game, Nightshade, ever heard?
 
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Noctosphere

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I've heard of it, and seen it, but never played it.
its a very cool game ;)
Unfortunatly, if you look at full intro (without skipping it) you'll see "Part 1" at the beginning of a very long text
Part 2 never came out :(
 
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mightymuffy

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...Fits nicely with a topic I replied to yesterday: going on about foreign games I enjoyed - I have become somewhat decent at reading and understanding Japanese due to games, mainly due to the huge number of quality JRPG's on the SNES and a lesser extent PS1 that never made it out of Japan.. Not fluent by any stretch of the imagination, but good enough to mostly traverse any JRPG, etc.

I can also get my groove on in a nightclub far better (or, at least, I THINK I can..) being heavily into DDR machines (and thus, Stepmania) back in the day, even going down to London for a couple of tournies/meetups. Im no fukkin Michael Jackson style show off, but I know I 'move' better than I did pre-DDR.
 
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