Get paid thanks to games: A game developer

This one's been a long coming. Over a year, actually. I was putting it off because I didn't quite know how to put it together in one short article. I mean, studios can really vary among themselves. And the roles within the industry are very different as well. A blanket article on how to become a part of the game-making industry is likely to become either very general or very long and both these options will make it pretty useless. Finally, I've decided on a format that has a chance of making some sense. If it doesn't, at least I tried. Oh, and some of it might seem very obvious, but after talking to some high schoolers about game development, I feel that there's a lot of people that still require this kind of knowledge.

When you decide you want to make games, the first thing you have to realize is how many options you have. Game industry is very diverse and there are tons of doors and windows you can enter through. The biggest question though is what kind of games you want to make.

Inside of the Blizzard Entertainment studio.

On one hand, you have games done by single people and very small teams (under 5 people), like Banished, Darkest Dungeon or Undertale. On the other - huge blockbusters like Assassin's Creed, GTA or Uncharted, with hundreds of people on board and hundreds of millions of dollars in the budget. The rule of thumb here is that the smaller the team, the more skills you need. However, they don't have to be as highly developed as in the big teams. What I'm saying is that in small teams, you will often have to wear several hats. When there's just two of you, one becomes (for example) a programmer and a designer, while the other one draws, animates, writes and takes care of the soundtrack. When you're trying to do so many things at once, nobody expects you to be the best at everything. You just make a game you can make. In the big teams, you don't have to be a few people in one. You get to specialize. If you want to be an animator there, you need to be a good one. That's not to say that a great game desiner can't make a smaller game. Or that there are no average people in bigger companies, but they seem to rather be an exception. It's quite logical, really - Blizzard won't hire guys that are mediocre but some small company with small budget and less applicants might.

Once you know what kind of game you want to make and how big the company you want to work for is, there remains a question of what role you will play in it. You see, there are many elements of games that need to be made while the game is being put together. To get a job in the industry, you need to have skills needed to make some portion of these elements. Also, these skills need to be in demand. Let me give you an example. A lot of people think they can write and could write for games or could come up with game ideas. Now let's put aside that it's actually not that easy and that at least 99% of those people are wrong. Let's assume you are indeed an excellent writer and would be perfect for games. Still, most studios don't need full-time writers and ones that do rarely look for them, because the job is taken. And with maybe 20 openings like that in the whole world, you can imagine how huge the competition is. On the other hand, in an average studio, there's around 10 times more 3D graphic artists than writers and many of these studios constantly recruit for the 3D art positions. That means it might be much easier to get a job in the art department rather than writing and the required skill level might also be a little bit lower. It's a simple function of supply and demand, really.

This graph might seem funny but it is actually very accurate. Thanks, SharkBomb!

So what roles are there? Let me give you a very quick overview to help you decide what you might be best suitable for:

1) Programmers: need to be skilled in a programming language. Usually C++ or C# if the studio uses Unity Engine. The bigger the company, the higher the chance that programmers will specialize: engine / UI / AI, etc. Very high demand, companies are often willing to take juniors without much experience in the industry, but great programming skills are a must.

2) Designers: there's a lot of types of designers and not every type needs to exist in every studio. It highly depends on a game they are making. Free to play games will require Monetization Designers while RPG's will require Quest Designers. There are general Game Designers, story-focused Narrative Designers, self-explanatory Level Designers or Mission Designers. The role of designers is to come up with game systems and mechanics (or levels, missions, etc.), which is much harder than just coming up with ideas - you have to expand these ideas to cover every possible outcome in a balanced, logical and fun way that possibly helps tell the story and positively surprises the player. The demand for designers is quite high, but good designers are very hard to find. Also, everyone wants to be a designer (as it seems to be the "coolest" role), so the competition is very high as well.

3) Concept artists: these 2D artists design the mood of the game, characters, locations and props that are used. Their concept art serves as a reference to the 3D art team. These people also often end up producing all the 2D elements that you find in the game, so if a game is in 2D, it means pretty much all graphical assets. The requirements are simple: you need to be skilled at drawing and Photoshop. The demand is high, but good artists that have a great sense of color, lighting and composition are very rare.

4) UI artists: these are 2D artists that specialize in the user interface. They don't draw characters. They draw health bars, icons, charts and menus, which is a lot harder than it seems. You need to be great with Photoshop and to have an eye for usability and clarity of visual communication. Studios don't usually need more than one person like that so the demand isn't that high, but the good ones are considerably hard to find.

5) 3D artists: these are the guys who put together 3D models for the games. Everything from a simple stool to a huge monster. They usually specialize in either characters or pieces of environment. In bigger studios, they specialize even further: humans / monsters / buildings / rocks / vegetation. There's a lot of software that can be used for that, but the most popular programs are Zbrush for 3D sculpting and 3ds Max for blocking. There is a huge demand for these artists and there seems to be an everlasting shortage of really good ones.

6) Animators: whether it's in 2D or 3D, these are the guys that make things move. The true 2D animation is fundamentally different from 3D technology- and toolwise, but the common requirement is to have a sense of every detail of motion and what makes a movement natural. In 3D, you will likely have a chance to work with Motion Capture, which is a lot of fun. Popular tools for 3D animation are MotionBuilder and Maya. For 2D it's Adobe AfterEffects and Toon Boom. There is a huge demand for animators as the number of good ones in the world is very small and animations become a bottleneck in most of the studios sooner or later.

7) Sound designers: these people take care of the sound in our games. They don't compose the music, but make sure the ambient sound is the right volume, the sound effects are all in their places and that every single torch can't be heard from miles away.  There's a lot of tools for that: Audition, Reaper, Cubase, Nuendo and if you're fluent in any of them, you should be ok. The demand isn't huge, as many studios don't even hire in-house sound designers, but there's still some possibility to do it in freelance for a number of studios at a time.

8) Composers: the folks that actually compose the game music. And music in general. They rarely focus only on games. Pretty much all you need here is to be able to actually write music and some basic knowledge how the game music loops. Studios don't hire full-time composers so it's purely a freelance job. One where it might be very hard to get noticed unless you've won some solid awards for your music.

9) Narrative designers / writers: Narrative designers put the story together and are the ones that make sure it goes well with gameplay. Writers are the ones that create all on-screen text. Very often, narrative designer is also a writer. Don't be fooled: it's not like these people write a script and then everyone follows it. Most often, they have to adjust the narrative to what's going on on the screen to give it at least some logical continuity. The requirements here seem to be very easy to meet - you need to be great at writing. Unfortunately, there are thousands of people who think they can write when they actually can't and they spam companies with their applications. The demand itself is pretty low as many studios don't even need a dedicated writer for their types of games.

10) QA testers: one of the most crucial and underappreciated roles in the industry. Testers are the ones that play the game over and over and over while it's being made. It requires a lot of patience and eye for details. There are no hard skills required, but deep interest in games, displayed by messing around in game engines, learning to draw or code or at least making your own maps in popular editors is very welcome. The pay is the lowest in the industry, but so is the required skillset. There is a high demand for testers, but also a lot of people apply, so when you do, make sure to stand out somehow.

11) Producers: the "managers" that essentially take care of the schedules and budgets, but they are also responsible for making everyone's job as easy and smooth as possible, by solving problems, providing good communication and resolving any conflicts that might arise. The top producer is often the product owner and is personally responsible for delivering the game to the market. Producers need to be skilled in business, management and development methodologies and software, as well as have great communication skills, because they are the link between all the departments in the studio. The demand isn't too high, though good, experienced producers are hard to come by.

One thing to keep in mind when thinking about salaries in gamedev are usually lower than in other industries. An average business software programmer can earn even twice as much as a game programmer, even though their skills are comparable. That's, unfortunately, what you get for working your "dream job".

Nowadays, even Barbie can develop games.

There are generally three ways of getting into the industry. First is assembling your own team and just starting to make games. Nowadays, with digital distribution, it is relatively easy to publish your own game. And it doesn't even have to be very complex either. You are most probably just learning and you never know where it might lead you. You may continue to work on games on your own for years to come, eventually turning into your own business - your own studio. Getting better at what you do and working with more talented people. Even if your first 30 games were absolute crap, you will learn from them. And even if your team splits up before actually making money on your games, the games you did are now your portfolio. Portfolio that will help you a lot when applying to a gamedev studio as a programmer, designer, writer, artist, producer - whatever you learned to do while making those games. I can assure you that having finished some, even small projects, helps you land a job tremendously. Just remember to know where to aim. Making two small 2D games won't help you when applying for a Senior 3D Artist position.

The second way is to become a QA tester. Even if you want to write or code, there's nothing wrong with starting out as a tester. I know lots of testers that managed to move on to design, programming or production. Being a tester lets you get to know the industry from the inside. Watch closely how more senior positions work and what is really needed in your studio. Then, when the time is right, you might be able to move on. I believe it is actually the easiest way to get into the bigger companies. The biggest drawbacks are the low salary and often long working hours which is okay early on in your career, but won't let you support a family if you're planning on getting into the industry later in your life.

The third way is the hardest, but often the only way acceptable for people that already have a career and cannot afford being a tester or staying in their mother's basement figuring out how to make a game. It is using your current career to transition to games. If you are a really good programmer, you might be able to transition quite smoothly. If you're a writer, graphic artist or a project manager you'll have to make some adjustments to be suitable for games, but you still can land in the actual development as well. There are other professions, however, that let you work in gamedev studios, in roles supporting gamedev. If your skills and professional experience allow it, you might get into the marketing or PR team. Or become an in-house lawyer. Or an HR manager. Or a finance manager. It might not be that easy then to transition into development itself and you might discover you don't even want to (game marketing can be pretty awesome with all the travels and game fairs). If you show enough interest though and prove you can be a great addition to the team, you might be able to become a dev. Oh, and keep an open mind - being a manager in a gamedev studio can be quite different from your usual work at some bank or consulting firm and sadly, the salary will likely not be as high either.

You should also remember that not only development studios are involved in making games. And I am not talking about youtubers or journalists here. I mean companies that play a supporting role for game development studios. Backend solutions companies that maintain servers for online or mobile games. Motion capture studios. Motion capture actors. VoiceOver studios. VoiceOver actors. Orchestras that record game scores. All sorts of 2D and 3D outsourcing companies. Localization companies that translate mostly game texts. These are all highly involved in production of many great games and it might be a good idea to start in one of those if you can't find a place for yourself in a gamedev studio.

Whichever way you choose, the success will highly depend on your skill and knowledge of the industry. The more you know how it works, the better chance you have at learning the right skills and attitude. Then, with just a bit of luck, it's a matter of time before you are able to call yourself a game developer. Good luck!

Get paid thanks to games: A game journalist

In the previous part of the series I wrote about game blogging and vlogging. Today I will be continuing on the subject, by moving on to game journalism. I believe many conservative guys who write about games for living will get a bito offended, but... a difference between a game journalist and a game blogger is getting more blurry with every passing year and both professions have a lot in common.

Let's face it, it's not the 90's anymore. Paper magazines are dying, the online gaming sites have become a much more successful substitute and with the embedded videos and hourly updates, there's no way in hell paper magazines will get back on that horse. Game journalism, that was once a profession of the selected few, has become a free for all job market. There's almost no entry barrier. You should know how to write, but we all read these online magazines and we all know that not everyone there meets this requirement.

With the entry barrier practically non-existent, you can guess - there's a lot of people who want in. And whenever the market gets saturated and the supply of work keeps growing, there's only one reaction you can expect: the labor becomes cheaper. So while inthe 90's these relatively few people who wrote about games were able to support themselves doing this, nowadays the vast majority of game journalists have to treat it like an additional (and usually poor) source of income.

There's a nice article on GamesRadar that gives a rough overview of how much the game journalists can actually earn. Please keep in mind that the article seems to only take into account the guys that have actually succeeded in networking and manage to publish quite a number of articles. When you start out, you'll be lucky to get one or two reviews published a month, and that won't give you anywhere near the tens of thousands of dollars a year.

How do you get into the zone and make it possible to live off the game journalism then? Here's ten steps that will help you get there. Of course the sooner you start, the better:

1) Learn to write. Write well. The fact that you grew up with your language and were taught it at school means nothing. Read a lot - not only gaming sites, but good, well-edited books. Analyze the language. Learn to use it, learn to write.

2) If you're not from an English-speaking country, learn English. Yes, you will probably be writing in your native tongue, but eventually you will want to do some research on the global level and most of the news and info is first available in English. Also, how do you expect to get an interview with a foreign game maker when you can't communicate?

3) You have to learn to play a variety of games. Having 15 max level characters in WoW or having a 1000 hours of playtime in Call of Duty won't get you far. You need variety. You need to derive pleasure from exploring and discovering new games. Versatility and being interested in the whole industry are the key to success.

4) When you finally learn to read and write and play something other than StarCraft 2, start a blog or a vlog. Here you can find some tips how to go about it. It's important that the blog doesn't only consist of classic reviews. Any form of originality is great - screenshot-based stories, essays, your own drawings to illustrate the text... Some of the big gaming sites let their users start blogs there. If your blog is supposed to be your foot in the door, why not place this foot closer to your target?

5) When your blog or vlog has enough entries to make it possible to assess your skill, attack the offices of the game magazines and portals, offering your services. If you skipped the blogging step, you will have to send them some examples of your writing via e-mail. Seriously, it's as easy as "Hey! I was wondering, maybe you guys need some more content for your website? Here's a taste of my writing". It's of course easier to start with smaller sites - most often they just require less experience.

6) If you've been successful in the previous step, don't pat yourself on the back just yet. Well... maybe a little pat won't hurt. Still, you're just getting started. A few bucks for your review is great when you're 16, but you won't support a family with it. Continue to learn more about the industry, about the process of making games. It's time for learning from your older journalist colleagues and polishing your writing skill. Don't get discouraged, if you don't get many assignments or they aren't overly ambitious. These can't be avoid even in the next steps.

7) When you'll gain some notable experience working with the editor-in-chief and quite a few published articles, you should repeat step 5. You should get out there and offer your services to as many magazines and portals as possible. This time, trying the biggest ones as well. In most cases, nobody minds if you work with more than one magazine.

8) In a bigger and more "professional" team, you have to be prepared to be a newbie for a while. Newbies don't attend international game conferences, don't interview the game making stars. They put together uninspired top tens, they write reviews of second-rate games and trash articles on the evolution of Lara's boobs or which DoA girl has a skimpier outfit. These articles generate pageviews. You still shouldn't expect to make any good money at this stage. If you're lucky, it'll be enough to get by during your college days.

9) When you finally manage to get past the newbie step, you get a shot at more serious reviews. Older colleagues might take you to watch and learn during some interviews. Because your goal here is still to learn. It's easy to end your career on step 8 or 9 - there's lots of journalists like that. These are the guys that keep writing stock reviews, mumbling something about engines and middleware they have no idea about. If you want to get to the top, you will need to show a lot of commitment: visiting all game-related events you possibly can, being active in your editorial office and constantly increasing your qualifications.

10) Congrats. If you managed to get to step 10, there's a big chance that the reviews of the top titles, interviews with game developers, stories from game events and game industry articles let you make enough money to support yourself. And it's a high time - most likely you're already too old to delay starting a family anymore.

It's very important to be original. Articles that stand out can easily end up for example on digg.com - writing articles with such potential is a desired skill. Of course, the center of attention will always be reviews and news and your editor-in-chief will not always give you complete creative freedom. If you can write and keep learning more about the industry, you don't have to finish your career as a journalist or editor. PR departments of game studios constantly need people who know the industry and write well. Working at a gamedev studio is a whole other topic though.

Many thanks to Mielu from gram.pl for help and insight.

Get paid thanks to games: A game blogger / vlogger

Today we're continuing with the second part of the last part of... Uhh, that got complicated, didn't it? So, this is the second part of the "Get paid thanks to games" series. "Get paid thanks to games" are actually the third and last part of bigger series, which is "Stop wasting your time with games". Now that this confusion is just a tad less confusing than before, let's proceed to the actual topic. Last time I've written a bit about pro gamers, and today it's time for...

Game bloggers / vloggers 

This is a career with an extremely low entry barrier. Practically everyone can do it and frankly, I would encourage everyone with sufficient skill to try it. YouTube channels are free. Blog hosting is free. Your only investment is your time. Here's some tips how to avoid most common mistakes:

Generate your own content. I cannot stress it enough. If you want to deliver game news, don't copy news from other sites, seek, rewrite and compile them with your own style. If you want to review games, give your opinion, not repeat after others. Original content is a beautiful thing. Uncredited copy-pasting is just stealing someone else's work and it should be punished with cutting off the thief’s hand.

Almost as important as the previous one. Seriously, don't start writing if you don't know how. Don't go making videos when all you do is mumble to yourself. Nobody will be able to read that. Nobody will be able to watch that. Spare everyone the time. Be a valuable voice in the discussion. If you have nothing to say, just don't write, don't make videos. The world will be better off without it. You will have more time to do something more productive. Win-win.

Decide who your audience is. Decide what you want to deliver. Do you want to be the number 1 source of knowledge about one specific game? Do you want to review racing games? Do you just want to play a bunch of games and talk about them? Whichever you decide on, it's best to stick to it until it succeeds or fails.

Know, how to sell yourself. Bloggers and vloggers are rarely successful without serious marketing skills. Network, share your link, comment on others, link others. Be visible in the community. Support it and make it fuller.

Also, mostly for vloggers - please look decent. Heal your acne before showing your face. Wear a clean t-shirt. Clean the part of your room that's going to be visible. You don't have to be pretty or handsome, you don't have to wear stylish clothes and horn-rimmed glasses. You don't need to shave and don't need to grow a beard. You don't need a ton of makeup. It might be a good idea to find a cool look for yourself, as people seem to respond to that, but above all, just look clean. And open your mouth while trying to speak and know what you want to say instead of umming and erming.

Success is easily measured - if your blog or channel gets enough followers, you can start trying to get in some revenue from the ads. If it is enough to put food on your table, congrats - you have succeeded. The most successful vloggers are currently earning serious cash and can set trends as successfully as the leading gaming sites. They no longer do simple videos. They're employing people to deliver well-developed entertainment. It's enough to check out the Angry Joe's website to see what I mean. Lately, my studio invited the most popular game vlogger in my country to show him the game. He came with his team of 9 more people to check it out.

If, however, you weren't able to gather enough audience, your work wasn't necessarily all in vain. If it shows you can easily and fluently pass on your opinions that aren't a complete bullshit, your blog or vlog can easily be your portfolio for some other game-related project or job, like a journalist or a junior developer. For example, the blog of yours truly has a relatively low audience, but thanks to the content, I've already been asked to publish my articles in several places around the web. 

Sometimes opportunities can present themselves quite unexpectedly. The most popular Dark Souls streamer – EpicNameBro - was asked to help prepare the Dark Souls 2 strategy guide and test DS2 way before beta tests were open. In the age where gaming communities are growing in power, being an active and outstanding member of your favourite game's community can lead to working with the developers. And then, beta testing and community management can open you even more doors.

What do you need to become a decent blogger / vlogger?

- an idea for your own, original content;

- a lot of insight into whichever piece of the field you want to dig into;
- patience, as you'll be doing a lot for free for an extended amount of time;

- great writing and language skills;

- great presentation skills (mostly for vloggers, but doesn’t hurt in a blog as well);
- ability to network, if you want your online baby to reach a wide audience.

Get paid thanks to games: A Pro Gamer

I grew up in a relatively small town in Poland, in the 80's and 90's (they were pretty much like 70's and 80's in the US). Games were just something that we played and some companies in the far away USA and Japan were making. Sure, there was maybe one or two games developed in Poland, but it was still in a city far, far away. Careers I could think of were either being a writer with no guarantee of any real income or a lawyer, an economist or some other suit to be able to support my family.

It took me a while to realize that hundreds of hours I have spent on games can literally pay off. The passion for gaming, the titles I could reference, the conclusion I was able to draw from what I've seen in games landed me a job in the industry and are now paying my bills.

With this short introduction I welcome you to the third and the final part of my "stop wasting your time with games" games for education rant. In previous parts I've described how games can enrich our lives and teach us skills useful in real life. This time, I am going to get to the ultimate argument how games can be the very opposite of a waste of time - how they can turn into a career. Unlike in the first two parts, now I will be harsh. Skills can be learned pretty easily and widely applied to many situations. Career connected with games is far from a piece of cake though. Let's get started with...

Since a career in the gaming industry is an extremely broad topic, part three of the "stop wasting your time with games" gets to become 4 separate articles. Today it'll be about pro gaming. Next articles will touch game blogging and vlogging, game journalism and finally a broad description of game development career. Without further ado...

A professional gamer
Who doesn't dream about getting paid for just playing games? Lately, I have even seen news materials about "kids who earn lots of money for playing in tournaments". They vaguely mentioned the hard work required, they never really showed the scale of competition, they focused on hundreds of thousands of dollars these gamers earn. So... How do you become a pro gamer?

Above everything else, you have to find a game you are extremely good at. By extremely, I mean beating all your friends 100 to 0 in five minutes while blindfolded and hanging upside down. If anyone you know in real life can give you any kind of challenge, you are not good enough. You have to compete with the whole world. Struggling on the level of your neighborhood is just not gonna cut it.

What's more, the game of your choice needs to have a league. And games with worthwhile leagues are the biggest, most popular multiplayer titles: Starcraft 2, League of Legends, Counter Strike, FIFA, DOTA 2. Farmville, WoW and Minecraft might be the most popular games on the globe, but no matter how great you are, you won’t go pro there.

Pro gamers spend at least 8 to 10 hours a day on one and the same game over and over for... well, years. Top players are already adults. They started early, played since they can remember, but... they did finish schools. Being a pro gamer doesn't mean flushing your education down the toilet. It's a job like any other - sometimes monotonous and frustrating. It's important to invest in hardware as well. Good gaming PC with a gaming mouse and keyboard fit for professionals is needed. Obviously, good, communicative knowledge of English is a must as well. You also have to control your language and actions. No good team will invite a raging hater that risks being banned in every single match.

Pro gaming is a career in which your only kind of promotion is to get higher in rankings. That's pretty much the only ladder you are going to climb. Luckily, with e-sport becoming more and more popular, there are many options for the pro gamers that know when to quit. There are pro gamers like Fatal1ty, who design or at least promote lines of gaming hardware. There are pro gamers who get hired by gaming companies as representatives. Still, you have to be aware that the game you are so good at sooner or later will die. Some other game will take its place. Some other game you might be good at, but never good enough to go pro again.

While preparing for this job you have to focus on one specific game (or - only sometimes - on one type of a game). Research it, get in deep. Really deep. There will most probably be no time for any other games. Once you find a game you might go pro with, you will miss a lot of other titles over the course of a few years. If you get high enough in the leagues, if you manage to win some tournaments (not regional ones - we're talking nationals), make more friends than enemies, you might eventually get invited to go pro. Once you agree, you will start getting paid for exactly the same thing you've been doing for the past years. Playing the same game over and over for many hours every day.

And lastly, when choosing this path you have to always remember it's like playing in a band. Most of them bands never get out of their garage, very little become a one-hit wonders and pretty much one in a million really sells albums and tickets.

Summing up, you will need:
- an early start - trying to go pro when you're 40 and have never used a computer might be tricky;
- extreme talent and knowledge in a game you want to go pro in;
- tons of determination and time spent on the the game;
- great communication skills and (if you are a foreigner) good knowledge of English language;
- decent gaming hardware to start with before you get better stuff from sponsors;
- lots of tolerance and support from your family and friends, be it parents or life partners, as rarely anyone will take your career choice seriously.

"Stop wasting your time with games" - part 2

Back with the topic of what games can give the player other than just entertainment. Previous part was about how games can enrich our lives with new experiences. Today, I will be touching the topic of skills acquired in the games.

It was back in the summer of 1998 when I think I have heard this sentence the most - "stop wasting your time with games". I have "wasted" over 80 hours of my life playing Final Fantasy VII. But you know what happened next? After a month of school, my parents got asked by my English teacher "Did he attend some intensive course over the summer?". And then it dawned on them. No, all their kid did was "waste time" over a video game. A video game that gave me way more vocabulary in 80 hours that I have learned at school over a few years.

Teaching a language is an obvious perk if you're not a native speaker, but there are tons of other skills that can be learnt through games. These skills will be the main topic this time. Not all of these skills are so obvious and not every game teaches them. Also, to really benefit from them, once again, while playing - you have to pay attention.

Here's a bunch of skills you can quite commonly learn in games:

Communication 

Learning a language is actually the tip of the iceberg. Single player games teach us, through predetermined responses from the NPC's, how various people might react to different situations and our dialogue choices, but it's multiplayer games where communication really can be learnt. From coordinating attacks with the rest of your squad, through bowing before a duel in Dark Souls to simple chirping in Journey - all of this increases our communication skills.

Problem solving

Games have a unique way of putting us in abstract situations, giving us complex tasks and the tools to solve them. Even kids that don't consider themselves bright are able to find solutions to these problems. That's extremely valuable for personal development. Lets a person know that given some pieces of the puzzle, they can attempt to solve it. Every type of a game can teach problem solving - from extremely robust strategies to the simplest shooters. Where there's data, objective and obstacles, there's always a harder or easier problem to solve.

Cooperation

Strongly connected to communication. What you can achieve alone in most games is far from what you can do with a group. Many online games push you very strongly towards cooperation, making many tasks simply impossible to do when playing alone. Cooperation lurks in everything from setting up a balanced squad through battle tactics, to loot distribution. In many cases, when you can't be a team player, nobody will want to team up with you. Learning to cooperate is pretty much forced onto players in the online environment.

Competition

Where there's a game, there's a competition. Many games show leaderboards and statistics, many encourage to post and compare them online. Even before the internet age video games thrived on competition. Who will get farther? Who will get there faster? Who will get somewhere on first try? Who will beat the game without dying? Possibilities are endless and if you take a look at the challenges people themselves force upon them, you would be amazed what amount of self-improvement and self-proving games can induce.

Leadership and people management

This is mostly true for online games, but not only. In real life, we rarely get a chance to be a leader. At school, at work, most of us are just cogs in the machine. In online games, we get to lead squads to battle. Even if we are shy and feeling unimportant in real life,  in online games we get a chance to manage the whole guilds of hundreds of people. To make the guild successful, leaders need to assemble a real management team - recruiters, event managers, battle advisors, finance managers... And before every battle, the leaders get to speak to all of the guild members to motivate them to victory. How often do you get to experience or practice something like that in the real world?

Innovation and creativity

Games are becoming more and more open, letting players explore their creativity. In the 90's many games included a map editor that let players create their own experiences in the games. Now games like Minecraft or Little Big Planet are all about creating your own worlds. As long as games have existed, players have used their mechanics to do things these games were never designed for. Playing with physics systems, "breaking" the game mechanics to create amusing situations - every game is a potential tool for exploring your creativity.

Logical thinking

Games are based on systems. Systems, in order to work, need to be based on logic. If the player wants to succeed in a game, he needs to at least instinctively follow this logic, as going against it will almost always mean failure. Whether you like it or not, every game, even the most abstract one, will force you to use logic to progress in it. Be it solving a complicated puzzle or just a simple task of ammo management, it's always based on logic.

Planning and optimization

This is actually something that I will probably write a whole separate article about, but the general idea goes like this: Every game has a goal. Even if it doesn't, like Minecraft, it lets us easily come up with a goal for ourselves. This goal is most of the time very specific and well-defined and we do get the right tools to reach it. Based on these tools, the player consciously and naturally optimizes the time spent in the game, planning his build, his next quest, how to spend his money or experience, in order to reach this goal. Now think how useful it would be to apply this skill to real life.

Reflexes and precission

Majority of games includes a fast-paced action requiring incredible reflexes to master. Fighting games, sport games, platformers, racing games, strategy games... Even simplest games like Tetris or Pac-Man need extreme hand-to-eye coordination if you are to master them. Research has shown that "Action game players make more correct decisions per unit time. If you are a surgeon or you are in the middle of a battlefield, that can make all the difference." - Daphne Bavelier, cognitive researcher (source).

Art skills:

Depending on the interests and perceptiveness of the player, games can teach incredibly many artistic things. They are a fast-developing visual medium, with often amazing art direction. They also focus more and more on story, creating compelling characters and interesting storylines. Many kids start drawing thanks to the games. Many kids try writing because of games. Many kids listen to game music. Of course not all of them will become world-class artists, but I personally know quite a few who got interested in various kinds of art this way and are now making their living thanks to that.

This is by no means a complete list of skills the games can teach. Every new game that comes out has a chance to have some new mechanics with a potential to teach something new. Also, I most probably forgot about many of them, quite possibly very obvious ones too. Purpose of this article was not to list them all though. It was to show you, how games can teach you things without you even knowing you are learning. There are two requirements for you to meet if you want to really benefit from games in such way.

First and I cannot stress enough how important, is pay attention. Yes, I know I am repeating myself. It's just that important. If you pay attention during your online sessions, you will learn how to effectively lead and communicate, how to apply correct tactics to every situation and solve new problems, how to improve yourself through competition. If you don't pay attention, you are just jumping around, shooting stuff and even if you happen to win a match or two, you are loosing a lot that the game has to offer.

Second is to realize how you can transition these skills to real life. All to often, we are unable to make the connection between what we learn in games and its applications outside of them. Have you ever realized that you can make tons of virtual money in an MMO, but for some reason you are not doing it in real world? I know that the real life is much more complex than any game can possibly be, but on the other hand, have you realized, that in games you are able to solve complicated problems and in your life you are struggling with the simple ones?

So once again - play games, pay attention, and once in a while stop and think how what you learned can help you make your life better. I guarantee it can. So far I've covered how the games can enrich your life as a medium and what skills they can teach you without you even realizing it. In the next and the final part of this article series I will touch the topic of how the games can actually become your career. And yes, you guessed it. A big part of it will be paying attention ;)

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Polish version of the article available on zgranarodzina.edu.pl

"Stop wasting your time with games" - part 1

That's a sentence I'm sure many of you have heard a lot. From your parents, partners, co-workers, friends - both gamers and non-gamers. I have, too, and most of the time I felt offended, but you know what? I've said it a few times in my life as well. Obviously, calling games a waste of time by default is an extremely biased thing to do, but it doesn't mean games always a valuable pastime.

Games can give us many wonderful things, but, like with every other activity, we need to know how to make the most of it. Like with a sport. You can do it purely for recreation, and that's fine. You can also try to get better at it - not necessarily to become a world champion, but just for the sake of being better than some of your friends. But ultimately, making the most of sports is letting it contribute to your own personal development. To apply lessons you've learned to other things, beyond sport. Games can be used in exactly same way.

Over the next three articles, I will be talking about three ways in which games can contribute to your life. I will start with the most obvious and the least measurable of the three. It seems to be the least convincing of the three, but I just can't ignore it and also, I like to save the big guns for later. I am very sorry if you are an attentive gamer - what I will write here will most probably be a parade of obvious arguments for you, but this article's goal is to clear it up for people who might not be into games too much or kids who would just swallow any game without thinking. I promise the next two articles will be less painfully obvious. 

The first way in which games can contribute to your life is enriching with new experiences. This is actually something every piece of media does better or worse. As with any other media, you get a fair amount of crap - games, books, movies, plays, music - they can all be created purely for money without any potential for depth of any kind. And that's okay, I guess... If consumers want it, well, they vote with money, don't they? But, for the sake of our argument, let's focus on the games that actually have some real value.

Games tell stories. What's more, being interactive, they let the player be a part of the story. I have touched the topic of narrative in the article on Dark Souls vs. Heavy Rain, but to sum up quickly: The story in the game is not only what is seen in cutscenes and told in dialogues. It is also what the player does. Every won battle. Every solved puzzle. Every explored area. They are a crucial part of the story, told in most cases without a single word.

This means that games let us live through experiences like no other media ever before. They let us take actions and make decissions. When books teach us the value of friendship, they show us characters whose friendship lets them overcome hardships. When games teach us the value of friendship, they let the player become friends with game characters. An average player will always be closer to the main character than an average reader. An average player will much easier learn the value of friendship from Persona series than from Lord of the Rings. 

Games put the players in situations they don't encounter so easily in real life. Players make relevant decissions that have often serious consequences for the further development of the game or at least one of its quests. Games let players save princesses or even worlds. Especially Japanese games start exploring the "difficult topics" like tolerance, fidelity, sexual orientation, religion or death. But... to really benefit from that, you actually have to pay attention.

The sad truth is, most of the players click through dialogues without reading them and skip cutscenes, to get to the "gameplay". In majority of games, gameplay without context of the backstory is deprived of meaning. When you pay attention in BioShock, you get a game about a failed utopia, about man's dream of greatness and where it might lead. When you don't pay attention in BioShock, you get a shooter with pretty clunky mechanics, where it's sometimes too dark to see the enemy. 

Next time you are playing a game, ask yourself - are you just mindlessly killing mob after mob or actually benefitting from what the game offers your, well... soul, or any other equivalent you accept as a part of yourself. Next time your kid tells you about this awesome game he/she is playing, listen carefully. Is your kid talking about the journey he embarked on? A story of the characters he met in the game? A dilemma the game presented? A question it asked and now your kid is struggling with? All of these indicate, that your kid is an attentive and empathic human being. You should be happy and proud. You should encourage these kinds of observations in all media.

And if your kid just tells you about the number of guys he killed? About the raids he's been on? About the bases he built under opponent's nose or rushes he pushed back? It still doesn't mean your kid has necessarily wasted his/her time with a game. There are other ways to benefit from games, but that will be the topic of the next two parts of this topic. Stay tuned. :)

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This article was also translated to Polish and published on zgranarodzina.edu.pl