Be smarter! Play MMORPGs - Intelligence development thanks to games.
Did you know that, playing MMORPGs can make you smarter? Do you know what traits do they enhance in you? If you don't, then you came to the right place.
Forced to focus my attention in one thing at something so subjective as "intelligence", I will not go over the different branches that this article may lead me to. I'll just work with Howard Gardner's theory of Multiple Intelligences
Gardner's model proposes 8 areas of intelligence, you exercise all of them by playing MMORPGs.
How does this happen? To analyze this, we will use the "Jack the Ripper" method, taking it by parts.
Logical-Mathematical Intelligence
First, we should observe what happens with logic, math and strategy capacities. After all, they are considered of prime importance in our contemporary educative system.
As we play any MMORPG, the first thing we consider is optimizing our character, this is, how does the player uses algebraic and statistic methods to better hurt an opponent or heal an ally more efficiently (knowing "our own" stats to not hit by 999 someone that is at 1 HP or heal by 9999 someone that is only hurt by 10... Is what draws the line that divides "pr0s" from noobs; No overkill/overheal).
Recount, for WOW
You guessed it, that thing above is an addon that allows you to check your in-game performance, there's several options that allow you to see deeper data to "tidy up" your combo and make you a better player.
While Damagers focus on -duh!- Damage, healers have a harder time, controlling their party's HP, keeping event the newbiest noobs alive!
Strategically speaking, at least in any respectable MMORGP, the potential variations of a character build allows you to costumize it as you please, to better suit your style and needs. This, forces you to think ahead a lot of things. Where a noob plays like Leroy Jenkins, a good player sets up a group strategy and a plan, complementing skills and abilities.
PS: This was an advertisement campaign!
Algebra, statistics and logic, are exploited to the maximum, for a better gameplay experience.
Linguistic Intelligence
Of course, whenever there's people doing the same thing, there's communication. This one, generally speaking, is done over VOIP channels, like discord or teamspeak (among many, many others)
This communication is imperative at a point and efficiency in those messages is must.
Clear, brief and concise instructions are a must whenever one does not have much of a time window to perform a task, under the pressure of one's opponents!
Abbreviations, acronyms, unique terms are constantly used at several game platforms. This unique language was created over the last 30 years. New terms are forged everyday for specific games yet... Every MMORPG player knows what "HP", "mana" and "pots" are.
An outsider (like, a candy crush player) would feel like a fish in the desert if s/he ever wanted to join a conversation about an MMORPG.
You are FORCED to read in many games, you are FORCED to learn and understand text in a way not many schools today force children to. Text comprehension is taken to the limit at some "quests" that include riddles.
Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence
Hand-eye coordination play another key role on good players (If you didn't know that, I dare you to watch a Professional Korean Gamer working). This is not only talking about finger agility, but also prediction of the opponent's movements (players and MOBs, mobiles non-player opponents).
Hand-eye coordination in gamers is way above the average people. Some studies point out that the motor and perceptual-spatial skills are also enhanced in them, better reflexes and response time.
Intrapersonal Intelligence
There's people, you've to interact with them!
The ability to communicate with them was stated at a previous point. Intrapersonal relationships go in a deeper level.
It wouldn't be a surprise to find "guildies" becoming real life friends, partners. It is nothing new to hear of a game guild helping out a member in REAL LIFE problems that arise. Contrary to what many grandmothers believed as Online Gaming appeared, social skills are boosted at MMORPGs in the case they exist.
The ability to organize large groups of people, demagogic skills, politics: are all required for good guild leaders and officers on the "good" guilds".
You want to see the intrapersonal intelligence at its best? Go to any GameCon, and you'll see people that never saw or talked to each other behave as if they were best friends since they were 5 years old, If that is not Intrapersonal Intelligence I don't know what it is.
Visual and Motion Intelligence
Some MMORPGs worlds are HUGE. Continents, countries, territories, dungeons. You end up knowing them all by heart.
Mechanic transportation methods, portals, or even walking require quite a lot of "memory" in our heads to go from A to B as fast as possible.
At dungeons, knowing the safe zones and corners can be the difference between success and utterly failure. Knowing how to move around to prevent taking damage is also necessary.
These days those mods do everything for all you whippersnappers.
Back in my day, we used to just toss EBolts with our Magery skill and guess who was doing the most damage. Bragging rights weren't dps based but not-fizzling-your-Flamestrike based.
Corp por. Thanks for the post.
I've tried to explain this exact thing to many people throughout my life, but have never succeeded. You broke it down to eat h type of learning and how it helps the brain. Very good explanation and great information. I enjoyed reading this and the good Ole Leroy Jenkins video just topped it off. Well done.
He helped many of us define what a Noob is in simple terms!
Oh yes!
I remember back in high school that when most people in math class were trying to work out the answer to some math-problem they were given, I was calculating what average DPS our raid's damage dealers would need to bring down the first Drake on Sartharion 3-drakes before the second one landed. ^^ As an officer, I then not only followed up with playing around with my own character in the excel DPS spreadsheets to optimise my gear and gem combination, rotation and talents, but also for all the other DPS players who fell below the DPS requirement for us to successfully overcome that challenge. Seeing if there would be certain item drops that would significantly increase their damage, so that they could be given priority on those drops while the guild was progress raiding and aiming to be server first on that particular kill.
My experience coordinating raids and setting guidelines for communications as "simple rules" could have been a book on its own, if it were not already written :p . All by observing that the best efficiency came when you agree on a few simple rules for everyone to follow so that the actions by one player can be easily read by all other players since they all knows he's following the simple rule of "if that, then this", and where if someone saw a flaw in established simple rules then that were something to take up on the discussion forums afterwards.
Working with StartUp companies in later years I also find it very similar to raiding. Succeeding as a StartUp is all about testing out central hypothesis to what is required for the company to have a sustainable, repeatable and scalable business model. By testing out hypothesis about customer's need and willingness to pay for specific features about the product. The startup that wins is the one that can quickly learn from its mistakes, iterate its strategy, and come up with something that once established can be repeated for sustained income. SImilar with raiding, you start out on a new boss without knowing what will be the exact killer strategy. You then need to try out different configurations of raid setups, player positionings, role distributions etc, and the guilds that kills a boss first is the one that managed to quickly learn what specific parts of the strategy worked and didnt work untill they were left with a killer-strategy that could be repeated over-and-over again once mastered, making the boss a farm rather than a progress kill.
Wow I could have gone on, and on, and on (don't get me started on arena) but totally agree with your post! Well written, I am glad to be following you. :)
This comment, deserves a post on its own!
I agree!
Hehe, thanks for the encouragement ;) Guess I'll have to do that then ^^
That is a fascinating assesment! I've never played...and don't have a clue on that 30yr language...not because of Candy Crush though!
But at least with this view of MMORPGs, I will probably be more accepting of the idea when/if my oldest comes and tells me he's getting into or wants to play them!
Beware tho, many "new" games have training wheels up to max lvl. This is thanks to the game producing companies, that aim at a specific public: 5 year old children.
As an example:
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind required the player to "KNOW" the maps and READ the books to locate a specific place, legendary item or non-player character.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Has map markers in a compass that "aims" you to the target you select in a questbook... Retard-proof.
luckily for pc gamers,there is probably a mod that can disable quest markers ,or maybe the game was just more story focused
Oh Sad!
Dumbing down everything!
I think that being able to devote lots of time to a single pursuit, even a video game, can be good for the mind. It's kind of like meditation: one of the reasons meditation is so helpful for a lot of people is that, by focusing on the breath, and the breath only for long periods of time, the mind is being trained to focus. It's somewhat similar with video games, except a video game, with all the flashing lights and different stimuli, being focused on it is obviously more chaotic than one's breath.
AHAHAH, somehow, when I run out of ideas: All I have to do is play a game, any game, to make my brain work in the background.
I consider it an option to "sleeping on it" whenever I need to think.
Great post. I definitely agree gaming helps your brain move faster and react quicker. Gaming also helps a lot of people learn about economy cause most games, MMOs, have currency, items, and an auction house. You can easily learn from a young age how to market to make money in a video game , and then translate it to the real world and succeed. I've seen many friends do this.
Great and clear post! I was a hardcore wow player a few months ago and this was my reward below. it was really great feeling to embrace the challenge and being a competitive player and reach your goals. 1st DPS Warlock on Tarren Mill and 14th in the world. However, im a foreign trade manager and business world kinda same like mmorpg to me :)
Good post! I'm going to follow you to see more post like this and for support us!
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