Holding your nerve and watching a strategy play out in a game is one of the most satisfying things to witness – especially when it goes to plan. Tamer Asfahani investigates what strategy games can teach us about ourselves and our resolve

Photo by Matilda Wormwood, Pexels

You may choose to ignore the oncoming waves of attacks in Command & Conquer (C&C) and focus on defence, but it won’t be long before your overrun

VIDEOGAMES can teach us a lot – be it about a certain subject, a place or a point in history. But how often do we really consider what we learn about ourselves from games? It’s not an obvious connection, especially as we’ve historically seen games as an entertainment medium.

In previous issues we’ve discussed transferable skills – whether from a racing driver’s perspective, learning a new language or considering historical settings of games that can give us more colour or background on a particular event or point in time. But can specific genres help us learn more about ourselves, and how we can apply ourselves to the world and people around us? Can we take some of our strategies from games and put them into practice in the real world?

Of course, we do this every day without knowing it. Our reaction times increase as a result of playing games on our phones, as do our observation skills and our problem-solving skills. Anything, really, that keeps the brain active can be enhanced by playing games.

So, how then can strategy games specifically help in your day-to-day lives?

Putting on your “games head”

I can’t talk for everyone and I don’t purport to be an expert on this, but having played games pretty much all of my life, I do recognise when I shift into my “game head”. It’s a phrase I’ve used for a very long time, and one I used in the playground as I played with my friends, recreating games such as Sonic, Double Dragon, Captain Planet and many more that I shan’t name. It’s about being able to adapt that game to the real world, and then getting your mindset in the same place as it would have been had you actually been playing the game.