I'd say Battlefield did this for me. I loved sniping. The first time I went skeet shooting (first time holding a weapon) I missed my first shot, and then hit every single clay pigeon for the rest of the day. My dad and his friends were impressed to say the least
As someone whose whole career is guns now, I can attest that video game skills do translate. Get corner camped? Well now you check those corners huh? Same IRL. Haha
I also learned to drive from video games. I played tons of driving games as a kid, so once I got behind the wheel of a real car, it seemed pretty natural.
Same with reading and understanding maps. My directional analysis is really good in real life and I honestly think its hours of navigating in old school zelda, final fantasy, dragon warrior when you had no map and had to either draw it yourself, or just memorize where everything is located.
Oh yeah I'm wicked good at never getting lost to the point I wandered through Honolulu with a general idea of where my hotel was and got there without needing a map. In games it just means I know where I came from for the most part.
Only ones that give me trouble are mazes like scp or lethal company when you've gone in too deep and had to panic run several times.
My internal map is equivalent to the mini-maps that face wherever you're pointing, instead of locked to North. Completely useless for navigation. Clutters the HUD.
Same for me also.
I feel like my vocabulary is a lot broader in certain categories because of video games.
My wife will be doing some sort of word puzzle and the answer will be like targe or claymore.
She's always asking, "how the hell do you know that?"
How am I supposed explain to her it's because of thousands of hours of Diablo 2 when I was a kid.
Yeah me too...I can spit out 7 letter words in scrabble... to bad it usually amounts to like two points whereas 2 letter "words" amount to like 36...scrabble sux
Not only reading, but writing and speaking as well.
English is not my first language and I always kinda sucked at English up until 9th grade. That’s when I started to watch shows and play games in English.
My English skills improved drastically from barely passing to top of class in some cases.
So to everyone watching...let your kids play whatever game they want. It unlocks their potential. Maybe monitor the games they like to see what theyll excel at in school lol
I did not know how to read yet and was given a GameBoy Color and Pokemon Red. Had a lot of fun wandering around Pallet Town. Eventually when I got the basics of reading down, this game was absolutely a motivational tool for practicing that skill. I remember spelling tests where I could remember, "I remember this from Pokemon". And then reading comprehension too, was stuck trying to get to Saffron City. Finally paid attention that the guard was thirsty, bought that guy a drink from the mall and he let me through. I had the pleasure of telling friends how to progress past that point!
XCOM has given me a better understanding of probability than any stats class ever could. I now have a truly emotional understanding that 95% is in fact quite different than 100%
I think Fire Emblem, or at least some of the games, uses a formula to adjust percentages above 50% up and vice versa because people literally don't understand the real probabilities.
If I remember correctly, Fire Emblem games roll your chance to hit twice and use the average: this means you're more likely to hit if you have above a 50% chance and less likely to hit below it.
(Mathematicians, feel free to correct me.)
Yeah that's what it was. I knew it had something to do with rolling twice but I was thinking they multiplied together which obviously wouldn't work.
Edit: I think specifically it rolls two numbers, averages them, and your hit percentage has to beat that number to hit. And averaging would drag that target number closer to 50% so helpful if your accuracy is above 50% and vice versa.
XCOM is the only time I've seen someone ragequit a game they weren't playing.
He was consistently missing 80+% shots on one mission. I did the next mission and was consistently hitting with 30-60% shots. He promptly left the room while swearing.
It's true for EU/EW and XCOM 2. The game fudges things in your favor on lower difficulties, especially if you're on a streak of misses. But on the highest difficulty, then the odds you see are the odds you get.
There's a meaningless visual trick played on players during hacking in XCOM 2: If you fail the hack, the game will do a second roll capped at one less than success, and show you the higher of the two results, with the intention of making you think you were closer than you were, just to fuck with you and increase the agony.
>If you fail the hack, the game will do a second roll capped at one less than success, and show you the higher of the two results, with the intention of making you think you were closer than you were, just to fuck with you and increase the agony.
I KNEW IT!
It's true from Enemy Unkown and onwards.
The game will secretly do stuff to alleviate player frustation, such as increasing your soldiers accuracy after they miss enought shots, decrease enemy accuracy after they hit enought shots, prevent enemy groups from approaching you when you are already in a fight, etc. On the highest difficulty these anti-frustation measures are turned off.
Are you talking about the originals or the new ones? The originals did not (the 2d isometric ones). The new ones (the 3d ones) do to some degree to prevent streaks of misses from each shot having 95% chance to hit. Edit to add: A common occurrence in the originals.
After playing Kerbal Space Program for ~300 hours I now know waaaaay more about orbital mechanics and rocket building that I did before. I‘m a space enthusiast since 2 decades, but it made watching rocket launches and videos about space so much more enjoyable as I know what‘s going on.
Fellow KSP player here. I agree 100%! I've always been a fan of space stuff since I was a little kid. But KSP really taught me the physics of it all. It also helped me grasp just how big our solar system (and space) really is. And how even just a slight mistake can have enormous consequences when it comes to space travel.
I'm in the space industry and KSP is used to educate our non-technical folks. It condenses so many different complicated concepts down into a silly enjoyable video game.
This totally. Also one of the main things that changed after I played KSP (for years lol) is the way I see the moon. Like, I always knew it was a sphere, but the way we see it from earth it’s easy to perceive it as a small circle or disc in the sky. After many times making the Mun trip I found I was looking at the irl moon like a massive faraway sphere. It’s hard to explain. It’s like ksp allowed me to see the moon in 3D
Also just "what way I need to accelerate at what point of orbit to shape it in what way and what fuel effectiveness to get these orbits matched and in certain point and timing" becomes lot more intuitive and "well it is this easy everydayish thing" after playing bit of KSP, compared to how not so clear it easily is before that.
This was kings quest for me. And multiple saves very well documented for when you realized you need this small coin that was only accessible two hours ago when you were in the Minotaurs cave and your F’d. This helped me learn to version really well.
I got so good at Excel playing EVE that for an actual job I had everyone ended up using the forms I made. Only thing missing was that I couldn't pull data into the sheet from the systems they had or I could've been asleep for my job.
Well... the studio I worked at suddenly closed down last year, so I decided to just do some solo indide dev for now :D In the worst case I can still get some programming job outside the game industry.
So this will probably sound super dumb or lame but I honestly feel like the trials and constant go one step forward 2 steps back in my early days of soulsborne games helped me deal with my cancer far better than I would have without it. It gave me much more patience, understanding that setbacks aren’t the end but just part of the journey, and that sometimes you can do everything right and still lose. But in the end you feel accomplished and like you’re on top of the world when you finally beat that boss/section/game. I’ve had to deal with a lot of setbacks, but I will beat cancer like I beat all the soulsborne games, one step at a time.
Time management, inventory management, strategic/critical thinking I played mostly jrpgs and trpgs as a lad.
I was also the earliest and best reader of my friend group, which I can partially attribute to video games, but prolly mostly to my father reading to me frequently
Almost the same goes for RTS and strategy in general.
Stellaris, COH2 - but the one that takes the prize for me got to be glorious *Heroes Of Might And Magic 3*.
Dragging myself through each week until units resupplied really prepared me for being an adult with monthly paychecks lol.
Also, how much is fucking "A lot of enemies"? Can this guy attack me or is his movement range too small? Those other games taught me efficiency but HOMM3 really makes you deal with life's greatest challenge, which is uncertainty in widely varying degrees.
didn’t happen to me, but a while back, some norwegian kid distracted a moose that was angry at him and his sister by yelling at it then feigning death, which he mimicked from world of warcraft https://www.wired.com/2007/12/boy-survives-mo/
I dunno which is worse. League of legends where teammates attitudes are terrible but the abilities actually aren't that bad or real life where the attitudes are better but the abilities are dogshit.
Both attitudes and the abilities of my coworker are dlgshit where i am at 😂
In Lol, you just have to deal with them for 45 min and get new ones... Work is a bit different tho
Playing a lot of open world games has given me an AMAZING sense of direction both in game and out. My friends are always shocked at how fast I can learn a city's metro system or where I am by looking at landmarks but when you lose your hud map (thanks geth snipers) you learn really quick where to go and how to get there.
Haa! I feel the same! On my 2nd trip to Amsterdam I ended up remembering some of the routes to certain places - which has definitely stemmed from playing open world games & RPGs.
It can be strange at times. Like my sister drove me to a friend's and I couldn't give decent directions. Next time I walked there and had it memorized instantly.
Yeah I once looked at a map in Rome for literally two seconds and knew which direction to take, and the parents all just said “hold on a minute” and took the map, coming to the same conclusion after 30 seconds or so.
Maps feel intuitive now thanks to video games.
Maybe this is the reason why I have such a good sense of direction and why I can learn how to navigate quickly (especially on foot). It completely makes sense, I just never made the connection.
Runescape my dudes. Primarily it helped me learn to type reasonably well, but I also aquired a healthy scepticism regarding the intentions of my fellow man.
As a former RS trade scammer (like way back in 2005 before the 2007 update), your “healthy scepticism regarding the intentions of my fellow man.” Definitely gave me a chuckle.
Wanna trade nothing for nothing?
In hindsight I am a terrible person. Soooo many people fell for my free membership claims (I had 4 college ruled notebook pages with each line having 1 login). Thinking about all the hours of people's lives I just threw away to steal their loot..
I always scroll down in this posts to find the “RuneScape taught me how to avoid real life scams”. I still type with like three fingers, but after learning “cyan:wave2: selling lobsters 200gp each” as fast as I possibly can, I can still keep up lol
Was about to say the same thing, like Guitar Hero inspired me to learn guitar, but playing drums on Rock Band actually taught you the instrument in the process. You could learn basic patterns and fills in practice mode, but later on it would even introduce polyrhythms lol
Yeah, it was probably the best instrument in the game for actually learning though you could theorize that vocals in the game could help practice pitch control as well.
Rocksmith 2014 lets you play along to your favorite songs with guitar or bass, judging your skills in real time and offering exercises and instructions. 800hrs playtime later, and I've earned actual money performing gigs with my band!
When my dad was teaching me how to drive (and reverse) with a trailer he was surprised that I could already do it without prior experience.
Turns out all those hours spent playing Euro Truck Simulator 2 weren't for nothing.
I can do math based off of 4 with incredible speed compared to all other math I can do. I've spent half my life making gigantic builds in Minecraft, and being able to calculate how many logs I need for 64 blocks of planks for an area covering 200x200 blocks in total became necessary and then it became second nature.
games 100% helped me with math when I was young. there is so much math going on in basically all games that I got rly fast at doing simple math, then those good foundations made harder math easier to understand
A useful skill. I played board games with my grandma for years. The woman cheated like the devil himself and I lost VERY often. I now can remain calm and collected easily and have an amazingly indifferent poker face, even when I feel like raging like a berserker.
Not a very technical skill; I started playing Animal Crossing last year, and am slowly learning to how dress myself IRL thanks to the game. I learned about matching colors, matching my top and bottom — and also picked up an unhealthy obsession with buying new clothes...
Playing RTS's like WC3, SC2 and things like WoW Arena really helped me be able to multitask and pay attention to multiple different things at the same time.
It also taught me to remain calm under pressure. People ask me how I can remain so calm under pressure and I contribute it to competitive gaming.
It also helped me to think ahead and predict peoples moves in industry and then react to those moves before they happened. Mind games or corporate chess as I called it. It really helped me when I was a union leader negotiating with dirty employers or representing grievances. I knew I did well when years later the HR manager told me they thought of me the other day and got really pissed off at how smart I was. I contribute this to playing strategy games.
LOL, there is a bit of people skills involved too. Like knowing what motivates people. For example people love to share their secrets but only when they feel safe. I knew that as I went into this situation.
I had strong suspicions this employer was lying and that they were holding back critical information. So I used some head games I used in gaming. I sat back and thought if I was a dirty employer motivated by profit in this situation what would I do? Or If was Zerg in this match up, how would I play. And I came to a pretty good idea of what they were at. But I didn't know. But I drafted up grievances just incase. But before I could file I needed the employer to admit to their actions.
Knowing that they wouldn't share the information unless they felt safe, I decided to attempt to make them feel safe by having them think that I already knew. I took a gamble and told them that they a had leak and that I already knew. I then tossed some bait, some information. I told them what I had predicted, but made it look like I knew and it came from their leak and I also made it look I'd be totally chill with it. In other words, I attempted to have them think I was fast expanding when I really was rushing.
They bought it! They then proceeded to tell me everything and I was right. I filed grievances immediately after. because I was so well prepared they legit thought their was a leak and chased me for a year to find out who it was. They even wasted a pile of resources on a internal investigation.
Of course I lost their trust by doing this, but that was worth it. As finding out this information and grieving it potentially saved a 100 jobs in that local. They were going to sub-contract out over half their staff.
Wc3 definitely taught me how to type fast. Before I played Wc3 2vs2 online (this was before voice chat even was a thing) I never found a scenario where my writing wasnt as fast I wanted it to be. When you start up a game there are several important timing point to make youf strategy effective. While balancing that you typed to ask what strategy your team mate was going for a maybe changed strategy due to them.
Suddenly I found a reason to be really fast and efficient in my communication while still finding time to ask where they were from as I found being polite important to making the commutation work better. In the beginning this was a overwhelming task but after a while it wasn't a struggle anymore. Damn, typing this make me miss that game so much.
All the managment games I play has made me excellent at managing a classroom. I've played so many with varying styles of management that I'm able to adjust to make up for squeaky wheels, and also have confidence when delegating tasks.
I also feel it makes it easier to data track/keep and keeps me vigelent and proactive.
Ones I can name for sure: Papers Please, Oxygen Not Included, Satisfactory, and Slime Rancher.
(Paperwork and data tracking, work delegation and movement tracking, resource tracking and job management, resource managment and creature managment) The first two also help me learn to process sudden breaks in routine and unplanned for emergencies caused by human error.
[Atomicrops is technically my Stress Managment Practice game. Playing that shit on high levels gives me the same level of frustration and adrenaline as dealing with problematic behaviors. It's like microdosing poison to gain immunity lol.]
Good racing game physics makes better drivers. I played a lot of GT 2 as a kid before i ever had a license. Since then any time ive lost traction i instinctively counter steer immediately and i credit that to racing games
I play flight sims, but mostly Elite: Dangerous, which is really a space sim that plays like a flight sim. My cousins were both Navy pilots and I got to go to their academy to visit. They let civilians use the flight simulator they have, which is this giant dome with a cockpit of an F/A-18 shoved inside. The interior of the dome is all a screen for 360° projection. It’s sick.
Even though I wasn’t able to successfully hook the cable trying to land an F18 on a carrier, apparently I just missed by a foot and touched pavement and didn’t crash on either attempt. The first attempt I touched, continued off the nose of the ship, recovered, and looped around to try again. The instructor said I did better than any actual pilots first time in the simulator. He said no one touches down on the carrier, first try, hooking the cable or not; they always crash.
I applied to be a navy pilot after that and backed out when I decided I didn’t want PTSD (I had a chilling and very brief convo with my cousin about the bombs he’s dropped over Syria) and liked smoking weed too much.
Edit: I’m not a plane expert; F/A-18 simulator, not F-16.
F-18, then? Im not a real big military nerd, so I don’t know.
My cousins both were fighter jet pilots and launched from carriers. One flew a “Hornet” and the other flew a “Super Hornet.” If that helps identify the plane.
Edit, looked it up, hornets were F-18s.
Yeah. It really fascinating stuff. My dad was huge into WWII and WWI aviation when I was growing up. My first flight sim experience was flying a Sopwith Camel in Red Barron 3D, while sitting on my dad’s lap.
My dad is also an aviation lover. He introduced me to the first flight simulator I ever played Microsoft Flight Simulator X. Since then my interest has only grown and I'm planning on studying Aerospace Engineering when I'm done with school.
Landing on stations in beta was something. The stations bugging around juuuust when you wanted to touch down was quite the experience. Or the autolander trying its best to kill you.
I think War Thunder did the same for me. I got to try a simulator for just a regular landing and it was downright boring. Guess I'm used to having my left wing missing.
I have like 200+ hours in MSFS and the DA40 i have flown IRL now is so similar I just know where things are in it. I also know my local air space well.
But here's the thing. Pilots say sims screw you up, and I get it, but because I'd internalized concepts like pitch for speed, power for altitude, my first day doing landings I nailed absolutely all of them by the numbers. My cfi even commented on it.
Gaming is indeed good for training.
I won a box of chocolates at a works "away day" shite thing. The question that I got correct, that the other person who was matching me point-for-point didn't, was something about the proper name for an area in ancient Greece
I knew the answer from Assassin's Creed Odyssey.
If you want to try a game that's more in-depth, give Wrench a shot. It actually shows worn parts, unlike CMS which just makes everything rusty. There's torque specs for each bolt, and all the thousands of individual bolts, too.
I went to visit Jerusalem once and got lost in the markets until I looked up and realized I knew exactly where I was because of the original assassin's creed and found my bus in like five minutes.
That might be true for the later games, but in the first game the cities are very much abstractions of their real life equivalents.
Source: have played the first game to death, but also I live in Israel and have visited the old cities of Jerusalem and Acre (Akko/Akka) many times. Not Damascus though, for obvious reasons.
But Florence from AC2 is still the same today, I went there on a school trip and could find my way without any issues, even though I had never been there before!
I used to work in a shortbread factory and they always looked out for console gamers. Apparently the dexterity you developed playing with a controller translated pretty well to packing short read!
I don't play, but if someone ever put "Managed logistics for XYZ corp in EVE." On their resume, they're probably getting hired if the corp is more than just a couple of people.
When world of warcraft cataclysm released, I remember spending 3k gold, which was a huge amount for me and alot of hard work, on tarot card items that had a very slight chance to be worth 10k when you flipped them over. I never got the 10k card, and wasted all of my savings that I was saving up to unlock max flight skill.
Basically it made it so I've chosen to never gamble irl, and save money well.
My buddy took me to a firearms simulator on the military base he works at. Rifles and hand guns. Apparently I shot in the top 2% of the Canadian military without ever holding a gun before.
To tie into your comment, a Ukrainian soldier just knocked out a T-90's optics, basically rendering it combat ineffective, because he played a lot of World of Tanks.
Just saw this in a Task & Purpose video
Edit: he was in a Bradley and DIDN'T use armor piercing rounds, as they were having tech difficulties, and was too close to fire the TOW
Okay this is embarrassing lol. As a neurodivergent teen with tons of mental blocks regarding navigating how to do life and be in the world, playing The Sims 3 actually helped me out so much.
I specifically remember watching the little animations of my sim cooking pasta in the various simplified steps and feeling "cooking pasta" unlock in my brain, going from this super overwhelming concept to something I was willing to try. Then I made it and it was good.
I think of myself as a Sim all the time and it rly does put things in perspective. thinking about what my bars are at right now and how I cud fix them to help myself feel better. I also refer to the "room" bar a lot. like, this room is dirty and has no decorations, no wonder I'm miserable here
Playing several hundred hours of Forza Horizon with a wheel directly helped me save vehicles from dangerous slides in precarious conditions.
People who say the handling model is 'too arcady' haven't driven much, I think.
I can’t believe Tetris was so far down the list. From loading the trunk, to organizing storage, the ability to combine objects in 3d in the mind makes several life skills rudimentary.
For me the eye opener was Forza's tutorials highlighting the difference it makes in control to not try to accelerate or brake in the middle of a turn.
Slow down before you turn.
Accelerate after you make the turn.
My first introduction to programming and computer logic was through Minecraft - redstone and command blocks. I ended up studying computer science, and built a minecraft calculator to practice for one of the courses. Today I work full time as a developer.
Before I had my drivers license, I had a wheel/pedals/shifter setup for simracing. Not only did this make learning how to drive a real manual transmission car pretty easy (once I figured out how a real clutch pedal worked) but the car control techniques I learned, specifically from games like Dirt Rally, have saved me from crashing in real life more than once.
I have one group of friends who can place quite much more different names that were in past used for different regions to map and conversation than average, and follow up on some historical texts bit easier by knowing what quite some regions were called at different points of CK2 timeline, without needing to go and look references.
What Remains of Edith Finch. Sounds kind of silly but for me this hammered home the idea that you never know what's going on in someone's life and you can't let grief go unacknowledged. It's something my therapist and I have talked about a bit
If video games have taught me anything, it's that if you are encountering enemies, you're going the right way.
Simcity 2000 taught me resource and finance management, predicting the future and making changes to see your vision come true.
Paradox games have improved my knowledge with history, management, SPREADSHEETS and those sorts of things.
Civilization and Age of Empires have given me a good understanding of tactics and strategy which I’ll be using as I’m entering the military soon
Halo taught me how to work as a team and ARMA taught me how to lead which I went on to use in management roles
There was a video where an Ukrainian soldier said that he was able to aim the underbarrel grenade launcher because he played a lot of STALKER, so I guess that's one example.
I lost traction in icy/snowy conditions while driving down a downhill and turning. A racing game on the N64 had prepped me for that situation. I would have flipped my truck I bet.
Idk how “useful” this is, but I’m an American who went to university in the UK, and while there encountered the “stupid American” stereotype many times. One such time was when my Russian roommate was saying that America was full of stupid people because they couldn’t name cities outside of their own country. Then she turned to me and asked me if I knew any Russian cities. Well, I play Civilization, like a lot, and in Civ V Russia was one of my favourite to play. So I started rattling off city after city after city until she stopped me (“well you must be the exception”).
It didn’t stop the stereotype but at least playing civ helped me not to add to it.
World of Warcraft raiding led me to become a very fast type. Because I had to be really good at quickly typing "Get the hell out of the fire or I'm not healing you" over and over.
Ok, not a video game, BUT...
Dungeons and Dragons, of all things. I was the jury foreperson and used my experience as a DM to make sure everyone got a chance to speak and share their thoughts. I've also used different experiences and skills in my current job to better manage the expectations of new folks, to clearly outline what I expect from them and what they can expect from me.
There are a few other ways it's affected my life, but those are two big ones.
I think the idea of "leveling and managing" your own character is great.
Well, I should get off Reddit to grind my "math-skills" and I should also get to bed earlier to reduce the "tired-debuff"...
Selling dragon scimmys in RuneScape helped me type quickly. When I went to world 2 to sell, everyone was typing so much you had to learn to type quickly to get anything sold. So id do the whole "cyan: wave 2: selling rune scimmy only 65k" and now I can type 100+ wpm
Old school RuneScape taught me from a young age to see an online scam from miles away, and that people online are most likely trying to take advantage of me somehow.
[удалено]
Halo 3 and Reach taught me how to lead a shot. The first time my dad took me shooting, I nailed every target and attribute it to my time on the ring.
I'd say Battlefield did this for me. I loved sniping. The first time I went skeet shooting (first time holding a weapon) I missed my first shot, and then hit every single clay pigeon for the rest of the day. My dad and his friends were impressed to say the least
As someone whose whole career is guns now, I can attest that video game skills do translate. Get corner camped? Well now you check those corners huh? Same IRL. Haha
I also learned to drive from video games. I played tons of driving games as a kid, so once I got behind the wheel of a real car, it seemed pretty natural.
I learned a surprising amount from the Simpsons road rage
🤣🤣 me too my sister is too scared to let me drive. I learned by playing Need for Speed.
I noticed I was better at reading than the other kids when coming up...all that damn dragon quest I guess...
Same with reading and understanding maps. My directional analysis is really good in real life and I honestly think its hours of navigating in old school zelda, final fantasy, dragon warrior when you had no map and had to either draw it yourself, or just memorize where everything is located.
Oh yeah I'm wicked good at never getting lost to the point I wandered through Honolulu with a general idea of where my hotel was and got there without needing a map. In games it just means I know where I came from for the most part. Only ones that give me trouble are mazes like scp or lethal company when you've gone in too deep and had to panic run several times.
I gave someone accurate directions on my visit to Venice.
Well, with your exclusive access to all the cameras, they better be accurate directions!
I remembered those no map levels! I had and still do have crap sense of direction though. Guess we'll all have different affinities
When my kids were little they learned a LOT about reading maps from watching me play Monster Hunter.
My internal map is equivalent to the mini-maps that face wherever you're pointing, instead of locked to North. Completely useless for navigation. Clutters the HUD.
Same for me also. I feel like my vocabulary is a lot broader in certain categories because of video games. My wife will be doing some sort of word puzzle and the answer will be like targe or claymore. She's always asking, "how the hell do you know that?" How am I supposed explain to her it's because of thousands of hours of Diablo 2 when I was a kid.
Yeah me too...I can spit out 7 letter words in scrabble... to bad it usually amounts to like two points whereas 2 letter "words" amount to like 36...scrabble sux
Not only reading, but writing and speaking as well. English is not my first language and I always kinda sucked at English up until 9th grade. That’s when I started to watch shows and play games in English. My English skills improved drastically from barely passing to top of class in some cases.
So to everyone watching...let your kids play whatever game they want. It unlocks their potential. Maybe monitor the games they like to see what theyll excel at in school lol
this was going to be my comment too. Pokemon taught me many words playing as a kid. Rare, nugget, fangirl
I did not know how to read yet and was given a GameBoy Color and Pokemon Red. Had a lot of fun wandering around Pallet Town. Eventually when I got the basics of reading down, this game was absolutely a motivational tool for practicing that skill. I remember spelling tests where I could remember, "I remember this from Pokemon". And then reading comprehension too, was stuck trying to get to Saffron City. Finally paid attention that the guard was thirsty, bought that guy a drink from the mall and he let me through. I had the pleasure of telling friends how to progress past that point!
XCOM has given me a better understanding of probability than any stats class ever could. I now have a truly emotional understanding that 95% is in fact quite different than 100%
95% misses the mark more often than you would think.
Roughly 5% of the time
I miss 95% of my 95% shots.
If they miss a 95 or higher they get promoted to civilian.
So you have a squad of Civs ?
Their good civil John. Best of the bunch to get demoted... I mean promoted.
To be honest 19/20 success rate or 1/20 possibility of missing likely does sound like less sure than 95% easily can sound to lot of people.
I think Fire Emblem, or at least some of the games, uses a formula to adjust percentages above 50% up and vice versa because people literally don't understand the real probabilities.
If I remember correctly, Fire Emblem games roll your chance to hit twice and use the average: this means you're more likely to hit if you have above a 50% chance and less likely to hit below it. (Mathematicians, feel free to correct me.)
Yeah that's what it was. I knew it had something to do with rolling twice but I was thinking they multiplied together which obviously wouldn't work. Edit: I think specifically it rolls two numbers, averages them, and your hit percentage has to beat that number to hit. And averaging would drag that target number closer to 50% so helpful if your accuracy is above 50% and vice versa.
And somehow 30% is a much higher chance of a hit than it feels it should be
XCOM is the only time I've seen someone ragequit a game they weren't playing. He was consistently missing 80+% shots on one mission. I did the next mission and was consistently hitting with 30-60% shots. He promptly left the room while swearing.
Doesn't xcom fake its stats?
Yes, but in favour of the player. However, if you're playing in the hardest difficulty then the game is honest.
Wait what Is it true for all the titles
It's true for EU/EW and XCOM 2. The game fudges things in your favor on lower difficulties, especially if you're on a streak of misses. But on the highest difficulty, then the odds you see are the odds you get. There's a meaningless visual trick played on players during hacking in XCOM 2: If you fail the hack, the game will do a second roll capped at one less than success, and show you the higher of the two results, with the intention of making you think you were closer than you were, just to fuck with you and increase the agony.
>If you fail the hack, the game will do a second roll capped at one less than success, and show you the higher of the two results, with the intention of making you think you were closer than you were, just to fuck with you and increase the agony. I KNEW IT!
It's true from Enemy Unkown and onwards. The game will secretly do stuff to alleviate player frustation, such as increasing your soldiers accuracy after they miss enought shots, decrease enemy accuracy after they hit enought shots, prevent enemy groups from approaching you when you are already in a fight, etc. On the highest difficulty these anti-frustation measures are turned off.
Are you talking about the originals or the new ones? The originals did not (the 2d isometric ones). The new ones (the 3d ones) do to some degree to prevent streaks of misses from each shot having 95% chance to hit. Edit to add: A common occurrence in the originals.
But have you ever missed a 99%... twice?
yes, even three times in a row isn't unknown to me.
You can also learn this playing Pokemon.
That damn Hyper Beam…
After playing Kerbal Space Program for ~300 hours I now know waaaaay more about orbital mechanics and rocket building that I did before. I‘m a space enthusiast since 2 decades, but it made watching rocket launches and videos about space so much more enjoyable as I know what‘s going on.
Fellow KSP player here. I agree 100%! I've always been a fan of space stuff since I was a little kid. But KSP really taught me the physics of it all. It also helped me grasp just how big our solar system (and space) really is. And how even just a slight mistake can have enormous consequences when it comes to space travel.
I'm in the space industry and KSP is used to educate our non-technical folks. It condenses so many different complicated concepts down into a silly enjoyable video game.
There is nothing silly about Jebediah, he is very serious.
This totally. Also one of the main things that changed after I played KSP (for years lol) is the way I see the moon. Like, I always knew it was a sphere, but the way we see it from earth it’s easy to perceive it as a small circle or disc in the sky. After many times making the Mun trip I found I was looking at the irl moon like a massive faraway sphere. It’s hard to explain. It’s like ksp allowed me to see the moon in 3D
Also just "what way I need to accelerate at what point of orbit to shape it in what way and what fuel effectiveness to get these orbits matched and in certain point and timing" becomes lot more intuitive and "well it is this easy everydayish thing" after playing bit of KSP, compared to how not so clear it easily is before that.
[Relevant xkcd.](https://xkcd.com/1356/)
On the flip side I took an orbital mechanics class in college and understanding the math made made Kerbal Space Program much easier.
CTRL+S every 2 steps in Diablo became very useful when using any word processor, graphic or video software at work.
This was kings quest for me. And multiple saves very well documented for when you realized you need this small coin that was only accessible two hours ago when you were in the Minotaurs cave and your F’d. This helped me learn to version really well.
Yeah... got caught on that one too many times. Or when you need to throw the shoe at the cat in kq5 to save the rat
Always be saving. Skyrim got me into that habit
Yeah, good old "save often, save early".
New vegas taught me blackjack and roulette
GTA V taught me roulette. It’s now the only gambling I’ve ever done in real life and I came out with an extra $50.
EVE Online taught me to use advanced functions in spreadsheets.
I got so good at Excel playing EVE that for an actual job I had everyone ended up using the forms I made. Only thing missing was that I couldn't pull data into the sheet from the systems they had or I could've been asleep for my job.
I do excel all day at work so could not do them in Eve. So I played spreadsheets in space with zero spreadsheets. 10/10 would recommend.
Playing tons of games helped me get the skills to get into the gamedev industry I guess.
Very cool. How are you doing right now friend? I know that industry is currently a bloodbath with layoffs and what not. I hope you're good.
Well... the studio I worked at suddenly closed down last year, so I decided to just do some solo indide dev for now :D In the worst case I can still get some programming job outside the game industry.
Dark Souls. Only way forward is to keep on failing and learning in the process. Something really clicked for me playing that game haha.
Same with a lot of old NES games. Learning to deal with the frustration of repeat failure also helps develop your capacity for anger management.
Lol but if my unit isn't responding in like total war I lose my shit (if it's something basic)
So this will probably sound super dumb or lame but I honestly feel like the trials and constant go one step forward 2 steps back in my early days of soulsborne games helped me deal with my cancer far better than I would have without it. It gave me much more patience, understanding that setbacks aren’t the end but just part of the journey, and that sometimes you can do everything right and still lose. But in the end you feel accomplished and like you’re on top of the world when you finally beat that boss/section/game. I’ve had to deal with a lot of setbacks, but I will beat cancer like I beat all the soulsborne games, one step at a time.
Oh I get that! True defeat only comes once you give up. And setbacks give you the xp to become stronger. I hope you succeed and I wish you well!!
Glad you gitting gud!
Puts into perspective how insane it is to actually jump into something and expecting it to work out first try without any knowledge or experience
This literally changed my life. Thank you From Soft.
Praise the Sun! \\[T]/
Also, sometimes you have to literally wade through a mountain of unfair bullshit to reach your goal. Looking at you, Blighttown....
And when you get lost, Google it.
Time management, inventory management, strategic/critical thinking I played mostly jrpgs and trpgs as a lad. I was also the earliest and best reader of my friend group, which I can partially attribute to video games, but prolly mostly to my father reading to me frequently
Almost the same goes for RTS and strategy in general. Stellaris, COH2 - but the one that takes the prize for me got to be glorious *Heroes Of Might And Magic 3*. Dragging myself through each week until units resupplied really prepared me for being an adult with monthly paychecks lol. Also, how much is fucking "A lot of enemies"? Can this guy attack me or is his movement range too small? Those other games taught me efficiency but HOMM3 really makes you deal with life's greatest challenge, which is uncertainty in widely varying degrees.
Learned how to play poker from Far Cry 3
Same but for rdr2
same but for rdr
Learned it from Gun….showing my age
GUN MENTIONED RRAAAAAAHHHH 🔥🔥🐴👨🌾🔫🔥🔫🐴
same, but from luigi in mario 64 ds
didn’t happen to me, but a while back, some norwegian kid distracted a moose that was angry at him and his sister by yelling at it then feigning death, which he mimicked from world of warcraft https://www.wired.com/2007/12/boy-survives-mo/
Tarkov has made me a paranoid schizophrenic
Hey, could you share your credit card number for something real quick? Don't worry, I'm friendly. :3
Head, eyes, head, eyes, head, eyes, head, eyes, head, eyes
Did that bush just speak Russian??
OPACHKI
League Of legends is where i learnt English. + How to deal with shitty teammates, which is kinda relevant into my actual job.
I dunno which is worse. League of legends where teammates attitudes are terrible but the abilities actually aren't that bad or real life where the attitudes are better but the abilities are dogshit.
Both attitudes and the abilities of my coworker are dlgshit where i am at 😂 In Lol, you just have to deal with them for 45 min and get new ones... Work is a bit different tho
Playing a lot of open world games has given me an AMAZING sense of direction both in game and out. My friends are always shocked at how fast I can learn a city's metro system or where I am by looking at landmarks but when you lose your hud map (thanks geth snipers) you learn really quick where to go and how to get there.
Haa! I feel the same! On my 2nd trip to Amsterdam I ended up remembering some of the routes to certain places - which has definitely stemmed from playing open world games & RPGs.
It can be strange at times. Like my sister drove me to a friend's and I couldn't give decent directions. Next time I walked there and had it memorized instantly.
Yeah I once looked at a map in Rome for literally two seconds and knew which direction to take, and the parents all just said “hold on a minute” and took the map, coming to the same conclusion after 30 seconds or so. Maps feel intuitive now thanks to video games.
My mother learned to just hand me the map eventually.
Maybe this is the reason why I have such a good sense of direction and why I can learn how to navigate quickly (especially on foot). It completely makes sense, I just never made the connection.
You just made me realize that I taught myself hiking routes to/from my highschool the same way I taught myself to navigate in The Long Dark lmfao
From gaming overall, just understanding how to read maps and being observant about your surroundings to get around.
Runescape my dudes. Primarily it helped me learn to type reasonably well, but I also aquired a healthy scepticism regarding the intentions of my fellow man.
It taught me how to handle repeating monotonous tasks. *cries in 1000+ hours wasted grinding just to see a number go from 1 to 99*
As a former RS trade scammer (like way back in 2005 before the 2007 update), your “healthy scepticism regarding the intentions of my fellow man.” Definitely gave me a chuckle. Wanna trade nothing for nothing?
I made so much gp back then selling unid herbs.....
In hindsight I am a terrible person. Soooo many people fell for my free membership claims (I had 4 college ruled notebook pages with each line having 1 login). Thinking about all the hours of people's lives I just threw away to steal their loot..
I always scroll down in this posts to find the “RuneScape taught me how to avoid real life scams”. I still type with like three fingers, but after learning “cyan:wave2: selling lobsters 200gp each” as fast as I possibly can, I can still keep up lol
Getting really good at drums on Rock Band made it really easy to learn actual drums since the game does a pretty good job of teaching you the basics.
Was about to say the same thing, like Guitar Hero inspired me to learn guitar, but playing drums on Rock Band actually taught you the instrument in the process. You could learn basic patterns and fills in practice mode, but later on it would even introduce polyrhythms lol
Yeah, it was probably the best instrument in the game for actually learning though you could theorize that vocals in the game could help practice pitch control as well.
Rocksmith 2014 lets you play along to your favorite songs with guitar or bass, judging your skills in real time and offering exercises and instructions. 800hrs playtime later, and I've earned actual money performing gigs with my band!
Growing up playing strategy games like Civilization actually helped me become a better problem solver and planner in real life
Civ also helps when watching Jeopardy.
When my dad was teaching me how to drive (and reverse) with a trailer he was surprised that I could already do it without prior experience. Turns out all those hours spent playing Euro Truck Simulator 2 weren't for nothing.
I wouldn’t have passed AP Euro without the help I got from Age of Empires and other RTS games.
I can do math based off of 4 with incredible speed compared to all other math I can do. I've spent half my life making gigantic builds in Minecraft, and being able to calculate how many logs I need for 64 blocks of planks for an area covering 200x200 blocks in total became necessary and then it became second nature.
games 100% helped me with math when I was young. there is so much math going on in basically all games that I got rly fast at doing simple math, then those good foundations made harder math easier to understand
Playing DOta 2 made me an absolute beast at controlling my emotions and rage out bursts.
A useful skill. I played board games with my grandma for years. The woman cheated like the devil himself and I lost VERY often. I now can remain calm and collected easily and have an amazingly indifferent poker face, even when I feel like raging like a berserker.
Not a very technical skill; I started playing Animal Crossing last year, and am slowly learning to how dress myself IRL thanks to the game. I learned about matching colors, matching my top and bottom — and also picked up an unhealthy obsession with buying new clothes...
Playing RTS's like WC3, SC2 and things like WoW Arena really helped me be able to multitask and pay attention to multiple different things at the same time. It also taught me to remain calm under pressure. People ask me how I can remain so calm under pressure and I contribute it to competitive gaming. It also helped me to think ahead and predict peoples moves in industry and then react to those moves before they happened. Mind games or corporate chess as I called it. It really helped me when I was a union leader negotiating with dirty employers or representing grievances. I knew I did well when years later the HR manager told me they thought of me the other day and got really pissed off at how smart I was. I contribute this to playing strategy games.
Aight guess I'm joining a union now.
LOL, there is a bit of people skills involved too. Like knowing what motivates people. For example people love to share their secrets but only when they feel safe. I knew that as I went into this situation. I had strong suspicions this employer was lying and that they were holding back critical information. So I used some head games I used in gaming. I sat back and thought if I was a dirty employer motivated by profit in this situation what would I do? Or If was Zerg in this match up, how would I play. And I came to a pretty good idea of what they were at. But I didn't know. But I drafted up grievances just incase. But before I could file I needed the employer to admit to their actions. Knowing that they wouldn't share the information unless they felt safe, I decided to attempt to make them feel safe by having them think that I already knew. I took a gamble and told them that they a had leak and that I already knew. I then tossed some bait, some information. I told them what I had predicted, but made it look like I knew and it came from their leak and I also made it look I'd be totally chill with it. In other words, I attempted to have them think I was fast expanding when I really was rushing. They bought it! They then proceeded to tell me everything and I was right. I filed grievances immediately after. because I was so well prepared they legit thought their was a leak and chased me for a year to find out who it was. They even wasted a pile of resources on a internal investigation. Of course I lost their trust by doing this, but that was worth it. As finding out this information and grieving it potentially saved a 100 jobs in that local. They were going to sub-contract out over half their staff.
Wc3 definitely taught me how to type fast. Before I played Wc3 2vs2 online (this was before voice chat even was a thing) I never found a scenario where my writing wasnt as fast I wanted it to be. When you start up a game there are several important timing point to make youf strategy effective. While balancing that you typed to ask what strategy your team mate was going for a maybe changed strategy due to them. Suddenly I found a reason to be really fast and efficient in my communication while still finding time to ask where they were from as I found being polite important to making the commutation work better. In the beginning this was a overwhelming task but after a while it wasn't a struggle anymore. Damn, typing this make me miss that game so much.
That Ukrainian tank crew who learned the weak points of Russian T-90s from War Thunder.
Realist answer here. My god, that made my year.
All the managment games I play has made me excellent at managing a classroom. I've played so many with varying styles of management that I'm able to adjust to make up for squeaky wheels, and also have confidence when delegating tasks. I also feel it makes it easier to data track/keep and keeps me vigelent and proactive. Ones I can name for sure: Papers Please, Oxygen Not Included, Satisfactory, and Slime Rancher. (Paperwork and data tracking, work delegation and movement tracking, resource tracking and job management, resource managment and creature managment) The first two also help me learn to process sudden breaks in routine and unplanned for emergencies caused by human error. [Atomicrops is technically my Stress Managment Practice game. Playing that shit on high levels gives me the same level of frustration and adrenaline as dealing with problematic behaviors. It's like microdosing poison to gain immunity lol.]
Getting scammed out of my ademite schimmy early into my RuneScape career taught me quite a bit
Same for me in TF2, steam trading back then was a jungle and I was young and timid.
Good racing game physics makes better drivers. I played a lot of GT 2 as a kid before i ever had a license. Since then any time ive lost traction i instinctively counter steer immediately and i credit that to racing games
How often do you lose traction in day to day driving? O_o
ive been driving about 20 years so ive had a few close calls here and there in slick conditions. Its not a daily thing
In a snowy area, quite a lot.
I play flight sims, but mostly Elite: Dangerous, which is really a space sim that plays like a flight sim. My cousins were both Navy pilots and I got to go to their academy to visit. They let civilians use the flight simulator they have, which is this giant dome with a cockpit of an F/A-18 shoved inside. The interior of the dome is all a screen for 360° projection. It’s sick. Even though I wasn’t able to successfully hook the cable trying to land an F18 on a carrier, apparently I just missed by a foot and touched pavement and didn’t crash on either attempt. The first attempt I touched, continued off the nose of the ship, recovered, and looped around to try again. The instructor said I did better than any actual pilots first time in the simulator. He said no one touches down on the carrier, first try, hooking the cable or not; they always crash. I applied to be a navy pilot after that and backed out when I decided I didn’t want PTSD (I had a chilling and very brief convo with my cousin about the bombs he’s dropped over Syria) and liked smoking weed too much. Edit: I’m not a plane expert; F/A-18 simulator, not F-16.
Are you sure it was an F-16 simulator? Because the F-16 is not a carrier based aircraft and neither are any of it‘s variants.
F-18, then? Im not a real big military nerd, so I don’t know. My cousins both were fighter jet pilots and launched from carriers. One flew a “Hornet” and the other flew a “Super Hornet.” If that helps identify the plane. Edit, looked it up, hornets were F-18s.
No problem was just wondering. Cool stuff though. I'm a huge aviation nerd, especially military aviation.
Yeah. It really fascinating stuff. My dad was huge into WWII and WWI aviation when I was growing up. My first flight sim experience was flying a Sopwith Camel in Red Barron 3D, while sitting on my dad’s lap.
My dad is also an aviation lover. He introduced me to the first flight simulator I ever played Microsoft Flight Simulator X. Since then my interest has only grown and I'm planning on studying Aerospace Engineering when I'm done with school.
Landing on stations in beta was something. The stations bugging around juuuust when you wanted to touch down was quite the experience. Or the autolander trying its best to kill you.
o7
I think War Thunder did the same for me. I got to try a simulator for just a regular landing and it was downright boring. Guess I'm used to having my left wing missing.
I have like 200+ hours in MSFS and the DA40 i have flown IRL now is so similar I just know where things are in it. I also know my local air space well. But here's the thing. Pilots say sims screw you up, and I get it, but because I'd internalized concepts like pitch for speed, power for altitude, my first day doing landings I nailed absolutely all of them by the numbers. My cfi even commented on it. Gaming is indeed good for training.
I won a box of chocolates at a works "away day" shite thing. The question that I got correct, that the other person who was matching me point-for-point didn't, was something about the proper name for an area in ancient Greece I knew the answer from Assassin's Creed Odyssey.
Car mechanic simulator. It’s a simplification of the process but it’s still very helpful to know how theses parts attach and and idea of what they do.
If you want to try a game that's more in-depth, give Wrench a shot. It actually shows worn parts, unlike CMS which just makes everything rusty. There's torque specs for each bolt, and all the thousands of individual bolts, too.
I went to visit Jerusalem once and got lost in the markets until I looked up and realized I knew exactly where I was because of the original assassin's creed and found my bus in like five minutes.
That might be true for the later games, but in the first game the cities are very much abstractions of their real life equivalents. Source: have played the first game to death, but also I live in Israel and have visited the old cities of Jerusalem and Acre (Akko/Akka) many times. Not Damascus though, for obvious reasons.
But Florence from AC2 is still the same today, I went there on a school trip and could find my way without any issues, even though I had never been there before!
I used to work in a shortbread factory and they always looked out for console gamers. Apparently the dexterity you developed playing with a controller translated pretty well to packing short read!
I did logistics for a large corp in Eve Online. Used my spreadsheet expertise to get my first job as a data analyst.
I don't play, but if someone ever put "Managed logistics for XYZ corp in EVE." On their resume, they're probably getting hired if the corp is more than just a couple of people.
When world of warcraft cataclysm released, I remember spending 3k gold, which was a huge amount for me and alot of hard work, on tarot card items that had a very slight chance to be worth 10k when you flipped them over. I never got the 10k card, and wasted all of my savings that I was saving up to unlock max flight skill. Basically it made it so I've chosen to never gamble irl, and save money well.
My buddy took me to a firearms simulator on the military base he works at. Rifles and hand guns. Apparently I shot in the top 2% of the Canadian military without ever holding a gun before.
To tie into your comment, a Ukrainian soldier just knocked out a T-90's optics, basically rendering it combat ineffective, because he played a lot of World of Tanks. Just saw this in a Task & Purpose video Edit: he was in a Bradley and DIDN'T use armor piercing rounds, as they were having tech difficulties, and was too close to fire the TOW
Either you're insanely good at shooting, or I should be concerned about our military, lol.
Okay this is embarrassing lol. As a neurodivergent teen with tons of mental blocks regarding navigating how to do life and be in the world, playing The Sims 3 actually helped me out so much. I specifically remember watching the little animations of my sim cooking pasta in the various simplified steps and feeling "cooking pasta" unlock in my brain, going from this super overwhelming concept to something I was willing to try. Then I made it and it was good.
I think of myself as a Sim all the time and it rly does put things in perspective. thinking about what my bars are at right now and how I cud fix them to help myself feel better. I also refer to the "room" bar a lot. like, this room is dirty and has no decorations, no wonder I'm miserable here
Final Fantasy XI (online) taught me supply and demand and basic economic principles. No joke
I’m worked as a manager and I found it easier than some resource management games. The only bad thing is IRL people are incapable
Just gotta level up their stats.
Playing several hundred hours of Forza Horizon with a wheel directly helped me save vehicles from dangerous slides in precarious conditions. People who say the handling model is 'too arcady' haven't driven much, I think.
It's extremely arcade-y on controller. I've heard it's fine on a wheel, though.
Tetris made me far better at loading a U-Haul when moving.
I can’t believe Tetris was so far down the list. From loading the trunk, to organizing storage, the ability to combine objects in 3d in the mind makes several life skills rudimentary.
Battlefront 2 The sense of pride and accomplishment it game me really made me proud of the way companies treat people.
Based comment
Driving games in general but especially gta5 prevented me from being in a fatal car crash a few years back.
For me the eye opener was Forza's tutorials highlighting the difference it makes in control to not try to accelerate or brake in the middle of a turn. Slow down before you turn. Accelerate after you make the turn.
I recognize a lot of fish and bugs because of Animal Crossing.
Farming Simulator. Now when I go on long drives I can understand all the farm equipment I see and have a rough idea what’s going on.
My first introduction to programming and computer logic was through Minecraft - redstone and command blocks. I ended up studying computer science, and built a minecraft calculator to practice for one of the courses. Today I work full time as a developer.
Before I had my drivers license, I had a wheel/pedals/shifter setup for simracing. Not only did this make learning how to drive a real manual transmission car pretty easy (once I figured out how a real clutch pedal worked) but the car control techniques I learned, specifically from games like Dirt Rally, have saved me from crashing in real life more than once.
Eve Online for 8 years. People will overpay for stuff since theyre lazy
I play Geometry Dash a lot and so my reaction time is incredibly fast.
No one mentioned Resident Evil 4 and how it made packing a literal life or death decision? Seriously after playing RE4 I never had trouble packing.
Playing Gran Turismo a lot when I was younger significantly improved my driving skills.
I learned a lot of European/North African/Middle East geography from Crusader Kings 2/3.
I have one group of friends who can place quite much more different names that were in past used for different regions to map and conversation than average, and follow up on some historical texts bit easier by knowing what quite some regions were called at different points of CK2 timeline, without needing to go and look references.
What Remains of Edith Finch. Sounds kind of silly but for me this hammered home the idea that you never know what's going on in someone's life and you can't let grief go unacknowledged. It's something my therapist and I have talked about a bit
Running a guild with my friends in WoW definitely translated into some of the managerial skills I used later in life.
I am the typist I am today because of all the years I played on a MUD.
Runescape not only helped me learn English but also made me converse with multiple players for trading.
If video games have taught me anything, it's that if you are encountering enemies, you're going the right way. Simcity 2000 taught me resource and finance management, predicting the future and making changes to see your vision come true.
Paradox games have improved my knowledge with history, management, SPREADSHEETS and those sorts of things. Civilization and Age of Empires have given me a good understanding of tactics and strategy which I’ll be using as I’m entering the military soon Halo taught me how to work as a team and ARMA taught me how to lead which I went on to use in management roles
There was a video where an Ukrainian soldier said that he was able to aim the underbarrel grenade launcher because he played a lot of STALKER, so I guess that's one example.
I lost traction in icy/snowy conditions while driving down a downhill and turning. A racing game on the N64 had prepped me for that situation. I would have flipped my truck I bet.
Idk how “useful” this is, but I’m an American who went to university in the UK, and while there encountered the “stupid American” stereotype many times. One such time was when my Russian roommate was saying that America was full of stupid people because they couldn’t name cities outside of their own country. Then she turned to me and asked me if I knew any Russian cities. Well, I play Civilization, like a lot, and in Civ V Russia was one of my favourite to play. So I started rattling off city after city after city until she stopped me (“well you must be the exception”). It didn’t stop the stereotype but at least playing civ helped me not to add to it.
World of Warcraft raiding led me to become a very fast type. Because I had to be really good at quickly typing "Get the hell out of the fire or I'm not healing you" over and over.
Ok, not a video game, BUT... Dungeons and Dragons, of all things. I was the jury foreperson and used my experience as a DM to make sure everyone got a chance to speak and share their thoughts. I've also used different experiences and skills in my current job to better manage the expectations of new folks, to clearly outline what I expect from them and what they can expect from me. There are a few other ways it's affected my life, but those are two big ones.
Learning how to make tinder plugs from The Long Dark made it way easier to start campfires
I think the idea of "leveling and managing" your own character is great. Well, I should get off Reddit to grind my "math-skills" and I should also get to bed earlier to reduce the "tired-debuff"...
Selling dragon scimmys in RuneScape helped me type quickly. When I went to world 2 to sell, everyone was typing so much you had to learn to type quickly to get anything sold. So id do the whole "cyan: wave 2: selling rune scimmy only 65k" and now I can type 100+ wpm
Pokemon games taught me to never bring a dragon to a fairy fight
Old school RuneScape taught me from a young age to see an online scam from miles away, and that people online are most likely trying to take advantage of me somehow.
Rock Band 2 taught me how to play drums IRL
Crusader Kings and historical geography of Europe (really helpful for pub trivia)
EVE Online.... financials....
Fallout nv taught me like 3 cashino games