My Kids Will Be Gamers

How all of my success can be contributed to the hours I spent illuminated in the dark with a monitor in my face. And how your job is to provide the tools for your child’s success.

“Games are bad for children, they’re violent, they’re addicting and they don’t let kids get outside and experience life”

Bullshit.

I am 22 years old, working at an agency & consulting freelance — making twice what my friends will when (or if) they graduate from college. There’s no-where to go from here but up, I’m learning more everyday and with that — I’m teaching more every day.

Every bit of my success as an entrepreneur, as a business person or just generally in life could be attributed back to my career as a competitive gamer. I genuinely don’t know where I would be without having a PC attached to my hip since I was 11 but it definitely wouldn’t be here.

Games of today may be “violent” or “addictive” but I believe if given the proper context they can be taught from better than any other platform. It depends on the learner and it depends on the guardian. Some people learn from hands-on-experience and visuals, of which games give unparalleled interaction.

There is a fundamental difference between a spoiled gamer kid and a gamer kid who respects what he has and understands what he has to gain from it. This comes through teaching and parenting, that part isn’t inherently carried within games (so I’m not just saying let your kids loose on games and go smoke a cigar on the porch). It takes work.

When I was growing up we couldn’t afford a ton of new consoles, I had a NES and a N64. I got Playstation and eventually an Xbox but my true love was PC gaming. I fell in love with Diablo (yeah, a game about KILLING THE DEVIL, violence can be justified) and Starcraft (fighting for the survival of the human race against aliens using war-time strategy). I also later discovered Counter Strike (a counter-terrorist war game) that would consume many, many nights of my life.

I was sucked into playing these PC games, but we couldn’t afford to keep upgrading computers AND consoles, nor really could I keep up to date on the best computer hardware. So I ended up having a custom build PC and incrementally improving components on it (which taught me about building PCs and the fundamentals of computer hardware, which is invaluable to me now).

While Diablo taught me about fighting for a cause, about haggling (if you ever played online you understand what I mean) and synergy (some skills worked better with others) — Starcraft taught me about real-time strategy, overarching goals, on-the-fly improvements, reactions and ultimately suffering consequences after a LONG engagement. Counter Strike taught me situational awareness, accuracy, reaction time, on-the-fly strategy, team play and sportsmanship. These are just a few lessons learned, but like a Disney film, the lessons were more deep-seeded, and even if they weren’t noticed on the surface, they took effect deep within.

Blowing people’s heads off in Counter Strike or Call of Duty never made me a raving psychopath, it never made me think about storming a public shopping mall — or as with the controversy with MW2 — an airport. It taught me reaction, pin-point precision and that was it. It wasn’t some maniacal thing, born of ill-fated death wishes and sour hearts — it was innocent. Like Austin Powers not using condoms in the 70's, “FREE LOVE MAN”.

It even taught me to be a more successful student. In 6th grade at the beginning of the year — in “Intro to computing” — my teacher promised any student that if they could out-type her by the end of the year they could play games for the rest of the year. My teacher typed at 60 wpm, I typed at 120. At the end of the first week, I asked her how fast she typed and was completely astounded that I typed twice as fast as she did. She didn’t believe me, so naturally I went over to my PC, booted up Mavis Beacon and jotted out the lines of the test until it was over. 121 WPM. Her mouth dropped — “How in the world did you learn to type that fast?!” she said. “Gaming” I responded. “When I’m playing Starcraft every single second counts, so I had to learn how to type really fast so that I could communicate with my teammates in 2v2, 3v3 or 4v4 scenarios while still being able to operate my own units.” She was absolutely stunned and stayed true to her word. The funny thing is, when I was bored of destroying rocks on Asteroids I would go ahead and follow along with her lessons. She ended up being one of my favorite teachers throughout the course of my middle-school career.

I played Counter Strike for 8 years from the time I was 10, playing tournaments online and in person, winning prizes and credibility — I learned how to really work as a unified team in perfect harmony. It was like being in the NBA by 13. I didn’t need to make my high-school’s basketball team (which I did) to teach me team sports, I made the basketball team because I knew team sports so well.

Gaming taught me these skills preliminary to when other people were learning them. I think there is a fundamental lapse in understanding when people talk about gamers “not wanting to go outside” or “experience the world” because they don’t understand that they’re experiencing the world beyond the realm that is of access to them in everyday life. They’re experiencing people and cultures from all over the world as they play together in teams and in groups. They are interacting, learning and building onto their own understanding faster than most at their own age that are not like-wise engaged. Reason being because if you’re online — you’re not limited to the confines of your physical location. Just as businesses that offer remote-work opportunities want “talent” from all over the world, and not just limited to their own physical surroundings, gamers want to play against and interact with the “best” in the world. It’s no different.

Had I grown up not on the web, not interacting with people around the world (who I will forever remember as some of my closest friends) I would have grown up in Cumming, GA. I would probably have had a dip in my lip by 13 instead of winning tournaments and prize money for competition. I would probably have drove a huge truck with an extended blower exhaust instead of caring about the minot features of German cars and the beauty of their simplistic design. I would have probably stayed in the same place and not escaped my situation to somewhere that meant more to me to pursue opportunities that generally interested me — as working at the local Wal-Mart would have probably been a perfectly acceptable option to me.

I’m not saying I’m a big winner for the experience I had gaming, but I sure as hell would rather my kids reach for their fullest potential rather than be limited to the confines of what is in their immediate proximity. It’s absolutely selfish to not give your kids the tools they need to succeed, tools and teaching. This is why I will give my kids every opportunity I can to learn the ways of the force — I mean the web, and the opportunities that are available to them.

I learned this through gaming, I know there are many other variables that went into this — but I believe there are different avenues for everyone to find their own greatest potential. This is why I will give my kids every potential avenue they see towards success. Whether it be gaming or not, my parents were absolutely incredible to give me the freedom to define my own path — by merely (and I say that like it was a small feat, it was massive) giving me the tools to carry out their journey.

If you haven’t got the point by now — it’s not to force your kids to game, it’s to realize your kid’s potential and give them the tools necessary to find their own path — their own “voice” in this world, and to embrace what teaches them.