Video Games Can Help You Become a Better Team Player at Work
Any creative process can definitely be considered a fun activity in general. This is especially true for designers and creatives who work as a part of the team. Basically, you can treat this process as a game in order to boost your creative thinking. In that respect, you are free to utilize the strategic moves you would use in a video game to improve your creative process as well as better yourself as a team player at work.
Creative professions such as web/graphic designer, content writer, marketer, etc. require you to work with people as well. It’s not just about focusing straight on your projects. This doesn’t only include clients, but your team members, too. This means that you need to be a valuable addition to the team, especially when you’re all working on a joint project. And, this is where video gaming can help you improve yourself, your communication skills and your patience. After all, just like in video games, working with team members professionally also involves different people with different skills, roles, and personalities.
So, let’s discuss the main skills one can develop when playing video games in a cooperative way and how these help improve your skills to work as a part of the team.
Understand the roles of your teammates
If you have worked on your own before becoming a part of the team, it may be a bit difficult for you to adapt. Still, even when you work as a freelancer, you’re never completely on your own, not really. You still need to discuss important decisions with the clients. For instance, teams in video games all have their own respective roles and duties that will allow all of them to finish different quests. If you play a lot of RPG games, you know what this is about. Essentially, you can translate this practice into your profession. Think of your team as a team of people you play games with. Your quests are your projects. And just like everyone in the game contributes to the goal with their unique skill set, you can all do the same at work.
Learn the game dynamics
Both freelancers and creatives who work for a company can benefit from learning the game dynamics. For starters, if you play games online at different intervals with different people every time you log in, you’ll learn to adapt easier to different clients you probably have to deal with as a freelancer. And games where you already have an established team of players whom you work towards a certain goal with will help you adapt to your position at the company office as well. In the end, it’s all about accepting and understanding the game dynamics. Regardless of what you do, where you do it and who you do it with, working together with the same goal in mind will only be more efficient if you know how.
Get to know your team members better
You don’t have to become best friends with your teammates in order to get to know them better. Even a nice professional relationship is perfectly fine. Of course, if you do become friends, that’s great. But, the point is to know your colleagues enough so that you know how they behave in stressful situations, when they’re impatient, what their thought processes are, etc. This will be essential if you want to work efficiently as a team. Not to mention that you can avoid frustration and awkward future situations if you just learn more about the personalities and temperament of your colleagues.
Basically, the same thing happens in the world of video gaming. After all, once you get to know how some users play and act inside the game, you’d either want to team up with them for a quest or avoid them as much as possible. Obviously, while you can’t avoid your teammates, you can avoid causing the situations that make your relationship difficult. In the end, even if you don’t really get along with your coworkers but know enough about them to work efficiently and professionally, it’s more than enough to earn you respect as a team player.
Communication is essential
RPG games make the communication much more effective, especially since most of them require you to talk openly to your team players about strategies to beat the enemies and take all the right steps. It may be a bit difficult at the beginning, but after a while, you’ll get used to discussing various topics about a common goal and ways to achieve it with different people. Well, you can expect the same thing to happen in the world of creative professions such as website design, content writing and similar. Teams usually consist of people who have different skills and roles in order to bring a certain project to completion. Precisely because of that, you will have to openly discuss and explain your part of the project. You will have to clearly state what has to be done if you’re leading the project as well.
Essentially, communication between team members is a must, both in the world of creative digital work and the world of video gaming. If you already have some experience with the latter, don’t hesitate to utilize it in order to improve efficiency at work, too.
