My job role is a Technical Lead. When researching some cloud technologies for adoption I came across the Cloud Native Computing Foundation’s Landscape web page which lists all cloud technologies that come under their umbrella.

The sheer number and variety of them made me realise that perhaps players of games like Magic The Gathering or Dota would probably feel right at home when designing cloud applications since the job involves identifying apps that synergize with each other and min-maxing their costs.

So I was curious if there were more such examples where gaming skill could translate well to real life jobs?

  • Shard@lemmy.world
    0·
    1 day ago

    True story. Am a controls engineer. I program stuff like the production processes for pharmaceuticals, F&B, etc.

    I come from a time where most games were single player you couldn’t pay to win. Not all games had cheat codes.

    What we did have were memory/hex editors, game files, .ini stuff.

    With what little instructions you could find online, you had to dig around and figure out where to find stuff and how to edit them so you got unlimited gold or super powerful equipment, etc and not crash the game at the same time.

    Little did I know, this built my foundations for controls programming and troubleshooting. There are so many parallels like using memory editors is so similar to our debugging software where we want to find individual parameters that aren’t behaving or communicating properly.

  • thermal_shock@lemmy.worldEnglish
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    2 days ago

    I learned to type gaming. Learned much better hand eye coordination. Learned about history. Learned about critical thinking and problem solving, context clues. All translate very well into life skills.

  • Drusas@fedia.io
    0·
    2 days ago

    I learned more about leadership than one would expect by being a leader in a major WoW guild back in the day. Managing people is managing people.

    • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
      0·
      2 days ago

      I remember people talking about stories where someone got a great job because they happened to be a big guild leader and someone at the company was in the guild. It makes sense to me, just running a 10 man Kara with people that already knew what to do was exhausting.

  • HarvesterOfEyes@piefed.socialEnglish
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    2 days ago

    I mostly play fighting games nowadays and I think people can learn a lot about mental self-improvement by playing them online. Namely:

    • The main one for me: how to accept losses and learn from them. Losing/making mistakes is not the end of the world but an opportunity to learn from, grow and get better. Losing gives you experience if only on what not to do in a given situation
    • Not expecting short-term improvement and that you’ll get better at something overnight. Be patient, understand and accept that on some days you’ll be at the top of your game and on others you can’t even think straight. Think in medium-to-long term
    • Sometimes losing/making a lot of mistakes will get you mad. And that’s okay. Take a breather if you can.
    • Not comparing yourself to others and let yourself get discouraged. Everyone has their own rhythm. Maybe you’ll need to work harder than others on some things. But that’s just how it is sometimes. Keep at it and you’ll eventually see improvements.
  • KitB@feddit.ukEnglish
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    3 days ago

    Going back to my childhood: reading comprehension way ahead of my age group. You can’t play old jrpgs and point-and-click adventures without reading a lot.

    Not sure how true it would be today with everything being voiced.

  • Libra00@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    3 days ago

    Kerala Space Program taught me orbital mechanics. Well, Scott Manley videos taught me orbital mechanics, but KSP was the motivating factor and let me learn by doing.

  • traches@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    0·
    3 days ago

    Factorio uses all the same parts of my brain as my programming job, to the extent that I can’t play it during the week without risking exhaustion and burnout.

    • breaking down a complex problem into simple ones
    • organizing complexity
    • tracking inputs and outputs
    • managing edge cases
    • error handling
    • designing generalized, reusable components
    • tracking side effects
    • working under time pressure
    • handling feedback from biters users

    Seriously, if you like factorio and are looking for a career go into some flavor of IT/programming.

    • jet@hackertalks.comEnglish
      0·
      2 days ago

      When interviewing people I do ask if they play Factorio, and if yes, I ask about their thoughts on various design constraints and strategies they explored.

    • Libra00@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      3 days ago

      Apparently playing factorio is very similar to process engineering too. If I had known that was a thing before I got disabled I definitely would’ve done that as a job.

  • GeeDubHayduke@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    0·
    3 days ago

    Eye/hand coordination. Pattern recognition. Problem solving. Task prioritization. Cost/benefit analysis. Inventory management. I could probably think of others if i put effort into it.

  • AstridWipenaugh@lemmy.world
    0·
    3 days ago

    If you can use an Xbox controller, you can work for the military flying drones to murder people from the comfort of your desk chair.

    • Drusas@fedia.io
      0·
      2 days ago

      I guess I’m suddenly glad that all of their controllers are too large for my hands…?

  • naught101@lemmy.world
    0·
    3 days ago

    Not video games, but go/baduk taught me a lot about many things:

    • the value of failure with review for learning
    • the value of cycling between theory and practice for learning
    • approaches to pattern recognition, or at least how to apply already recognised patterns (this is more or less all of thinking, IMO)
    • reinforced my understanding of the ability of simple systems to produce very complex outcomes and emergent behaviour

    I’m a scientist, so these are all relevant to my work, but I’ve also used some of them in my personal life.

    More generally, C. This Nguyen frames games as “the art of agency” (where music is the art of sound, etc.). His observations of games are amazing and relevant to anyone working in a bureaucracy. An excellent intro to his work is his episode on Ezra Klein’s podcast. Well worth a listen: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/best-of-a-life-changing-philosophy-of-games/id1548604447?i=1000576579207

  • leaky_shower_thought@feddit.nl
    0·
    3 days ago

    some competitive players can learn emotional control and flexibility especially during stressful moments

    games like tetris and puyo-puyo train pattern-matching and real time cause-effect predictions

    on the not so serious side, there are <job> simulator games out there

  • Skunk@jlai.lu
    0·
    3 days ago

    I work in ATC and I’m a gamer. We do recruit some gamers for their competences that are 2000% beneficial to the job, like 3D space representation, stress resistance, quick eye to hand movement and quick thinking (think fast RTS or MOBA for example).

    But honestly I still find it hard to convince management into studying gaming benefits to ATC.

    Most of them still have the boomer reaction, aka:

    “bUt ThEy’Ll ThInK RaDaR iS a ViDeO GaMe!!! ThEy WoNt TaKe iT SeRiOuSlY”