I also feel playing lots of games helped me develop my spatial skills. Whenever I visit a new place, my brain immediately begins building a 3D map of the location, and I maintain an excellent sense of direction. I think this is a skill I developed from playing lots of lots computer games, especially adventure and RPG games where building a mental map as you explore is part of the fun. Even the old text adventure games like Zork helped me learn to make mental spatial maps in my imagination.

This skill especially comes in handy when navigating the mega-resorts in Las Vegas, which are often designed to hide the exits and keep people trapped inside as they wander through fields of slot machines.

I think if someone stops and reflects on it long enough, a person should realize that ANY definition they place upon themselves is really just a sort of “container” or “delivery medium.”

“I am a game developer.”
“I am a dancer.”
“I am a PhD.”
“I am John Doe.”
“I am male.”
“I am human.”
“I am consciousness.”

Every medium offers various opportunities and limitations. Some mediums we can control a great deal, while other mediums we (seemingly) can’t control at all.

Don’t take this wrong — I want my degree, but I want to use it as a route towards working one-on-one with people in my community. I don’t understand the people whose egos aren’t complete without those meaningless letters, who get crappy jobs they hate and ask, “Why don’t I get paid more? I have such-and-such degree!”

In education, like in life, what you learn is directly proportionate to the kind and amount of effort you put into it. You can slide through and get a nice piece of paper and a bullet on your resume, or you can really get invovled, get connections with people you’d otherwise never have worked with, and end up with multiple bullets on your resume as a perk.

And I am so not talking about “practical” degrees. With the number of MBAs being churned out, that degree’s doing to be as “useless” as my English degree… which I landed a pretty damn nice job with right out of college, thank you very much.

That degree hanging on your wall? Sorry, kids. It’s just the medium. There’s no inherent message in it unless you make one for yourself.

*blink* That is exactly why I was quietly miserable at the last place I worked for. People had been telling me for years that the medium was all that mattered.

Its nice to see an article that helps separate the medium from the message. I understand that being a game it has limits in terms of the message it can provide and the way it provides it, but within that room there is a lot of room to deliver a positive one.

I’m sure Steve has probably encountered a bit of cynicism from people who cast his role into the light created by a lot of self-help books that tout quick fixes but don’t actually promote growth at all. As I’m sure he probably encountered resistance when he too worked on games from people who see all games as GTA.

When reading the article I first thought “What a lame article! Steve just writes about some common sense things”

When I got deeper into the article, I found a deeper understanding of what I do.

Thank you for the article, Steve!

Games can provide all the benefits of entertainment, but games can be used to increase logical thinking, creativity, and many other benefits. I think Steve clarifies it best when he says that (games) are only the medium, the message can be pretty much whatever you want.

I think it carries an important message for a lot of us. I saw your comment at ProBlogger a few days ago about the guy who was giving up blogging as a business - And since I have started blogging myself, I have started questioning my reasons for doing so (blogging that is). Am I bloggin to blog, or blogging to help, or blogging to make money, or ect.. etc..
I think that by blogging, I am starting to understand my ‘Message’.

This article certainly helps me to question myself.

Hmm.. hope that all makes sense.

Thanks again.

Working on computer games (I came here from dexterity), it often feels a bit hard to feel like you are contributing real value when the industry is often attacked as a result of a few games that don’t represent my intentions. Your article really has given me a different perspective, thanks for that.