Can Playing Video Games Make Us Better in Business?

Thanks to smartphones putting a handheld console in everyone’s pocket, video games are more popular than ever. In 2013, the video game industry pulled in over $21 billion in sales, and today, more adult women identify as video game players than do teenage boys. Aside from providing hours of entertainment and brain workouts, video games can actually make entrepreneurs better in business. The same skills that make an individual a successful gamer are the traits that lead to business success. Below we discuss video game principals that can be applied today to make us better at managing or running a business.

Learn That Success Means Constant Improvements With Video Games

All successful video games have improved on their original versions with each addition to their franchise. Games like Super Mario Bros, Madden NFL, Call of Duty and HALO are excellent examples of games where the developers did not wait for everything to be perfect before releasing their first edition. Instead, they continually relied on their broad spectrum of customers to play the games and help them find their flaws and areas that need improvement. Video games can teach business leaders that success is an ongoing process.

Video Games Demonstrate a Quick-Win Culture

When you’re playing a video game, you experience short-term wins. Most successful games are designed with these short-term wins so that a habit of success is instilled in the long-run. It is up to business leaders and owners to create and celebrate a quick-win culture in order to foster the long-term success of their company. This requires setting up achievable, actionable near-term goals and a clear picture as to how those goals lead toward the broader objectives of the business. Video games can replicate this experience with their design, which breaks them down into checkpoints, worlds, levels and stages. These measures of progress keep our interest in the game and will work the same way for keeping your staff engaged in achieving business goals.

Video Games Make Saving a Habit

The more complex that video games have become the more important that the saving progression has become to successful completion of the game. Saving lets players start in the same spot where they left off. Just like a business entrepreneur, gamers spend hours collecting, working and advancing. Since no one wants to repeatedly start over from square one, it makes perfect sense for business owners to build redundancies and backups for the most critical systems for the success of the enterprise. It is also a good idea to practice personal backup protocols, by capturing lessons learned so we do not fall into a routine of making the same mistakes over and over again. The most successful professionals, executives and even world leaders have benefitted from keeping a work journal, written or digital.