My Learning for life from online games

For the past few years I have been playing a number of online games in my quest to build and maintain my brain. Specifically those that develop speed of reaction, strategic adaptation and memory. I know from research that games can only improve the specific area of thinking that is practiced (e.g. speed of reaction) – but my experience is that I have learnt a great deal more about life from playing these games. Let me explain.

When I started playing Zuma Blitz my scores were hopeless (under 200 each week); they are now consistently high (1-2 million each week).The objective of this game is to score points by shooting balls at groups of three or more balls of the same colour. Side issues include hitting fruit which appears erratically and choosing and using special powers that are earned along the way that can give greater scoring possibilities.

I can assume that the skills needed to play have been improved; speed of response, spatial awareness, changing strategy with each week’s new board and opportunism (taking sudden chances to score as they arise). Interestingly, although there is no doubt that these skills have improved, I have also noticed the following personal life learning from the game as a whole:

• Stick at it. It’s important to play regularly because it is only by practice that the brain creates an ‘auto pilot’ for the basics of shooting balls – giving me the extra thinking time to create new strategies.

• Don’t be put off by others. When I first started, a friend competed with me. She was naturally very good at playing – she was younger and clearly had much faster responses. For the first month she beat me every week. It would have been easy to feel that I would never have a chance and should give it up.   Instead I just decided to compete with myself and kept playing to improve against my previous week. I realised that when I compare myself to others I often feel emotionally defeated. After the first month, I noticed that I started to beat her. I did every week until she gave up playing.

• Experience helps if you use it. As with many other games like this one (and life) it gets easier as you progress through the levels of experience – you get more benefits and at level 80 it is infinitely easier to score over 1mill than it would have been at level 2. Stay with it and you will automatically get better results if you improve your skills and get the benefits of experience.

• Learn to focus on the right thing. For example, if the board was easy, I could often score for shooting fruit – but if it was hard, I learned to forget fruit and focus on hitting more time allowances for a higher score. You can’t focus on everything at once and choosing the priority is critical for high scoring!

• Understand the fundamentals. Speed is critical at all times and on all boards. It helps to grasp the key underlying criteria for scoring.

• Challenge yourself often. Once I just decided to speed up – and astounded myself by actually doing it! I had thought that I was shooting as fast as I could, but simply by deciding to do it faster – I did! This realisation shocked me more than any other – how much of my potential am I holding back because I think I am doing the best I can already?

• Focus on the result – don’t be distracted by success. On one occasion I happened to glance at the score as I was playing a particularly good game. Disaster. I was scoring very highly – the emotion of excitement that hit me knocked me off my stride and I lost valuable seconds. I went from a potential high score to an average one. Now I have learnt that I never check how I am doing until the game finishes.

• Don’t let failure derail you. I get frustrated when I miss a ball. In the early days, I used to stop and find myself thinking about why I missed it; naturally this slowed me down. I learnt that Short term failure is not a problem. Now I have trained myself to keep going as hard as before the mistake – not even allow it to enter my feelings as I play. I think about why I missed when the game ends and plan to adjust my technique. My highest score happened after I had made two or three poor shots at the start of a game!

My Conclusion

I can only talk from my own experience of learning from on line games.  I reckon that I have learned as much about myself as I have improved my mental skill set. I thoroughly recommend using games for development – its fun – which is the best state of mind for learning.

I also play Plants and Zombies, Bookworm and Bejewelled from the Popcap stable   I regularly play the short games on Grownups , Posit science  and do Sudoku on the NZ Herald site  

 If you are interested in the areas to develop visit this site to discover your brain age by doing the brain age test! 

If you are wondering what I do in my spare time – I work!