Maybe it’s time to leave that cabinet and take control, as 2 out of 3 Americans say it’s time for gaming to be considered a legitimate career.
The revelation comes as 54 percent of 2,000 adults surveyed believe that gaming should also be taught in schools, and 3 out of 5 believe that games should be part of the core school curriculum.
Meanwhile, 53 percent noted that video games should be considered an academic extracurricular activity, like other sports.
Commissioned by Wargaming, a video game company founded in Belarus in 1998 and now headquartered in Cyprus, and conducted by OnePoll, the study found that many think it should be taught either elementary school (41 percent) or high school (42 percent).
Although the average person started playing at the age of 11, more than half of respondents (54 percent) believe that entering professional gaming should start with younger children playing in smaller leagues, similar to Small League baseball.
A majority of college students surveyed had similar feelings about video game education. Four out of 10 respondents stated that they are currently in some form of higher education. Of those, 88 percent said they would be most important in gaming if they could.
When asked what they would emphasize their hypothetical gaming studies to, college students said they would be most interested in content-creation-related communications and fluency (60 percent), gameplay (50 percent), graphic and technical arts (50 percent), and business management. 49 percent).
“Just like in math, social studies and reading, there’s a lot to learn from gaming,” said Artur Plociennik, publishing director at Wargaming. “Giving kids a place to develop real-life skills in video games is something that can give them a bright future that is just as fun as it is lucrative.”
More than 4 in 5 (85 percent) play video games regularly or a few times a month. Half of that amount (42 percent) said they play every day.
Six out of 10 players (64 percent) learned basic skills from gaming, including critical thinking (47 percent), creativity (47 percent), hand-eye coordination (45 percent) and communication skills (44 percent).
More than half (58 percent) said they also learned some more confusing but useful skills from what they play.
These skills include patience, being more alert and focused and statistics and probabilities. A handful of respondents even credit video games for leveling up their physical skills, such as improving their “dribbling, jumping and shooting” skills.
Fifty-two percent said gaming even improved them on their day jobs, with (55 percent) saying they would give up on playing games professionally.
The main genres credited with helping hired players “get better” with their day jobs are real-time strategy games (RTS) (15 percent), first-person shooters (FPS) (14 percent) and sandbox games (14 percent).
“It goes without saying: the number of skills people have learned from gaming has proved invaluable,” Plociennik continued. “Hand-in-hand coordination, teamwork, critical thinking … these are just a few examples that this survey has shown that they can help people improve their day-to-day work – even if they’re not professional players.”
Top 7 Gaming-Related Majors College Students Would Take
Produced in association with SWNS. This may interest you : Amazon Prime Video just quietly added 15 major movies to its library.
This story was provided to Newsweek by Zenger News.
