NEW YORK — It might be time to ditch that cubicle and pick up the controller — two out of three Americans say it’s time for society to treat gaming as a legitimate career. The revelation comes as 54 percent of 2,000 adults polled believe video games should be learned. in schools, and three out of five believe that gambling should be part of the primary school curriculum.
Meanwhile, 53 percent said video games should be an academic extracurricular activity, just like other sports.
The study, commissioned by Wargaming and conducted by OnePoll, finds that many believe they should be taught as early as primary school (41%) or secondary school (42%). Although the average person started gaming at age 11, more than half of respondents (54%) believe entry into professional gaming should begin with younger children playing in minor leagues similar to minor league baseball.
Most of the surveyed students have similar feelings about game education. Four out of 10 respondents said they were currently in some form of higher education. Of those, 88 percent would play games if they could.
When asked what they would focus their hypothetical gaming studies on, students would be most interested in communications and streaming related to content creation (60%), games knowledge (50%), graphic and technical arts (50%), and business management (49 %).
“Just like math, social studies and reading lessons, there’s a lot to learn from playing games,” says Artur Plociennik, director of publishing at Wargaming, in a statement. “Giving kids a place to develop real skills in video games is something that can give them a bright future that’s both fun and profitable.”
Time to quit your day job?
More than four out of five (85%) play video games regularly or a few times a month. Read also : Chicago area black belt representing the United States in Maccabiah Games. Half of these respondents (42%) play every day.
Six in 10 gamers (64%) learned basic skills through gaming – including critical thinking (47%), creativity (47%), hand-eye coordination (45%) and communication skills (44%). More than half of those surveyed (58%) also learned some more obscure but useful skills from what they play. These skills include patience, increased attention and focus, and statistics and probabilities. A handful of respondents even credited video games with improving their physical abilities — such as improving their “dribbling, jumping and shooting” skills.
Fifty-two percent believe gaming even makes them better at their day-to-day work, with (55%) saying they would stop gaming professionally. The top-earning genres that help busy gamers “do well” in their daily work are real-time strategy (RTS) games (15%), first-person shooters (FPS) (14%) and sandbox games (14%).
“It goes without saying: the number of skills people have learned through gaming has proven to be invaluable,” continues Artur. “Hand-eye coordination, teamwork, critical thinking… these are just a few examples that this research has shown can help people improve their day-to-day work – even if they’re not professional gamers.”
