What Video Games Get Right

Are you worried about the addictive power of video games? Are you worried they might suck the real world right out of your child? Well, hold that thought for another time. I want you to take a cold hard look at some of the good stuff video games have to teach us.

Let’s start with the Magic Formula for Motivation. Do you remember it?

The video game industry has certainly got it right when it comes to motivation. Kids want to play and they know they can succeed. And if they don’t know how, they can learn from repeated mistakes and reboots – free of judgment.

How does that compare with motivation at school or in math class?

Kind of like multiplying by zero isn’t it?

Kids are willing to play and lose – or fail – hundreds of times in a video game, while they learn to master it and advance. How come that kind of resilience isn’t fostered in school?

Video games promote mastery, engagement, and self-soothing by design. If you can harness those same elements and apply them elsewhere, what a powerful tool for learning you would have. No risk of judgment or humiliation attached to failure. In fact, failure is a source of learning in the video gaming world.

Fail early, fail often. Works for Video games and start-ups, but not school. Go figure!

Take a look around and try to figure out how you can recreate this Not So Secret Sauce. Can you think of an area of needed mastery where you could encourage engagement and resilience, free of the fear of failure and judgment? When you are learning a new sport, sometimes it’s more fun to not keep score. It sure helps my feelings about golf.

So, what can you do as a parent? Take the lessons from the video game industry and apply them at home. Instead of the need to avoid failures (and humiliation), label them challenges and sources of learning. In something like math, there’s no better way to guide your efforts than to focus your study on the problems you got wrong. Demonstrate your own willingness to take on challenges and learn from your mistakes so your kids get the message that it’s ok to fail en route to learning.

Author: ahbtest

Dr. Beitel has decades of experience as a therapist, teacher and parent since earning his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois. As a member of the University of Illinois medical school faculty, Dr. Beitel supervises psychiatry residents in training. He is married to "the other Dr. Beitel", a family physician. He and Joyce have two grown children. View all posts by ahbtest