Book recommendation: Got Game: How the Game Generation Is Reshaping Business Forever, by John Beck & Mitchell Wade. The basic premise is that Gamers are learning some fabulous tactics and attitudes that will serve them exceedingly well in the biz career wars that lie ahead. Here are some highlights from the review I read in today’s Financial Times:
“Growing up is simply different for gamers. They have replaced whatever traditional experiences they might have had as supporting players [to conventional, passive media] with a dramatic increase in experiencing the hero role; they’ve also had more experience with repeated failure that builds toward success.”—the authors
“Perhaps surprisingly [the authors] found no evidence of short attention spans. Far from it. Avid gamers have the ability to spend hours, days, or even weeks in single-minded pursuit of an objective. Nor did they find violent tendencies. They argue that behind the hyperviolent veneer, most video games are actually sophisticated simulations that reward perseverance and learning-by-doing. The result is a generation that can seem like ‘arrogant slackers’ at first but are in fact highly motivated—if given the opportunity to develop and play a starring role in their own projects.”—FT