'I learned English': Gamers reveal skills they gleaned from playing video games, leveling up their custom characters in the real world

Jesse Kessenheimer • Writer and Editor

Jul 27, 2023 3:00 PM EDT

Gaming has gotten a pretty bad rap over the years. Scared mothers who don't understand how video games are bewitching their children have been spearheading campaigns against the video game world. They've claimed that games are dumbing down the kiddos and brainwashing them into becoming violence-obsessed beasts and deviants. Any real gamer or video game aficionado can attest that that is clearly not true. Unlike the mind numbing slot machine-style games and mobile games designed for the technologically-challenged, most video games actually have a ton of add-value in a person's real life. Obviously for most gamers, there's also a lot of slashing, crashing, and looting, but in the midst of the game there are some beautiful nuggets of transferrable skill.

I bet you never considered a GPS to be like a real life mini-map and I bet you never realized how many people learn English as a second language using video games. Inadvertently, games are steeping gamers in talent and adding to everyone's skill trees without them even realizing it. Are you playing a racing game? I'd reckon you're checking your mirrors and being a little more aware of your surroundings on the freeway. Are you playing Red Dead Redemption? Perhaps you played a Black Jack in-game and now you know a little more about cards.

The gaming world is full of untapped beauty that the rest of the world just doesn't get. Even Goat Simulator has helped people in someway… perhaps with their rage issues and chaos fulfillment, blessing players with a dash of goat empathy.