After a brief intermission Make a Game of That returns, today we dance a brief jig on the graves of many a fantacist, summoning up the notion that we can apply what we learn in games directly into other aspects of our life

Games are fun, they're entertaining, that's why we play them, or so you may have heard. This isn't actually strictly true, we've played games for millennia because they're a very powerful way of learning. Nevertheless, while historically games have been treated quite seriously- think of sports, chess, debates and games of cunning, the modern game industry has propagated the idea of games as an exercise of leisure, of escape. Video games take us to other worlds, other places. Yet, while we can take the immediacy from games, you can't take games from immediacy. A wise man, long ago, once rhymed

'Leave the wise to argue and with me
the quarrels of the universe let be
come, and in some corner of the hubbub couched
make a game of that which makes as much of thee'

(Incidentally, this is where the title of this blog comes from) The sentiment expressed by Omar Khayyam, over a millennium ago, remains true today. Everything in our games is real, is out there in a myriad subtle ways. Play and games in general have become our way of addressing these complex and often terrible forces we must deal with in our day to day lives. Not only do they provide solace, but they also provide us ways of teaching each other to control these forces, passing on wisdom and developing skill.

Yet we have, by and large, succumbed to the idea that in playing our games we are wasting our time. This couldn't be further from the truth. Apart from the variety of minor cognitive and physical benefits heavy game-play has been shown scientifically to provide, it also gives us many more skills. Unfortunately, these suffer from what I like to call a synergistic lock. Because of the idea we have that games are separate from reality, and because of the fantastic couching in which games place real world skills, we often fail to realise that we can apply these skills in reality. People often suggest that it's a long bow to draw to give our fantasy play sessions a root in immediate skill gathering, but frankly that's bullshit. Take half a second, look at it from one step back and it's plain as day

This shit is subtle bro. Real subtle.

Whether it's an appreciation of the dynamics of urban planning fostered by Sim City or non-linear problem solving behaviour induced by Portal, a canny gamer can learn to draw out the skillsets required by video games into real life more consciously. Day[9], stalwart of this community that he is, has given us many demonstrations of this ability to unlock synergy. He reduces concepts to their barest essentials – if you're under pressure, hold off, when it eases, take advantage. Your opponent must have spent many resources to pressure you, so you're ahead. That's certainly a tactic you can use in, say, an argument, a business, so long as you understand the underlying principles. In short, games give us the skills, we must merely bootstrap the principles underlying them.

Day[9], bless him, also explored many other benefits his Starcraft career has leached into his 'real' life. The ability to make snap decisions, to organise time, to multi-task, to control stress and use it to his advantage. To resist peer pressure, to hold to his beliefs with passion but also with objectivity. All extremely valuable, powerful skills and abilities, ones that I have encountered training for in special forces military training, martial arts and practical medicine. Skills that typically take dedicated, intensive work to procure. Sean didn't have to do that training, he developed the skills along the way, just playing the game. All he had to do to apply them to real life- or rather, his life in other places than Starcraft- was to realise that he could. That's really all there is to undoing the synergistic lock, to realise that there's something on the other side of the door worth opening it for.

proof positive that gaming a manly man doth make.

As a designer, I think it behoves us creators to understand the skills we are developing a little more, to link them to reality and give our players the chance to apply their hard earned skills, to make a game, as the poem goes, which makes as much of them. As a player, I urge you to question the idea that games are merely entertainment. They are no more pure entertainment than the great works of literature, the sports and cultural rituals of our society, and their benefits are no less tangible. Nevertheless, to find those benefits, you have to know they're there. Now you do. Now you shall be ubermensch.

FORTH MY EVERGROWING ARMY OF THE UNDEAD!