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Comment by ulnarkressty | Hacker News Reader

In general transferring skills through games is quite hard, except for the skill you are actually practicing in the game (i.e. by playing chess you will mostly improve your chess ELO). There is some research going on to broaden this area though [0].

Where gaming and more recently the 'educational' apps one sees advertised on certain websites and youtube channels definitely do help is raising awareness and motivation to the featured scientific disciplines.

[0] - https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s41465-022-002...

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From experience, I can say that there are many games with transferable skills.

At the top of my list is Factorio, and second is actually World of Warcraft.

More generally, there is a lot to learn from game design that you can learn through playing. The question of how to make taxes palatable, for example, is really no different to the question of how to challenge a player without frustrating them.

I believe the value of games are poorly understood, partially because chess, a game that has nothing left to teach us, muddies the conversation

> "because chess, a game that has nothing left to teach us"

That's a wild and weird take. It may not teach the collective "us", if your "us" is a very small set of well-established, experienced, smart, and mature people always in their element, then, yes, Chess has arguably nothing left to teach "us".

But it can be a very good learning experience for the absolute majority of people.

>(i.e. by playing chess you will mostly improve your chess ELO)

I have found it to help with strategy, especially multi-round strategy. This is useful in business and other areas of life, not just chess ELO.

Opportunity cost.

What about Go, or Checkers, or Call of Duty, or...?

That's the issue. Yes sitting down and concentrating on difficult tasks for long periods of time is good exercise. So is jogging, which isn't sitting down. Or rowing. Or lifting weights. Or...

Chess probably has much less benefits than learning a musical instrument, for example.

I will say that playing counter strike for money has given me confidence in stressful situations in a workplace, as well as helping me navigate tension between team members/co-workers.

It is mostly soft skill type stuff. For example, something goes wrong and veers from an original plan, and you have to come up with a solution and adapt in the moment.

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