Even if it’s not a real-life risk, playing a modern video game raises the stakes by putting your avatar and progress at risk of dying or falling behind in-game. Gamers quickly learn how to navigate unfamiliar areas and situations to face the unknown and get themselves or their team out of dangerous situations safely. This gives them the skills to face risks and the unknown in real life as well.

Even though being careless isn’t a good thing, having calculated, strategic risk-takers on your team can help your business go in new directions.

If you’ve ever played the Water Temple level on N64’s Ocarina of Time, then you know all about the importance of patience.

Patience and persistence are rare traits that help people do well at work and in their personal lives. People who are mentally strong are patient and know how to use these skills to deal with difficult situations and wait for success. This means that they are willing to go through training and the ranks to become an important part of your business.

Video games often have puzzles and other challenges that require players to change the way they think or act in order to solve them.

Over time, these skills of planning, adaptability, and experimenting get better, and they help in the business world when dealing with crises, work challenges, and conflicts. They also help gamers find creative solutions with limited resources.

In a lot of video games, you have to use strategy and plan ahead to move forward and finish a series of steps to get to the next level or prize. Games like StarCraft and Civilization have become very popular because they require a lot of planning and strategy.

Strategic thinkers also help in the business world, where a lot of success depends on having good plans to deal with the challenges of a constantly changing business environment.

For video game scenarios to work, the player has to pay attention to every detail and tune out the noise.

Calls, texts, and social media are a constant distractions for workers. The person that can focus on the task at hand gets more done. In a business setting, employees that can focus and have a keen attention to detail help deliver results.

In multiplayer video games, players often work in groups with leaders who decide how to play and what strategies to use. It’s up to the team leader to set times, talk to the other players, come up with plans, figure out the team’s strengths and weaknesses, keep morale high, and keep everyone on task.

Over time and by working with different teams in different game settings and situations, these skills get better. In business, managers, directors, and team leaders use the same leadership skills to keep their teams motivated and working together toward the business’s goals.

Multiplayer games require players to talk to each other and work as a team from far away using tools like webcams, Bluetooth headsets, and social media. To stay on a team, players need to learn social skills like being on time, being polite, being a good sport, and having a healthy sense of competition. These skills will help them interact with other players in a way that is fun. (Of course, not everyone gets that…)

In a business setting, these skills make employees who are willing and able to work well as part of a team, show up on time, work together, encourage others, and openly share ideas and strategies to solve business problems.

Every choice you make in a video game has risks and results, so good gamers know how to think through their options and use their best judgment to finish missions and campaigns. Most of the time, these decisions have to be made in seconds, so players quickly learn how to make good decisions and stay calm under pressure.

Business-critical decisions made in a panic can be disastrous, so it’s important to have calm, quick decision-makers on your team who can look at the current information and figure out what to do next to solve a problem.

Since the beginning of video games, it’s been important to find patterns and use them to move forward and win. Usually, this means looking at a lot of data and possible outcomes to figure out what’s going on and predict what will happen in the game. This is best seen in rhythm-action games like Just Dance.

Making decisions based on data in the modern business world means looking at the numbers, finding patterns, and making predictions to solve problems or get ahead of the competition.

Games used to be very easy. You had to hit a ball that was there. You had to be the first person to reach the finish line. Old games were simple because, of course, the technology of the time made them that way. But as game technology improved, the tasks became harder.

Take the very well-known Grand Theft Auto games. Now, players have to get to a certain place in a certain amount of time while fighting bad guys, getting through crowded streets, and making phone calls. It’s a lot of different things at once (which I think is the GTA motto).