Often, gamers will become an IB/AP student. While people often question how come people who value entertainment so much end up doing so well at academic learning? Well I'm here to answer your questions through a gamer's standpoint.
So, what are games, really?
I tend to define games as an activity whether it be virtual or not which induces 'fun' entertainment value.
And fun is defined as?
The act of learning. Why? Well I'll tell you why, if you go to the roots of fun; the basis is that you're learning. Don't believe me? Well consider this: how are puzzles games entertaining to you? That's right, you want to solve the puzzle. This in turn means that you end up learning how to more efficiently do the puzzle and finally beat the game. Now, the obvious question is how do action games incorporate learning then? Well I'd have to say, finding the weaknesses of your enemies and how to navigate the terrain is pretty much the same thing as a puzzle game. Killing the enemy is essentially solving the puzzle, finding his weakness if just finding the most efficient way to solve the puzzle. Why is killing everything fun then? Well, while I don't have a concrete answer for this, I admit, I figure that the most logical course of action is that. It's fun because you're actually learning how it would feel like to be a person of such power. However, this gets boring quickly because your mind eventually cannot learn anything new. Same thing with grinding, it's not fun because you've learned how to kill this enemy several times already and your brain does not want to function to do such a repetitive task. Same thing with exploration, it's fun because you learn about the world around you.
So why is school boring then if you define 'fun' as learning. The fundamentally boring aspect school comes from how it's being presented. Inside a virtual world everything is exciting and the information comes to you in controlled 'spoonfuls'. Whilst during school you are force fed the concepts rather than exploring it. If you don't understand correctly, learning in my terms is defined as: "The discovery of new things". In video games this is discovering how to kill an enemy, seeing a new area etc... However in school, you're not discovering anything, you are being presented with information. This is not 'learning' per say, it's just trying to make your brain recognize this information and process it. Since the discovery element is not in play during school, we naturally perceive school as boring.
Why are so many gamers academically capable? Well that lies within the learning process of gamers. From gaming we know that learning is usually straightforward or out of the box. Straight forward games involve the simple hacking and slashing of multiple enemies while out of the box encompasses usage of switches, levers and in game mechanics to get to the next area. The very best games are a balance between the two. Because gamer's always take two different approaches to learning it is easy to see why they can absorb the information. gamers tend to take the information and remember it because of knowing this information can lead to further discoveries. Consider mystery games, gamers need to take note of everything they see so they can solve the case or puzzle of the game. Many games require you to be environmentally aware to accomplish in game tasks. What does this mean? Gamers remember things because the brain is in the habit of remembering information for later use as it may become important in completing something elsewhere.
Gamers who use the pc are even put in a greater advantage than your average gamer. They will normally have experience in coding. Because at some point a gamer's mind will be curious of how a game works. Normally this leads to the eventual knowledge of a coding language of some sort. Coding and programming in general includes lots of trial and error. Because trial and error is an important skill to know for academic success. For example, figuring out what caused the error in the program will let you more easily identify the same error if it occurs again. This is how studying works. Finding out what causes your errors and get into the habit of no longer making them. But because gamers will eventually develop this skill on their own accord through an entertaining hobby it becomes much more thoroughly developed as it was developed by doing something you enjoy, which acts like a catalyst for this skill. You know what I mean, you learn a certain subject better because it's more enjoyable then the next one; demonstrating my theory, of which you learn better if you enjoy doing it. That's the core reason gamers tend to be more intellectually fit. Furthermore, pc gamers will have to deal with viruses, errors, etc.. that they come across while using the pc. The process which they take to solve these problems are often the same process they will use whilst solving a problem at school. First attempt a straightforward way, and if that doesn't work, try something a little 'random' per say. Eventually you find the problem through all these random extentions from the straightforward process.
There are a couple of disadvantages of this style of learning however. The way your brain works in this stage makes you more of the logical type. You want solid concrete answers rather than arbitrary assumptions with evidence. You'll struggle with language arts especially. When you're trying to prove something you'll be driven crazy by the fact that you will rarely be able to back up your argument 100%. This sense of doubt will be your downfall. Often we end up only leaving in the points where we know we can back up 100% thus leaving a lot of gaps in our work. So I suggest that you try and forget that philosophy just for language arts class. It also a well known stereotype that gamers are somewhat uncreative. I believe this arose from how much we spend in a world created for us rather than day dreaming or something of the such of our own virtual world. However, gamers are equally creative, think about it. Gamers often ask themselves in video games: "I wonder if I could...". This ideology leads to the ability to think outside the box when solving problems which is a useful skill. I think that gamers which are left brained will have the greatest affect in their academic career. They will enhance the already logical mind while also prompting the brain to think about what ifs.
Finally, I think the most valuable skill you learn as a gamer is persistence. Because we sometimes try many, many times to succeed in a level or get a max score. our brains have that feeling of needing to do very well, and if that means you have to try several times, it will. And because we are gamers this skill is very well developed.
Just so you know, I disagree with everything that politics has said about video games. They always like to link video games to violence and miss doings these days. Particularly related to the FPS genre and GTA series. While I do agree that some people may get ideology from video games. The amount of people is almost negligible. Half the time they forget to factor in the many other sources of ideologies these days. The internet, movies, books, tv shows, etc... Which can also factor into this. Most of all however, is that fact that it isn't their entertainment values which lead them into their own wrong doings, it's often peer pressure or parents which just abuse their child. You cannot blame virtual worlds for the decisions of real people. It's the decisions of the person(s) to do crimes. And even if you did blame video games, they have ESRB ratings. I's not the developer's fault that parents give their 6 year old child CoD: Black ops.
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