electron zoo

Here’s a “joke” that reflects my present geek-life:

Q: You know you’re a nerd when …
A: You’re having a bad day because you woke up and and realized all your Sims have died.

No, I don’t usually game, but for the last few days I’ve been playing a Palm OS game called Village Sim.

I don’t play video games much, but I often wish I did. For years I’ve suspected that by not gaming, I may be lacking some kinds of intelligence — such as the ability to navigate a virtual 3D world — that a younger generation (who grew up playing the fancy stuff) has. I figure that these skills that are gained by gaming will earn someone higher productivity and understanding of the systems that will be developed by this generation of gamers.

Just as the Windows and Mac desktop act a little bit like Lemmings, future operating systems may behave like Unreal … or whatever those crazy kids are playing these days. And I don’t want to be left behind.

These suspicions found some ground when I read an article in Discover magazine about some new brain research. This research concludes that playing video games is like going to the gym for your brain — it builds problem solving ability.

Additionally, some virtues can be learned by gaming, such as patience. As an adult who stopped gaming years ago, I completely agree. I can pick up a game and put it down again faster than a baby with a business management book. Why? It takes a lot of hard hard work to master a game — in fact, just learning the controls can require major effort. (This research was about video games, but I would argue that Linux users also demonstrate extreme patience!)

I know I’m not going to master these skills by playing a Sim on my Palm Tungsten, but it does take some patience and problem solving ability to keep my group of virtual islanders alive. To all you grown-ups out there who haven’t been giving video games a chance: try to endure one for a little while, and you might learn something new.

Or maybe you’ll kill off a bunch of innocent Sims in your sleep. And then when the robots rule humans in 2015, you’ll pay — oh yes, you’ll pay dearly for what you did to the ancestors of your new computer overlords.

Uh oh …