I think that every parent wants the best for their children, to ensure that their children are making the best choices in their life. I am the mother of a 17 year old son that is a junior in High School. This means that every choice he makes can potentially impact his soon to be college admissions and future career. One night recently, my husband and I were having a conversation about our son. We were discussing what he likes to do for fun. One of the things he likes to do is play role playing games on the computer, i.e. – Dungeons and Dragons. As I am always thinking like a workforce development professional, I made the comment, “I hope he is getting some transferrable skills from this game.”
Since that night of parenting pillow
talk, I have been exploring this further. Do these games translate into a
future or is my child going to be eating cat food at age 50 while living in my
basement? After much discussion with my husband about how these games work, I
have learned that maybe this is way for career preparation for the real world.
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Team Work- I have learned
that you can’t play Dungeons and Dragons alone. This is game where a group of
people work towards a collective goal (save the world) while each person
remains in a character that is necessary for the story. The characters all have
specific jobs (wizards, priests, and elves) that help the final goal be
achieved. If one person is missing from that night of play, the whole story
changes, including the final ending.
Sounds like the real world of work where if I don’t perform my job the
company’s goal may not be achieved.
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Negotiation- Along the way in
the story, each character has to learn to negotiate with the other characters
to achieve his goal, get necessary goods and resources, and or remain in the
story. This reminds me of the real world
of work, where every day is a negotiation of giving and taking from others in
order to get the best overall result.
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Leadership – There are
assigned leaders in the game and then there are points when characters may take
a major role in their stories. Each character may come to a point where it is
necessary to be front and center in order to get the story to the point it
needs to go.
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Management- In these games,
there is someone that is a “Master” that usually does not play a major
character, but rather manages the time, resources, and story of the game. This
person is in charge of having all the information necessary for the players to
be able to play in the session. Without
this guidance, there would not be a common goal or the story would be all over
the place.
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Cultural
Competency-
Since this is the technological age, my son is not sitting around a table with
a bunch of friends from school doing this. He is on the computer doing this
virtually. He plays with real people from all over the world. I learned that he plays a game with someone
from Japan. The game is the game, but learning to work with people from all
over the world is a big deal
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Working
Remotely-
Since he is doing all of this on the computer and he is essentially physically
alone when he is doing this, he has learned how to manage his own technology,
troubleshoot his issues, and how to manage his time to achieve his goal.
After I came up with this list, I spoke
to my son about it. He referred me to an online video called “Can Dungeons and
Dragons Make You a Confident and Successful Person?”- http://youtu.be/VFtlDhksGHA from the PBS Idea Channel.
After watching this, I also noted the creativity and adaptability learned, ethical
issues and problem solving debate, and organization learned from this, so this
lead me to ask my teenager, “So if you have learned all these things, why do
you do not apply them in school?” His answer, “Dungeons and Dragons doesn’t
feel like work.”
I guess the other thing that is
transferrable to the real world of work is PASSION!
If work feels like work, it will always be work. As workforce development
professionals we are trying to help people get work, but the kind that will not
feel like a job, but rather a calling. If my youth can figure out that you need
passion to be successful, then maybe we need to be working harder on passion
and less on occupations in demand. Just a thought. Maybe we can work out the
future of our profession in a role playing game?
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