Hello everyone, this is my first blog post. I planned to start my blog after I finished school for the summer (April 30), but I stumbled upon this article that was retweeted by one of my professors (syberspaz).
This article first touches upon how the number of women gamers are on the rise thanks to Electronic Art's "Sim" series and Nintendo's Wii console, and how this relates to the business world. It states that video games and simulations that are implemented into job training can improve the effectiveness of an employee; they allow the employee to fail as many times as needed in a synthetic environment rather than in real life (which removes risk of corporate monetary loss), and helps build collaborative skills with subordinates. Laura Staniland, co-founder of CivicsLab LLC believes that, "Games are a good space for women to grow more comfortable in being assertive decision makers and leaders."
Honestly, I feel that what the article provides is interesting; however I believe that the rising number of women gamers has nothing to do with women participating in business simulations with subordinates. If a business decides to train its employees through simulations, it would train both men and women employees, whether the number of women gamers are on the rise or not. Video games are pieces of software that anyone can purchase primarily to have fun, while simulations are pieces of software that put the user through an artificial learning experience. Excuse me for going off on a tangent here; what I'm really interested in, is if in the future, video game developers start to incorporate realistic (doesn't have to be exactly real life-like) simulations as design elements in video games. You can expect a post about that in the near future.
Opinions? Post your comments below!
