Getting Real World Skills from Playing Video Games | Liz Fiacco | TEDxChapmanU

Liz Fiacco, creative entrepreneur and game designer, and co-founder of Fallstreak Studio, makes the case for videogames insofar as they help us develop transferable skills that can make the difference for us in the real world. .

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With so many things in the world
to learn and master,

how can anyone ever become an icon,
a genius or a maverick?

I think most of us here probably relate

more to the Demon Cat in Adventure Time

where we have, like, an approximate
knowledge of many things.

Luckily, knowledge in one topic can
actually help you master another topic

or at least, help you get a head start.

So my name is Liz Fiacco

and I graduated here,
Chapman University

last year with a BFA in Visual Arts
and game development.

After graduation, I founded a company
called Fallstreak Studio

with the partners that I work with on
developing a game called Axel.

So we raised 20,000 dollars through
donations on Kickstarter

but we could not have done that

without a lot of hard work
and a huge transition.

You see, I've been studying
animation and film for 4 years,

as emphasizing in storyboarding,

and then suddenly I found myself

surrounded by all these
businessmen and businesswomen.

And I was a little bit out of my water.

Luckily, I think everyone here
has experienced some time

where you've learnt something
outside of the classroom

and it's become useful
somewhere unexpected.

For instance, when you're a kid
and you're roasting marshmallows

you kind of get the idea that you can
get the fire going by blowing on it

and you get the idea
that you put a fire out

by smothering it with water or sand.

Well, that's great
for roasting marshmallows,

but then when you get
to high school chemistry

and you're studying combustion reactions,

all of a sudden you understand
why oxygen is needed for fires.

You have this innate knowledge of it.

But you weren't thinking about chemistry
back when you were roasting marshmallows.

Unless of course you had really nerdy
parents who told you.

So I used this ability,

these transferable skills,
after I graduated

to sort of retrofit
my film animation education

into the entrepreneur world.

One of the first things that
just kind of boggled my mind

about the business world is that
everyone kept asking me:

"who's your market"?

And my major reaction was to say:
"anyone, please,

someone, please, someone,
buy my product! Please!"

But that is not what they wanted to hear.

So, when we were developing
our Kickstarter video,

I realized that when businesspeople
asked me what our market was,

that's when film people were asking us
who you're audience is?

And that painted a really
clear picture for me.

And from there I can make
better choices about how to build,

market and monetize our game.

So, transferable skills,
incredibly useful

but kind of unpredictable.

You don't really know
when a skill you learn in one place

is going to come in handy
somewhere else.

Plus, everyone comes from different
backgrounds and experiences,

so they're hard to share.

If you tell someone about
a transferable skill,

they don't really experience
the transferable skill.

But it's such a powerful learning tool

there's got to be a way to make it
part of a day-to-day solution.

And that is where I think
videogames can really shine.

See, games are actually the perfect medium
to hone transferable skills

because most of the times when you think
of a skill that you learn in a videogame,

you're thinking kind of like,
knowing what ability that you need to be

super effective to gain some
certain pokemon

which isn't terribly useful day-to-day.

But, if you think about
something like Rock Band,

if you learn how to drum on Rock Band,

eventually you're gonna learn
how to do real syncopated rhythms

and you're gonna learn
some common drum techniques,

which is pretty sweet.

And the power of these games comes from
their rapid teaching test cycles.

A player learns something new and then
immediately has to put it into practice

and they get tested on it again
and again and again.

One of the greatest games, Portal,
is actually about 70% tutorial.

So is not that when they teach you
it's a dry,

clearly, teaching through a videogame
is incredibly compelling.

Additionally, through a game
you can learn from failure.

I probably lost... I probably died
maybe hundreds of times

trying to beat
Donkey Kong Country Returns.

If I failed hundreds of tests in school,
I would have a very bad time.

But luckily with videogames,
you can learn from failure.

Additionally, with technology today,
videogames can actually simulate

extremely complex systems.
And they're interactive

which means that students or players
can change stuff about these systems

and then see the repercusions
of their actions in the world.

So all these powers in videogames,

but you can't get
a transferable skill from it

unless the mechanics actually reflect
real skills and real content.

Like with Risk. I love playing Risk
and I'm very competitive at Risk.

So in order to be good at Risk,
I need to really understand the map,

know where all the countries are,
know what borders what,

and this knowledge
to be competitive at Risk

helped me out when I was studying
World Geography.

Or a more poignant example
is the game Foldit.

Foldit is a game about
folding proteins up.

Stuff that scientists
are actually working on.

But it's a puzzle game and
it's a lot of fun,

and people actually managed
to fold the protein

within a couple weeks
of the game's launch,

that scientists have been stumped on
for years.

That's pretty cool.
That's a lot of power.

Also, games allow you to discover stuff
for yourself through the mechanics

you can find strategies and techniques

and really understand
why that's important.

For instance with Risk again,
I feel like I have first hand experience

on why Napoleon had such a hard time
moving his armies east through Russia.

Like that's impossible.

So yes, transferable skills are
incredibly important

but historically they've been only used
out of accident or necessity

or disresourcefulness.

And if we are mindful of them,

we can actually make them
a lot more powerful.

We can start inserting them into
the games that we make or other media.

So, encourage teachers to take
a second look at games

as more than just a distraction.

And try to find those real world ideas
and concepts and content from them

in order to actually bring
that content into the classroom.

Because these games aren't
necessarily educational,

like Risk, you don't think of it as
an educational game.

And Foldit is really more
of a puzzle game.

But yet there's really valuable
experience in them.

So, by actively seeking connections

you can actually use
transferable skills to a benefit.

Because if we all have a bunch
of disjointed experiences,

then you end up like that Demon Cat
from Adventure Time:

you have an approximate knowledge
of many different things.

But using transferable skills,
that can be the difference between

being knowledgeable
and being a genius.

So I urge everyone to go out

and try to create experiences
that can be transferable

for yourself and also for others.

And to realize that we have
the opportunity now to make

widespread transferable experiences
through videogames

and therefore the opportunity
to make an entire generation

of icons, geniuses and mavericks.

Thank you.

(Applause)