What Can Video Games Teach Us About Resource Management?

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If you’re not a part of the gaming world, you might think that spending hours playing video games during the week is a waste of time. However, video games have a great way of simulating real-world phenomena, including resource management. You can examine the implications of choices made in specific psychological and social situations without running the risk of making a mistake that affects people in reality.

Video games also teach us lessons that make it easier to evaluate decisions we should consider in real life. Additionally, it subconsciously helps children in a relatable, yet enjoyable way. 

Games and the Human Psyche

Just like everything else in life, video games can be used for good or for evil. You may have heard of how games make kids violent or ill-behaved. The media tends to focus on the negative effects of video games while ignoring the positive ones.

Depending on how they’re used, games can have positive and negative effects on the human psyche. Many of them are educational and provide us with a unique way to examine aspects of our own personalities. It’s also beneficial to view some business problems in the same way we would tackle a video game.

Resource and Asset Management in Video Games

Most games require you to learn the best way to manage and allocate your resources. You can’t pick up everything you come across without facing some in-game consequences. These resources include currency, limited use items and potions that provide some sort of benefit.

Video games distill many issues found in human interactions so that they follow simplified core rules. Resource management games require you to examine the resources you have, with the end goal in mind to come up with a strategy. This is a great method to adapt to .

Hoarding Useful Items

One approach players take for resource games is to hoard items, power-ups and other resources instead of using them through gameplay. Pride can prevent players from using valuable items. Other times, players can forget that they have something that would help them in a specific situation.

Game development can try to make up for hoarding by However, this usually leads to facilitating the behavior they’re trying to get rid of instead.

This type of hoarding behavior manifests in the business world in the form of business owners or tools they have on hand. Without a resource management system, there’s no way to know what you’ve got and how it might be helpful to your specific company’s challenges.

Too Awesome to Use

Many players work hard to get legendary items that are powerful and sometimes have limited use. But then when they receive it, they don’t use it until they get to the end of the game. The thought process behind this decision is that they might need it later.

Most of the time, this prevents them from making progress and complicate the game beyond what is reasonable. If you as a business owner are afraid to use an asset because of how useful it is, you might want to re-evaluate your decision and see if there is a specific application that would call for its use.

Choice Paralysis

Too much or not enough choice can make it difficult for gamers to make a decision. Thorough game development done in the sake of creating an epic game can sometimes .

Long introduction scenes or information dumps can make it difficult for players to understand what they need to do. To combat this, game designers have created systems that introduce gamers to the information they need as they need it.

Likewise, running a business in this way can help you better manage your resources. When you give your employees too much information, they can get overwhelmed and are more likely to make mistakes. But telling them what they need as they need it makes them more likely to succeed and utilize company resources appropriately.

Chance and Statistics: Failures of Human Perception

People aren’t great at analyzing their statistical chances. Gambling and games that have gambling mechanics exemplify the success of these actions. Game designers work to find a balance between making things too easy and making them too hard.

Business owners have a difficult time understanding how statistical probability applies to them. Instead of relying on your own perception, you’d be better relying on software to help you interpret asset data and Automating areas of your business to reduce human error will also help you make your company more efficient.

Learning from video games and working to gamify your business model is a great way to make your company more efficient and manage your resources more effectively.

By:

Bree Brouwer

Bree has held plenty of media- and marketing-related jobs over the years now, like working as a PR and marketing assistant to a Hollywood screenwriting coach, and writing content for three different digital marketing agencies.

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