A study published in February of 2020 concluded that the video game Civilization can be used to assess the skills that are highly relevant for managerial professions. These skills include problem solving, organizing, and planning. In this study, 40 business students were asked to play Civilization and subsequently participate in a series of assessments. It was found that the students who had high scores in the game had better skills related to problem solving, organizing and planning than the students who had low scores.
In the introduction of the study there is a quote from Mark Zuckerberg (Founder of Facebook) crediting Civilization for his beginnings in engineering. He states: “I’ve been playing Civilization since middle school. It’s my favorite strategy game and one of the reasons I got into engineering.” Similar to Kevin Systrom’s crediting Doom II for his interest in programming, let’s credit Civilization for inspiring one of the biggest innovators of our modern time.
If you have not played the video game before, Civilization is a strategy game in which the player has to build a civilization from scratch. The game takes place anywhere from the ancient era, all the way to the modern age. It allows players to protect their borders, build cities, develop infrastructures, discover novel technologies, maintain economies, promote cultures, and pursue diplomacy.
The mechanics require that game players move in turns, similar to chess. Each player has time to think strategically before acting. The game can be played alone in single-player mode or together with other players in multiplayer mode. There are four ways in which a player can win: domination, culture, science, and diplomacy. If a player is not able to achieve one of these victories, the game will end in 2050 and the person with the highest score will win. Due to all the ways a player can possibly win, the game is considered to be a broad and open one.
Further supporting the use of Civilization as an educational tool, Common Sense Media (a non-profit provider of entertainment and technology recommendations to families and schools) has stated that the game can be used in classrooms to help players develop creativity, thinking, and reasoning abilities. It is worth noting that the Civilization team was able to design an educational edition for the classroom and the game has since been used as an educational tool for history lessons.
All together, studies like this highlight the positive impact that commercial video games can have on our community. It is clear that different games and game genres can provide very different types of skills that gamers can learn and develop. You can learn more about the different benefits that you can gain from playing Civilization by using our video game benefits application.