It's eerie how similar my own introduction to programming and business matches the author's. I started playing Runescape in elementary school (I logged many thousands of hours on the game) and eventually started programming because I desperately needed to automate some aspects of the game (my parents restricted video games to weekends only, which made it extremely difficult to meet my in-game goals). After teaching myself Java, I moved onto Android development and built a mobile app development agency that I ran throughout high school and college.
People tend not to consider the positive impacts of gaming, but I think there's something to be said for MMORPGs. Runescape has a complex economy, captivating story telling, and complex inter-player dynamics - in other words, a consequence-free playground that prepares kids for real life.
When I first started playing the game, I remember spending many hours aimlessly walking around. It felt like I was an explorer of old; I'd come across something new every hour. That feeling persisted throughout the years as I unravelled new experience after new experience: learning to become a merchant, joining a clan, killing a challenging boss for the first time, and so on. Compared to the day-to-day boredom of middle school and high school, perhaps it is only natural that kids gravitate to these online worlds.
The vast majority of people "lost in the gaming world" is not going into programming or learning anything useful. Socially, it's a lot of "GG" and insults to each others mothers. Connections in "clans" or "squads" are mostly incredibly shallow and abstract, compared to hiking or playing sports in a team or otherwise engaging in groups irl. Kids are physically underdeveloped [1], programming MMORPGs is mostly treated as cheating and not encouraged. Sure, in a billion life-years spent in games good things can happen, but compared to the time invested? Not much imo.
It's absolutely understandable why kids gravitate to these online worlds but I regret the time lost in games and if I could go back I'd really limit my gaming to brief, enjoyable sessions, and invest my energy to more challenging and ultimately rewarding things. Building skills, building real relationships.
> Socially, it's a lot of "GG" and insults to each others mothers. Connections in "clans" or "squads" are mostly incredibly shallow and abstract, compared to hiking or playing sports in a team or otherwise engaging in groups irl.
The best man at my wedding was a friend I played video games with that I met online (in "clans"). In fact, I'm sitting in a Discord server right now with about ten people that I've sat in a chat server of some sort since I was 14 years old (I'm 34 now). We meet up several times a year at different locations for vacations. Some of us now live close together and regularly hang out with each other's wives and kids. We still game together on a near nightly basis.
Maybe the relationships are only superficial and shallow if that's the level of effort you put into them.
I mean that's the case for you, but not for everyone. I've made connections in games (friends, guildmates, clanmates), that have lasted for over a decade. I don't regret a moment of the thousands of hours I poured into online games.
> programming MMORPGs is mostly treated as cheating
WoW, by far the most successful and influential MMORPG ever made, has a large API surface for displaying in-game information and automating certain actions, and it has a large mod scene that takes advantage of it.
Games give you a nice domain to think about that you get very involved in. I think they are a very good starting point for business-oriented programmers. You are very invested in the "world" and stuff that doesn't work as you want is painful. If it's painful enough you solve the problem via programming.
That's pretty much exactly how good and sustainable software business in the B2B world tend to start. As a HS student it's not very likely that you know much about the healthcare, legal or whatever domain but it is very likely that you "live" in some game domain.
I think there's some potential in cultivating this spirit and moving on to real world problems. Maybe something as silly as "talk to your family, what jobs do people have, are there painpoints you can identify, how would you solve them".
The good thing about games is that there's no bureaucracy involved and feedback loops are fast. It can be frustrating if you write an automation script that makes a task someone solves by doing manual steps (Excel entry etc.) easier and then not have it rolled out or having to wait half a year to get a report if it improved things etc.
>People tend not to consider the positive impacts of gaming, but I think there's something to be said for MMORPGs.
I personally know multiple people that were fired from multiple jobs each because they would regularly call in or show up dead to the world specifically because of WoW. At one point I had 2 room mates, both got fired within a week of each other and would stay up playing WoW being incredibly loud in the living room for 18-20 hours at a time, often disturbing my sleep.
This is not an uncommon thing. People get incredibly addicted to these sorts of games chasing fictional lives, not contributing to society, letting their health slide into oblivion and even often spending actual money to purchase in game items. There have even been deaths and murders directly attributed to such games.
There is a reason people don't focus on the positive, those with negative impacts on their lives far outweigh those with positive I imagine.
I would love to see a game like RuneScape but with a built in "script manager". It would be sandboxed from your machine for security, but promote building little scripts to help you play the game. It would be ideal in a non-pvp game where the points don't really matter (Like Minecraft)
I have nothing to add, just pleasantly surprised to see RuneScape mentioned on here! I can credit RS for inspiring me to learn programming after I got involved with several private servers. Android development was also a natural progression for me.
People tend not to consider the positive impacts of gaming, but I think there's something to be said for MMORPGs. Runescape has a complex economy, captivating story telling, and complex inter-player dynamics - in other words, a consequence-free playground that prepares kids for real life.
When I first started playing the game, I remember spending many hours aimlessly walking around. It felt like I was an explorer of old; I'd come across something new every hour. That feeling persisted throughout the years as I unravelled new experience after new experience: learning to become a merchant, joining a clan, killing a challenging boss for the first time, and so on. Compared to the day-to-day boredom of middle school and high school, perhaps it is only natural that kids gravitate to these online worlds.