For the last part of the trilogy about gaming in your 30s as a marketing professional, I will explore what transferrable skills you gain from gaming and how I personally apply them in the workplace. Because, as mentioned in both part 1 and part 2, gaming is not just for kids and teenagers.

I remember my first touch with gaming. I was 6 years old, it was nearly Christmas, and my mom was out of town with work. She called to talk to me; she was going to see Santa soon and asked me what I would like to ask him for a present. I told her I wanted an Atari console so I can play after I do my homework. I guess Santa was good to me and I got an Atari 2600 for Christmas. It was pre-loaded with more than 500 games so I didn’t need any cartridges; it kept me going for hours. I then got a Nitendo Game Boy (the B&W one, the OG), and then I got a PC in 1998-99 with a massive CRT screen and two gaming CDs: Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 Arena. I did move onto Age of Empires, Diablo II and even Black & White and then I took a break to focus on my last year of school – and maybe become more engaged with MiRC for a while!

The first game I played when I moved to England in 2002 was Neverwinter Nights. Being a 17-year-old and away from home, in a foreign country, getting to know so many people from so many backgrounds was a bit overwhelming. Plus, most of the friends I made were also playing video games and it was a norm on how they were brought up, too. We preferred LAN parties to play DOTA 1 than going out – still, we never missed a Friday Night Disco (FND). I have played numerous games since and of various types: World of Warcraft (WoW), Grand Theft Auto (GTA), Halo, Skyrim, CS:Go, League of Legends (LoL), and Final Fantasy XII to name a few. And yes, I have played Worms and Angry Bird and all sorts of random mobile games, too. Some might interpret all of this gaming time as a “waste of time” when I could be doing something else, more appropriate for my age and gender; to me, gaming was and still is worth every second of the spare time I can get.

Gaming doesn’t benefit you in your professional life

I will always shout it from the rooftops and die on this hill: gaming gives you life skills and, consequently, work skills. Let me tell you how.

I have been at work places where I mentioned I enjoy video games and it was frowned upon. At a job I was before, I found out that a couple of the sales guys were playing the same game as me and we ended up chatting about it in the kitchen during lunches. After some weeks, my manager during my 1:to:1s told me that some of the higher ups saw us talking about games and they questioned my fitness to evolve into management material, as me gaming created a negative perception about my maturity in the office. When I asked whether this perception was also reflected to the sales guys, both men in their 40s at that time, he said that they didn’t tangentially come up in any conversations. I found that very offensive and I was vocal about it. I left that business after a while and never talked to anyone since – and never will.

I have also been in work places where guys would play video games and we would play after work all together, sometimes against each other and sometimes in the same team. We used to chat about it next day, strategise, go out and socialise, and work better as a team because we were all in sync with each other. Even when we had project disagreements, we didn’t care much – we plowed through everything in the end as a team through honesty, transparency, and good teamwork. I believe that gaming at that stage was just a means to bring us together and understand each other in-depth. We were a highly motivated, results-driven team and it showed every day.

So let’s go through the skills we transfer as gamers from gaming to work and specifically to marketing. I will talk with Counter-strike Global Offensive (CS:GO), League of Legends (LoL), and World of Warcraft (WoW) analogies. I mean.. why not, right! Some pointers:

• CS:GO is a multiplayer online first-person shooter game;
• LoL is a multiplayer online battle arena game;
• WoW is a multiplayer online roleplaying game.

So, how are gaming skills translated into work competencies – and more specifically, into marketing competencies? Let’s take strategy as our first commonality.

Strategy

One of the main things I do in product marketing is creating a strategy for the product I am responsible for based on creating a solid positioning, messaging, pricing (if they let me), and promotion tactics for the ideal customer profiles I want to target. I do market research to identify my audience needs and wants, pains and aspirations, competitors and other products that are replicas or similar to the one I am responsible for. I then put the information together and start informing people of the findings and asking for their input based on their experience and knowledge. This process happens naturally for me because this is what I do when I play videogames, plenty of which require strategy and strategic approaches so we can complete all steps and get a prize or an achievement. When I raid lead in WoW, for example, I have to be prepared (excuse the Illidan pun here for anyone who plays WoW). I have read all boss fight tactics, noted down map placements of different roles, and watched video fights from PTR videos. When I appear in the raid, I am ready to give the right information to the team with a clear directive to ensure we are all on the same page.

Simplification

As a product marketer, my forte is translating geek speak in short and simple pieces of content for the right target audience. Whoever knows me is aware that I am a talker. And also a writer on this occasion! But when we play I always take into consideration that we are all adults with limited free time, so it’s essential for me to highlight the specific gameplay mechanics that contribute to a quick and intense gaming experience. If I can get the help of some visualisations, too, that is a massive win for me. A very impressive fact for CS:GO 2 maps – the new updated version of CS:GO – is that they are designed for efficient navigation and clear objectives. This is how players can jump into matches, understand their roles, and engage in meaningful gameplay without a prolonged learning curve. Time is precious for everyone and the game has been improved to offer a quick, intense, and satisfying experience within a short timeframe. But sometimes the software is not designed with simplicity and time-to-value in mind. Not only in business but also in the case of WoW, a 20-year old game with 10 expansions and plenty of content to explore. So, when I raid lead in WoW, I start by reading various sources and writing down the tactics for me to read prior to the raid. Before we engage each boss, I break tactics down in phases, and then I summarise with bulletpoints and 2-3 keywords. I also make reminder macros to click on when the important phases come up and I try to make things fun so everyone can relate and enjoy it. We then give it some tries for everyone to start feeling comfortable and understanding when and what spells to click on. I remind everyone as well on Discord voice chat during the fight about the big incoming damages so healers can use their ultimate spells, or when we need ultimate power spells to be used when the boss is at its most vulnerable time, and we down – a.k.a. kill – all the bosses. So, even if I do all the research and get bogged down in all the detail, I always keep things simple for the guys with visualisations wherever possible so we can have time for more boss tries.

Leadership

I believe in being a leader by doing the work for and with the team, and that’s why people log online day after day to play the game but also to chat about life and how their day has been. With people being from all over the world – Europe, Asia, East Asia, even the US – I have to be inclusive of everyone’s needs and foster a guild environment that is safe and fun to be part of. Have I kicked people before for talking bad about others? Yes. Have I kicked them for mom or dad jokes? Not if I know that the other person receiving it is ok with it and it doesn’t get personal. Have I encouraged people to take initiatives and even help me raid lead? Yes, a sub team leader is always good to have. Have I let someone else raid lead? Yes, because I also have off days – I am human. But above all, I worked to ensure that everyone is happy and content within the team when we raid or do PVP and with the guild experience. This is part of who I am, and this is how we drive results in the guild; work hard, play hard, have fun harder. And I do the same at work, even if I don’t currently manage people. I love being part of a knowledgeable team where we can sit and strategise, delegate tasks, do some tests on different tactics per product, and then circle back and give feedback and results and improve from that point onwards. And the team thrives because my colleagues are of the same mindframe.

Adaptability

Talking about strategy, what happens when things don’t go as planned? In product marketing, just like in life in general, it is all about adaptability and making split-second decisions. External factors (our beloved PESTLE and Porter’s 5 Forces model to name a couple of external factors analyses) in combination with some internal company politics might mean that the plan we had in mind might be not viable anymore or too complex to execute in the short-term. It is an unstructured challenge that requires you to still make a strategic decision that can give you a win – or a lesson to learn. If we take LoL as an example, we can gain that adaptability skill very fast. We play 5v5 so strategy is required to be done both on a team level but also individually. You are split into 3 lanes, 1-1-2 and jungle as standard, and you got to push your own lane and help the rest of the team when needed. Depending on what characters you picked, you know your opponent’s spell so you can plan and assess the ever-changing situation you are in, adapt to your opponents’ strategies, and make those split-second decisions that might win you or cost you the game. Same thing happens in CS:GO; the nature of the game involves short rounds where you have intense firefights and strategic manoeuvres. You need to be able to pivot in seconds when things go wrong and adapt your strategy to push forward when you gain advantage.

3 Cs: Communication, Coordination, Collaboration

You can’t be a team and work towards winning a game or down a boss, if you don’t communicate. And by communication, I mean talking to each other every step of the way and coordinating and collaborating to succeed. I have seen my fair share in marketing before and even in the company I work for that marketers are there to “serve” sales and be an order-taking function. Or the product management thinks of them as a communications means and thinks that we will do “as we are told by the PMs” because we don’t know the product as well – but they can’t answer simple questions like “what is a feature, what is a platform, what is a product” and blame senior leadership for not having defined those parameters. No wonder why the product doesn’t have stickiness and there is no camaraderie, when everyone plays the blame game instead of communicating and collaborating. In WoW, if I don’t communicate the tactics clearly, we die. If I don’t ask for feedback on the boss fight to make things easier, we die. In LoL, if I don’t coordinate my lane and the jungler, we can be jumped at any point and have a 3vs2 situation and die because of my stupidity to not open my mouth early enough and voice the problems. In CS:GO, it is even more evident that you need communication, coordination, and collaboration; you are by yourself most of the time, you must make quick decisions, communicate with the others, and execute the strategy fast because the session is short and you need to outsmart the opposing team before they outsmart you. This collaborative aspect of those games fosters a sense of camaraderie and can serve as a positive contrast to the often solitary nature of some work tasks that are given to you to “just do without asking” by sales and product teams. This is real teamwork and as we all know that “Teamwork makes the dreamwork”!

Resource management

Within teamwork, we also have the issue of managing resources. I find many parallels in resource management skills in gaming that are applicable to our workplace lives. In LoL for example you are budgeting for item repairs and managing gold and experience points – a.k.a minion last hit- to optimise character performance. At work, when you plan events for example, you ensure there is enough budget to spend on collateral and freebies whilst balancing travelling expenses for people attending. You also get to manage human resources on who is free to attend and whether their time should be spent elsewhere instead of the event, which is part of event project planning. Planning the Customer Aquisition Cost (CAC) is imperative to know whether our investment will be recouped short, mid, or long term and in how many customer deals we will break even for example. In-game, you project plan which character follows what lane and where they need to be to maximise on attacking the enemy and taking them down. LoL’s dynamic nature requires resource planning skills and adaptability and helps with cultivating resilience and thinking on-the-spot for solutions – just like what needs to happen at work during any type of resource-based project.

Problem solving and critical thinking

LoL presents players with diverse challenges, requiring creative problem-solving to overcome obstacles and outsmart opponents. Example: you are at the top lane of the map and you are farming mobs near the opponent’s tower. Suddenly, you see an enemy at the back of you trying to blindside you. You can either sit and die or you can use a skill to slow them down, so you can get back to your tower. If you have used most of your slowing skills and you can’t do much, you can use a health potion to keep your life topped up until you drag yourself under your tower. And, if you don’t have a health potion and the opponent has got all his slow/stun spells ready for you, then you should have bought a vision ward – seeing them coming from the river earlier could have saved your life. But maybe you are lucky and your jungler friend is near, just ping them so they can come help get the enemy killed! This fast paced way of playing encourages pre-planning but also innovative thinking and the development of strategic approaches. It also encourages critical thinking by putting you in a panicked, fast decision-making situation. For marketing professionals solving real-world problems, LoL and similar game types provide the practice of applying and honing these creative problem-solving skills. I mean, you could play chess, too. It just comes down to game preference and what can give you the skill of making level-headed, fast decisions through information analysis, pattern recognition, and insights deciphering at a glance.

Creativity

People outside marketing always believe – and tell us, too – that we just do the colouring and we are a bit “fluffy”. Very discriminatory in my opinion, but hey that is another topic to cover at some point in the future. We are creative people, we don’t only strategise and are good with numbers. And gaming has personally helped me keep my creativity alive when the work’s “energy vampires” tried to suck it out of me. For me, WoW’s content-rich and detailed world stimulates creativity and imagination. Engaging with the game’s lore, encountering unique characters as allies and foes, and witnessing epic storylines can inspire you and your work storytelling. Even if I don’t personally talk like the quests or the NPCs in WoW, I do understand better the art of storytelling and connecting the dots between the 1st email campaign and the 4th one, which is useful when you do ABM. Even when you do blogs and social media posts, the storytelling is there, always coming back to the main point, the brand, the product, the feature, whatever is the main “character” of your story. I don’t expect people to understand what we have to go through as marketers daily to feed our creativity and our knowledge both in the workplace and outside it; I do, however, expect them to appreciate the effort and not dumbing us down to “another purple presentation”.

Patience and perseverance

Patience and perseverance are rare qualities in business. Everyone wants to climb up the ladder to reach C-suite and the faster that happens, the better. Networking does the job these days, it is not how much you work but who you work. But for people like me that do the work and we don’t get any spotlight, we need patience and perseverance. Or maybe a new job! But mentally strong people are patient and use the above skills to handle challenging people and situations and wait for success to come. Gamers, especially the ones who play MMORPGs like WoW, can end up grinding for hours for an achievement or for a piece of gear or a mount. But even in the faster-paced games like LoL we perform some tasks on repeat like mob killing under your tower to get enough experience points and gold to bump up our spells and buy new, better-stat gear. And all of that to overcome an enemy ganking or down a boss. Being patient to finish the grinding is a virtue. In the workplace, these people are willing to work their way through training and the ranks to become a vital asset to a business. And getting through the noise and the office politics to get your moment to shine for your actual skills and not just your talk game is a game of strategy, patience and perseverance. And maybe a good manager, too.

I can go on and on about more skills you can gain from playing: multitasking, task concentration, diverse team management, failure resilience.. I don’t really need to. Overall for me, gamers are well-rounded, skilled people who can drive a business forward in different ways than classically educated/trained employees. These are the type of people that any business should seek out, whether they are in the software industry or not. The ability to research, identify patterns, analyse data sets, strategise, and communicate findings to other team members are in the essence of successful business decision making. And with their ability of getting the job done no matter when and what they are thrown into, makes them the Willy Wonka gold ticket for any department. If you are lucky to have a team member or even a team with those characteristics at work, never let them go. Always incentivise them. And keep things simple, honest, transparent in every piece of communication. You might get to keep them afterall and serve a win for your team. GG, qq, wp.