Gamers, you are mathematician.
Video game, in my opinion, is probably the most entertaining form of Mathematics. Game is a set of problems that challenges the player in order to achieve numerous goals. If you think about it carefully, every single game has this property. Whether you’re playing a Tetris or the latest Assassin’s Creed saga, you as a gamer are solving problems that the game has to offer.
Back to the textbooks, we learned a mixture of new techniques and equations in order to solve relevant problems. I remembered learning Algebra in order to solve applied questions such as “How much Bob contributed to the saving account after 3 months?” In video games, the player is provided a set of instructions, rules, options, and the outcomes. The video game starts teaching you from the basic moves to advanced actions so that you can tackle game objectives with what you can do from the tutorial.
In Mathematics, Problem Solving skill is one of the crucial skillsets. You discover an uncharted problem and try to plug in a massive number of approaches based on your past knowledge and techniques. As you try one method by one, you start seeing a pattern in your method’s result. Then you draw another fact followed by another and another discovery. To build this Problem Solving skill from the scratch, it is very different from learning new math stuffs. It’s about learning how to reason, analyze, make decisions, and predict. It galvanizes your metacognitive state to next level based on your current knowledge base. It is very abstract and recursive that this skill has been taught by real applications and acquiring know-hows, and how-tos. Therefore, one has to learn basic knowledge to the complex ones in order to equip him/herself a list of tools and skills, so that he can apply a reasoning to the mysteries.
In school, you earn the point for every math question you answered correctly. In video game, you earn a game achievement prepared by the game itself and/or the current game consoles which also challenge the gamers higher standards. When you solve a problem, you feel achieved. you may feel a full-spirited joy from the game objective that nearly took you 3 hours with what you are capable of in the game. It is a intellectual reward that blurs the boundary between the player and the essential pattern from Mathematics history.
The recent trend for video games has been aiming “Open World” concept due to the enhancement in computer hardware and software. There are a vast of items, objectives, free-will to explore the unknowns, optional achievements, more flexibility in objective methods, nonlinear storylines, and more. This materializes the infinite number of solving scenarios. The player can adapt and develop his/her own ways to solve the ultimate problem in video game: Beat the game.
People have a strong stereotype on the Mathematics. It’s hard, confusing, mind-blowing, frustrating, and you name it. They don’t know what techniques and equations they have to choose, feel overwhelmed by the endless stream of numbers and symbols, thus they abandon their hope. Then, they turn on one of their favorite video game and start having smart funs with the mindset they developed from playing games, which is really sufficient to apply into Mathematics. Video games can teach you how to solve real problems without realizing it. All you have to do is to follow the same thing you’ve been doing in the video games. Learn your mathematical tools and skills. Follow the instructions. Then, get your reward.