Games as Practice For the Real World #SXSWi

There is a misperception that spending vast amounts of time staring at a screen means that a person is withdrawn, antisocial and perhaps socially awkward. At SXSW this week, this topic came up a few times.In a session with Nike and EA Sports, the representative from EA Sports said that video game players learn strategy and skills from playing the video game version of a sport and that this actually makes them better on the field or on the court. He noted that many professional sports players are creating "moves" on video games as a test before using them on the field or on the court. And soccer coaches are actually requiring that their players play Fifa video games to learn the strategy of the sport.In a session about Digital Divas, the presenters talked about the average age of social gamer is 43 years old, and she's a woman. And these are not reclusive, lonely and sad women. These women are more social offline too:

"Female online gamers are more social than their non-gaming counterparts. Forty-one percent socialize at least once each day in person compared to 31% of non-gamers. They’re also more active on social networks, with 88% of gamers socializing online at least once each day compared to 71% of non-gamers." ~ Mashable

If games are practice for the real world and help to educate and help to develop a certain level of comfort with a topic to the participants, there are many opportunities for us a marketers to help consumers learn about our products and services through gaming that we are not yet leveraging.