Lessons Taken from Strategy Games

Games of strategy, like chess, teach many lessons that are transferrable to everyday life. What is valuable in a game, as opposed to a book or public idea, is the way in which gaming mercilessly punishes error. A book or teaching may be popular in society, but how does society discover its errors? In games of strategy, like chess, a blunder is quickly punished. But in society, which is governed by a "politically correct" regime that manages our perceptions, blunders are often masked and good ideas are blamed for effects caused by bad ideas. Erroneous policies can remain in place for decades, until society finds itself in a crisis. But in a strategy game, one is forced to confront one's own shortcomings. The player who adopts a bad idea is crushed by his opponent - who is immediately rewarded for his perspicacity.

The first lesson, learned by the beginning chess player, is that skill comes with experience. The experienced player usually crushes the inexperienced player. Typically, the new player doesn't know what to do. He cannot tell good moves from bad moves. The experienced player takes advantage and ignorance suffers humiliation - a most valuable lesson indeed.

Some people imagine that high intelligence and raw calculating power is all that is required to win a game. In many games, however, character is. Those who are easily discouraged, or who allow emotion to cloud their reason, are playing with serious deficits. In a long contest, involving frustrations and reverses, they lose heart. Others fall into victory sickness when they start to win, savoring the moment by inward gloating - thereby undermining their own caution and vigilance.

Those who are thin-skinned, afraid to lose, or excessively pessimistic nearly always undermine their chances. It does not matter if they possess intellectual genius. Their emotional immaturity negates their superior reason, leading them into strategic error. In recent years books and papers have been written on the subject of "emotional intelligence." A good example of this is Daneil Goleman's book, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, or Howard Gardner's Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences which suggests there are many types of intelligence, such as interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence - including the ability to grasp the feelings and intentions of others along with self knowledge.

Games are a social activity, and many of the lessons we can learn from intensive social interaction may be learned from games. It has been alleged that President John F. Kennedy's played a game called Diplomacy, which Henry Kissinger once described as his favorite game. Such multiplayer games allow players to engage in betrayal, deception and collusion. A game can tease out emotions and experiences that lead to valuable lessons. We learn that some people are followers, unsure of their own judgments. Others are leaders, confident of their judgments and determined to have their way.

In real life, the political and strategic games used by politicians and statesmen are in fact social games - requiring social intelligence as well as technical mastery of information. The skills of the orator, cultivated by ancient statesmen like Cicero and Demosthenes, or by modern statesmen like Benjamin Disraeli and Abraham Lincoln, require emotional maturity and the talent of seeing events through the eyes of others. A great statesman sets aside his own egoism. He takes a more objective view. In this way, he avoids the errors that attend a purely egoistic standpoint.

Inner emotional balance, clarity of perception and self criticism can make a mediocre intellect shine; because intellectual power always finds itself modified by the soul, we find that good moral qualities are tested in games even as they are tested in real life. The meanness of a player, who thinks nothing of his opponent's feelings, quickly reveals someone who is clueless about the other fellow's strategic intentions. Those who are self-preoccupied will demonstrate the same preoccupation in a game - and lose on account of it.

It is worthwhile to notice, as well, the various tendencies of optimists and pessimists. The latter are severely handicapped, while the former are empowered by the belief that victory is possible for those who persevere. Strategy games have been underestimated as learning tools. Such are a laboratory of ideas - both philosophical and practical. Society would be well-served if we paid more attention to the results of our actions - and those of our statesmen - than by attending their words. All this can be learned through the discipline of structured gaming.

About the Author

jrnyquist [at] aol [dot] com ()
randomness