Learning Early That Success Is a Game

WHEN my children push my buttons, they do it with an Xbox controller. As I watch the two of them staring at the screen, oblivious to the real world around them (specifically their mother standing nearby and talking about room-straightening), I fear for their future. What kind of juvenile delinquents am I raising? Who would ever hire someone whose proudest achievement is reaching the 70th level in Everquest?

Before you start composing your outraged e-mail messages, let me assure you that, yes, there are limits on the amount of time that Evan, 13, and Alex, 10, can spend playing video games. And, yes, we revisit those rules periodically as their life-schoolwork equation changes. But even the strictest limits would not mitigate my baseline worries.

Why are my boys so entranced with this world in the first place? What does it mean that they want to climb into this magic box instead of heading outside or joining a team or even talking on the phone for far too many hours? (For the record, I used a touch-tone Princess phone to press my parents' buttons.) Why can they look at a screen and see a world where they belong while I look at the same screen and get a migraine?

Just in time for gift-giving season (Evan wants Xbox Live, Alex wants the new Game Boy, but they are not getting them), John C. Beck and Mitchell Wade have come along to make me feel a little better.

Mr. Beck, a senior research fellow at the Annenberg Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California, and Mr. Wade, a consultant to companies like Google and the RAND Corporation, have just published "Got Game: How the Gamer Generation Is Reshaping Business Forever" (Harvard Business School Press). They collected 2,000 detailed questionnaires and conducted 200 additional interviews for the book. And they assure me that by playing video games my boys are actually training for the new world of work, not avoiding it.

Mr. Beck and Mr. Wade divide the world into two groups: those who grew up with video games (the gamers) and those who did not. The fault line, at the moment, is at about age 30, and the difference in worldview is so sharp that it is already transforming the workplace. "This new generation is completely different from the baby boomers, in the way they think and work," said Mr. Wade, who, like his co-author, is a nongamer in his mid-40's, "and all of this is directly attributable to gaming."

My first mistake - and the first mistake of many workplace managers, the authors write - is in thinking that these games are an oddity or a niche. "Game Boy and PlayStation aren't just a faintly embarrassing part of the economic landscape," they write. "They are a central, defining part of growing up for millions of people. The first massive wave of mainstream gamers are in their 20's and early 30's now. They think games are just another part of the real world."

So, my children are not social outcasts. But what are they learning? According to Mr. Wade and Mr. Beck, they are learning a lot more than how to steal cars (no, I don't let them play that one) or shoot aliens (yes, they do quite a bit of that). Among the author's list of lessons from the gaming world:

"You are the star. Unlike, say, Little League, where most kids will never be the star."

"You're the boss. The world is very responsive to you."

"There's always an answer. You might be frustrated for a while, you might even never find it, but you know it's there."

"Trial and error is almost always the best plan."

"It's all about the competition."

"Young people rule."

Now imagine how some of these messages translate into the work world. To start, gamers are 50 percent more likely than nongamers of the same age to describe themselves as "a deep expert in my work," a somewhat arrogant worldview for people in their 20's. The flip side of this arrogance, however, is a willingness to take a chance (60 percent of frequent gamers, compared with 45 percent of nongamers in the same age group, agree that "the best rewards come to those who take risks") and a view of failure as just part of the game.

"Sometimes you do everything right and you still die," Mr. Wade said. "So you pick yourself up and start again."

I can live with that message, even though I can't shake the feeling that it was designed to sell books to conflicted parents like me. I will let my boys continue to play their games, with restrictions. And I will hope that navigating the Legend of Zelda is somehow helping them navigate the world. What do I know? I am a dinosaur who can't even operate the controller.