Hey all, I’m back with an answer to a question I get asked about sometimes for this week’s Video Game Tuesday. It’s about a practical skill that can be learned from gaming.

Practical Skill?: Yep, I’ve been asked if I’ve learned any practical skills from gaming. There’s one that I frequently use, and I only got very good at because of it.

Well, which skill is it?: The answer is typing. I learned how to accurately and quickly type in the proper manner very quickly by playing early vanilla World of Warcraft where typing was vital to communication for things like battlegrounds. Being able to inform your team that you spotted a flanker trying to pull a quick one on you to grab your flag in Warsong Gulch, or that a large group of enemies was headed to an outpost in Alterac Valley was critical to success.

While being great at world PvP and an absolute terror to single opponents in World of Warcraft back then, I was very much not able to handle multiple enemies for long. So, I got very good at typing and relaying my location when asking for assistance from my team. It’s a skill I use to this day, and I personally only got good at it because of playing WoW. I know others got good at typing because of other games, with the funniest to me being The Typing of the Dead which was a modification of the arcade classic The House of the Dead 2.