Jim Intriglia’s Blog

The holiday season is a great time to meet new people, as numerous opportunities to attend holiday parties abound. While at a friend’s home this weekend, I met a couple who had brought their laptop along to the party.

Thinking I had met another workaholic, I asked the husband why he had brought the laptop to the party. He explained that they were competing in a virtual sailing race, mimicking the course of the actual Volvo Ocean Race that was occurring halfway around the world.

Curious, I accompanied him upstairs as he had to check the status of the yacht he was racing. Once upstairs in my friends home office, he unloaded navigation charts and then launched the race simulation software via the race website.

In a few minutes, he had an impressive dashboard up on his screen, with the position of his racing yacht graphically depicted along with statistics that reflected wind speed and direction, current latitude and longitude, etc. He then began pouring over an Excel spreadsheet of navigational course information to determine what change was needed to advance his yacht ahead of the others.

What struck me about this whole affiar was the knowledge this person had gained from competing in this online simulation. I had sailed for many years as a young adult, beginning with racing yachts. I had gained considerable knowledge and experience of both navigation and piloting of yachts of the size that were being sailed in the simulation.

While my new found friend never set foot on a sailboat or navigated a racing yacht, he had gained more knowledge about navigation, sail design and even racing tactics that I had gained in all the courses that I had taken and years I spent on the water competing in races.

I told my friend, much to his surprise, that if he ever visited a yacht club were racing was a passion, he would be quickly snapped-up by an owner who is passionate about winning recreational races that many yacht owners typically participate in. Further, his experience as an armchair navigator using a simulator would not be all that different from a real navigator’s activities about a racing yacht (except for spending most of his on-board time at a 45 degree angle).

This was yet another example of how computer simulated games can transfer real-world knowledge, skill and experience to people that engage them. I hope more high schools and universities pursue teaching fundamental and advanced topics using computer simulations, as students find such endeavors fun while they learn how such fundamentals apply to the real word.

As the number of simulations grow in response to the capabilities of  personal computers, people will have more of an opportunity to participate in simulation games. When engaging such games, they will gain knowledge and skill that can benefit them in the real world if they so choose. This is a welcome alternative to the current genre of shoot-em-up and fantasy role-playing games, which consume a huge amount of time and return little in the way of knowledge and skills to the majority of the participants.