Recently, Coinbase founder Brian Armstrong said on social media that he used to spend a lot of time playing video games. According to him, StarCraft and Civilization were addictive "almost to an unhealthy degree."
He drew a parallel between strategy games and real business:
Later I realized that entrepreneurship and business are a kind of "perfect game." It gives me the same feelings (resources, development, expansion), but at the same time you end up genuinely benefiting society, and that is far more satisfying.
Pavel Durov joined the discussion and shared his own experience: thanks to classic strategy games, he developed useful skills for running a business:
100%. I played all the classic strategy games of the 1990s — WarCraft 2, Command & Conquer, Transport Tycoon, Capitalism, Age of Empires, Sid Meier’s Civilization, Heroes of Might and Magic, SimCity, X-Com, Master of Orion, Total Annihilation, Myth, Majesty, Caesar, Krush Kill 'N Destroy — and even won money in local StarCraft tournaments. These games taught me planning, timing, resource allocation, and risk management.
Durov also separately noted that he likes Majesty — it simply came out in 2000, so it did not make the list of "1990s strategy games." This project inspired him to launch contests for programmers and designers, as well as to create a bug bounty program.
Brian noted that business is much more often a "positive-sum" game than ordinary video games. For example, in StarCraft another player has to lose for you to win, whereas in business, besides competition, situations are possible where a growing market can have several winners at once. The results achieved in business accumulate (it is an "infinite game"), rather than being reset after each match.
Brian's interest in video games has remained, but now he more often takes on the role of an observer:
Now I prefer watching professionals play video games to relax instead of playing myself. Although sometimes a quick match can still be a pleasant way to unwind. Unlike a regular video game, the "game" called business lasts for decades.