According to this really interesting statistic an average young teenager in a country with a strong gaming culture will have spent 10 000 hours playing online games by the age of 21.
Now 10 000 hours is a really interesting number for 2 reasons!
First of all: For children in the United States 10 080 hours is the exact amount of time you will spend in school from fifth grade to high school graduation if you have perfect attendance.
So we have an entire parallel track of education going on where young people are learning as much of what it takes to be a good gamer as they are learning about everything else in school.
Now in Malcolm Gladwell’s book the Outliers he says that if we can master 10 000 hours of evert full study of anything by the age of 21 we will be virtuosos at it. This is known as the 10 000 hour success theory.
So the question is.. What exactly are gamers getting good at?

The first thing is Urgent optimism: This can be seen as extreme self-motivation.

Second: Gamers are virtuosos at weaving a tight social fabric. There’s a lot of interesting research that shows that we like people better after we play a game with them. Even if they have beaten us badly.
The reason being that we trust that they will spend their time with us and that they will play by the same rules.

The third thing is blissful productivity: There is a reason that an average world of Warcraft gamer plays 22 hours a week which is equal to a half time job.
It’s because we know that when we’re playing a game were actually happier working hard that when we are relaxing or hanging out. And gamers are willing to work hard all the time if they are given the right work.

And finally epic meaning: Gamers love it to be attached to auw inspiring missions and amazing stories.

You all know wikipedia right? It’s the biggest wiki in the world.. The second biggest wiki in the world with nearly 80 000 articles is the World of Warcraft wiki. 5 Million people use it every month.
They have compiled more information about World of Warcraft on the internet than any other topic on any other wiki in the world. They are building an epic story!
These are 4 super powers that add up to one thing. Gamers are super empowered hopeful individuals. These are people who believe they are individually capable of changing the world.
And the only problem is. They believe they are capable of changing virtual worlds and not the real world.
Economist Edward catranova says that this makes perfect sense.

Because gamers can achieve more,
have better social relationships and have better feedback in games than in real life..