Diez cosas que aprendí de los videojuegos: Humberto Cervera at TEDxDF

Translator: Denise RQ Reviewer: Elisabeth Buffard I imagine many of you play or have played video games. And if your parents are a little like mine, all they'd tell you was that you were wasting your time. My name is Humberto Cervera and I'm 20 years old.

I've been a gamer for 17 years. And today I'm here to prove to parents that we were not wasting our time. (Applause) These are the 10 things I have learned from video games.

The first, and one of the most important thing I've learned is that you have a purpose. From the moment you insert the game, the purpose is very clear: save the princess, protect the castle, rescue the galaxy. The purpose defines the game!

You also need a purpose in your life, something to define it. It doesn't matter if it's something as simple as starting up a business or as complicated as saving the world. If you put in enough effort, everything is possible.

Do you want to be Batman? Read Dr Paul Zehr's study on "Becoming Batman," this is a 100% scientific study. It took him 21 years to become Batman, and it required a lot of effort.

Was it difficult to get there? Yes, it was. Was it impossible?

No. And just like any other purpose in life, it can't be achieved overnight. Video games also teach you how, in order to achieve that epic win moment, to get to where you were so eager to get, you'll need to complete 100 small tasks.

And the moment when you achieve that becomes a part of the whole set of experiences you went through in order to get there. This is exactly the feeling in a game such as Minecraft, where you have to move every single block in the game, one by one. Something that begins like this, ends up like an exact replica of Minas Tirith.

Something like this can't be achieved without planning in the long term. Just as the saying goes: "The Death Star wasn't built overnight. " (Laughter) Something essential in the long run is knowing how to manage ourselves.

You want a brand new rifle on Call of Duty yet you keep on spending all your money on 100 different skins for your only weapon? Then stop spending that much, save a little and buy yourself that new rifle. It's not quantum physics!

And if you have all these games but you can't afford buying the latest one well, sell five old ones and buy yourself the one you want. In life, just like in video games you cannot have it all. You want to have the power to break through walls with bare fists?

Ok, but again, the point you lost can never be used to move faster. It's all about optimizing resources. Basically, you can't be a hoarder.

If you pick up all the weapons you won't have any space left in your backpack for the bullets. Instead, if you know your target and your purpose is clear enough, you pick up the gun and bullets you need and even have some room left in your backpack for all the things you find along your way. I encourage you to remove once a year everything you don't use anymore, take it out from your closet and go sell it on a flea market, opening up some space for new experiences in your life.

Dare take a risk! All games start with the main character who dares do something no one has ever done before. Can you imagine Mario Bros, when the little mushroom tells him, "Mario, they've kidnapped the princess!

" and he replies "Jeez, I guess I need to find myself another princess now? " (Laughter) No, no, no! Mario gets up and says: "I will take up this challenge and I'll confront Bowser.

I'm going to that castle to rescue her. " Mario understands that in order to get something that you've never had, you need to do something you've never done before. And Mario is aware that he's not going to get it at first try.

I mean, let's face it, he's been facing this sign since 1985! (Risas) But Mario doesn't give up! Mario carries on!

A game will never offer you a challenge you cannot overcome, nor will it offer you a challenge that's impossible. If it's too easy, you'll get bored and if it's too difficult, you'll give up. But every time you lose the game you need to ask yourself What did I do wrong?

How can I overcome this? What can I do to make it better? And that is what motivates you, that you can get what you want.

You need to scan for all possible questions in a video game. In Mass Effect 2, the Reapers will attack the galaxy, but that's not all it is about Where do they come from? Why do they want to destroy us now?

That information is essential in order to defeat them. And you, in your career, need to also ask yourself all possible questions, and the day you come up with a question you can't answer, that's the question trully worth answering to. Because with a bit of effort, you'll come to find the answer, and this is how you will make a difference in that particular field of knowledge.

You don't know where the answer is going to be, but that's exactly why you'll need to be willing to explore around you. in the game, you might have to turn right in the game, but you didn't and you found a treasure and a map. In life, maybe you had to make a turn and instead you kept on going and that's how you found your inspiration or that answer you were long looking for.

Einstein came up with the theory of relativity while sitting on a train. Games offer you one hundred different roads but you can't choose them all, that's why they turn into a personal experience. You play Fall Out 3 and I do too but the experience is not the same.

Our decisions are not the same and most important what you learned from the game and how you feel about it is not the same in my case. The game warns you that every decision you make has tangible consecuences within the world the game is played, in the short and in the long run. It tells you: "These are your decisions.

Stick to them because they are yours! " "You don't like this? Change your path.

Do you like it? Keep going! " But it's your life, your game and you have to love it because it's yours The most important thing I've learned from the video games is that life is a game we can all play together.

Games teach you how to work on a team. The 20th century was driven by competition but the 21st is all about collaboration. Today there are over 7 billion people on the planet.

What would happen if we all decide to play the same game? Nothing too complicated! The game of a better neighbor or if we take a risk, the game of building a better future We all know games are way more fun when we play them together.

And the game of building a better future is a game worth playing together. Game Over.