How Games Taught Me More About Strategy Than School Ever Did

I’ve spent countless hours buried in textbooks, diagrams, and lecture slides — but some of the most important lessons I’ve ever learned about planning, adaptation, and strategic thinking didn’t come from a classroom. They came from games.

Growing up, I didn’t always relate to traditional learning. But put me in front of a complex turn-based strategy game or a real-time survival sim, and my brain lit up. These weren’t just games — they were systems. And over time, they shaped the way I think; how I break down problems, plan for contingencies, optimise resources, and recover from failure.

I didn’t know it at the time, but those long nights immersed in gameplay were laying the foundations for how I now approach everything — from university projects to real-life decision-making.

Lessons I Learned Through Play

Games like Dune II, Command & Conquer, Red Alert, Civilization, The Settlers II: Anniversary Edition, and the Anno series weren’t just entertainment — they were systems disguised as stories. Each one taught me a unique skill set, and over time, they helped shape how I approach real-world problems.

From Dune II and C&C, I learned how to adapt quickly under pressure. Strategy meant little if you couldn’t adjust on the fly when the enemy outflanked you or your economy crumbled. Civilization trained me to think long-term — to understand that every small decision creates a ripple, and those ripples turn into history.

The Settlers II, with its chain-based logistics and slow-burn resource management, taught me patience and infrastructure-first thinking. You couldn’t win by rushing. You had to think like a city planner, ensuring that every miner, baker, soldier, and courier was supported by a reliable supply network.

Anno then took that to a whole new level — a game of system-wide equilibrium, where expanding too fast or neglecting one node in your economy could break the entire loop. That idea — that everything supports everything else — is the exact mindset I bring into my engineering studies.

Most importantly, all these games framed failure as feedback. You didn’t just lose — you learned. You analysed what went wrong, iterated, and re-entered the scenario better prepared. That recursive learning loop? It’s more valuable than any multiple-choice quiz.

How That Mindset Shapes Me as a Student

When I started studying engineering, I didn’t walk in with just curiosity — I came armed with a mindset forged in the fires of hundreds of strategy sessions. I’d already spent years learning to think in systems, anticipate chain reactions, and reverse-engineer failures. What most students learned through lectures, I had unknowingly internalised through games.

I treat assessments like missions — I scan the constraints, break down objectives, identify the resource bottlenecks (usually time and mental energy), and then design a workflow around it. Just like in Anno or Settlers, every task I take on has dependencies, and if one thing fails, I track back to find the weak link rather than starting from scratch.

In group projects, I instinctively look for the role that lets me optimise the system: the planner, the structurer, the one who connects moving parts and ensures the outcome doesn’t collapse under imbalance.

And when I hit burnout — because it still happens — I approach it like a resource crisis. I stop. I check my reserves. I stabilise the system before I push forward again.

Games didn’t teach me the math or the mechanics — school did that. But they taught me how to think like an engineer, long before I ever became one.

Why It All Matters

Strategy games didn’t just fill my time — they trained my mind. They gave me a safe space to fail, adapt, and think critically without punishment. More than anything, they taught me that there’s always a system beneath the surface, and if you can understand that system, you can shape the outcome.

That mindset has helped me far more than any last-minute cramming session. And while school taught me the formulas, games taught me the frameworks — how to think through a problem, not just solve it.

So, if you’ve ever felt like your time spent gaming wasn’t “productive,” think again. Maybe it wasn’t wasted time at all. Maybe it was practice.

And maybe the next time someone tells you to “get off the game and do something useful,” you can smile and think: I already am.

— TechHermit —

“Play is the highest form of research.”

— Albert Einstein