I have this feeling that the skills we need for the AI era might be found in video games.

(Actually, no. I just want an excuse to play games. Self-improvement is a bonus.)

I asked the usual LLMs (Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT):

What are mobile phone games that have been consistently proven to be educational, instructive or skill/mental muscle building on the one hand, and also entertaining, engaging and popular on the other?

… followed by:

In the AI era what skills will become more important and what skills less? For the more important skills, which games teach them most effectively and engagingly?

The only familiar game on all three’s list was Chess. Specifically, analyzing moves teaches how to assess quality (with Lichess’ studies feature). Useful to assess AI quality.

It also mentioned:

  • Mini Metro: Teaches bottleneck identification and network optimization. Useful for organizational AI adoption challenges.
  • Human Resource Machine: Teaches assembly (programming language) through puzzle design. Useful for AI workflows.
  • Polytopia. 30 min strategy games that teach resource management, strategic positioning, optimization.
  • The Room series. 3D mechanical puzzles where learning one mechanism helps solve others.
  • Monument Valley. Navigate Escher-style architecture where rotating the world changes the path. Challenges our assumption that 3D space is Euclidean.

But the strongest recommendation was:

Baba Is You. It’s THE game for meta-level thinking. You literally reprogram the rules. Teaches seeing systems as changeable, not fixed. Exceptional for the “how do we restructure this problem?” thinking AI requires.

So, for the last few days, I’ve been playing Baba is You in my spare time.

The “rules” are literally written on the board. When these three blocks “FLAG”, “IS”, and “WIN” are placed next to each other, touching the flag wins. But if I push any block away, the rule breaks.

If I push the the “WALL” block to replace the “FLAG” block, touching the wall wins. So, the trick is to re-arrange the rules to win. I love doing that!

In Everything Bad Is Good For You, Steven Johnson argues that pop culture (video games, manga, soap operas, game shows, etc.) are becoming more and more complex and provide a dopamine kick from problem-solving. Pop culture does have bad side effects (screen-time, addiction, mis-information), and we’re not sure whether strategy games help with memory and planning or it’s the other way around, but I do believe that well-designed games can help us build useful skills.

So, more Baba Is You for me!