The University of Florida is now offering a three-credit course on the computer game StarCraft in its graduate school on business management. The doctoral student behind the idea says that the game teaches players how to wisely allocate scarce resources:
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"My problem solving skills in StarCraft are the same problem solving skills learned in school or the real world," declares Nate Poling, Ph.D. candidate at the University of Florida and the instructor behind EME2040: 21st Century Skills in StarCraft.[...]
"In StarCraft you're managing a lot of different units and groups of different capacities," says Poling. "It's not a stretch to think of that in the business world or in the work of a healthcare administrator."
Poling points out that people who manage hospitals, factories, small businesses and, say, nuclear power plants all have to manage people who have different abilities, and that they might have learned a thing or two about this process from StarCraft, which demands the same kind of resource and unit management.
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Jokes aside, I'm in agreement that Starcraft is a reasonable tool to teach resource management. However, actual competence in Starcraft is more than just that. Some extreme reaction times and RSI are also important Starcraft skills.
I can certainly see the relevance here.
serious starcraft players perform 200-400 actions per minute, which is up to 6 actions per second. i am 100% sure that starcraft is ten times harder than any real life job a business major might undertake.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbpCLqryN-Q
the beginning of this youtube clip shows a south korean pro playing the original starcraft