The Passion Trap

I hear many well-meaning adults tell children to pursue their passion. I too want kids to be happy and love their careers. However, this advice can create some unexpected pitfalls for boys who are at risk of becoming obsessed with video games.

Let me tell you about Nate, a top 100 Madden gamer. I met Nate because his mother reached out to me. She wanted me to interview her son. As CEO of GameTruck, I interview many gamers who hope to work for us as a Game Coach. A Game Coach is a party host who drives our game theater to the customer's house and entertains guests with video games. We do thousands of parties a month. It's a popular birthday celebration and a popular job. Therefore, I was happy to interview Nate.

Nate showed up on time for the video interview, camera on, wearing a tie. Those were all good signs. He was in his bedroom, which was neat and organized, with a large Xbox poster beside a row of Funko Pop figurines behind him on a shelf. He had a nice collection.

He looked nervous. I tried to put him at ease by talking about his player ranking. There was no doubt he had a lot of skill. The longer we talked, however, the more my heart sank. Nate was in his mid-twenties, not in college, and had no job. He also had no driver's license and did not seem interested in getting one. That was pretty bad (I mean, our company is GameTruck). However, the moment I knew it would never work was when I asked about other video games.

"I only play Madden," Nate said flatly. Only Madden. I felt a mixture of sadness and anger. Sad because I could not help Nate. Angry because someone, somewhere had told this young man that if he focused on what made him happy (apparently to the exclusion of all else), someone would come to him and offer him a job. Not just any job, but a job doing what he loved most: playing Madden.

Nate had pursued his passion, and it had trapped him. Despite developing elite gaming skills, Nate was unemployable because his skill did not serve anyone except Nate.

I let out a heavy sigh. I could not hire Nate even if I wanted to. Perhaps if I had met Nate sooner, when he was younger, when he first started focusing on developing his skill, I would not have told him to give up on video games. Instead, I would have tried to help him broaden his understanding of what being great at video games could mean. How do you broaden a player's perspective on video games? In my experience, it starts with a conversation that begins with an open-ended question.

While there is no perfect question, I ask something like, "How do you think your skill could be applied to help others?" Psychologists call this reframing. Your gamer may not know the answer. He might even get frustrated by your question. That is okay. Because your next statement is, "I'm proud of your skills, but if you want to treat video games seriously, it needs to lead to something you can do beyond the game." You don't have to use those exact words, but you want to position game skill as a starting point to real life, not the end point. You want to help him see it as something he can build upon.

Developing video game skill can lay the ground for future skills. They can be a path for a player to see himself as useful. That is the heart of it. I have hired many talented video gamers who have become awesome Game Coaches. GameTruck is blessed to have awesome people who play video games at a high level. Every one of them, however, has one thing in common. They have what I call the musician's mindset. Their skill is not only for their personal enjoyment; they employ that skill to entertain others. I once worked with a young man everyone called "Gem" (it was his gamer tag). He was absolutely outstanding at Smash Bros Ultimate. However, what he was even better at was teaching young gamers how to get better at the game. Our customers and their kids loved Gem. He worked for us for years until he had built enough experience working with kids to relocate and take a job as a kids club manager near his family. I don't know for sure what happened to Nate, as I never heard from him or his mother again. In all likelihood, he is still living in his childhood bedroom and has become part of the nearly 600,000 millennial and Gen Z young men who have fallen out of the workforce. I find that idea tragic. Which is why I do what I do.

I want to see all young people achieve their potential. If you know a budding elite level gamer, don't wait until they are out of high school. Start a conversation with them today about how video games can be a foundation but should not be an end in themselves. Instead of telling these young gamers to pursue their passion, help them learn how to be of service. In the end, they will get something more valuable than passion. They will experience satisfaction.

Give it a try, and let me know how it works out for you. I'd love to hear from you.