Games don't need to be edutainment to be educational

3 childhood chronicles that made me look at videogames as a way of life

It was a summer afternoon in 1991 when my mom bought me a magazine that changed my life forever.

Alex Kidd greeted the reader with his signature victory sign, set against a purple background. He was flanked by Bart Simpson and Michael Jackson, two pop culture icons who, at the time, also had their own videogames coming out that year. The magazine promised “shocking super strategies,” “clubs to make you even better,” and full coverage of the recently released Game Gear.

We didn’t even own a console yet, but my mom was already a gamer, all thanks to one of her best friends who had an Atari 2600 at home. Like most parents, she tried to pass along her own passions, hoping they’d shape the kind of person I might become. She had already succeeded with Paul McCartney. Now, she was taking a shot with videogames.

As for me, I couldn’t read a single word of that magazine. Not because of its over-the-top Brazilian gaming jargon, but because I was four years old and still learning the alphabet.

Still, I spent days flipping through its pages, staring at the grainy screenshots that accompanied the walkthroughs like storybook illustrations. I didn’t need to understand the text to be enchanted by that castle in Alex Kidd’s game. The images were enough.

Fast forward to March 2025.

After a few frustrating career moves — and even more frustrating advice from LinkedIn articles filled with corporate clichés —, I decided to try this Substack thing. My goal was simple: write the kind of pieces I always wanted to read. Ones that extract lessons from the hobbies I love, to make sense of whatever comes next.

Four months later, my audience is still small. A little over 20 free subscribers, some of them brilliant writers who explore games from unique and thoughtful angles.

At some point, you start asking yourself: Is it worth it? Should I keep writing for such a small pool of readers? Should I follow the “growth hacks” everyone seems to push?

But the key to solving a problem is asking the right question. In this case, the real question I should be asking myself is: What is the reason for me writing on The Boss Level?

I think that old Alex Kidd magazine holds the answer. Well, at least partly.

That magazine marked both the beginning of my relationship with videogames and the start of a way of thinking that would stay with me for life.

As I dug into those memories, I found three childhood stories that shaped how I see games and will help explain why I write what you read here every week.

With that, let me tell you about the first lessons I learned through videogames.

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The Value of Being Persistent

“Why do you want a new game? You didn’t even finish the one you have yet!”

This quote from my dad is laughable now, especially in an age where we all have endless backlogs and still add new games with every summer or holiday sale. But there was wisdom in those words.

After some tough years due to Brazil’s shaky economy, my parents finally managed to buy a Master System III (yes, we had two earlier MS models here, but that’s a story for another time). This version came with Sonic the Hedgehog built into the BIOS, so you didn’t need a cartridge to play it.

Sometimes, my mom would let me rent a game for the weekend. That’s how I discovered Castle of Illusion and Alex Kidd in Miracle World. But if I wanted a brand-new cartridge to play whenever I wanted, the conditions were clear:

“Get good grades and finish Sonic first. Then we’ll see.”

Shockingly, the grades part was easier (not that shocking, I was born a nerd). Finishing Sonic the Hedgehog on Master System, however, felt impossible. There were no cheat codes to skip stages, and the game wasn’t forgiving.

But eventually, after months of perseverance, I did it. Ok, I didn’t collect all the Chaos Emeralds, but I reached the end and watched Sonic sing into a microphone on the victory screen. And, true to their word, my parents rewarded me with my first cartridge: The Flintstones, another hard-as-nails game.This time, not because of difficulty, but because it kinda sucked.

Still, that whole Sonic saga taught me two lessons. One became clear immediately. The other only revealed itself decades later.

The first was simple: if well directed, persistence pays off. Finishing that game as a kid was one of the earliest and most effective lessons in resilience I ever had that no corporate seminar about “stoicism” has topped it since.

The second took years to click.

In adulthood, I decided to revisit Sonic and try to collect all the Chaos Emeralds. For years I had avoided it, haunted by the frustration it caused me as a kid. But when I finally tried again, I found it… surprisingly easy. Decades of playing other games had made me faster, more precise, more strategic.

I had grown. And that’s the real magic.

Sometimes, we need checkpoints in life to realize how far we’ve come. Maybe it’s watching an old movie through a new lens. Or re-listening to an album and realizing that band from your teens wasn’t that great.

In my case, all I had to do was boot up Sonic the Hedgehog.

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Mario Teaches Math

“Quick! How many points will you have after that?”

That was my mom, catching me completely off guard as I reached the Giant Gate bar in Super Mario World.

The SNES was the second console we had at home, and Super Mario World was basically mandatory, kind of a rite of passage for any player of the 90s. Like most kids, I was just happy to beat the level and hear that triumphant jingle. For my mom, however, that was the perfect opportunity to sneak in some math.

Every time Mario hit the pole at the end of a level, the game displayed a big, celebratory bonus point number. Reach 100 of those, and you’d unlock a bonus game to earn extra lives.

And just before the bonus points got added to my total, she’d ask, with playful authority:

“Okay, so what’s your total now?”

At first, I just froze. I was still learning how to add two-digit numbers, so the game made the calculations for me before I could even answer. But after enough surprise quizzes, my brain started doing the math automatically. I began calculating my bonus even before the question came. It was like I had secretly leveled up a stat without noticing.

Jump a few years later. The PlayStation entered the scene, and with it, Namco Museum Vol. 1. That disc was a time machine, filled with 80s arcade classics like Pac-Man, Pole Position, and Galaga, one of the first games my mom ever played in her youth.

It was in Galaga that she really upped her game on me.

Every few rounds, Galaga would throw a Challenging Stage your way. If you shot down all the enemy ships, you’d earn bonus points. But here’s the kicker: your score wasn’t just a few dozen points anymore. We were now talking about thousands of points!

So of course, my mom raised the stakes:

"You got a perfect run! So, how many points is that now?"

Suddenly, my mental math had to get creative. When you get a perfect score in a Challenging Stage, Galaga rewards you with 10,000 points. So if you already had 86,350… okay, break it down: add 10K to 80K first, then tack on the rest… boom, 96,350!

It sounds silly now, but it taught me two incredibly valuable lessons.

First, that math doesn’t have to be boring. Instead of solving equations on paper, I was calculating space-shooter scores in real time, under pressure, with my nerdy pride on the line. For a kid in the mid-90s, this beat solving for x any day.

Second, and more importantly: practice makes power. When I didn’t get a perfect score in those Challenging Stages, the math became harder. That’s why I forced myself to get better at the game. It made the math easier. After all, it’s way simpler to add 10,000 than 3,600.

Much like any skill in life — whether it’s writing, managing teams, or presenting ideas — repetition builds fluency. And when the stakes are high (or your pesky mom is watching), that fluency becomes your superpower to solve problems in a much easier way.

All thanks to Mario, Galaga, and a mom who knew exactly how to turn any game into a stealth lesson.

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Saving Money, Making Choices

"I won’t buy you a GBA. You want it? Start saving your allowance. End of story!"

Let’s just say my mom became a little less supportive once things at school started to go south.

I won’t get into the details, but I was going through a rough patch, enough for her to hit pause on the usual treats and teach me a different kind of lesson. One that I still carry with me to this day.

See, I didn’t have a huge allowance. It was just enough to grab a snack, buy a CD from a band I liked (this was before streaming, mind you), hang out with friends, and occasionally put aside some change for a new game.

But a whole new console? That felt impossible. Buying a game was one thing, but a Game Boy Advance? That was a mountain!

Still, my mom was firm. If I wanted it, I’d have to earn it.

So I did what many of us only learn later in life: I started cutting the unnecessary. I stopped spending on things that didn’t really matter and began saving every bit I could. No more snacks just because. No more random CDs. Every single penny had a destination.

It took almost two years of slow, patient saving. But eventually, I got there: a purple GBA and a brand new copy of Super Mario Advance.

To this day, that’s one of the most satisfying purchases I’ve ever made. Not because of the console itself, but because I earned it.

A lot of parents have pulled this move with their kids, especially those privileged enough to provide an allowance. I couldn’t agree more with this approach. Learning the real value of money early on changes how you approach everything, from finances to goals, even self-discipline. My lesson came a little later than some, but it landed just the same.

But there’s a twist to this story.

After the GBA, I felt confident enough to pursue my next dream: the PlayStation 2. I still had to save most of it, but my mom agreed to chip in if I stayed on track at school. Fair deal.

There was just one problem: the PS2 price kept going up.

Every time I hit my savings goal, the price jumped. I didn’t know if it was inflation, popularity, or both, but after the third time this happened, I started to think the PS2 might never be mine.

And then I saw something else: that strange lunchbox-shaped console that I was avoiding. The Nintendo GameCube. Same price as the PS2 used to be, and actually available.

I wasn’t thrilled at first. This wasn’t the dream. But I didn’t want to start over. So I went for it.

And honestly? I’m glad I did.

That little cube gave me some of my favorite gaming memories, like playing Super Smash Bros. Melee with friends and discovering Killer7, a surreal, unforgettable game that remains one of my all-time favorites.

A few months later, I got my first job and started buying my own games with my own money. The rest is history.

So yeah. I didn’t get what I wanted. But I got something special nevertheless.

And maybe that’s the biggest lesson of all, one The Rolling Stones already nailed long ago: "You can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, well, you might find you get what you need."

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Okay… now what?

So, you’ve made it to the end of this post. If you’re still here, thank you! But maybe you’re wondering: what’s the point of all this?

Well, here it is: that old magazine and this very newsletter were both starting points. The magazine introduced me to the world of games. TBL introduced me to a new way of looking at them.

But I could only connect those dots by stepping away from postmortems and mechanics for a moment, and looking inward. I realized that games had been pushing me to grow from the very beginning.

Having supportive parents who nudged me to engage with games in thoughtful ways certainly helped. They opened the doors that allowed me to see games not just as fun or escapism, but as a compelling medium packed with lessons worth carrying into real life. That might be one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever received from them.

It also gave me the answer I’ve been looking for since the start of this piece.

What is the reason for me writing on The Boss Level? Now that I’ve told you these three stories, the answer feels simple:

I write because I want more people to see games as tools for growth, to look at them through a creative lens and discover the lessons they hold for life, work, and everything in between.

That mission is what drives me to keep writing, keep refining, and keep leveling up this little space on the corner of Substack, both for me and for anyone who finds value in this perspective.

Now, maybe you're also wondering about the title of this post. "Games don’t need to be edutainment to be educational? A few sappy childhood memories… that’s your big proof?”

Actually, yeah.

Because the truth is, I’m not a fan of games that try to be educational in the traditional sense.

But I do believe that games, when played, reflected on, and revisited, can teach us things no textbook ever could. Lessons about patience, risk, focus, communication, creativity, and resilience.

You don’t need a tutorial for that. You just need to be paying attention.

And if you feel the same way… well, welcome to The Boss Level.

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Wrapping Up

That’s it for this week’s post. Don’t worry, next time, we’re back to the usual postmortem deep dives and philosophical analysis you know and love.

But if you enjoyed this more personal detour and want to see more stories like it, let me know in the comments.

In the meantime, as always, don’t forget to keep leveling up, one boss level at a time.