10. Multitasking
I was playing a mini-game on the Wii when my girlfriend wandered over, momentarily curious as to what I’d been doing for the past half hour. The game is ridiculously simple, and consists of watching several cages switching positions on the screen, and afterwards identifying those which you saw at the beginning to have birds under them. Almost any gamer can do it easily, but she watched for a couple of minutes before shaking her head in disbelief that I could follow several objects moving at the same time so easily. That got me thinking, so I did some research online. Perhaps you’ve read about the many health benefits that video games offer, but sometimes it’s hard to apply them to real life. Well, multi-tasking is definitely a useful life skill in anybody’s book, and video games will help you do it. Period.
Prove It
Professor Bavelier at the University of Rochester has conducted more than 20 studies related to video gaming, one of which specifically examined people’s capacity to multitask. Typically, the reaction time of an average person increases by 200 milliseconds while multitasking (around 30%), but that of a gamer increases only by 85 milliseconds (or 10%). The test was performed on previous non-gamers who were trained for a few weeks to play action games. Another study, published in Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, had similar findings.
9. Failure
Anybody can win, but it takes strength of character to cope with failure. There are basically two forms of failure which people experience: recreational (while playing sports, for example) and work-related (not achieving a pass mark in an exam, not getting chosen after a job interview). Both forms, depending on your lifestyle, are relatively uncommon – that is to say, it’s unlikely you’ll feel as if you’ve failed on a daily basis (unless you play sport very regularly). There is one notable exception, which is in (you’ve guessed it) the life of a video gamer. Gamers have to deal with failure up to 80% of the time (according to Nicole Lazzaro), and they subsequently learn to tolerate failure and actually see it as part of a learning process. This is (obviously) no bad thing; in fact it’s exactly the sort of lesson parents might want their children to learn.
Prove It
There’s quite a good blog entry by psychotherapist Mike Langlois about the effect on youths of failure in video gaming, or, if you fancy your science a little more detailed, you can read this (which shows gamers generally prefer to take responsibility for failure, and prefer games which challenge them considerably as they then have to learn to improve). This also opens up some interesting questions about how failure should be handled in video games, which you can read about here.
8. Eyesight
Did your parents tell you that staring at a screen all the time would make you go blind? Tell them that regularly playing video games is a highly recommended treatment for those unfortunate enough to be born with cataracts (not only during childhood, but continuing into adulthood), and see how they react. Perhaps they’ll point out you don’t have a crippling eye disease. Not to worry, video games also help the rest of us with such abilities as distinguishing differences in shades of colour and processing visual information more efficiently – and the results last for months after actually playing the game.
Anybody who’s played Call of Duty will know the importance of quickly picking out enemy fighters amongst the (somewhat) bleak, urban landscapes. It’s important because if they identify you first, they’ll shoot you, which will greatly decrease your enjoyment of the playing experience and quite possibly the quality of your day in general. Therefore, video gamers (almost regardless of genre) become quite practised at picking out the salient details from a screen packed with visual information. Playing GTA? You’ll want to choose your route through traffic quickly. Command and Conquer? Any enemy threat on radar needs to be dealt with as soon as possible. Viva Piñata? That Pretztail will take out your Bunnycombs if you don’t whack him first. It makes sense that this skill, used constantly while playing video games, translates to our daily lives.
Prove It
This Telegraph article talks extensively about the benefits for those born with problematic eye conditions, and Reuters talks here about the other potential long-term positives. This article gives a lot of information, and also identifies some of the ways that improving your visual attention can help you in daily life (such as while driving, or chasing angry piñatas away from your garden).
7. Catharsis
The idea of catharsis, a term originally used by the Ancient Greeks, is that a key function of art is to allow us to express our emotions through a “safe” form – that is to say, any violent urges, for example, might be satisfied by watching a tragedy play. Nowadays, you might be more likely to read a thriller, watch an action film or even (that’s right…) play a video game. Does this concept have any place in modern psychology? Yes, it does: for example the process of making trauma victims relive their experiences has been shown to sometimes allow them to move beyond the event (because the negative emotion is previously “trapped” inside them, unable to be expressed). In practical terms, what does this mean for gamers? It means that gamers express anger and violent urges in a way which does absolutely no damage to anyone, thus allowing them to feel more relaxed and well adjusted in their every-day lives.
Prove It
The “Hitman Study” showed in considerable detail that “violent games reduce depression and hostile feelings in players through mood management,” and is supported by this New York Times Article.
6. Fun
It’s important not to forget the primary purpose of video games – to enjoy yourself. Is that a waste of time? That depends on your view of the world, but if you believe that it is, go ahead and also boycott films, reading, music and socialising. But that’s different, those things are art… and normal! Really? Because playing video games can easily entail all four of those things, and more than half the world’s population do it in one form or another. While most of the other reasons in this top ten list help to the justify time spent gaming, having fun is the main reason that most gamers keep playing, and is there anything wrong with that? Not that I can see.
Prove It
Two words: Mario Kart.
5. Attention Span
There was a lot of negative media a while ago talking about video games damaging our ability to concentrate. This seemed somewhat counter-intuitive to me, since for many games you need to spend many hours doing quite similar tasks – in fact parents typically complain that it’s impossible to distract children from their game, which is exactly the opposite of what the report claims. Well, it turns out that the evidence was somewhat dodgy, to say the least, based mainly on testimonies from disgruntled teachers. In fact there’s now considerable evidence to the contrary – video games can help your attention span.
Prove It
The same report mentioned earlier, by Dr Bavelier, also noted improvements in the attention span of test subjects who gamed.
4. Problem Solving/Decision Making
That’s not the only improvement you might note after gaming. Video games also improve your ability to make quick decisions – regardless of whether or not you’re playing them voluntarily. Even people who were forced to play as part of a medical study showed a vast improvement in a huge variety of areas, most notably in making much quicker choices than those who hadn’t, without any sacrifice in the quality of the choices made. In 2011, a study published in Psychological Research found evidence that those playing first-person shooter games did a better job of judging what information should be stored in their working memory and what was no longer relevant to the task at hand. These are obviously extremely useful abilities, with many functions beyond the realm of video gaming.
Prove It
This article is one of many which mentions this research: “Our brains constantly perform probabilistic inferences — as you drive along and detect some unexpected moving object on the right side of the road, say a motorcycle, your brain will compute how likely it is that you are on a collision path with that motorcycle, and then infer from this probability whether you need to steer left or not, this kind of inference is used each time we make a decision.” Action video games give an edge “by improving this inference process”.
3. Teamwork
It may come as a surprise to non-gamers that video games can often teach youngsters the need for teamwork and social skills, but that’s the case. As in real life, a team in video games is often able to achieve much more than just talented individuals, and as video games usually consist of objectives to be completed (kill the enemy team, discover a certain treasure) gamers quickly learn to cooperate in pursuit of these goals – or they lose. They’re the same lessons that can be learnt playing sport, but for those who are shyer about performing in such a pressured environment, video games can provide the emotional distance needed to feel confident enough to compete. These are skills which will be used throughout life, in social and work-related environments, and video games have been shown to greatly aid their development.
Prove It
A survey conducted by the nonprofit research Joan Ganz Cooney Center and the educational site Brain Pop found that 60 percent of teachers said that their students had become better collaborators after using digital games in the classroom two to four days per week.
2. Motor Skills
Perhaps the best documented medical benefit of playing video games is the (almost inevitable) improvement in spatial awareness, reaction time and basic motor skills of gamers. In fact, during tests, gamers as a group have been demonstrated to have abilities honed to more or less the same level as that of a fighter pilot (and only slightly below Batman). Such skills might be used to avoid a car accident one day, or would help with any kind of manual labour. It stands to reason that if you spend hours upon hours practising something, your abilities will improve over time, and playing video games involves a wider range of abilities than almost any other hobby that exists – and kids will do it willingly.
Prove It
A study by Dr James Rosser and Douglas Gentile (Iowa State University) of 303 laparoscopic surgeons showed that surgeons who played video games requiring spatial skills and hand dexterity and then performed a drill testing these skills were significantly faster at their first attempt and across all 10 trials than the surgeons who did not the play video games first.
1. Experience An Art Medium Like No Other
So far I’ve spoken a lot about health/social benefits, but now I’d like to take a moment to consider video games as a recreational activity. So easily reducible in the minds of their detractors, they are much more than “point and shoot”, “solve the puzzle” or “win the football match.” Of course they are all of these things – but they are also much more. Video games can boast beautiful artwork, exhilarating musical scores, intriguing characters and exceptional plots. Unlike any other form of art in existence, they offer the combination of all of these different aspects combined with the satisfaction of experiencing them first hand – instead of watching James Bond defuse the bomb, you do it yourself. Instead of listening to someone else play the song, you play it yourself. The artwork of Okami is revealed by your own paint strokes (with the Wii-mote) on the screen, and the plot of Mass Effect is shaped to no small degree by your own choices throughout the experience.
To dismiss video games as nothing but a childish toy is short-sighted; they can be music (but with images), art (but with sound), and encompass a great plot (but with choices). All of this, and more; video games can let players display their own creativity. Instead of simply enjoying the work of others, they can design their own maps or scenarios and improve their minds with competitive play. The limits of the medium are what we make them, and they’re less and less restrictive each year.
Prove It
Much of what I’ve said here is self evident, but the uses of simulation as a more effective form of learning than passive reception have been well documented. Video games, more than film or even books, can help us experience and memorise information. My girlfriend studies Art History and was quite surprised at the extent to which I could talk to her about Italian Renaissance Architecture. I hadn’t studied it conventionally at any point, but I had played Assassin’s Creed II, which features quite a faithful replication of Renaissance Italy (up to the point of including the buildings still in construction in the time period). I predict that the use of virtually simulated environments within education is going to sky rocket in the future, as climbing up to the top of The Santa Maria del Fiore will always be infinitely preferable to reading about it for the majority of school children.
Closing Thoughts:
After reading this article, one could be forgiven for thinking that gamers are some new race of super-humans. Obviously I’m not trying to suggest that that’s the case – only that gaming is a fun activity which has been shown to have social, medical and educational benefits. As with anything, it’s only positive in moderation and there are also plenty of negative aspects to video games – which can potentially be socially isolating, might cause players to disassociate themselves somewhat from reality, and most of all, can be highly addictive. Video games should form part of a varied life style which also includes regular physical exercise and face-to-face human interaction; they shouldn’t replace it. When used responsibly, however, they can have a positive impact on someone’s life which extends far beyond time spent actually playing the games.
What do you think about playing video games? Do they have a positive or negative effect on us? Have your say in the comments section below.
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