Nintendo Okie

If you read internet gaming websites, as well as the occasional story found elsewhere, for more than five minutes you’ll see a number of stories promoting how gaming is bad for you.  It’s very common to see gaming linked to aggressive behavior, laziness, obesity and poor social skills.  While I’m not denying that is a possibility, in many cases it’s linked to younger children, especially when talking about video game violence.  The other factor that’s never mentioned in those articles is that there was a parent who probably wasn’t doing their job and allowed their 11 year old son to play Grand Theft Auto until 4 am instead of making them turn the box off and go to sleep. 

There are fewer articles out there showing some of the benefits of playing video games and I’m here to tell you that there are a number of positive benefits to gaming, some backed by science, some anecdotal.  Video games have been a positive influence on a number of people and I’m going to outline some of the reasons that you shouldn’t be so quick to demonize a form of entertainment.

The first is the effects on your brain.  While there are numerous studies out there that show that gaming is a negative influence on a developing brain, what about the positive sides of that coin.  A study by the Mind Research Network reveals that playing ‘Tetris’ on a regular basis can improve critical thinking, planning skills, reasoning, and even language.  The study in question had people playing Tetris for three months while using MRI brain scans to study those effects.  One member of the study, Neuropsychologist Dr. Rex Jung, said that playing Tetris increased attention, hand-eye co-ordination, memory and visual spatial problem solving, many of these things simultaneously. 

What about hand-eye coordination.  There are any number of games out there, all if you get right down to it, that require you to be manipulating objects in a virtual environment while paying attention to what is happening on the screen.  This can’t be accomplished without improving the ability for your hands to operate while looking in another location.  Puzzle games are the biggest in this respect. 

You also need to be able to solve problems quickly, sometimes while avoiding dangerous obstacles on the screen.  This increases your brains ability to decipher information quickly and process it so that you can finish the task given to you.  Logic and spatial recognition are a large part of this aspect of gaming as well.  Being able to place object precisely where they are required and using them in common as well as uncommon ways to complete an objective. 

Real time strategy games are huge benefits to multi-tasking, time management, resource management and planning.  Knowing the precise time to coordinate an attack on an enemy position while making sure you have the resources and the manpower to accomplish that task are key to survival.  Gamers, and even children will learn through trial and error the proper way to coordinate all of these resources.  If you don’t have enough wood to build the structure that will allow you to house your troops you’ll be left defenseless and vulnerable.  While this may not seem like a great real world aspect to gaming it does show you how to manage these variables and that will translate into being able to manage the work on your desk in the limited amount of time available to you in a typical work day.  If you can’t process the work you need to complete for a given day that will require more work on subsequent days that could begin to pile up on you and in turn cause you to potentially lose your real world job.

Don’t forget about Role Playing games, especially games from previous generations that relied on text to convey the story.  These games are key ingredients to enhancing literacy skills.  While they cannot fully replace a good book they do require the ability to read and comprehend what you’re reading.  It’s one thing to be able to read the instructions given to you by a character, but if you don’t understand and comprehend them you will fail in whatever goal was given to you and you’ll be forced to wander around aimlessly hoping that you stumble on your goal. 

Cooperation is a huge component of many games today and they require multiple people to work together to complete tasks.  This is a huge benefit to team building, cooperation and communication.  Knowing a goal that you need to accomplish is one thing, but if you’re trying to complete something that someone else is doing it’s going to prove fruitless.  Good communicators will be able to get multiple people working together performing a number of different things that all work in conjuction with each other.  Many times, especially in games that are combat oriented you need to be able to fully communicate with people and change goals and objectives on the fly.

While I will never say that video games are bad for you, I won’t ever say they’re completely good for you either.  They are simply another form of entertainment.  They’re interactive, they’re skill building, but they can also be addictive and destructive.  It requires parents to ultimately take responsibility for what they’re children are watching and participating in.  It requires them to understand what their children are able to comprehend and what affects them in positive and negative ways.  11, 12 and 13 year old children should not be playing Grand Theft Auto to begin with, but especially not until 4 am where it requires the police to be called. 

Parents have to take control of the situations in their own homes.  Video games, like rock music and art in the past have been made a scape goat of this generation.  It’s convenient for a lazy parent to say that the game system in their house is the problem, when in reality it is their own fault for not limited what a child see or plays, and how long they play it.  I will fully admit that games, especially violent ones, can be harmful to young minds, but used properly, in moderation and with proper supervision video games can be a wonderful, interactive, skill building form of entertainment more than books or movies could ever imagine being.  And who’s to say that a round of Tiger Woods on the telly won’t spark an interest in some young child to actually learn to play the game of golf?