Only a lazy person doesn’t tease the fat sides of gamers and tell them about the evils of video games straight into their bleary eyes. It’s not entirely fair, and it’s only sometimes objective. Let’s redress the balance and discover what unbiased science finds useful about gameplay. Here are 9 advantageous reasons to play video games.
Shooter fans make accurate decisions faster
Employees at the University of Rochester have conducted several studies and concluded that video games develop a gamer’s heightened sensitivity to what’s happening around them. And it’s not just limited to virtual worlds. A wide range of general skills that can be useful in everyday life is improved, such as multitasking, reading small text, recognizing people one knows in a crowd, or navigating around town.
One of the experiments involved several dozen people aged 18-25 who were far removed from video entertainment. Scientists divided them into two groups, each to play for 50 hours. One played shooters, while the other played a family simulator. The subjects then underwent a series of special tests on decision-making speed. The first group coped with the task 25% faster than the second without compromising correctness.
The authors shed light on the nature of this phenomenon. People make decisions based on probabilities, which they constantly calculate. The brain accumulates bits and pieces of visual and auditory information and eventually assembles enough to be perceived as an accurate decision. Shooting game fans reached the necessary threshold faster because their visual and auditory analyzers were more efficient.
Gamers have better control over their dreams
Jayne Gackenbach, a well-known psychologist at Grant McEwan University in Canada, compares video games to dreams, representing an alternate reality. And while dreams arise biologically in the human mind and video games arise technologically through computers and game consoles, the parallels are still apt.
Based on her research, Jane argues that gamers are more likely to encounter such an unusual phenomenon as a conscious dream. In such a state, one realizes that one is dreaming and can, to some extent, control the content of the invention. Researchers directly link this to virtual reality experiences.
Jayne elaborates and describes the well-known theory that dreams mimic threatening situations from everyday life. Nightmares help the body hone its defense skills in a safe environment so that it can apply them in real-life situations if necessary. Gackenbach studied the dream reports of 35 men and 63 women and found that gamers more easily perceived an imminent threat in their dreams and, at times, turned the situation around and gave battle to the source of the danger. That is, they turned a nightmare scenario into a revelatory raid.
Games make people wiser and kinder
Strategy games can influence gamers’ humanity and behavioral thinking in real life. That’s the thinking at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which created Quandary, an educational game for high school kids that raises fundamental questions about kids’ ethical development.
In the game, you lead a space colony and solve the dilemmas that arise between the cut-off settlers and Earth. You aim to get to the bottom of the dispute by talking to everyone involved. You’ll have to separate facts from subjective opinions, find common ground and offer your way out of the situation. There are no right or wrong solutions in the game. Each side has its bit of truth, and you must understand the position of each settler.
The scientists describe their game as both too moralistic and too severe. They don’t think such games will necessarily improve people’s understanding of the world, but they believe they will make them feel about objectively evaluating real-life situations.
Video games improve eyesight
High-speed, first-person perspective games improve a player’s eyesight. It was previously thought that the ability to recognize subtle differences in shades of grey could not be trained. But research by Daphne Bavelier suggests otherwise. The professor found that avid gamers are 58% better at perceiving subtle differences in contrast. Usually, this effect is achieved by eyeglasses or eye surgery.
Fast-paced gaming harnesses the full power of the human visual system; the brain adapts to the new environment, and the skills transfer to life away from the monitor. And the positive effect persists even two years after “getting hooked.” Daphne believes that video games can help treat amblyopia, characterized by impaired visual transmission to the brain.
Video games boost cognitive abilities
Gaming can restore impaired mental faculties in older people. This is evidenced by the results of an experiment described by a free essay writer and conducted within the walls of the University of California. A team of neuroscientists led by Adam Gazzaley has developed NeuroRacer, a seemingly simple racing arcade game in which the player controls a car with his left hand and reacts to (or ignores) traffic signs with his right.
A group aged 60-85 played it for six months, 12 hours a month. Scientists then tested a number of the subjects’ mental abilities. They found the training worthwhile: volunteers-gamers could better cope with several tasks at once. This makes sense. More unexpectedly, older people were better at remembering information and sustaining attention. And the effect was maintained for several months after the end of the experiments.
Electroencephalogram readings also support the conclusions. During the training, the brain’s low-frequency theta waves associated with attention increased. Dr. Gazzelli notes that activity in the prefrontal cortex of older people became similar to that in the prefrontal cortex of younger people.
Games improve professional skills
A laparoscope is a sophisticated medical instrument designed to perform diagnostic procedures and surgery on abdominal organs through a 5 to 10-mm diameter hole. Given the complexity of the systems and the time constraints, it is very demanding and expensive to train skilled personnel for laparoscopy.
A group of physicians at La Sapienza University in Rome conducted an exciting experiment and found that an ordinary home console could be a good simulator for masters of the scalpel.
Forty-two graduate students in general, vascular, and endoscopic surgery underwent a preliminary test session on the laparoscopic simulator before being randomly allocated to two teams. Over the next four weeks, half of the trainees played fairly regular games on the Nintendo Wii. The second session of similar tests showed that all participants improved their skills. However, gamers achieved better results for 13 of the 16 performance measures examined.
The scientists concluded that gaming consoles could be a useful, inexpensive, and entertaining way to train young professionals. Of course, in addition to standard surgical education based on simulators and actual surgeries.
Games help children learn to read
About 10% of children have dyslexia, a neurological disorder characterized by difficulty recognizing words accurately and fluently and a poor ability to read and write. Traditional treatments for dyslexia are long and demanding, so scientists are searching for alternatives. For example, Doctors at the University of Padua in Italy have suggested play therapy.
They tested the reading skills and attention of two groups of dyslexic children before and after playing regular and high-speed video games for nine sessions of 80 minutes daily. They found that action video games improved their reading speed without compromising accuracy more than one year of simple instruction and produced similar results to a year of specialized treatment.
Video games improve preschoolers’ motor skills
In a small study, Australian scientists compared some motor skills in children playing interactive and passive video games.
Staff at Deakin University assessed the level of physical activity in 53 children aged three to six regarding the amount of time they spend playing video games. They found that after playing Nintendo Wii, they improved their ability to kick a ball, catch bouncing objects and make throws, as their hand and eye coordination. No differences were found in running and jumping skills.
Biological games teach complex things
Biotic games are video games in which you control a real micro-organism instead of a familiar virtual object. Stanford University biophysicist Ingmar H. Riedel-Kruse invented the unusual genre. Scientists have created four “serious” games based on living biological processes. He controls a single-celled organism using electric fields, guiding it through obstacles, painting areas on a screen, and even playing football.
The unconventional concept increases students’ motivation to learn complex sciences.
