I think everyone is already aware that video games do more good than bad. Much has been said and repeated that playing made you more violent, but even the monkeys know how to make a difference when they are jokingly fighting and when they are serious. To say that we cannot distinguish it would be to place ourselves below them.
Number 5: players are more social
Perhaps the perception is still a little distorted because we keep thinking about that antisocial teenager who prefers to be alone, play alone, eat alone, do it all alone. So instilled was that image years ago that it was shameful to say that you liked games because the next thing to come was to ask if you were a weirdo. You can be perfectly proud, but a social oddity. That the players are more social is something very easy to understand. First we have to understand that after all, video games have to be treated as a hobby, and as such it is completely normal for me to end up socializing with those people who share your hobby: the smart ones in the class are grouped, the athletes are grouped, even The bullfighters group. And of course, the players are grouped. The correct thing is to say that players are more social than non-players who do not share a hobby. This fact is more frequent today because now most games have online multiplayer. There is no relationship between playing and being antisocial, the antisocial person is playing and not playing. Video games can attract more to that type of person but the important thing is that they do not generate them, do not create them, do not go from having friends to buy you a game and never want to know anything about anyone. All this has been trying to clarify since 2008 thanks to the work of pediatricians such as Christopher J. Ferguson, in his study “The risk that video games pose public health.” (doing a quick spoiler, it is concluded that there’s no risk).
Number 4: video games improve your understanding of space
Video games improve you practically as if they trained you. Improve your understanding of space and figures, your visual acuity and your reflexes, all put together with music and feelings, improving the cognitive skills and self perception. The researcher Dafne Bavelier carried out a research project where she demonstrates all of the above, and how video games improve those capacities by comparing players with no players. The former performed the tasks of perception and concentration better, with that it was clear that those who played frequently had more skill in those fields, but the researcher also wanted to check something else: he gathered a group of people who were not players examined them, He played a few weeks and examined them again with that simple test. He saw that they had really improved, that people could be trained through video games. For exemple, to demonstrate visual acuity Bavelier put an exercise that involves tracking objects with peripheral vision. That is, you look at the center point and you have to follow the blue faces, the sad faces and at one point they will turn yellow, they will continue to bounce a few seconds and then one of the faces will disappear. If you are a hardcore gamer you should know if it was blue or yellow. Explained perhaps it is simple and if there is only one blue face to pay attention to it is, but as soon as you put three four or five faces circling the screen it is much more difficult. In any case the players and especially those of fast action games, call of duty style, battlefield or street fighter, passed the test easily being able to follow up to seven objects when normal are about three. To evaluate the understanding of space and figures, he made a simple test in which you had to say which figure was the same as the one in the example having rotated. This test also showed that the players were more fluent and easy to do so.
Number 3: makes us smarter
This more than anything is a small annex to the previous one. To say yes, it makes you smarter as long as you think tracking seven objects is intelligence and not skill. The researcher Howard Gardner, the creator of multiple intelligences, would say yes. The truth is that they improve you although there is a limit. Playing one or two hours each day would have the same effect in the long run as playing six or seven. It is very good that you have an improved perception, more visual acuity and more understanding of space, but your body also needs activity! All of that mixed with auditive perception improving the capacity of process multiple items at the same time, one of the intelligence indicators.
Number 2: video games are art
I have already talked about it in other articles (in this one ) and I think that is already an indisputable point and Wagner would surely consider videogames as an art support. The games are not only another form of expression, but it has the particularity of being the only means where you are not only a witness of what happens but you are involved and interact. A kind of modern version of those books choose your own adventure, or theatrical improvisations in ancient Greece where the public made decisions in various parts of history. As Sims designer Will Wright said: “… in a movie the viewer can always think that the character is an idiot, that he could have done it differently, detaches himself from what he sees because he is literally a spectator. The video game that tells a story and lets you decide what, makes responsible for what has happened, because you have done it, made a decision and saw the consequences. ” Not all games have that capacity of immersion, but when they do it is undoubtedly a completely new, different, much more immersive expression of art. And of course, music have to do a lot with that, being also interactive and changing in every situation where the gamer puts himself in, guiding him in the emotional imput of the videogame. Thus, enjoying a work of art is included in this list of benefits of video games.
number 1: video games do not destabilize, but rather eliminate stress
Video games do not destabilize, but rather eliminate stress
As I said before, primates know how to make a difference when they are jokingly fighting and when they are serious. We, who are a smarter tad, also know the difference perfectly. But that is a classic, violence in video games allows you to get a feeling in a controlled way that you would otherwise have to have repressed 24 hours. At the end of the day we are animals, and like monkeys we need to joke. It has always been thought of just the opposite, that playing it encourages you to bring it to reality. But it is absurd, to give an example that is better understood: there is a very big difference between a child who rips the heads of the wrists, burns them and pierces them with nails, and that other child who shoots to kill in battlefield. The one with the dolls is much more worrisome. The difference is that battlefield puts you on a stage that is designed to kill the enemy team and you accept your role in that fictional world. While dolls are not made to make them suffer, they are also part of a real world. Only by understanding this last example we see that we cannot say that games indoctrinate in violence. Music in videogames helps to understand that, helps creating tensions and resolutions, helping the adrenaline to rise and still, guiding the gamer in this emotional travel of decompression and alternative fiction life. The effect on people is similar to that of movies or books: There are crazy people who have killed inspired by books they have read. But it was not the fault of the book, but of the person who was not mentally healthy.