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Playing Video Games Actually Have A Lot Of Benefits

Benefits of Playing Video Games

Video games may be thriving in recent weeks (or years) as a “booming” new industry, but that wasn’t always the case. Back then, people believed that video games were addicting sources of entertainment. That these video games were pointless and that they, uhm…rot your brain. Well, experts believe the contrary. A lot of researches had been conducted in order to prove otherwise and the scientists and researchers actually found a lot of benefits in playing video games. Here are the top benefits that video games might give you along with a few sample of games that might help you in that specific area.

Multitasking

Not Easy.
Yeah…the gist is, you will be controlling all of those at the SAME TIME. Easy, right? Nope.

Games: http://multitaskgames.com/

Try this: you’re watching the episodes of Game of Thrones because the new season is approaching really fast, while watching your kid, while writing this article, while doing another thing. Oh, look! You forgot your dinner on the stove. Handling this kind of scenario might be brain-wrecking for most people because they can’t handle multitasking. Well, worry not, my dear. Researchers found out that playing video games actually helps with doing (or at least paying attention to) multiple things at once.

But, it is important to note that this might be because the participants of the research were doing the same thing for thousands of times during the whole duration of the experiment which might be the reason why they were so good at it. It may be wonderful, fascinating even, to be able to do multiple things at once, but still you’ll be more efficient if you try to focus on just one task at a time.

Improved Attention

I know you've played something similar to this, right? Right?
I know you’ve played something similar to this, right? Right?

Games: Quake, Doom, Call of Duty, Overwatch, basically any action-packed games

Walking on a busy road, looking for a friend in a crowd or, following a ball during a game requires great effort and, sometimes, intense concentration; and these certain scenarios might be between life or death…ok, that may be taking it too far, nonetheless, it is a critical survival skill. In order to fully understand the relation between video games and Multiple Object Tracking (MOT), researchers from California designed, implemented, and evaluated TrackFX, a game that can be used by children as young as 30 months old.

The game is basically just like a hide-and-seek game where a ladybug and a spider are covered with leaves and were moved around. Then, after a few seconds, the movements stop and the player can then choose which leaf hides the ladybug. This way, the ladybug acts as the target and the spiders act as distractions. The results of the experiment were astonishing, the children still perform well despite the levels becoming more difficult.

Decision Making

Prof. Daphne Bavelier's test video game
Look at those dots! Oh, oh, oh!

Games: Tell-tale games, simulation games, and well…action games

One might look at gamers as if they are just ‘playing’ a game and not much is happening in their heads, but this is not the case. Each and every bit of a gaming session involves a lot of small and big decisions to be made; and some requires a reaction in a snap of a finger. This was further discussed by a team of researchers from New York. Oh and get this, the gender of a person doesn’t really matter.

What they did is that they assigned 14 people (half men, half women who haven’t played video games) to play two action games for no more than two hours a day up to a total of 50 hours. Then a second set of four men and seven women joined in but they played a Sims-like game where they direct the lives of the characters. Both of the groups improved greatly with the test game the researchers prepared but, action gamers responded faster. I can hear you cheering from here.

Do you think video games?

That’s all I got for now. There are still a lot of benefits that video games may offer us, but just like what my momma used to say, “Too much of everything is not good”. How about you? What are the benefits that video games have to offer us? And, have you experienced the benefits of games first-hand? Comment them down below and let’s have a chat.

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