The Benefits of Playing Video Games

Are you a gamer?

Seeing video gamers as unemployed nerds who live in their parents’ basements and play obsessively till dawn, surrounded by their favorite Star Wars action figures may no longer be valid. But guys, we all know that video games are not only about having fun. Many experts in the game industry discuss there are various benefits to people playing video games, and here are only few of them:

Develop critical thinking and problem solving skills.

Playing video games encourages finding creative solutions and adaptations to particular situations that we encounter in the game, which we can later apply to our real lives. Even the games specifically designed to be played by children involve figuring out how to do things different and better and finding ways they can win the game. The virtual reality games make this fresh thinking even more powerful with their 3-dimensional effect. When transferred into our everyday lives these skills learned through video games can bring surprisingly positive effects for individual people, as well as communities and the society as a whole.

Learn how to collaborate better.

The development of the Internet and all the new technology have made gaming worldwide cheap and easy, so now every true gamer has had the experience of forming alliances in multiplayer games, properly managing group resources, working together with others toward a common goal – these are just the skills we need in our real lives in order to be successful.

They give us the opportunity of experiencing completely new roles.

Each game has a specifically designed space that the player should interact with in order to solve problems and reflect on the scenario. In this situation we experience the environment in new, different ways and respond accordingly, and both, our real and imagined social identities and interactions are in play.

Games show who the real winners and losers are.

Sadly, we live in a world where no real stimulating competition happens, where every kid that participates in the event gets a ribbon, and their mature supposed-to-be role models tell them they’ve been great when they actually haven’t, which leads to a whole group of other problems. In video games these rules don’t apply – here, there are clear winners and losers. And when we win the game we have even more respect for the people against whom we’ve competed, without getting arrogant and bragging about it. Losing the game, on the other side, teaches you to lose with authority, not whine or blame others for the defeat.

Playing games makes players happy.

This may seem like unimportant or obvious, but this happiness circles all back to the smartness argument. We are happy when playing games because we’ve chosen them for ourselves, and we are willing to give all that hard work and achieve mastery. Working toward mastering stimulates us to go past our own limitations, learn how to be better and smarter.
It appears playing games is not that bad, so next time you spend hours on your favorite video game don’t feel they’ve been wasted, but consider the game as a brain food.

Author bio: Alex Petryck is a student at Wisconsin-Madison University, works as a writer at Best Essays.