A lot of news announcements will try and tell you that games are bad for you. They blame video games for murder, theft, racism, alien invaders, the cycles of the moon etc. They are wrong. Most of these so called “experts” have absolutely no knowledge of the industry, and think video games never go beyond Mario and Call of Duty. There’s a lot more to gaming than that, as we know, with even a few health benefits occurring from regular (but not excessive) game time. Read on for ten nuggets of knowledge you can wow the haters with, and hey, you might even learn something along the way.
Faster reaction times
You might not be this fast any time soon, but it’s a start.
It seems pretty obvious, but all those twitch reactions you develop while playing the average action game do come away with you when you put down the controller. A study printed in Current Directions in Psychological Science proved this very fact, noting that those who game had faster times in reaction tests, even when the reaction tests had nothing to do with video games. What are you waiting for then, start playing Time Crisis now and you may be able to catch bullets out of the air with enough practice time!
Improved concentration
It might not be as glamarous as you think, but you’ve got to respect this kind of dedication.
I doubt we even need a legitimate study to prove this one. Any gamers worth their salt will have conducted some kind of marathon session at some point over the years, and we all know that gamers are definitely capable of sticking with a single game for hours on end. Granted, this level of intensity might not transfer to other skills but, if a kid can go for a few hours on CoD without blinking an eye, then he clearly has capacity and dedication of a kind.
Learning stuff
See, now I know so much about assassin weaponary. Lesson learned.
I’ve never touched a cigarette in my life, and learned that it was a bad habit from a young age. Metal Gear Solid taught me that. I probably shouldn’t have been playing a game as violent as MGS in my youth, but seeing Snake’s health deplete while his cigarettes were equipped was enough to teach me the dangers of smoking. It shows that there is definitely knowledge to be gained from gaming, with many history games getting more and more accurate over the years. If the Total War engine can be used in historical documentaries, then there must be some education to be had in such a series.
