People – parents, for one, but also others – often complain that games are mind killing, psychologically damaging to kids, etc. We’ve heard it all.
And while this may have a lot of truth to it, what doesn’t get nearly enough attention is the actual benefits that players receive from long-term game playing.
In particular, gaming can lend itself to much-increased creativity. And creativity is important for many aspects of life, both in terms of personal interests and professional pursuits. Let’s take a closer look.
What psychological benefits can you gain from playing games?
Not only can gaming improve your strategic capacity – obviously, you need to know what kinds of moves to make to outsmart your competitor – but also many other things.
If you play a game that involves puzzles, this contributes to your logic skills and ability to recognize patterns.
Similarly, if you play adventure games, it can help your imagination and ability to tell stories. You can learn to envision surrealistic scenarios, develop characters, and come up with plots that can make you a great storyteller.
Benefits of designing your own games
If you manage to learn game design yourself, this opens up a whole host of possibilities for you. The principles of game design transfer easily into many other areas of life.
If you later work in business, for example, you will benefit from the planning, creativity, and other skills that you master from learning game design.
For example, if you become a business owner, you can create a business card mockup that will make you stand out from among the crowd.
Learning game design can teach you to think analytically, set goals, track your progress, and experience the fulfillment of a job well done.
What specific cognitive benefits does gaming provide?
There are numerous aptitudes that you can improve upon through gaming. This includes:
- Increasing your attention span
- Expanding your spatial awareness
- Improving your overall “mental flexibility” to look for new things and think in more different directions
- Enabling you to make decisions more quickly
- Improving your eyesight
- Developing a more positive outlook in general
- Increasing your ability to multitask
- Developing your ability to find creative solutions to problems
All of these skills are invaluable for every area of life. And while there is something of a risk of fanatical gamers becoming antisocial if they never leave the screen, parents can help control this by limiting the amount of time that teens spend at the gamebox.
Examples of deep and creative thought in gaming
If you’re still not convinced, let’s look at some examples of how designing real quality games can help you think more carefully.
Say you are designing a game in a tropical climate. Do you really know what kind of flora and fauna would be common in that climate?
This might sound like a trivial detail, but gaming has become so refined in recent years that you can bet critics would call you out if you got it wrong.
Here’s another scenario: Say you were designing a game that involved going deep into the sea. Do you know for a fact what type of marine life would be able to live at different depths?
A lot of very intelligent people who don’t happen to be marine biologists don’t. So the point is that game design can open up whole new worlds for those that get involved in it.
Understanding of how systems work
Knowledge of systems is enormously important for many fields of work. There are essential cognitive skills that contribute to the understanding of systems. These include:
- A deep understanding of cause and effect
- Analytical skills refined enough to break down systems into component parts to determine their functionality and relationships to each other
- Critical thinking skills to evaluate information and consider it from different perspectives
- Problem-solving skills that enable the identification of root causes of, and solutions to, problems that emerge from within a system
- Attention to detail and how minute system components react upon each other and the whole
- The ability to think holistically, in addition to understanding parts
Let your kids play games
The point is that you should let your kids play games. No, this shouldn’t mean allowing them to spend the whole day in front of the game board, to the exclusion of everything else. They should still be actively encouraged to spend time outside and be with friends.
But there are clear benefits to be had. If they seem to be interested enough, perhaps encourage them to pursue game design as a major in college.
Not only will it allow them to focus on work that they love, but they will develop many new aptitudes at the same time. And the pay isn’t bad, either!
