The Benefits of Gaming Part 1: Cognitive Skills

Video games have been around for a long time. The first video games were created in the 1950s and rose in popularity during the 70s and 80s. There was a crash in 1983 but in the 1990s they became much more mainstream with the advent of home consoles from Nintendo and Sega, among others.

Playing video games has long been associated with negative behaviours. Violent games are believed to cause violent behaviour in real life, although the ‘evidence’ for this is limited. The same goes for mental health issues, sleep problems and addiction.

There have been horrible incidents that are related to playing video games. There are physical risks such as repetitive strain injuries, seizures, eye strain and sleeping difficulties. Addiction is real, and with some games having ‘pay to win’ options, people have ended up losing a lot.

Some of the gaming spaces online are extremely toxic, with a lot of nastiness going on. A recent example is the release of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which was review bombed and criticised for including a non-binary character as a companion. Even though every Dragon Age game before it had plenty of LGBTQ+ representation.

So my goal with April’s posts is to counteract all this negativity. As a gamer, I know that playing video games has benefitted me in many ways. There are a lot of positives to playing games and potential benefits both for children and adults. So let’s get into it.

Hand-Eye Coordination

Gaming involves using a controller, keyboard and/or a mouse in order to control what you see on the screen. If you want to succeed in the game, you need to use the controls in the right way to achieve the goal.

So you are using what you see to guide your hands, and you learn how to respond to what you’re seeing. This lets you input commands at the right time. You generally can’t afford to look at your hands, so just like learning to touch type, you learn where the buttons are without looking down.

For many types of game, you need to learn good timing in order to succeed at the game. Platformers like Crash Bandicoot and Sonic the Hedgehog make you learn how to time jumps, judge distances and react accordingly. Run and gun games like Cuphead and first person shooters like Call of Duty also call for rapid responses and good hand eye coordination.

Attention and Observation Skills

To succeed in most games you need to be focused and paying attention to what’s happening on the screen. So playing games can improve resistance to distractions and boost focus. There is evidence that gamers can track more objects in an environment than non-gamers.

Gamers also can have better reaction times, especially if they play combat heavy games like FPS or Action RPGs. Gamers can pick out targets in cluttered visual fields and respond quickly. I also find my peripheral vision has improved because of gaming, I notice things.

Gaming encourages observation skills as well, if you have to look out for enemies or dangers. In the Fallout games, one of my favourite series, it’s very common to find traps in dungeons and buildings. Trip wires, mines, exploding baby prams, things like that. Skyrim is the same, with many of the dungeons full of pressure plates and magical traps. You learn how to spot them.

Spatial Navigation

Many games require you to navigate a space, like a maze of some kind with challenges in it. You need to understand the relationship of objects and space relative to each other in order to get through the level. This teaches you how to judge distance, speed and relative sizes.

Spyro the Dragon is a great example of this. It’s a platformer with a twist, something basically brand new when the first game game out on the original PlayStation (Sony). Spyro is a young dragon, he can’t fly outside specific flying challenge levels. He can glide though, so the game is challenging enough.

Spyro teaches you to observe the layout of the level, so you can figure out how to reach platforms and locations. You need to judge the height you need to get to, in order to cross the distance and reach the platform you need. It really is satisfying when you manage a difficult jump or glide.

Conclusion

This is the first of several parts discussing the benefits of playing video games. I have plenty more to say. Playing games is sometimes seen as a childish hobby, but I’ve loved them most of my life.

I have also learned a lot from gaming. My reaction times are really good, which helps when driving and also helped a lot in my veterinary career. I only suffered one serious dog bite in 15 years, because I was quick to evade them. I also believe my gaming helped me learn how to use the endoscope quickly.

Endoscopes are the cameras that can be passed into body systems like the stomach, in order to see what’s going on. You control the camera with buttons that move it around, and use instruments that are long and flexible in order to remove things, take samples or even repair things. It all made sense to me very quickly because I was already used to controlling a camera with buttons, from playing video games. Other skills learned through gaming can absolutely be helpful in your professional life, no matter what kind of career or job you have.