Six Reasons Why Video Games Are Good For You

There seems to be a trope floating around out there that New Media Is Evil. Every generation has its moral panic, over literature, radio, comic books, TV, the Internet, and now, video games. Just to name a few, video games are being blamed for:

- Social isolation

- Increasing violence

- Addictiveness

- Lowering moral standards

- Psychological damage

Which, really, are exactly the same charges leveled against every pastime humans have ever stumbled upon, from chess to drugs. But we see the occasional dissenter which tells us that video games are finally going to be accepted into society, just as soon as the moral watchdogs find a new dog to kick. Studies like this one are trying to break video game's bad rap.

Great idea! Let's break it some more. Here are the ways we've noticed that playing video games make you a better person:

They relieve stress. Go ahead, try it some time. The next time you come home from work after a hard day of dealing with rude customers, incompetent co-workers, and an insufferable boss and feel like you're ready to snap, plop down and play Quake for a half hour. There, now, you got some aggression out of your system and didn't hurt anybody doing it! How is this a bad thing?

They exercise your problem-solving skills. Of course, the casual game genre with puzzle games like Sudoku are obviously exercises for the brain, but really anything from Katamari Damacy to World of Warcraft involves problem-solving on some level. If you've massed your orcs to sack your opponent's camp through the brilliant strategy of getting the guards to chase your wizard into the woods while your own warriors pour in from the opposite border, you have just solved some kind of a problem.

They also exercise your lateral thinking. Adventure games are especially good at this. The first-person epic adventure genre spawned by the Myst series was chock full of finding out-of-the-box solutions for the unconventional puzzles found throughout. After all, in the first Myst game, it doesn't logically follow that spinning the tower in the painting in the library until the line hits the painting of the ship would give you a clue inside the real tower for unlocking the ship outside, but you solved it when you experimented long enough.

They increase your hand-eye coordination. Even your most stanch anti-gaming zealot will grudgingly admit you have a point here. But this goes beyond sliding a puzzle piece into the right space in Tetris or keying in the right combination to make your fighter finish your opponent with a secret move. Video games are now used to simulate the controls of various vehicles, which is being used by both military and commercial interests to train pilots of everything from tanks to passenger jets.

Video games actively engage you. As opposed to other kinds of media, video games are interactive. It has been shown that there's more brain activity going on when you play the simplest game than when you're watching any kind of film. Even reading, to an extent, doesn't provide some of the stimulation that gaming does, although the converse is also true.

Video games enhance your creativity. We're talking mainly about simulator games. Building a home for your Sims or a theme park in Roller Coaster Tycoon is a creative act. You're not just doing all that decorating to win points, after all, but you're actually having fun making it because it just looks cool. Similarly, when your daughter plays those Flash dress-up games online, she's also going to come out of it with a better sense of fashion.

Now, we're not trying to advocate gaming for everyone all the time. This list is just inspired by the fact that nobody seems to stick up for video games very often. Like all media, they have their good points, and like all media, they have been unfairly made the scapegoat for all of society's problems from when they were first introduced.

Filed Under: The Retro Stylez, Toyz