In a speech, on August 8th, 1983, Ronald Regan said, "I recently learned something quite interesting about video games. Many young people have developed incredible hand, eye, and brain coordination in playing these games. The air force believes these kids will be our outstanding pilots should they fly our jets." Typically when a U.S. President says something, the people listen. In this case, however, they did not. Most Americans, even those who play them regularly, still see video games as valueless time wasters that are nothing more than meaningless entertainment. The hand eye coordination benefits of playing video games are the butt of many jokes. What researchers did not know when Regan made this statement, and what a vast majority of Americans still do not know, is that video games have far more benefits than just coordination.
Five or six years ago, I read an article in either Scientific American or Discover magazine. I cannot find a reference for the article because neither of those magazines' websites have decent search capability, and there are so many articles on the subject that even Google is no help. The author of this article was working on a research project on sensory benefits of certain sensory disabilities. It has been known for some time that people who are blind or deaf tend to have heightened ability in the other senses. This researcher wanted to find exactly how far these sensory benefits went, so he made some computer programs to test things like reflexes and coordination. He found that people with sensory disabilities performed significantly better on all of his tests than people without any sensory disabilities. Then one day, he decided to try the tests himself. He scored off the charts. His scores beat both the normal test subjects and the disabled ones, by a wide margin. After testing the other researchers he worked with, along with some other people, he found that the link was computer games. People who regularly played computer games consistently scored much higher than even people with sensory disabilities. This researcher ended up changing his research to find the effects of video games on the human brain. In his article, he compares playing video games to working out for the brain. Further research found that video games can improve social skills, mathematical skills, quick decision making skills, risk assessment skills, spatial memory skills, reflexes, physical and mental coordination, as well as any number of different types of problem solving skills, and many other skills.
Other recent research has found even more beneficial uses of games in general. A Deseret News article I recently read advocated the use of games for improving family life. The article cited research showing that playing games (including board and cards games, as well as video games) occupies the logical centers of our brains, which makes us less hesitant about discussing difficult subjects. In family settings, this can help keep discussions on controversial topics more civil and more likely to occur in the first place.
Jane McGonigal, a gaming advocate, has given several TED talks on how video games can improve society. Her focus is on family life improvement and building problem solving skills that will be useful for solving some of the world's most difficult problems. She recommends playing no less than 20 hours of games a week. She suggests that MMORPGs are especially good, because of the cooperative social interaction, but says that multiplayer games in person are even better. Ideally, she says that cooperative in-person games are the best, because they build teamwork skills and strengthen relationships. In one TED talk, she also explains and shows how turning a difficult task into a game can make it much easier, or at least less tedious and more engaging.
I also have some personal experience with the benefits of video games. Many years ago, I attended a youth group, where we played volleyball weekly. I noticed that most people who joined our games were not very coordinated when they started and often took many months to improve their skill. There were some people, however, that were very coordinated and could play well, without any prior experience. There were a few differences between those who could play well right off and those who could not. People with prior experience in other sports tended to be fairly good right off. There were some people though, that were good right off, but that had no real athletic experience. Most of these people were actually not very physically fit either. This was because they spent a lot of time playing video games. Somehow, they could play as well as some people with prior vollyball experience, even though they were unathletic, with no real experience in any sport. The benefits to coordination, reflexes, and quick decision making from playing video games were very clear.
A lot of research showing the beneficial effects of games is not limited to video games. Most games can have some beneficial effect, and different games have different beneficial effects. For instance, Tetris is great for basic problem solving, reflexes, coordination, and fast decision making, while Dungeons and Dragons is great for cooperative social skills, relationship building, advanced problem solving, and even basic mathematical skills. Video games tend to focus more on fast decision making, reflexes, coordination, while non-video games focus more on advanced problem solving, risk assessment, and social skills. Obviously some games cross boundaries, but there are some skills that do not cross boundaries well. In short, not all of the benefits of video games can be gained from non-video games, and not all of the benefits of non-video games can be gained from video games. For the full benefits, a variety of games and game types are important.
We need to get over this social stigma of video games. Admittedly, video games can be addictive, and like working out, if you do not use what you gain from it, it is worthless. I think, however, that eliminating the social stigma around video games would solve part of this problem. Many gamers feel isolated by this social stigma, so they spend most of their time playing video games, because at least on the games, they have friends who do not judge their hobby. Ironically, these gamers tend to be smarter than the people who judge them, and recent research has shown that many of them even have better social skills, because they work with other people solving in-game problems regularly (many MMORPGs are more social than workplaces or even bars). If our society did not push these gamers into isolation, they would probably spend less time playing games and more time working with other people to solve real world problems, and they would be extremely good at it, because of the problem solving skills gained playing games. Also, if society stopped pushing gamers into isolation, maybe more people would play games, and the average intelligence of our society would improve. If this happened, maybe all of these extremely difficult problems we are facing would not be so difficult anymore.
One thing we need to consider is what is really important in our society? Many schools and colleges place emphasis on certain types of games. These are sports, an athletic kind of game that does have some benefits in common with other types of games. The primary benefit of sports are all physical though. Sports improve our strength and endurance. They can also improve coordination to some degree, but they do not improve our mental function as much as games that challenge the mind (there is strong evidence that physical exercise does improve cognitive function, but only on a general level). This seems to indicate that our society values physical fitness more than mental fitness. Ironically, much of our media supports this theory. Also, ironically, the most important jobs are not ones where anyone cares about physical fitness. Some of the best paying and highest demand jobs are engineering jobs, where mental fitness is the only qualifying factor. Engineers are not muscular, skinny people with great bodies. They are extremely smart people with well developed minds. So, why are we not having more "sports" in schools and colleges that emphasize mental fitness? Some colleges, including MIT, have StarCraft 2 teams, but most traditional colleges have at least football, basketball, and volleyball teams, and many also include baseball and softball, but nothing to challenge the mind. These skills will be great for the fraction of a percent of students who become professional athletes, but for the rest of us the only benefit is better physical fitness, which could easily be achieved by walking or running to our classes instead of driving.
I would like to see more video games in schools. I don't mind if they are educational games, since this is really the goal, but they should also be engaging games, otherwise students will not want to play them and will get far less benefits from them. Also, while StarCraft 2 is a great competitive game and teaches a lot of useful skills, we need some cooperative games as well. Jane McGonigal recommends 20 hours of games per week. I do not think this should all occur in school (otherwise half of school time would be gaming), but even 2 or 3 hours a week would have beneficial effects. In elementary school students typically get an hour of recess per day (usually 30 minutes at a time), and an hour of lunch that includes some recess time after eating. This is more than enough physical activity to maintain good fitness (not to mention the PE classes that involve even more physical activity). What if, two days a week, that hour of recess was spent playing games instead? The students would still have the recess time during lunch for physical activity. The game time could begin and end with restroom breaks, so the students are not sitting still for too long at a time. If the games could be played in short intervals, they could be played during the normal 30 minute recess times, otherwise the school could schedule time differently for those days, to make the time 1 continuous hour. Highschools and colleges could offer game class time or extracurricular game time much like they currently offer sports. Note that I am not saying they should eliminate sports entirely, but I think that if sports are considered a valuable asset to students, games should be considered at least as valuable, since they offer more practical benefits than physical sports.
Also, games are usually cheaper than physical sports. For a given sport, schools or students often end up paying hundreds of dollars per student for equipment. Most schools already have a computer lab, and multiple students can use a computer if they are scheduled at different times (much like the same field can be used for multiple sports, as long as it is scheduled well), so computer costs are already covered. The best games for this sort of thing do not cost more than $60 per copy, and most cost substantially less, so even if each student needs their own copy, the per student cost for student specific equipment is not more than $60 per sport (and, for account based games like StarCraft 2, many students will already have their own account). Also, this is typically a one time cost, while physical sports often require new equipment regularly, as the old equipment wears out. New computers will only be needed if new game courses are added that require better computers, or if there are too many students and there are not enough computers to go around. Our society and our schools embrace extracurricular games that build skills that are not very relevant to our modern civilization, when they could be embracing games that build useful and relevant skills for much cheaper.
Focusing of physical sports and physical fitness is great if we are trying to raise a generation of construction workers, but what we really need are engineers and problem solvers. Games can help give us these. Games are to mental fitness as working out is to physical fitness. Since our current civilization needs mentally fit people much more than physically fit people, our culture needs to embrace gaming as a means of improving and progressing. If we can eliminate this video game stigma that our society has harbored for far too long, I believe that we can progress much faster and solve many of our most difficult problems much more easily.
Lord Rybec
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