The Psychological Benefits to Video Games
To start I’d like to say that this is a bit of a different post to what I’d normally write about, it’s still technology related & whatnot, but it doesn’t really have too much to do with coding or whatever…
It’s quite funny how many people jump to the conclusion that playing video games can be bad for one’s mental state & well-being. Although I beg to differ to an extent, before you assume that I’m one of those gamers that just looks for any excuse to play a video game, I’d just like to state that I’m not even that much of a gamer. Sure I play a wide number of video games & I spend a lot of time playing video games, however I do like to spend a large amount of my time doing other things. Even learning, a lot of the time I’ll priorities conducting research & experimenting with new coding techniques.
Back to the main subject at hand, looking at the current state of the world there’s a lot of sadness & chaos in the world at this moment in time. Video games allow us to escape from reality to a certain extent, it allows us to become somewhat distracted. Given that a large number of countries are currently in lock down, another perk to playing video games is that they just enforce you to stay indoors. In addition to all of this, they also help us pass the time, rather than watching paint dry it gives a lot of people whom are unable to go about doing their usual routine something to do.
Now I’m not saying that there aren’t any negative impacts to playing a lot of video games, an example being how it can cause people to become more distant. If people play a lot of very violent video games, people tend to become more & more familiar with such graphical scenes. Now I’m not by any means suggesting or implying that playing a really violent video game will make you a murderous psychopath, but it may cause you to develop some form of detachment that you wouldn’t theoretically otherwise develop.
Of course there’s also the physical side of things too, it’s no lie that as humans, we need to do a reasonable amount of exercise to ensure that we remain healthy. Video games don’t typically go hand in hand with ensuring that we remain fit & healthy, although there are some platforms such as a number of the fitness games that are being developed, an old example being Wii fit. But even fitness & exercise aside, spending too much time playing video games can also lead to the development of the likes of RSI.
Now before you leave, I’d just like to say that sure I’ve not provided any references as if this is a research article or anything along those lines. I’ve mostly used a mixture of common sense & some knowledge that can be obtained by doing some very quick Google searches, I’m sure that you’ll find a lot of arguments for & against that involve studies & so on.
Personally, I know that I feel a lot more relaxed after playing the likes of Risk of Rain 2 for a good couple of hours straight, I love that game.
