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Games, my favorite and I’m quite sure millions of people share the same interest as me. We admire the breath taking graphics, spectacular sound and most important of all, the outstanding gameplay experience that just blow us off away.

Sadly not everyone share the same point of view as us gamers. Some people thinks that games are useless and a waste of time. Others even believe that games are evil and will influence gamers to convict crime.

As a game design student, such view is an outrage to me. Sometimes I wonder who are they to make such claims and do they know anything about games? All this must put to an end and I have spent many hours searching to prove that gaming is indeed a blessing to society. And so today I’m ready to share out my findings and finally make a stand for all the gamers out there that games not just entertain us but bring other benefit to us as well.

Visual Awareness
During my quest for searching the benefit for gaming, the first benefit I found was the improvement of visual awareness when playing action games. I remember my reaction was “yes, a concrete stand that gaming is useful after all”. Then I ask myself so what is visual awareness and what advantages does it bring to us in our daily life? Lucky the article explains everything to me. Below are some of the quotations from the article,

“In the University of Rochester, a research is conducted showing that people that play action games enhance that person ability to monitor more objects in their visual field and do so faster than a person who doesn’t play such games. In fact action games helps players process visual information more quickly and can track 30% more objects than nonplayers.

The study suggests that in addition to making game players more aware of their surroundings while performing tasks such as driving, action game playing might be a useful tool to rehabilitate visually impaired patients or to train soldiers for combat. “

So the next time a thief try to snatch the money of a player that consistently play action games, he better think twice.

Reference http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article1121.asp

Developing problem solving skills
Visual awareness might sound useless to some of you. So what if we can process visual information that quick, it does not help much in our daily life. Fortunately visual awareness is not the only benefit that playing games give. Playing games will also enhance our problem solving skills as all games are base on completing objectives.
Like all standard games, we have to rescue a certain people, get a certain item, and go to a certain location and many more. All this are goal driven experience. That is why games are very different from books or television. People that read books or watch television will just sit down and experience the enjoyment passively. Unlike games, player has to make decisions every single time and that means players must think or analyze before making any move.

Here is a quotation from an article that support my claim,

“Children who play such video games exhibit what experts call "fluid intelligence," or problem solving. They have to discover the rules of the game and how to think strategically," said James Paul Gee, a University of Wisconsin-Madison curriculum and instruction professor. "Like any problem solving that is good for your head, it makes you smarter.”

Reference http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Health/story?id=814080&page=1

Improve general knowledge
Finally games also improve our general knowledge. As we all know, some developer spend lots of time collecting enormous details that is related to their games. Company like Iron Lore studio need great understanding about Greek mythology to develop Titan Quest and Polyphony Digital must know the ins and outs about cars to develop Gran Turismo.

That is why playing games like “Call of Duty” will expend our knowledge about World War 2. For example for the Russian mission, the country is big but poor; as a result there are not enough guns and bullets for everyone. Because of that some people only have gun while others only have bullets at their disposal and the game capture the scenario very well. Another good example will be Rome: Total War. Playing it will give you a better understanding about how certain family names are so powerful and how the senates control Rome.

In fact, I believe that games will convey the information much better then books and television. Books and television can only let you imagine and see how the experience is like. Games on the other hand, give you the feeling that you are there experiencing the real thing and all this are made possible thanks to a little friend call “interaction”. This means that games not only teach you but giving you hands on experience as well.

Below are the pros and cons about book, television and game. Bear in mind it’s all base on my own opinion:

Book
Pros: give detail knowledge, activate our imagination.
Cons: boring to some people, statistic shows most people never finish reading the whole book.

TV
Pros: a picture paints a thousand words but a thousand frame of pictures……
Cons: encourage people to sit down and do nothing, convey less information compare to books

Game
Pros: interaction, fun way of learning, improve problem solving skills
Cons: addictive, time consuming,

Conclusion
I’m sure some of you must be thinking “Cool!! I never know that games have so many advantages”. At least that is what I said to myself when I first discover all this benefits. I know that some of you still think that all this are nonsense. Too bad, I have reference at my disposal and the only way it can be proven false is the research those university did was faulty, which I believe is quite unlikely.

So the next time you load your FPS game and go pixel hunting or having your archers shooting down a group of footman in a RTS game and suddenly someone tells you that you are wasting your life away, show them this article and prove them wrong.