Often the video games that get the most attention are the most sensational, shocking and often violent games, but they’re not really representative of what all videogames are like. In fact, most video games do have quite a few redeeming qualities. Many games can and do have benefits for players, and in a number of different and sometimes surprising ways.
EDUCATIONAL BENEFITS FOR KIDS
A recent study from the Education Development Center on the Ready To Learn Initiative found that a curriculum that involved digital media such as video games could improve early literacy skills when coupled with strong parental and teacher involvement. Interestingly, the study focused on young children and the 4- and 5-year-olds in the study showed increases in letter recognition, sounds associated with letters, and understanding basic concepts about stories and print.
The key for this study was having high-quality educational titles, along with parents and teachers who were equally invested in the subject matter. That way kids can discuss and examine the concepts they were exposed to in games. Also interesting was the value that video games can have even for very young players.
Luckily for families, there are a number of these types of games to choose from, such as Sesame Street Elmo’s A to Zoo Adventure, Dora’s Cooking Club and Cosmos Chaos.
ADULTS CAN LEARN TOO
Adults can learn something and benefit from games, too. Research under way by the Office of Naval Research indicates that videogames can help adults process information much faster and improve their fundamental abilities to reason and solve problems in novel contexts.
In fact, results from the ONR study show that video game players perform 10 to 20 percent higher in terms of perceptual and cognitive ability than non-gameplayers.
MULTI-TASKING
Other carefully designed studies have also shown that action videogames can improve several aspects of visual perception and visual attention. One recent study out of Duke that was published in the journal of Attention, Perception and Psychophysics by Sarah Donohue, Marty Woldorff and Stephen Mitroff, showed that the benefits of action videogame playing leads to “enhanced multisensory perception and integration.”
“If you think about it, the attentional and working memory demands of videogames can be much greater than other tasks,” says Michael Stroud, a professor of psychology at Merrimack College. “Consider Pac-Man as an example. In Pac-Man, you must navigate your character through a spatial layout while monitoring the separate paths of four additional objects (the ghosts), while keeping the overall goal of clearing the small pellets in memory, as well as keeping track of the remaining large pellets.”
“Think about how this may apply to skills such as driving,” says Stroud. “When you drive your car, you are faced with a constantly changing environment in the road not to mention several other distractions that compete for attention that reside in the car. At the same time, you are attempting to navigate through the environment to reach a goal.”
SOCIAL BENEFITS
Games with broad appeal that are easy to play can help many families play together across generations. Consider a game like Just Dance, which can have young kids dancing alongside their grandparents.
There are also games that have positive social messages that encourage families to do good. In a series of experiments published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers found that participants who had just played a “prosocial” game in which characters must work together to help each other out compared to those who had just played a “neutral” game (e.g., Tetris) were more likely to engage in helpful behaviors such as assisting in a situation involving a harassing boyfriend, picking up a box of pencils or even volunteering for more research.
CAREER BENEFITS
The future career choices for today’s youngsters will no doubt be influenced by technology in a way that is difficult for many parents to imagine. Skills learned and honed playing home console and mobile apps video games will likely be very valuable to students in the workforce of 2025.
The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) has proclaimed that kids need more, not less, videogames. They argue that video games hold the potential to help address one of America’s most pressing problems – preparing students for an increasingly competitive global market.
“The success of complex videogames demonstrates that games can teach higher-order thinking skills such as strategic thinking, interpretative analysis, problem solving, plan formulation and execution, and adaptation to rapid change,” the Federation announced in a report last year. “These are the skills U.S. employers increasingly seek in workers and new workforce entrants.”
ENCOURAGE COOPERATION & TEAMWORK
Many games today emphasize the cooperative aspects of gameplay, in which two players need to work together in order to reach a common goal. Games like Lego Star Wars: Pirates of the Caribbean or Kirby’s Epic Yarn are enhanced by having players cooperate to solve in-game puzzles.
Even the way games are made can encourage teamwork. At Washburn University in Kansas students study the game development process as a way to build teamwork and collaborative skills.
“It taught me to work in a group, videogames are not created with just one person and they require you to work well with others,” said Washburn student Adam Bideau in a recent interview with the Washburn review. “You have to pool everyone’s talents together in order to produce the required product,” he said.
CONFIDENCE BOOSTERS
Researchers from McGill University’s Department of Psychology have created and tested computer games that are specifically designed to help people enhance their self-acceptance. The researchers drew on their experience playing repetitive computer games and devised novel counterparts that would help people feel more positive about themselves.
And even games that aren’t specifically designed to do so can still help kids feel a sense of achievement, just based on the basic principles involved in what makes a game. Through puzzles, exploration and discovery, players learn to succeed in ways that some researchers say our brains actually prefer. Most games are designed to introduce a concept, such as jumping, and then provide players with an opportunity to master it. Players are then free to explore and utilize and achieve success with this new skill.
GAMES ARE NOW EXERCISE
All parents know that kids need a healthy combination of physical and mental exercise. Today’s emphasis on movement-controlled games via Xbox Kinect, Nintendo Wii and PlayStation Move help kids get both kind of exercise at the same time.
A study reported in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine of 39 Boston middle-school children who played with six different interactive gaming systems found the games “compared favorably with walking on a treadmill at three miles per hour, with four out of the six activities resulting in higher energy expenditure.”
Titles like Body and Brain Connection will challenge players’ minds and bodies to think and coordinate quickly.
FIND WHAT’S RIGHT FOR YOUR FAMILY
Moving, thinking, cooperating, helping, learning – videogames can help kids and families do all these things and more. Find the right games for your family, and you’ll get positive benefits from your together time, and you’ll all have fun doing it, too.
In new running series The Family Perspective, FamilyFriendlyVideoGames.com founder Johner Riehl takes a closer look at important and noteworthy issues that relate to families and video games. Over the coming weeks, we’ll examine research and topics from a family gaming point-of-view to dig deeper into issues and research that parents should be aware of, promote healthy gaming habits and highlight positive impacts of video games as part of family life.
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Scott Steinberg is the CEO of video game consulting firm TechSavvy Global, and founder of GameExec magazine and Game Industry TV. Hailed as a top technology and video game expert by dozens of publications from USA Today to Forbes and NPR, he’s covered the field for 400+ outlets from Playboy to Rolling Stone. A frequent on-air analyst for networks like ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN, he’s also the author of Video Game Marketing and PR.