Playing Video Games: In Case You Haven’t Heard, It’s Good For You

Playing video games, it turns out, is GOOD for you. That’s the official word these days. Ten years ago, you would have been laughed at and ridiculed for even thinking such a thing. Oh how things change. Recent headlines include:

• Discovery News: Playing Video Games Enhances Decision-Making
• Armed With Science: Adults Benefit from Playing Video Games
• Forbes.com: How Playing Video Games Can Boost Your Career
• PGATour.com: How Playing Video Games Can Help Your Game

The Discovery News story has been replicated across a dozen or more news sites, and the reason for the flurry of news about how playing video games can enhance your decision-making abilities is a recent study from the University of Rochester. In this study, psychologist Daphne Bavelier first tested eleven men who had reported that they had played video games five days per week for the past year and twelve men who had reported not playing any video games for the past year. In the test, both groups of men watched arrays of dots moving on a computer screen and were tasked with indicating, using a keystroke, which direction the dots were moving. The arrays varied in difficulty.

Test results showed that the gamers were significantly faster at detecting which way the dots were moving at all levels, even the toughest ones, while maintaining the same level of accuracy as their non-playing cohort. The gamers were also just as adept when tested for auditory prowess. Volunteers were tested using headphones to hear oscillating sounds that moved between the headphones and were tasked to indicate which direction the sounds were going. Researchers have surmised from the results of this study that gamers develop, by playing those shoot-em-up games, an increased ability to translate sensory information quickly into accurate decision-making. This ability is termed, “probabilistic inference.”

In another study, the same team of researchers took a group of seven men and seven women and this group was tasked with playing video games for no more than two hours per day for a total of fifty hours. A different group of seven women and four men were tasked with playing video games that involved simulated characters, where the gamers were to direct the activities of these characters to achieve a certain goal. Definitely not a shoot-em-up game. None of the participants had played video games before this test.

In the case of golf, playing a golf game can improve your performance on a real golf course, according to the PGA Tour website. Golf video games include real-life courses from around the world. Playing these games can help a golfer become familiar with these courses in advance of playing them. The games also teach a golfer about the effects of wind on the ball and how a ball will travel over a green (and how to adjust the swing to accommodate the green). These games also help a golfer learn how to swing better, taking into consideration the speed of the swing and helping the player learn how to slow his or her swing down for better results.

Not to say that taken to extremes, video games don’t also have a dark side, but I suppose that is true with anything we do. It is good to see evidence that there could be benefits to game play, besides the fact that they are fun.