Positive effects of video games Essay Example for Free

Positive effects of video games Essay Now I am no expert in the mind, but in my research I have found that there is several ways that we can learn from playing video games. Video games have always been infamous for their anti-social aspect and the violence that is shown in them. They have been seen as negatively affecting the players in terms of lack of social skills, inefficiency, obesity and laziness. We lack the unbiased view thus miss on the positive effects of video games. The negativities brought in by video games are due to the unrestricted duration for which they are played. Video games are popular among the children and the youth of America. If there is no limit to the time for which a child is allowed to play a video game or no supervision on the way in which the game is being played, the not-so-positive effects of video games will start showing up. In the contrary case, video game players will start manifesting the positive effects of video games. Good video games incorporate good learning principles. Why? If no one could learn these games, no one would buy them. Players will not accept easy, dumbed down, or short games. Challenge and learning are a large part of what makes good video games motivating and entertaining. First of all a gamer can learn identity. No learning happens unless gamers make a commitment. Learning a new area, whether it be physics or medicine, requires the learner to take on a new identity: to make a commitment to see and value work and the world in the ways in which good physicists or doctors do. Good video games capture the player through identity. Players are either given a strongly formed and appealing character, such as Master Chief in the Halo series or they get to build a character from the ground up, as in Fallout 3. Either way, players become committed to the new virtual world in which they will live, learn, and act through their commitment to their new identity (Gee 4). When playing video games, gamers can learn how to interact. In fact, nothing happens until a player acts and makes decisions. Then the game reacts back, giving the player feedback and new problems. In a good game, words and actions are all placed in the context of an interactive relationship between the player and the world. (Gee 5). Players are producers, not just consumers. Even at the simplest level, players co-design games by the actions they take and the decisions they make. An open-ended game like Fallout 3 is, by the end, a different game for each player. In a massive-multi-player game like World of WarCraft thousands of people create different virtual careers through their own unique choices in a world they share with each other. Also many games come with versions of the software with which they are made and players can modify them. Such modifications range from building new skate parks in Tony Hawk or new scenarios in Age of Mythology to building whole new games. Players help â€Å"write† the worlds they live in. Players learn how to take risks and manage resources. Good video games lower the consequences of failure. If this happens then the players are encouraged to take risks, explore, and try new things. In fact, in a game, failure is a good thing. When facing a boss, the gamer uses initial failures as ways to find the boss’s pattern and look for a weakness. Also, especially with strategy games, player receive resources at given intervals and must save and spend them wisely to reach his ultimate goal. This involves abilities of resource management and testing. A player can learn to recognize the types of situations and react to them with determination. He can also learn to map the virtual world scenarios to those in the real world. Players can usually, in one way or another, customize a game to fit with their learning and playing styles. Games often have different difficulty levels and many good games allow players to solve problems in different ways. In a role-playing game, the distinctive attributes each player chooses for his or her character determines how the game will be played. Players can even try out new styles, thanks to the risk taking principle above. Research has shown that when learners are left free to roam in a complex problem space they tend to hit on creative solutions to complex problems. In good video games, the problems players face are ordered so that the earlier ones build a foundation so that later players can be presented with more, harder problems. It matters how the problems are organized, this is why games have levels. Good games offer players a set of challenging problems. Then, when the players have got it figured out the game throws a new type of problem at the players (sometimes this is called a â€Å"boss†), requiring them to rethink their now taken-for-granted mastery, learn something new, and integrate this new learning with their old mastery. In time, this new mastery is reinforcedA game can create an accomplished feeling by being pleasantly frustrating. Thanks to many of the above principles, good games stay within, but at the outer edge, of the player’s comfort level. That is, the game feels doable, but challenging. This is a highly motivating state for learners because it can feel rewarding beating the level or the boss that the player fails at a few times. Games encourage players to think about relationships, not isolated events, facts, and skills. In a game like Empire: Total War, for instance, players need to think of how each action taken might impact on their future actions and the actions of the other players playing against them as they each move their civilizations through the Ages. In a massive multi-player game like World of WarCraft, players must think of the consequences, good or bad, of their actions not only on all aspects of the game world, but on lots of other players as well. In our complex, global world, such system thinking is crucial for everyone. When players play a multi-player game like World of WarCraft, they often play in teams, in which each player has a different set of skills (say a Mage, a Warrior, or Druid). Players must each master their own specialty, since a Mage plays differently than a Warrior, but players learn to use each other’s strengths to minimize weaknesses. Furthermore, in such teams, people are allied by their commitment to a common goal, not primarily by their race, class, ethnicity, or gender. Players can play before they are experienced, supported by the design of the game, the help the game offers, and often, too, the support of other, more advanced players (in multi-player games, in chat rooms, or standing there in the living room). A very important positive effect of video games is the improvement of hand-eye coordination. A player has to watch on screen while simultaneously operating the joystick of the device in his hand to make moves. This requires the player to be alert and well coordinated. A study conducted by researchers at the University of Rochester found that people who play fast-paced action video games have improved visual and reaction skills when compared to those who dont play. According to the study, people who played such video games were able to better track objects appearing simultaneously, and processed fast-changing visual information more efficiently. To help ensure the validity of the study, researchers also looked at people who did not normally play video games, trained them to play, and then looked at the results. This group, too, showed improved visual capabilities. The games the non-players were trained on were Medal of Honor and Tetris. Those who played Medal of Honor scored better on the visual tests than those who did not. The findings indicate that video game training for people who require improved visual skills, such as soldiers or teenagers preparing to drive, would be successful. In a study conducted in 2004 by Butch Rosser, a surgeon of Laparoscopy, he studied the surgical skills of surgeons playing video games and surgeons who did not. It was astonishing to know from the results that surgeons playing video games were faster in action and made lesser mistakes during work than those who did not play video games. Children with problems with attention, lack of self-confidence, or who are picked on are often helped by the gaming experience. Video games have also been included in the therapy for children with such psychological problems. Children that see themselves as failures receive benefit from playing video games, because they can provide the player with a sense of participation success. In playing video games, a child gets a sense of participation, a sense of achievement, thus building his self-confidence. Children, after playing video games begin to feel excited about their lives, they start feeling positive and enthusiastic. This enables them to defeat their psychological disorders to a certain extent. And video games give children a chance to share their expertise and skills with their parents. This can give the child a boost of self-confidence when he gets to teach his parents something that he learned. Playing video games involves problem solving, planning, estimation and analysis of the moves or actions of both you and your opponent. This affects the player positively by developing in his problem-solving skills, analytical and estimation skills and quick decision-making. Video games give the means to channel one’s emotions in a positive way. Anger, hatred and such other negative feelings in a person’s mind get a chance to come forth by way of a game instead of real life. A player can shoot or beat up enemies with satisfying results that gets rid of anger that might have built up inside them.