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Just like prescription drugs or food, gaming outside the bounds of moderation can lead to serious drawbacks. But most reasonable experts in fields such as psychology, education and research acknowledge that interactive entertainment has important benefits that have the potential to shape the world’s future.

An important idea to keep in mind: Iowa State University psychologist Douglas Gentile said at the 2008 American Psychologist Association convention, “The big picture is that there are several dimensions on which games have effects. [Dimensions include] the amount they are played, the content of each game, what you have to pay attention to on the screen, and how you control the motions.

“This means that games are not 'good' or 'bad,' but are powerful educational tools and have many effects we might not have expected they could.”

Edge spoke with Chicago-based psychologist Dr. Kourosh Dini, Sharp Brains CEO and education expert Alvaro Fernandez and XEODesign president Nicole Lazarro, in addition to compiling other authoritative opinions on 15 of gaming’s most prominent benefits.

Empathy



Dr. Dini argues that children can learn empathy from games. “There are different ways that I think empathy can be engaged in a person and learned by a person,” he says. “One of the big things about many games is you’re interacting with other people in such a way that you have to actively think about what the other people are doing or thinking in order to either play against them or play them cooperatively. Either way you’ve got to be engaged in trying to think of how is this person learning and what’s this person going to be doing next.”

Post-traumatic gaming




A study at Oxford University is finding out how Tetris can help subjects deal with post-traumatic stress. "Tetris may work by competing for the brain's resources for sensory information," Dr. Emily Holmes recently told the BBC. "We suggest it specifically interferes with the way sensory memories are laid down in the period after trauma and thus reduces the number of flashbacks that are experienced afterwards."

But games can also help alleviate more common stress that people feel every day, studies have found. One 2008 PopCap-endorsed study by East Carolina University’s Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies that determined that casual games can improve players' moods.

Distraction factor



Games can often be distracting to a fault when more pressing issues should be taking a priority. But games' strong distraction factor can be used to positive effect, experts say. A 2007 report in Medical News Today said Nationwide Children's Hospital Burn Center had begun using videogames to distract burn victims from intense pain, as opposed to more traditional distractions like books and music. Dr. Catherine Butz told the publication, "Research shows a very strong connection between anxiety and pain. Distraction does a great job in decreasing any kind of anxiety that might be associated with the anticipated procedures, so by distracting patients and keeping anxiety at a minimum, procedures tend to go much more smoothly and be much less painful for the child."

Another study commissioned by RealGames found that among 2,700 respondents, 59 percent said casual games were a positive distraction from snacking or overeating, while 42 percent of smokers among the group said casual gaming helped them light up less frequently.

Physical Rehab



Soon after the console's launch, the Wii craze spilled into legitimate physical therapy sessions. The mix of exercise, motor skill development, competition and simple fun that games like Wii Sports provide is a welcome alternative to some of the more tortuous means of physical rehabilitation. And recently, Leeds, U.K.-based Seacroft Hospital said it would use the Wii Balance Board and the peripheral’s ability to measure weight distribution to familiarize amputees with new prosthetic limbs. What's particularly astounding is that therapists aren't only using medical-grade hardware or software, but also creatively using off-the-shelf commercial products that are available to anyone.

Sharper image



A 2006 study at the University of Rochester found a correlation between playing action videogames and spatial resolution of players’ vision. According to the study, “…Avid action videogame players were found to localize a peripheral target in a field of distracting objects more accurately than non-action videogame players, as well as to process a visual stream of briefly presented objects more efficiently and to track more objects at once than [non-action videogame players].”

Non-action videogame players that were trained on the games also showed similar improvement in their ability to perform complex visual tasks. It’s something to think about next time you’re sniping in Team Fortress 2.


The old chesnut



For decades, the argument that videogames improve hand-eye coordination has served as the layman’s main line of defense against assertions that the hobby has no redeeming value. But improvements in coordination are more than just an excuse to play, researchers have found. One interesting but small study by doctors at Beth Israel Medical Center, New York noticed a link between gaming and improved performance in laparoscopic surgery—minimally invasive procedures that involve doctors remotely controlling a camera inside of a patient while looking at a TV screen.

There are few professions where steady hands could mean life or death, so when the study’s authors say "Videogames may be a practical teaching tool to help train surgeons,” people should hold the conclusion in high regard.

Serious simulation



Simulations can be “games” in and of themselves, allowing users to fly planes, perform surgeries or drive at high speeds from the safety of a computer or console. But while organizations are successfully using simulations to perform important, real world “hands-on” tasks, they also have the potential to educate people on serious world issues: SimCity is just a hint of how far this idea can reach.

Says Lazarro, “With any simulation of a certain sufficient complexity, the knowledge is if you master that simulation, you then master the knowledge of that system. …It’s going to be absolutely essential that we develop the kinds of citizens that can solve problems like global warming and deforestation and AIDS, all these things that you can’t really become really well-informed in without a game. Words and video only go so far. A simulation is where you can actually invent things or talk about things more.”


A new kind of literacy



In 2007, the MacArthur Foundation said it would be contributing $1.1 million in funding towards a new middle and high school in New York whose curriculum would draw inspiration from videogames. Students wouldn’t necessarily be slaying warthogs in World of Warcraft, however. The school would implement “gaming literacy,” a way of learning that encourages students to think of problem solving by cause-and-effect associations often found in interactive entertainment, instead of relying on more standard learning methods such as memorization.

"The learning processes behind play, I think, are undervalued,” says Dini. “When a person is engaged in play, they seem to learn better. … There’s this feeling of mastery that can happen that sometimes kids don’t get to achieve otherwise.”

Sparking imaginations



Videogames can spark imagination and creativity in myriad ways. Whether it’s a younger player immersed in the Green Hill Zone or an older player stepping into the shoes of a zombie slayer, games have a unique way of suspending disbelief. And with user generated content penetrating the mainstream, players can now create their own worlds to share with others instead of relying wholly on professionals to spoon-feed experiences.

Sims creator Will Wright wrote in Wired in 2006, “…The gamers' mindset—the fact that they are learning in a totally new way—means they'll treat the world as a place for creation, not consumption. This is the true impact videogames will have on our culture.”


The cognitive health recipe



Games—some more than others—have shown to have positive effects on cognitive health. Problem-solving and quick decision-making are common elements of interactive entertainment. In one example, University of Illinois psychology professor Arthur Kramer recently found that Big Huge Games’ Rise of Nations strategy game improved specific cognitive skills such as short-term memory in adults in their 60s and 70s under lab conditions.

But Fernadez warns that the gamer generation isn’t automatically guaranteed to have better cognitive health than their grandparents. “Cognitive fitness (having the mental abilities required to thrive in cognitively more complex environments) seems to depend on four major pillars: nutrition, physical exercise, stress management and mental exercise. All these factors have physical effects on our brains (for example, physical exercise contributes to the creation of new neurons, while stress and anxiety prevents and/or reduces the creation of new neurons). The bad news is that we have growing obesity rates and anxiety among young people. So, games are great for mental exercise, but we shouldn't forget the other ‘ingredients’ for cognitive fitness.”

Understanding the opponent



The rise of connected gaming has increased the competitive aspects of our digital pastime; one only has to look as far as the large number of Counter-Strike servers, simultaneous Halo 3 players or professional gaming events for evidence of this. The more adept virtual gladiators have found that understanding how an opponent functions on a psychological level is at least as important as reflexes and strategic aptitude. The ability to pick apart competition from within—and understanding one’s own capabilities and mindset—is a valuable life skill that can be reinforced by games.

Chess champion-turned-martial-arts-champion Joshua Waitzkin recently told Fernandez, “Chess taught me how to be relentlessly introspective, how to unearth tells in myself and in opponents, but then I really took that foundation and put it into dynamic action in the martial arts. I work on being a heat-seeking missile for dogma. If you unearth or instill a false assumption in an opponent, they are in a lot of trouble unless they feel you getting into their head and kick you out fast.”


Gaming social



It wasn’t too long ago that community and social gaming was barely on the radar for game companies—gamers were agoraphobic basement nerds. But now a game or platform’s community and social features are marketers’ main bullet points. For good reason, too.

Lazarro explains why she prefers social gaming over solitary gaming: “The act of social gaming actually builds real experiences and real social capital between you and your friends. Not only is gaming together with people in social gaming more fun and more emotional, … but it is actually connecting them with people. And when [players are] connected with other people, generally that’s the better option.”

Hardware and science



Advancements in the computing power of gaming hardware have proven beneficial to scientists with a knack for ingenuity. In 2003, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and Computer Science department at the University of Illinois made national news by linking together 70 PS2s to create a bona fide supercomputer. Stanford and Sony teamed up on the Folding@home project, which used the power of connected PS3s to make calculations related to the research of proteins, with the ultimate goal of fighting disease. The PS3’s Cell processor has also made its way into medical and military applications, while Rice University is using the Wii Remote to find new ways to program robotic devices that could teach people how to more quickly learn physical tasks. Aside from their power or unique capabilities, the ready availability and inexpensiveness of gaming hardware makes it all the more alluring to researchers.


Busting guts



Using videogames as tools for exercise has become a mainstream practice. For example, in 2006, junior high school gym classes across West Virginia adopted Konami’s Dance Dance Revolution in order to fight childhood obesity, convincing students they weren’t exercising, just gaming. Wii Fit has been a commercial smash for Nintendo, and EA is following suit with its own fitness game.

There will always be room on the couch, but as game makers realize that people actually want to get off of their couches to play games, these companies will try to create physically active experiences. In doing so, they’ll continue to chip away the traditional image of a sedentary gamer.

Games are just fun



In compiling all of the research and insight as to why games are beneficial, we find ourselves wondering why gamers feel the need to justify the hobby more fiercely than a voracious movie-lover or an avid reader. Why can’t we just say the benefit of gaming is entertainment—having fun? Why must we justify this hobby any other way?

Fernandez muses, “Indeed ‘fun’ can be seen as a goal in itself … The problem is that we confuse gaming as a vehicle with gaming as content. Gaming as vehicle is arguably great—it allows for interactivity, engagement. Gaming as content, well, it depends. It is not the same to play a bloody shooter game as it is to Tetris or Rise of Nations, so the field should do a better job at explaining to mainstream society the diversity of games and dispel some myths.”

A final note

While the conclusion that games have some truly valuable qualities is valid, it must be said that a lot of the benefits of gaming can also be achieved through more traditional means: playing sports can improve hand-eye coordination; imagination can be stimulated by a beautiful painting or book; social skills can develop by joining a bowling league; and so on.

Fernandez explains, “’Real world’ activities do bring benefits, and games do too. It simply matters how we use them.

“… Talking about ‘games’ in general is as useful as talking about ‘books’ in general: There are good and bad games, and good and bad books; some are pointless, some are stimulating.”

em: http://www.edge-online.com/features/the-15-clearest-benefits-gaming?page=0%2C6