THE GAMING-PILL: 5 Ways Gaming is Making Your Life Better

Any conversation can easily turn into a debate when the string of gaming is strung. You can find no two people in a group (unless it's a gaming group) agreeing to the same thing when it comes to gaming and its effects.

Tomorrow is uncertain, so is love, for sure, but what’s certain is the fact that half of the world’s population would be utterly happy to vote gaming out of their lives if given a chance. Can you even imagine a single household (of course, there are exceptions), without the argument over video games? I personally haven’t ever seen my parents sitting peacefully while I am holding that joystick.

Well, these people are not entirely wrong, but they aren't completely correct either. We may agree that gaming can affect one’s eyes, but so does any other job that requires prolonged exposure to computer screens. They say gaming makes you violent, but do we have any scientific proof that supports this statement? I believe there isn’t!

“Games have sometimes been praised or demonized, often without real data backing up those claims. Moreover, gaming is a popular activity, so everyone seems to have strong opinions on the topic,” states Marc Palaus, the first author of a review published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience regarding gaming and its effects.

There’s always a negative to every positive. In the same way, gaming, which came into existence to add a little amount of relaxation to the hectic human life, also comes with some negative factors. Like they say, too much of anything can be harmful, gaming too can add some adverse effects in one’s life if no control is imposed on it. Today’s generation is practically living in the digital technology. They walk, talk and sleep technology. So, to think about it, it isn’t the game or the digital technology that’s harmful, it’s the amount of time we invest in it that creates all the difference.

To be practical, gaming can be good for us. Here are a few researched and analysed points that depict the benefits of gaming in our lives.

1. Gaming As Therapy

Medical science has been persistently trying to find alternates to drugs for curing diseases and other physical & mental impairments. Several theories have been put into play and the results are amazingly positive. An experiment on “Role of Video Games in Improving Health-Related Outcomes” was practised, where 2 teams got into action with a research strategy to find the therapeutic results that gaming has provided. Only RCTs that tested the effect of gaming on positive and clinically relevant health consequences were chosen. The study retrieved 1452 articles, out of which 38 met all the criteria.

“Among the 38 studies, a total of 195 health outcomes were examined. Video games improved 69% of psychological therapy outcomes, 59% of physical therapy outcomes, 50% of physical activity outcomes, 46% of clinician skills outcomes, 42% of health education outcomes”.

Gaming has also been used as a medium of distraction from acute pain in many health conditions. Video games/gaming also has shown potential value in being helpful for other health-related problems (directly or indirectly), like supporting psychotherapeutic treatment, conflict resolution, improving self-esteem and revamping spirometric measurement.

2. Feel Young

Ageing is a natural process. No amount of needles or creams can stop it. Even though getting wiser with age has its own perks, yet, no one wants to lose their childhood any time soon. You know the reason, right? With old-age comes inactivity and lethargy. But, who said you have to age? I mean, naturally, you have to, but that doesn’t mean you also have to feel old.

Like our body, our mind also needs to be kept ‘in shape’ as we step out of our ‘youngster’ zone.

As a healthy diet and regular exercise are to your body, gaming is to the mind.

The ageing of mind is reflected through the degree of mental decay. A study at the University of Lowa (literally) showed that one can delay their mental decay through gaming. They say that “challenging yourself with a brain-teasing game for just two hours a week may help slow the degree of mental decay associated with the natural aging process”.

They asked 681 healthy adults over the age of 50 to play a specially designed video game for 10 hours in the span of five to eight weeks. Recording the observations carefully, they stated that “10 hours is enough to slow the decline by several years.”

They also added in an interview, “We saw a range across all our tests from a minimum of a year-and-a-half all the way up to about six-and-a-half years of recovery or improvement. From just 10 to 14 hours of training, that’s quite a lot of improvement”.

So, basically, any task that demands brain exercise helps you keep it young. Video games do the same.

3. Better Decision Making

American Researcher, Peter Gary has critically analysed both, the perks as well as the falls of gaming. In one of his articles, he notes (favouring the findings of Adam Eichenbaum, Daphne Bavelier, and C. Shawn Green) that when regular gamers are put into competition through some perceptual or cognitive test with non-gamers, the gamers outperform the non-gamers on whatever test is used.

“Action video games are fast-paced, and there are peripheral images and events popping up, and disappearing. These video games are teaching people to become better at taking sensory data in, and translating it into correct decisions.”

Gary talks about Executive Functioning and says that gaming can literally enhance executive functioning, which in turn affects our decision-making process. He supports his theory with two examples:

“• Improved ability to engage in multiple tasks simultaneously: Chiappe and colleagues (2013) found that 50 hours of experience on an action video game significantly improved performance on a test called the Multi-Attribute Task Battery, which is modelled after skills required in piloting aircraft. It involves using a joystick to keep a target centred on a screen, monitoring fuel levels, responding to lights on an instrument panel, and listening and responding to radio communication. High scores on this test correlate well with real-world piloting performance.

• Increased mental flexibility: A number of researchers have reported that experience with action video games improves people’s abilities to switch rapidly and without error between tasks that have conflicting demands.”

When decision making becomes faster, our confidence tends to get doubled-up. With that, every little step in our personal and professional life seems to get easier than before, which again, adds liveliness to life.

4. To Be (Social), Or Not To Be

There has been a prejudice against gamers since the beginning of time that they are anti-social, introverts or awkward social rejects. There are undoubtedly many basement-dwelling gamers in the world, but this doesn’t mean that all the gamers have a problem with socialising with people. In fact, in present times, there are a number of games that are played online with people from all around the world. I don’t think playing online games doesn’t require interaction, does it?

A recent study finds that “typical 2014 gamer doesn’t fit the old, reductive stereotypes.” Researchers from the Ontario Institute of Technology , North Carolina State University, and York University travelled to more than 20 gaming events in UK and Canada to watch how the gamers interacted. After a number of observations, the lead author of the study and Nick Tylor, a professor of communication at NC State concluded the study with the statement- “gamers aren't the antisocial basement-dwellers we see in pop culture stereotypes; they're highly social people”.

Not all of us socialize in a hail-fellow-well-met kind of way. Some of us just like to keep our interactions confined to like-minded people. May it be art, music, academics or anything else, all it takes is a medium that connects one person’s interest to the other. Gaming is one such medium.

5. An Investment For The Future

There are a number of professions that require good hand-eye coordination. May it be a technical job, the work of a surgeon or any other, having your hand and eye tuned helps you make motor decisions like a reflex.

Curious to know whether gaming could help in this mechanism, the scientists of University of Texas Medical Branch took a bunch of high-school kids and college goers (who played video games regularly) and put them in competition with resident physicians in robotic surgery simulations.

According to this study, “the superior hand-eye coordination and hand skills gained from hours of repetitive joystick maneuvers mimic the abilities needed to perform today’s most technologically-advanced robotic surgeries.”

This and many other similar studies support the fact that gaming isn’t just an activity for fun. Rather, learning gaming skills actually incorporates future career and professional possibilities in the books of teenagers.

Conclusion

Gaming isn’t just about having fun anymore. Scientists, psychologist and physicians all around the world are today in favour of gaming for good-health and stress relief.

At the present time, when gaming sits proudly as a multibillion-dollar industry, spread across the sphere, you are getting all the more chances of utilising this digital-drug towards your malady. The World Wide Web is filled with games that are waiting for you to explore, absorb and apply them towards making your life healthier and merrier. You can always read a review to find the game of your choice. Websites like Gaming Beasts can help you with that. This way, two demons would be killed by a single arrow – boredom as well as your ailment.

Of course, if you are all play and no work, you are simply nullifying all the benefits that gaming could bring to your life.

Make sure that your tea of life has just the right amount of gaming-sugar, and you are good to go!