The medical benefits of video games.

Press start, fellow members! For today is the day that I open your minds to a source of mental and physical well being which can truly take you to the 'next level'.

Terrible puns aside, the purpose of this thread is to spread the word about the positive effects that video games have on us, because for far too long the media has blamed and scrutinized the gaming industry for many of the ills that occurs in society. And as a gamer who's played in each of the last four decades, I feel it's my duty to rid the medium of it's stigmas in this thread that took over 45 minutes of research.

Video games can improve your health

The general consensus amongst philistines is that gamers are fat lazy couch potatoes with a controller in one hand and a pack of Doritos in the other.

But in reality, the last decade saw a big momentum shift towards games that required physical exertion. Products such as the Nintendo Wii and Microsoft's Kinect have proven to be so effective that they have been deployed in nursing homes to get the elderly more active, which is not too shabby for products that supposedly turn your children into murderous cultists.

One elderly gamer, Barrie Edgar, said: "It's a very pleasant distraction and it's great fun to have electronic gadgets in the home.

"I didn't know how my daughter's Nintendo games worked before, but we've all really enjoyed playing it and the games are good for you as well."

Jayne Naylor, Sunrise Director, said she cant tear the pensioners away from the Wii, and will be organising leagues so the fun-loving residents can make their games more competitive.

"It helps their coordination, memory and keeps them fit and active."

Daily Mail

Video games can improve mental cognition

Us gamers push many people's buttons (sorry but I couldn't help myself) and that's what many people believe that's all us gamers actually do. But there is more to it then just mashing buttons, there are some games out there that have elements that can be applied to everyday life from fiscal solvency to ancient history.

Educators know this, which is why they have been utilizing video games to help people such as young students, vets with PTSD, medical personnel, and so forth. Hell If it wasn't for games like 'the incredible machine' or 'gizmos and gadgets' I may not have developed the passion for science that I have now.

Virtual reality offers returning soldiers 'psychotherapy by computer' to treat PTSD. For those soldiers worried about the stigma associated with seeing a therapist, virtual reality applications for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may be the alternative to the traditional "talk therapy."

Science daily

David Williamson Shaffer, assistant professor in the Department of Educational Psychology at University of Wisconsin, Madison, argued that video games have the potential to serve as tremendous educational tools. According to Shaffer, the question is, "How can we use the power of video games as a constructive force in schools, homes, and workplaces?"

Video games, he noted, can help kids work with planning and problem-solving. Games that require players to search, negotiate, plan various approaches in order to advance to a new level, and implement strategies can help improve children's brain development. The process of understanding game rules and learning by doing provides children with essential decision-making skills.

Medical Daily

Video games can improve social consciousness

Maim, kill, repeat. This is the ultimate objective in any video game, according to the prudes handbook. But what they don't realize is that for more than a decade games have been presenting their controllers with moral choices that have profound effects and consequences.

But the big mistake that the MSM makes is that they believe that video games enable the darker side of ourselves, and providing us the option of being 'evil' only exacerbates the problem. But if you were ask any gamer if they'd prefer taking the good path or the bad path, nine out of ten of them will tell you they took the good path. And in reality many game developers reward those who make positive moral decisions more than those who choose more dubious moral decisions.

I can't actually provide any evidence besides my gaming buddies, and the truth is that millions of gamers worldwide are outstanding citizens who's morals aren't besmirched by video games, but try telling that to Boffins like this:

Neuroscientific studies show reduced cognitive brain functions in individuals exposed to violent media. The greater the experience with violent media, the lower was the activation of brain areas for thinking, learning, reasoning and emotional control. Talk about dumbing down the kids!

In my view, violent media should be considered a health risk as great as tobacco use

Thanks Prof, I never realized gaming tripled my chance of getting lung cancer, I had better cut down.

Gaming can help you sleep

Yours truly can personally attest to the positive effects that video games has on a sleeping mind. At least one publication has done a study proving that gaming improves lucid dreaming. And dreaming is linked to R.E.M sleep, and we all know that R.E.M sleep is vital for a good nights rest.

The first study suggested that people who frequently played video games were more likely to report lucid dreams, observer dreams where they viewed themselves from outside their bodies, and dream control that allowed people to actively influence or change their dream worlds – qualities suggestive of watching or controlling the action of a video-game character.

Live Science

So there you have it, and not a character to spare. It's high time that video games are not considered the scapegoat and rather the Samaritan, and it's time for the media should start recognizing video games for their positive effects and not the negatives.

Until next time, may your aim be true and your thumbs be swift.

Ive always believed in the benefits of Video Games.

Since I was 3 there's been an Atari or some system in my home.

Always done in moderation, it expanded my love of technology, got me into PC repair and Building, in general has helped me always find work and strive in the worst of times.


All thanks to Nintendo, Sega, and Atari.


A video game is a tool, and like all tools its in how you use it, but for the most part the benefits are being proven and all the Myths are just that, Myths of the ills of video games.

reply to post by benrl

all the Myths are just that, Myths of the ills of video games.

"Taken in moderation…" I like the sound of that. Its what addicts say about their drug use. Or smokers, or alcoholics.

Like in Vegas, "gaming" is fun, its healthy and educational…

Good for those that do not become addicted. It is the primary purpose behind the games though. Always has been.

What level are you stuck on?

intrptr
reply to post by benrl

 

all the Myths are just that, Myths of the ills of video games.

"Taken in moderation…" I like the sound of that. Its what addicts say about their drug use. Or smokers, or alcoholics.

Like in Vegas, "gaming" is fun, its healthy and educational…

Good for those that do not become addicted. It is the primary purpose behind the games though. Always has been.

What level are you stuck on?

Reading, in moderation is good.

I don't pick up every trash and read it.

I don't grab a copy of Twilight for my enrichment, as there are better uses of my time.

Neuroscience is backing up video games as a benefit, gamers tend to be faster at decision making (with no determent to the quality of choice made) they are better at tracking movement.

TED TALK

Good ted talk on the matter.


AS to what level Im "stuck on" Well, Current'y playing Titan fall and Infamous SS, Ive worked for microsoft Xbox, and currently working for Dells Alien ware division.

I get to see the Latest and greatest stuff out there, Games as an art form, will surpass Theater and most other forms of media, and are well on the way already.

Budgets are bigger than any Blockbuster movie, Non gamers are missing out on some amazing creative art.

reply to post by Thecakeisalie


My son is very addicted, for some it may be o.k., but it really depends on the individual, My son has trouble with over focusing on what he is into at the time and video games have not helped this, he turns down real life for virtual games, he has an i.q. of 140+,but the games are to focused for him, so sorry icannot and do not agree with such a generalised sweeping load of doodoo like that, everybody is an individual and cannot be applied to "research" like this, they desensitise violence and the american army understand this video game culture and use to train, so i am led to believe

THELONIO
reply to post by Thecakeisalie

 

My son is very addicted, for some it may be o.k., but it really depends on the individual, My son has trouble with over focusing on what he is into at the time and video games have not helped this, he turns down real life for virtual games, he has an i.q. of 140+,but the games are to focused for him, so sorry icannot and do not agree with such a generalised sweeping load of doodoo like that, everybody is an individual and cannot be applied to "research" like this, they desensitise violence and the american army understand this video game culture and use to train, so i am led to believe

As someone with an exceptionally high IQ myself,

Your son is playing you,

Be stricter, set controls, be a stronger parent.

As a plus 130 myself, My parents where Puppets to dance to my whims.

Thank god my Dad was a raging authoritarian, it was constant chess matches and one up man ship to out smart them growing up.

Just humble advice from a former "gifted child" who talked his parents into Homeschooling, and pretty much letting me do as I will to my own determent.

WHY????? are so many of them war based?

Other than that I agree with OP.

Cant wait for Oculus Rift to get up and running!

reply to post by benrl

AS to what level Im "stuck on" Well, Current'y playing Titan fall and Infamous SS, Ive worked for microsoft Xbox, and currently working for Dells Alien ware division.

So you do see from the inside. Now tell me, these games aren't designed to attract people are they. To play and play and play? The more people play the more popular the more "catching"? Thanks, I seen enough of that. My generation invented the video game.

Sorry about that world.

VoidHawk
WHY????? are so many of them war based?

Other than that I agree with OP.

Cant wait for Oculus Rift to get up and running!

Because violence appeals to humanity on a deep primal level, it is not there BECAUSE of the video game, the video game is there because of it.

reply to post by benrl


my son is 11 years old, he is genuinely not playing me, i know him, we have fought for ages, he has no interest in anything else, he is a good lad, very advanced for his age, he has hit puberty takes a size 10 shoe and is fast approaching 6' in height, he can memorise a page reading it once, he knows better than to play me. i know it sounds like i am kidding myself but trust me i am not, for him they have not helped

intrptr
reply to post by benrl

 

AS to what level Im "stuck on" Well, Current'y playing Titan fall and Infamous SS, Ive worked for microsoft Xbox, and currently working for Dells Alien ware division.

So you do see from the inside. Now tell me, these games aren't designed to attract people are they. To play and play and play? The more people play the more popular the more "catching"? Thanks, I seen enough of that. My generation invented the video game.

Sorry about that world.

No more than a TV show trys to "catch" you.

No more than a good book "grabs" you.

Clever plot use is an equal manipulator of the benefit reward mechanism at play in video games.

In good writing, the suspense of not knowing and reading, is rewarded by the discovery of plot points.

Just the same as the Stimulus reward mechanism at play in games.

I think what you miss, is its all manipulation to get you.

Ones just the newer one, so people jump on it, over the previously accepted opiate of the masses.

reply to post by VoidHawk


I once heard that war video games are being used by our government. They just monitor the data and make war like scenarios for us to go through or something like that I dont think its that likely its true but who knows these days

reply to post by Thecakeisalie


Here is some info I gathered about Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG’s)

On Sept 13, 2005, an estimated 4 million players of the popular online role-playing game World of Warcraft - Blizzard Entertainment, Irvine, CA, USA (currently 10 million players – this would be the largest peer-to-peer network in the world) encountered an unexpected challenge in the game, introduced in a software update released that day: a full-blown epidemic.
Players exploring a newly accessible area within the game encountered an extremely virulent, highly contagious disease. Soon, the disease had spread to the densely populated capital cities of the fantasy world, causing high rates of mortality and, much more importantly, the social chaos that comes from a large-scale outbreak of deadly disease.
These unforeseen effects raised the possibility for valuable scientific content to be gained from this unintentional game error.

Patch 1.7, released on Sept 13, 2005, contained access to an area known as “Zul’Gurub”. Which was intended for use by players whose characters had achieved a sufficient level within the game to be considered “relatively powerful”. The centrepiece of this area was a combative encounter with a powerful creature called “Hakkar”.
Occasionally, one of the players facing this massive winged serpent would be purposefully infected by a disease called “Corrupted Blood”. This infection, as intended, then rapidly began infecting other nearby players. To the powerful players who were battling Hakkar, the infection was just a hindrance, designed to make this particular combat more challenging. However, several aspects of the disease caused this minor inconvenience to blossom into an uncontrolled game wide epidemic. The ability of many characters to transport themselves instantly from one location to another was the first factor in the game that unexpectedly set the stage for the plague. This type of travel is frequently used to return to the capital cities of the game from more remote regions for reasons of game play. Many victims of Corrupted Blood thus reached heavily populated areas before either being killed by or cured of the disease, mimicking the travel of contagious carriers over long distances that has been the hallmark of many disease outbreaks in history — the Mongol horde and the bubonic plague, or the cholera outbreaks of Europe during the mid-19th century. The highly contagious disease then spread to other players outside the intended, localized combat area near Hakkar. The second factor that sustained the epidemic was that the disease could escape its origin in Zul’Gurub via interspecies transmission from player characters to animals and then back. Many players in the game have “pets”, non-player animal characters that assist them in the completion of certain functions within the game. The penalty assigned by the game for allowing a pet to die was prohibitively high, therefore players commonly dismissed their pets rather than subjecting them to dangerous effects such as disease. Dismissal temporarily removes the pet from the game, keeping them in stasis until they can be healed or otherwise safeguarded after the dangers of combat have gone. These pets, therefore, acted as carriers of the disease and also served as a source of disease by causing new outbreaks when brought out of stasis—even if their owner had recovered and was no longer infectious. Based on player accounts, pets, as opposed to the infective characters themselves, seem to have been the dominant factors for the disease. Players would return to densely packed capital cities and retrieve pets that, being infectious, immediately triggered an outbreak. The density of susceptible characters within a specific radius was, therefore, the only apparent limit to transmission.

www.youtube.com...
www.youtube.com...

1.) MMORPG’s can help with management training in areas such as:
Goal Setting, Short Term, Mid Term, and Long Term

Leadership Skills, Conflict Resolution, Delegation, Leading a Group

Event Organization, Estimating Time, Scheduling, Promoting

Teamwork Skills, Working in a Group, Taking Criticism, Listening to others

Research Skills, Finding Information, Organizing / Presenting Information

“Simulation games have proven excellent tools for training people in manual skills; for example, X-Plane, a flight simulator that runs on home computers, has been certified by the Federal Aviation Administration.
Virtual environments are safe platforms for trial and error. The chance of failure is high, but the cost is low and the lessons learned are immediate.”i
“Some 60 schools and universities have set up shop inside Second Life some 90 Harvard law and extension school students taking the course, called "CyberOne: Law in the Court of Public Opinion," can receive real college credit. But anyone on Earth with a computer connection can also take the course for free. Students are participating from as far away as South Korea and China.
Other classes using SL include undergraduate English composition courses at Ball State and Central Missouri State universities, an education course at Pepperdine University, and a medical course on hypertension at the University of Tennessee.”ii
b.) “Using World of Warcraft and Other MMORPGs to Foster a Targeted, Social, and Cooperative Approach Toward Language Learning.”iii

www.academiccommons.org...

Continued in next post

reply to post by Thecakeisalie

3.) Studied by the Center for Disease Control
a.)

“Simulation models are of increasing importance within the field of applied epidemiology. However, very little can be done to validate such models or to tailor their use to incorporate important human behaviors. In a recent (Sept. 2005) incident in the virtual world of online gaming (WOW), the accidental inclusion of a disease-like phenomenon provided an excellent example of the potential of such systems to alleviate these modeling constraints.”

Eric T Lofgren, Rutgers University and
Nina H Fefferman Dept. Public health and Family Medicine, Tufts University
The Lancet Infectious Disease Journal

b.) “In August 2006, CDC set up its first test site for sharing public health information in an on-line, "cyber community." The community is named Second Life and has more than 3.3 million members.”

www.cdc.gov...

i John Seely Brown ([email protected]) is director emeritus of Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, Inc and a visiting scholar at USC. Douglas Thomas ([email protected]) teaches at USC's Annenberg School for Communication and edits Games & Culture: A Journal of Interactive Media www.wired.com... You Play World of Warcraft? You're Hired! Issue 14.04 - April 2006
ii www.usatoday.com... Posted 10/5/2006 By Gregory M. Lamb, The Christian Science Monitor
iii Todd Bryant Language Program Admin Acad Tech
Language Program Administrator Dickinson College a nationally recognized and highly selective liberal arts college located in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
www.language-exchanges.org...

Thisbseth
reply to post by VoidHawk

 

I once heard that war video games are being used by our government. They just monitor the data and make war like scenarios for us to go through or something like that I dont think its that likely its true but who knows these days

I've heard the same, and personaly I suspect it may be true. Its teaching the up coming generation that going to war makes them a hero.

reply to post by Thecakeisalie

Gaming can help you sleep

erm...

I agree that gaming is good for mental health, but im not so sure about this one...

How good can it possibly be to dream about the very game you're playing...

I've spent many a restless night dreaming about the game I was playing the previous day or evening...

There is NO sleep when your mind doesn't wander, but focuses on a game...

benrl
Because violence appeals to humanity on a deep primal level, it is not there BECAUSE of the video game, the video game is there because of it.

Hmmm, I suspect these games feed - and therefore - encourage that.
So what might happen if we didn't create war games? Might we learn to be less violent?

VoidHawk

Thisbseth
reply to post by VoidHawk

 

I once heard that war video games are being used by our government. They just monitor the data and make war like scenarios for us to go through or something like that I dont think its that likely its true but who knows these days

I've heard the same, and personaly I suspect it may be true. Its teaching the up coming generation that going to war makes them a hero.

Sure just like Comic books used to make kids fly around the sky rescuing people from car crashes...

Oh wait, there certainly where the dims ones that dawned a cape and jumped from roofs right?

VoidHawk

benrl
Because violence appeals to humanity on a deep primal level, it is not there BECAUSE of the video game, the video game is there because of it.

Hmmm, I suspect these games feed - and therefore - encourage that.
So what might happen if we didn't create war games? Might we learn to be less violent?

SO that old argument,

Its Arnold or Marilyn Manson fault our kids are F-ed up...

I thought we dropped that nonsense post columbine.

reply to post by benrl

No more than a good book "grabs" you.

But a book ends. A "good" video game never ends. I may like a book but I don't usually read it over and over. I don't become hooked on it. A video game ends when people get tired of it or exhausted by it.

By nature a video game is designed to keep you playing…

By the way, I have read a lot of books and played a lot of video games. Guess which one I have learned from more?

I think what you miss, is its all manipulation to get you.

I'll buy that. We are the land of the addiction, no?

Ones just the newer one, so people jump on it, over the previously accepted opiate of the masses.

At least you admit they are like a drug.