Take a Break: Part 2: Video Games

There’s nothing more statisfying than making something explode or getting to shoot something.

While I’d love to be a mythbuster have that form of stress relief every day, I can’t. I’d love to, but I’m stuck at college, with hours upon hours of homework, crazy professors, exams that make me want to change my major or just give up all together.

That’s where video games come in. I can shoot things and make things explode without causing too much paper work. The only paper work video games give me is the receipt.

But video games do more than just relieve stress. From Wikipedia: “In Steven Johnson's book, Everything Bad Is Good For You, he argues that video games in fact demand far more from a player than traditional games like Monopoly. To experience the game, the player must first determine the objectives, as well as how to complete them. They must then learn the game controls and how the human-machine interface works, including menus and HUDs. Beyond such skills, which after some time become quite fundamental and are taken for granted by many gamers, video games are based upon the player navigating (and eventually mastering) a highly complex system with many variables. This requires a strong analytical ability, as well as flexibility and adaptability. He argues that the process of learning the boundaries, goals, and controls of a given game is often a highly demanding one that calls on many different areas of cognitive function. Indeed, most games require a great deal of patience and focus from the player, and, contrary to the popular perception that games provide instant gratification, games actually delay gratification far longer than other forms of entertainment such as film or even many books. Some research suggests video games may even increase players' attention capacities.”

And to think that my mom used to yell at me, telling me that video games would rot my brain. You can fight Wikipedia all you want, but it’s not just Wikipedia saying that video games aren’t bad, and may in fact be good for you.

Henry Jenkins, a professor at MIT, wrote an article debunking 8 myths about video games. Helium.com also has articles debunking the same myths and citing other sources.

From my own experience, my brain is jello after assignments and exams. I can’t think about doing my simple calculus homework or writing up a chem lab. But I can beat levels of Zelda, play hours of fpsers or an rpg. I relax. I know that I can die in a video game and it’s not the end of the world. I can still rescue Princess Peach (who really needs to stop being kidnapped), save Hyrule, and get some head shots in before entering “real life” again. I float. And I find that I think better after playing.

My thoughts are more fluid (have you ever tried writing a paper after a college exam? If not, your thoughts are not fluid. They are cottage cheese.). I can balance chemical equations like there’s no tomorrow, I can integrate, finding the volumes of solids of revolution, write tens of lines of code, and manage to do it all properly (ah, there’s the catch) and still manage to sleep.

I’m sure some, if not all, of us have tried to do homework on little to no sleep or after a big test. It doesn’t work.

The moral of the story: play video games when you can’t concentrate. Play video games when you have free time. Hell, just play video games because they’re awesome!

photo courtesy of http://www.quicksavejunkie.com.