The gaming sector is rising fast worldwide, and it offers more than entertainment. Gaming has a huge social impact, and investors are well aware of this. More than a few minutes of fun, games can promote social interaction and even have educational purposes. Here are some of the benefits of gaming society.
Playing for Fun
Digital games have a vast fan base. Last year, there were 3.09 billion active players around the world, and the numbers keep soaring. While video games remain the most popular option, the online game market is also rising fast. Platforms like Hub88 provide hundreds of games of all kinds. Better still, no console is required; all of them run on any smartphone.
Such platforms provide plenty of social interaction between players, which makes everything much more engaging. Typically, AI-powered chatbots are available around the clock to help players in multiple languages, ensuring a smooth experience. Online gaming is among the main sources of entertainment for over 1.3 billion people around the world.
Indeed, gaming brings several benefits even to those who play just for fun. Video games are linked to improved cognitive performance. Gamers tend to have superior working memory and impulse control compared to people who never play. Additionally, gaming can improve social skills, simulate real-life situations, and foster collaboration among players.
Finding Balance
Despite gaming’s manifold benefits, health specialists advise against using it as the sole source of entertainment or education. Individuals of all ages must find the balance between games and real-life interactions, outdoor activities, and traditional education. There are many other ways to improve cognition, like learning a new instrument, practicing sports, and so on.
The Game-Changers
Not many people know about it, but “bundle games” were indeed created for a charitable cause. Bundle games are vast collections of titles that users can purchase in a single operation. Back in 2011, a company called Humble Bundle came up with the format that is so popular today. This format became a vital tool for channeling the gaming community’s attention to social causes.
Gaming has also proven to be a powerful ally in education. Gamified educational content turns out to be much more engaging than traditional methods. In India, educational games are widely used for primary and secondary education, keeping students engaged for over 900 million hours yearly.
More importantly, free apps like Duolingo have democratized access to language learning. Indeed, educational games have become nearly an independent market from the gaming industry itself. This sector was valued at over USD 12 billion last year. The gamified approach to education has boosted students’ performance and course satisfaction.
Top 7 Benefits of Gaming
Digital games can be an instrument of social change and self-improvement. Educational games aren’t the only ones that bring benefits. Gamers who play completely non-educational games also reap several benefits, from a sharper brain to improved mental health. Here are some of the most important ones.
Mental Health
Contrary to popular belief, gaming can be beneficial for mental health. Multiple psychologists and researchers have demonstrated that playing video games can reduce stress and anxiety and improve well-being. Recent studies have also shown that people who play video games regularly feel less lonely and isolated.
Sharper Decision-Making
Gamers must have a fast trigger to stand a chance in any adventure. It doesn’t mean simply shooting everything that moves, but players often have a split-second to decide what to do next. The decision-making abilities gamers develop while playing can also be applied in real-life situations, according to research published by the University of Rochester. Action and other fast-paced games are better for training this ability than slow-paced ones.
Improved Problem-Solving Skills
Games are also perfect for honing problem-solving skills. Mission-based and open-world adventures are particularly beneficial since players have many ways to complete a task or a mission. A Pew Research study from last year has confirmed this, noticing that 56% of people who play video games regularly demonstrate sharper problem-solving skills in other situations in their daily lives.
Enhanced Multi-Tasking
Many games require players to handle several tasks at once; it’s part of the challenge. Multi-tasking is quite common in action titles, but other genres might also need it. Typically, players must keep track of their character’s health, maps, nearby enemies, and many other stats and radars. Such games are considered highly stimulating for the brain, requiring constant attention and a high level of multitasking.
Social Interaction
People no longer hide in the basement to play video games. Some kinds of games promote intense social interaction, as is the case of MMOs (massively multiplayer online games). Researchers from the University of York and Edge Hill University studied a group of 700 MMO gamers and found that they have high levels of social competence, improved self-esteem, and decreased loneliness.
Collaborative Skills
Likewise, people who play online multiplayer games are used to collaborate with other players to complete missions, kill bosses, defeat other teams, and so on. Games like Counter-Strike and League of Legends are team-based, where individual players must pull out a collective effort to achieve their goals. A study from Birmingham University confirms that people who played such games together for about an hour were able to perform other collaborative tasks better.
Improved Performance
Playing games can improve accuracy and completion time, even for the most delicate tasks. A 2007 study compared surgeons who played video games often with those who didn’t. The result was pretty shocking: “gamer-surgeons” completed tasks 27% faster and made 37% fewer mistakes compared to their colleagues. According to the same study, just 3 hours of gaming per week is enough to have measurable impacts on performance.
Final Round
Gaming is finally getting rid of old stereotypes, and the scientific community is shedding new light on its impacts on the human brain. Indeed, only a few hours per week can have a tremendous effect on memory, cognition, problem-solving, and even stress relief. In critical moments, the gaming community can also band together to support humanitarian causes through their favorite titles.
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