What are the questions?

How and where did games come from? What path did they take to get to their current state? What will happen to them next? All these questions I would like to cut off that would not distract from the very essence and meaning of the concept of “computer game”, for this historical background is not important in principle.

All of us have heard many times that games are the scourge of our time, and probably no less number of times we have encountered statements about how games are useful and necessary for modern society. Let’s try to analyze it all properly. So.

What is a game

Let’s dive into the encyclopedias of those recent times when there was no such concept as “Computer Game” and try to understand: Are computer games really “games” in the original sense of the word.

All studies on the topic of games are almost always focused on children’s play, but there everything is more or less studied and clear. Children and animals, playing, master the skills of adult life, try on the suit of reason on the body of instincts, socialize. Children learn to communicate and manage their bodies and the surrounding physics, while kittens, for example, learn to kill What makes children play? Probably positive motivation in the form of joy. With age, the pedagogical role of games fades, for comprehension of the world around us at a complex level games can not do without, we have to grow up gradually reduce the game component and move to direct processes. But the fun of games doesn’t disappear. We still have fun running, jumping, dancing.

We, in our question, of course, must look at the games from the point of view of an adult person, let’s overlook educational, informative and children’s computer games.

Running, jumping, dancing and shouting – we are expressing ourselves, creating culture. Any kind of art has a close affinity with game activity. Although, for example, to draw pictures, you need training, but having mastered the skills of the artist as if playing with the canvas. This is, of course, a very gross simplification, but it is enough for us to realize that this explanation does not suit us. In computer games, we don’t realize ourselves. Maybe in some of them we create something, sometimes even something beautiful.

But there’s another use for games in adulthood:
The release of accumulated energy, it’s like sublimation, only in a broader sense. Especially since we have already found out that playing games gives us pleasure at any age.

And under this explanation we can already start talking about computer games. Computer games give us an opportunity to release the accumulated energy. But what would be enough to release energy would be just a little time, and we play for hours on end. Some of us can even sit up all night. We have games because we want to play. Demand breeds supply, the modern world – what can you do?

So why do they attract us so much, do they give us anything else but pleasure and psychological relief? Games, for the most part, are complex. Even easy games are difficult. To understand this it is enough to see how people far from computers try to play them, there is enough of such goodness on youtube. To master the game perfectly you need, as a rule, a lot of time. Here we deceive ourselves (imperceptibly for ourselves, somewhere in the subconscious). Our “I” thinks that it learns the world, learns to manage it, acquires useful skills, forcing us to play more and more, but in fact it is a closed system, and the skills acquired in games, if they affect our external world, then very slightly. Basically, by playing we gain the skill to play even better.

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Games can help develop physical skills. Preschool children who played interactive games, such as those available on the Wii, showed improved motor skills, such as being able to hit, catch, and throw a ball better than children who do not play video games. A study by microsurgery surgeons in Boston found that those who played video games were 27 percent faster and made 37 percent fewer mistakes than those who did not. Vision also improved, especially distinguishing between shades of gray. This is useful for driving at night, flying an airplane, or reading X-rays.

Games also contribute to a variety of brain functions, including decision-making. According to one study, people who play action games make decisions 25 percent faster than others and are just as accurate. It was also found that the best players can make choices and act accordingly up to six times per second, which is four times faster than most people. In another study by researchers at the University of Rochester in New York, it was shown that experienced gamers are able to pay attention to more than six things at once without getting confused, compared to the four that most people can usually remember.

There is also evidence that games can help with psychological problems. At the University of Auckland in New Zealand, researchers asked 94 young people diagnosed with depression to play a three-dimensional fantasy game called SPARX, and in many cases, the game reduced symptoms of depression more than conventional treatment. Another research team from the University of Oxford found that playing Tetris shortly after being exposed to something very disturbing – the experiment used a movie with traumatic scenes of injury and death – could actually prevent disturbing memories in people.

However, the effects are not always so positive. Researchers at Indiana University have scanned the brains of young men and found evidence that violent games can change the way the brain works after just a week of playing, affecting areas of the brain associated with emotional control and causing more aggressive behavior. But Daphne Bavelier, one of the most experienced researchers in the field, says that the violent action games that parents often worry about the most may actually have the strongest beneficial effects on the brain. In the future, we may see many treatments for physical and neurological problems that involve playing video games.

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