Gaming: The Good Side

We, as a society hear way too much bad press about videogames - idiotic teenagers thinking they're Tommy Vercetti, even more idiotic teenagers who think they're Neo, and quite possibly the dumbest people in the world; those who believe that videogames affect every child in that same way.

I've been a gamer since I was a little child, and I can safely say that games like GTA have never once tempted me to spray my family's brains against the wall. Quite the opposite, actually; high aggression games generally help to release anger -- be it pummelling the life out of some poor soul on a game like Tekken, disposing of half the local Police Force in GTA, or even hacking your way through hordes of enemies on Zelda -- gaming is a fantastic stress reliever. Of course, some frustrating games can cause a lot of stress too, but that's easily alleviated by a bit of virtual violence.

Gaming is a very mentally stimulating form of entertainment -- usually it involves a lot of quick, precise thinking, or perhaps some slower, more tactical and informed thinking. Either way, the brain is always ticking away, unlike other forms of entertainment such as TV. Although perhaps not as educational as reading or maybe watching a television documentary, games can certainly teach a wide variety of things. War games such as Medal of Honor or Command and Conquer teach players a few things about the past, whereas other games teach more thinking skills than anything -- RPGs especially rely on tactics and thorough thinking, which are valuable skills well taught by games. I've even known people who learnt to read through playing games such as Final Fantasy.

Gaming is also a very good way of achieving a higher sense of hand-to-eye co-ordination. Pulling off long combos in fighters, thinking and acting fast in shooters, or just simply whizzing through battle menus at top speed in RPGs requires great co-ordination skill. If you ever watch a new gamer, he or she will spend a long time searching his or her controller for the right button to push. More experienced gamers just know where to find said buttons, and can co-ordinate their fingers at extreme speeds to push them at the right time, and so on.

Not all games have the player sitting in a still position all day getting fatter by the minute -- games like Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) incorporate a dance mat, which requires the player to dance around quite a bit. Perhaps making a fool of themselves, but certainly burning a few calories and toning a muscle or two. Also, the controller for the new Nintendo Wii console will require the player to be a lot more active -- it's gyroscope motion sensor technology will have the player jumping around, swinging the "Wiimote" about, and generally doing a lot of moving.

So are games at all that bad? We certainly don't think so. Although there will always be the extremists who live in their grandparent's basement on a diet of soda and crisps, wasting their life away in front of a TV screen, gaming in healthy moderation will certainly do you more good than harm. It's mentally stimulating, very involving, a great stress reliever, somewhat educational and can even provide some form of exercise. There will be the occasional plonker who thinks he's a Tekken character, or some little kid who throws bottles at his friends in order to try and heal them; but let's face it, kids like that have a lot of problems and TV is probably just as bad an influence on them as their 18-rated games. As fellow writer for RPGSite Roger stated to me in an instant message conversation, "Which badass mo'fo' said games were bad for you? B*llends."