A 2023 study showed that children who played video games showed better cognitive skills, impulse control and working memory compared to children who never played them. But not just children, gaming has become the favourite pastime for people of all ages. Experts are therefore very keen to find out the ways it benefits gamers.
Real-life choices demand skills and decisiveness, much like rummy or a combat game, for instance. The big question, therefore, is - will your hours spent on a rummy app help you in your decision-making in real life? Numerous observations show that gaming can be of help in this regard.
How Studies Concur
Gaming these days is becoming more and more fast and dynamic. They serve as a dress rehearsal for real life, which also has become incredibly fast-paced. Video gaming is a cognitively engaging recreation that creates a sensory-rich environment. This has intrigued scientists worldwide, leading to various in-depth studies.
One such study did a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment on video gamers and non-video gamers. The experiment studied the brain response of the participating individuals during decision-making situations. Video game players proved to be 190 milliseconds faster than non-video game players, resulting in a 2% better accuracy.
Apart from this time advantage, the study also gave valuable insights into the workings of brain mechanisms. It also showed improvements in sensorimotor decision-making abilities, which can be directly attributed to video game playtime.
Video gaming improves your sharpness in decision-making through a variety of gaming categories.
Decision-Making and Video Game Categories
If you have downloaded a rummy app like RummyCulture, you may have noticed that a rummy game involves constant skill and decision-making. Card games like rummy and poker challenge our decision-making in a variety of ways. From the probability of card availability to discarded card analysis, managing the deadwood in your hand, to opponent modelling, card games are all about analyses and choices.
However, various other game variants appeal to our decision-making in different ways.
In role-playing games like Baldur’s Gate 3, for instance, you assume the role of a character. Your decision-making impacts the story narrative and your character’s development. This includes decisions like choice of quest paths, combat strategies, resource allocation and even dialogue selection. Situations that are quite similar to our real-life and career decisions, indeed!
When it comes to strategy games like Rise of Kingdoms, decision-making is crucial when it comes to resource management and troop deployment. These decisions decide how successful your army or civilisation will eventually be.
Not to forget, there are video games whose core tenet is decision-making. While playing Batman: The Enemy Within, your decisions and choices have a direct impact on the character of the chief antagonist, The Joker. Similarly, in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, your choices are key to how the non-playing characters pan out in the game and how they interact with you. Many of these games also test you through decisions that involve a moral dilemma. In such situations, there are hardly any clear right or wrong choices.
Video games challenge your critical thinking capacity and problem-solving skills while entertaining you with the gaming experience. A lot of these situations are ever-present in our everyday life.
Takeaways for Real-life Choices
In a study supported by the US National Institutes of Health, nearly 2,000 children who played video games for three or more hours per day revealed what was being suspected all along. They had better cognitive skills compared to children who never played video games. For children, mature video games are simply off the table. However, simple formats like “Would You Rather” and “Chutes and Ladder” help hone their decision-making skills and understand the concept of cause and effect.
Teenagers and students were always advised to play games like chess, which encapsulates the best of critical thinking and decision-making. Video games like SimCity help them develop their early management skills as they successfully manage to build their virtual city.
Video games like Pass the Hoop and What If are leadership games that can develop the leadership skills of professionals. Negotiation war games and corporate wargaming are also simulations of real-life career and business scenarios. Nevertheless, for people in the apex, gaming choices can be quite simple as well. Elon Musk, for instance, prefers the popular role-playing game, Diablo IV.
From little children to the richest man in the world, video games have an appeal for everyone. But, apart from the appeal, it seems to sharpen their life skills as well.
The Deciding Thoughts
Video games have evolved from the days when hand-eye coordination was the primary requirement. Modern video games take us into an alternate gaming universe where our choices and decisions have a domino effect on the gameplay. These games are subconsciously sharpening the decision-making skills of millions of gamers across the world.
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