Skills acquired in games become real-life tools

Gaming provides a strong educational experience for students, encouraging personal and psychological learning.

By: Angel Martin, Opinion Editor

Gaming is educational and is much more than holding a controller. Video games are

a great tool for teaching students, gaining personal growth, honing physical skills and improving academic performance.

Currently 85 percent of U.S. teens spend time playing video games. In the past gaming was looked down upon as a recreational activity, due to the stereotypes of video games producing violence and presumed laziness in school performance. Now, gaming has evolved to include educational resources like Minecraft Education Edition and forms of coding, game design, history, art and more. The National Institute of Health did a study where 2,000 students who play games for three hours or more a day gained more cognitive skills compared to other students.

While gaming helps physical skills, academic ability can also be improved. Role-playing games like Skyrim, Fallout and Diablo encourage gamers to study up on the background of their games for

powerful items, building the best character and discovering the most efficient combat methods. In turn, this creates ways of studying, discovering valuable sources, time management and overall curiosity that could be applied outside of games.

Team-based games are a great way to increase students’ ability to work in groups. A study done by the Wenzhou Medical University in China had students play an online multiplayer team game “Glory

of Kings” where students made teams with different roles: healers, tanks, mages and assassins. The study found that students used the game as a way to be more social, or to be more confident. One

student in the study said that their team would encourage them to be bolder or more adventurous. Another student claimed that being communicative while playing the game has helped them become more talkative outside of games.

iAsia Brown, a gaming executive and investor, is a strong supporter of gaming education, firmly believing games are a future catalyst to education. Brown has viewed gaming as

a sandbox of learning, saying that these educational aspects of video games can be used

in everyday life like moving boxes, problem-solving, connecting learning online through games.

Brown said the biggest misconception about gaming is that video games can’t teach people anything.

“I think that’s incorrect,” she said.

Gaming is more than a hobby. It is a strong educational tool that many had their whole lives. What many thought was just mindless fun, turns out to be a secret educational tool they never knew they had.