Positive Social Aspects of Computer Games - Research Paper Example

Positive social aspects of computer games Playing computer games is important for us, it has both positiveimpacts and negative impacts, this paper majors mainly on the positive social effects of computer games. Computer games results to some unique behaviors, they encourage the player playing them into becoming a part of the whole script. Currently, there are advanced computer games that require the player to pay full attention, these results to the players engaging in the games both emotionally and physically that they usually do when watching TV or a movie. Some people regard computer games as time wasters, with some educational experts regarding computer games to corrupt the brains of the teenagers playing it, however some tend to understand that computer games have positive educational impacts and help in developing creative minds. People need to understand that computer games help people, both kids, adolescents and even the adults grow in different ways, the benefits of the computer range from health, to social. The benefits of playing video games fall into different categories, from benefits to children, adolescents and even to adults. Playing computer games has evolutionary benefits positively affecting the players regardless of their age. The main positive impact falling in all the categories is improvement in coordination and brain exercises, playing computer games requires Maximum Corporation; this improves the brain activities, as one has to intellectually think of the next move acting as a brain exercise. Some of the benefits include; Improvement in planning, logistics, and resource management- many computer games tend to have limited resources that the gamer has to learn to manage, these gamers transfer these skills to real life, they learn how to manage the resources they have effectively. In addition, some games such as the railway tycoons encourage players to undertake certain careers such as architecture and urban planning. Playing computer games improve spatial, the fine motor skills, and the hand-eye coordination-those games involving shooting, the player may be shooting and running at the same time. This is not an easy skill to memories; the skill requires coordination as the player need to know where he is heading and where to aim and shoot. Through this the players needs to coordinate his movements, reactions, and interpretations in the brain, recorded by the movements of the fingertips and the hands. Research shows that some of the fighter pilots gain skills from playing video games, especially the skills for quick reaction. Computer games help in managing multiple objectives and multitasking- some of the computer games force the players to be quick and flexible in order to perform certain moves, this skills help in real life as the gamers can perform different tasks and complete them in time. It also helps in coordination and organization in performing the activities in real life. Help in making fact analysis and quick thinking, these levels in this computer games tend to be hard as the player proceeds. When playing action games the player needs to make quick decisions, these decisions and the difficulty levels in the computer games help give the brain repetitive workouts. Games involving making analysis before completion of a certain level may help the players in their outside life especially when it comes to making analysis and decision. Improving teamwork skills- for the games that require multiple players the players need to work and coordinate their team in order to complete certain level. These teamwork skills help the gamers from kids, adolescents, and even the adults when transferred to real life. Other important benefits gained from playing video games include, introducing the kids to the computer world and management. This paper tackles how computer games in todays society helps the gamers to alleviate the pressure of study or work and increase their knowledge and ideas, improve team cooperation ability, improve brain operation and improve memory and narrow the gender gaps. Computer games help release the players stress of either studying or work; they help in helping the brain relax. Playing some of the violent games helps the players release the anger in them. When an individual play a violent game then he or she rehearses the aggressive scripts in the games, these rehearsals help the players in reinforcing vigilance for their enemies. It also helps the players in reinforcing their aggressive actions toward others, positive attitudes towards violence and why it is bad, and reinforces the thought that others also behave aggressively. These violent games help the player understand all the negative impacts of violence, though playing the game the player also understands that violent solutions are never effective and appropriate. Once a player opens his or her mind to the negative impacts revolving around violence then he or she releases the aggressive feelings thoughts and behavior. It is important to understand that violent games can result to violence especially if played on a long-term basis, the players should then avoid the addiction towards the violent games (Sicart, 2009).Video games help improve the knowledge and ideas to players, research shows that gamers show improved skills in attention, vision and also some certain aspects of cognition.it also shows that gamers have a tendency or performing better that the non-gamers especially on the levels of paying attention, accuracy, speed, vision and even multitasking. Through playing computer games children acquire very important skills that help them in real life, apart for acquiring finer computer operating skills, computer games help in brain development for children through playing video games children are able to increase their knowledge of things, at times they may transfer the good they learn from the games to the outside world. Through the computer games children ability to solve problems and make ethical decisions is improved, they solve problems in a different and an improved manner. For example, the mind computer games, the moves the kids make determines what decision they will make the next move; these decisions tend to be highly thought of (Vargas, 2006). Playing video games gives us experience in what to do in real life, different levels in games help the gamers in developing more ideas on how to tackle certain problems. An example is that of soldiers claiming that the battlefield is just like playing video games. In this, we say that video games help build our thoughts in an unimaginable way the video games give those gamers the skills of quickness and coordination at the same time. In real life experiences, this skills help in striving and achieving our goals in an effective manner, the skill of teamwork learned from gaming also help in real life. Some of the activities in real life require people to cooperate and work together so as to achieve certain goals, multiplayer computer games improve this skill of teamwork and promote coordination among the team members (Daniel, 2006). The basis of this statement is mainly on the social skill acquired from playing computer games; the multiplayer games require the players to be sharp and work together in order to complete the different levels of the game. This helps improve the gamers social skills and the emotions regulation skills; this multiplayer games promotes teamwork and bring people together. The multiplayer games are the games that involve two or more players playing at the same time. The games help bring friends together, promote interaction with others, and form friendships. In the multiplayer games the gamers not only compete but also work together, this in turn gives them opportunities that help in building relationships with one another. The games offer the players an opportunity to socialize with one another. The multiplayer kind of games depend on trust and high levels of cooperation between the gamers in order to work, it is through this spaces that the gamers engage socially with the other gamers on their terms. The social multiplayer games involve the pickup groups; these groups require the players to join forces with other players they do not know. This gives players to meet new people and even create new friends, for the multiplayer games where one plays with his friend online, he or she can socialize with the other gamer as thy continue playing (Eklund, 2013). When people play this games they attempt to complete certain missions together, this helps promote teamwork important in day-to-day life. When kids play the multiplayer games they learn how to work together even in school in order to accomplish their goals, this applies even to the adolescents and adults who play computer games. Some of the games create arenas where the players work together to take the difficult challenges, challenges that they could not take individually. Multiplayers also help improve the cooperation ability of the players, as they need to complete the missions set in the objectives together. This cooperation is important when transferred to real life as it helps people to work together in a team to complete certain objectives, for example in the military, they need to work together in a highly coordinated team in order to complete their given objectives. Transferring the teamwork and coordination skills to real life can help one achieve success in life, a good team with the best coordination can achieve the goals, and the visions set. This is because with a good team the objectives and tasks can be completed simultaneously if only the team is well coordinated. The pro-social games also help improve the social skills of the gamers since in the games the players need to work together complete certain tasks. Computer games act as facilitators to brain exercises; they help improve the brains operational ability and also improve memory. These games results to exercises in the part of the brains mainly responsible for memory formation, spatial orientation, fine motor skill, and strategic planning. Video games require the gamer to pay a lot of attention and at times require him or her to solve certain puzzles in order to complete a certain level in the game. Other games require some quick thinking in order to perform certain activities, games such as "cut the rope" needs the player to think and dedicate all his or her attention towards completing the level. These kinds of brain games help improve the different aspects in our brain. Almost all activities around computer games involve the ability of the gamer to think, the benefits of computer games also revolve around our brains. Benefits such as improvements in problem solving, logistics and also planning revolve around our brains (Shaffer, 2006). For kids computer games help their brain develop in all aspects, from improved thinking to even improved memory levels. An article by Shaffer talks about how computer games improve a childs brain by mainly improving his skills on performing creative works both in schools and out of school. Computer games improve the brains operation for the kids making them more innovative and creative. Puzzle computer games are important in achieving this as they make the player think as the game proceeds, through the thinking the creativity of the players brain improves. Some of the gamers have ease in performing the outside life activities as they can think quicker and even respond quickly (Valkenburg, 2002). Playing video games for all ages increase the brain capability, it leads to the general growth of the brain in terms or thinking and also in terms of memory. In medical studies done, the results are that gaming helps in the growth of new neurons, this improves the connectivity in different regions responsible for memory formation, strategic planning and also in spatial orientation. Through the rapid activity of the brain during gaming the gray matter of the brain increases, as one plays the computer games the brain reacts rapidly to the simulations, this acting as brain exercises. also during gaming the brain region responsible for high intelligence and consciousness are in action. Gaming brings together the different parts of the brain resulting to high performance and high cognitive functions of the brain. Children with the tendency of playing video games shows more performance in school both in class and co curriculum activities. They tend to be more active than those that do not play; this kids also show great qualities when it comes to teamwork Male players tend to dominate the field of computer gaming; this has however reduced as more women begin to participate in playing computer games. Over the years many of the games created contained no female roles, even in those that had women, only 2% had given them active roles while 6% had them play the damsel roles. In these games, it was mainly the mens role to come rescue the women in distress. This has however changed, the current study shows that the ratio of women to men to women in this games is 13 to 1, with this stats it is evidently clear that the gender gap is reducing, some of the game companies are progressing towards changing the role of women by giving them better powerful roles. The original concept that women are bad, erotic In the computer games is changing with the changing trends in gender. Also outside the virtual world the female gamers are increasing, more women show interest in playing computer games than in the past where mainly men did play computer games. Integration of women into the computer gaming show huge decrease in the gender gap, in various studies the women integrated in the computer games did show high level sf visual attention, they showed improves level of skills relation to those acquired from video games. Currently, the number of women involved in gaming has increased greatly; the game cooperations also now create games that girls can play, and this narrows the gender gap in computer gaming greatly (Cassel, 1998). The benefits of computer games seem to be more for most people, even with the many social benefits of computer games there are still come disadvantages. The social positive impacts have some major concepts; this includes that fact that the adults and the children in the gaming increase their knowledge by living in the virtual world of computer games. For the multiplayer online games, the gamers benefit from meeting and making new friends. Computer games make the gamers more creative, think quickly, and improve their brain operations, they also help in ensuring gender equality in the computer world All through the paper, it is evident that there are more benefits of playing computer games than the negative benefits. The benefits override the disadvantages by far. However, parents should understand that the time spent on gaming should be controlled in that parents should restrict the kids from spending all their time on computers. This is because computer games can be addictive which mainly results to anti-socialism. It is also important to understand that playing violent games for a long period is one cause of the increase in aggressive behaviors. The violent video games increase aggressive behavior in almost all categories of players mainly the children as these violent actions occur all through the game. Those children who play violent games at the beginning of their school years show a lot of aggression than those that play later in life. Continuous play of the violent games also increases angry feelings, psychological arousal, and aggressive behavior. Violent games also change the way people speak, for example, many violent video games use a lot of abusive language, once the children keep playing this games continuously they tend to change the way they speak. Work cited Daniel Terdiman, “Shakespeare Coming to a Virtual World,” The New York Times, Oct. 19, 2006. Jose Antonio Vargas, “Virtual Reality Prepares Soldiers for Real War,” The Washington Post, Feb. 16, 2006, p. A1. Sicart, Miguel. “The Ethics of Computer Games.” Cambridge, Mass : MIT Press. 2009 Lina Eklund, Magnus Johansson “Played and Designed Sociality in a Massive. Multiplayer Online Game” Eludamos. Journal for Computer Game Culture. 2013; 7 (1), pp. 35-54 David Williamson Shaffer, How Computer Games Help Children Learn (2006). Patti M Valkenburg. Ed. Jorge Reina Schement . Video and Computer Games and the Internet, page(s): 1058-1062. Vol. 3. New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2002 Justine Cassell and Henry Jenkins, eds., From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games (1998). Read More