The Educational Benefits of Video Games

So this is a paper that I wrote for English class last semester. It's on the educational benefits of video games and also how video games could be integrated into the education system. It's about 10 pages long so there's quite a bit there but if you've got the time I think it'll be well worth your time. Enjoy.


The early 1990’s brought on a new form of entertainment, video games. Not only were video games gaining in popularity but they were becoming more and more popular as well as more accessible. Home consoles were something that many people were investing in for the ease of video gaming in the home instead of having to go out to an arcade in order to play their favorite video game. This brought many to contemplate the issue that could arise from gaming, and whether or not it would have a positive effect on children and teens. Many would go on to blame violent crimes such as the Columbine shooting on those people’s interest in in such video games. Since this time, many have believed that video games cannot have a positive effect but are just rotting the brains of today’s youth. This, however, I do not believe to be true. While yes, there are many negative affects tied to video games, it is possible that video games can be used in the educational system to help increase students learning capacity; and that the good that can come out of video games outweighs the bad.

So, why study video games? When people think of video games one of the most popular examples that comes to mind is the game Grand Theft Auto. This is a game that has five different installments, all of which you take the role of an American gangster, or criminal, where you eventually wreak havoc on the city. So how can this possibly be beneficial? In short, it can’t. Let’s be honest here, these types of games have so little educational, mental, and physical benefits it’s not useful. It is true that playing video games of any type can provide you with increased hand eye coordination and increase decision making skills but the types of games that are filled with mindless violence don’t provide enough good to overtake the bad.

Jane McGonigal, a game researcher, author, and designer explains in her book, Reality Is Broken, that the positive effects are far greater than the negative effects that come from gaming. She argues that there is a minimal effect from the violence contained within video games, while the positive effects are great. She explains that the popularity of games is because they give us something to do, something to imagine, and not something keeping our minds idle like many television programs. They keep our minds active, giving us problems to solve and tasks to complete. They open our imaginations to possible futures as well as inspiring many that play games into progressive fields of learning and study.

“It is games that give us something to do when there is nothing to do. We thus call games “pastimes” and regard them as trifling fillers of the interstices of our lives. But they are much more important than that. They are clues to the future. And their serious cultivation now is perhaps our only salvation” (McGonigal 1).

McGonigal believes we need to look at gaming in a new light and to understand that maybe having a strong boundary between the real world and a fantasy world is not that great, but instead we have to use our imagination to solve problems, not only in the fantasy world, but it can also help us in the real world in which we live. She argues that video games help in brain development, therefore, they should not be discouraged.

In a recent study done by IMAGEN they took the studied the correlation between video game playing and the thickness in the left frontal cortical. They took surveys of how often they play video games during weekdays, and then on the weekends. In the survey process they questioned both males and females of all ages. They were able to discover that on average a person plays about 12 hours of video games per week. According to the data collected, women tend to play less video games than men in the data sample. However, the results match up in both males and females, affecting them both in the same ways. What they were able to find out was that those who spent more time playing video games actually had a thicker prefrontal Cortex (DLPFC) and the “prefrontal cortex has been described as the substrate of executive control”(Kühn 36). DLPFC is what is primarily responsible for “manipulating decision relevant information and during decisions involving conscious deliberation” (Kühn 38). From this alone we are able to see immediate benefits that can come from playing video games and that they are not, in fact, “turning our brains to mush,” as so many may state, but on the contrary are making them stronger and more capable of processing data.

While playing video games in general, we are able to help in brain structure, and are actually able to strengthen the brain rather than weaken it. How are we going to be able to integrated it into the education system? It’s not advisable, nor is it practical, to just assign out assignments to go play 2 hours of video games a night to improve brain strength. There has to be a way to integrate video games into education in order to correlate with, and complement the school system so that they can work as one entity and not as two separate entities.

The first step is finding the right types of games that can both entertain and educate. Most games are not created for the sole purpose to educate the player, however that does not mean that they are completely void of educational value. Take the highly popular Assassin’s Creed series for example; in this particular game you take the role of an assassin who is in a war against a society known as the Templars. While this game is quite violent as you move from target to target through the game, there is also much that you are able to learn about ancient civilizations. In one particular game you take the role as an assassin during the Renaissance in Rome, fighting against the House of Borgia. In the game you are able to learn a lot about this power in Rome at the time and how they influenced Roman civilization during that time. Another game titled Rome: Total War teaches you about the roman society and their vast empire. You take the role of a roman general commanding troops and building cities to eventually take over the world. In this game you are able to learn about how the romans gained power over the known world by concurring nations such as the Carthaginians, and the Gaul. While there is violence in these video games they have the potential to teach the player about history.

While there are many games that we are able to learn from, there are also many games that have little to no educational value. This however, does not make them useless or void of any value at all. Many games, even the most violent of games, have moral issues or life lessons embedded within them. Take the game Halo, for example. In this sci-fi action game the player takes the role of a solder known as the Master Chef. As this game progress the player is able to see and even feel the values of friendship and sacrifice throughout the game. In another game known as Mass Effect the player is forced to make moral choices sometimes having to choose between saving a single life (usually of a character that has become close to the main character of the story) or saving the lives of many. One may argue that these are just game characters and there is no real attachment that grows there. This, however, is not true. Much like when one is reading a book or watching a film, you grow attached to the characters there in, and when one has to die it can be difficult to let them go.

There are also games such as Minecraft and Little Big Planet which are not only fun, light hearted games, that are imaginative and show us a beautiful new and different type of world, but they help us to be imaginative. These types of games encourage the play to be imaginative and build and design their own worlds. These games also allow the play to create complex systems and devices. Devices as complex as calculators have been created in these games by using a series of switches and components that are available to the player. The author of the book, Out of Our Minds, Ken Robinson, argues that imagination and creativity are key components in providing a strong basis of education. He urges the need for people to learn to be creative. He argues, “creativity is also about working in a highly focused way on ideas and projects, crafting them into their best forms and making critical judgments along the way . . .” (Robinson 5). These focuses outlined are all benefits that often are associated with video games.

Video games have many advantages and disadvantages. We’ve seen throughout the history of video games that there have been many clear disadvantages. However, “despite the disadvantages, it would appear that video games (in the right context) may be a facilitator in educational aid” (Griffiths, 48). Studies have shown that video games have the capabilities to increase learning capacity in spatial abilities, problem solving exercises and mathematical ability.

We have also seen that here are many other ways that video games can be used as an affective educational source. For example, a group of M.I.T. scientists got together and conducted an experiment bringing in two control groups. The first group played a particular video game and then attended a lecture on the subject while the second group did the same process in reverse. The research showed that the first group had a better context of what was being discussed and was better able to focus on key points, while the second group did not know what to listen for and were unable to pinpoint key points in the lecture (Gershenfeld).

There are many examples of how video games can be beneficial, but it raises the question of what type of video games will ad to the education of our youth. Griffiths, in his paper, “The educational benefits of video games” argues that we need to play the right type of games which have been developed for the primary purpose of education, while avoiding violent video games which are currently most popular with today’s youth. Gershenfeld, however, provides us a study done by Daphne Bavelier in which even the most violent video games were shown to increase a person’s brain plasticity and learning capacity, improve vision and improve one’s ability to make quick on the spot decisions. While violence can have negative affect on person's who are too young to distinguish between the virtual world and the real world, once someone is older and has the capability to distinguish between the two different worlds, virtual and the real world, it can be shown to lower stress levels and help relieve tensions in one’s life.

Video games have also been shown to help those who are mentally disabled or who have learning disabilities. People who have these disabilities struggle with learning basic skills such as language, math, reading, and social skills. Many times when a child with learning disabilities goes through the education system, they get left behind. The teachers are expecting them to learn at that same rate as the other students but they just are not able to do so. However, through video games these children are able to enter into a more conducive learning environment. Video games can help by having a player listen for, and follow basic instruction, improving their language skills; by having them play interactive games which keep a score of the points they’ve earned, helping their math skills; by having character dialogue on the screen, improving reading ability; and by giving them something to talk about that many other children are interested in making communication easier, giving them the chance to improve their social skills.

Video games can not only help in an individual manor but can also benefit the player in a cooperative and competitive atmosphere. In cooperative games players are placed on a team and are told to accomplish a certain goal. This gets players to work on communication skills as they must communicate with one another and work as a team to accomplish their goal, and if they don’t work together or don’t communicate well they run the risk of not accomplishing the task and failing their goal. Cooperative games help to improve the performance of the player, increasing the amount able to be learned as well as increasing the entertainment levels. Competitive games are currently one of the most popular forms of gaming. These types of games tend to help the player to do better as they are striving to be better than the other players. While competitive games are usually not quite as beneficial as those of a cooperative nature they still have beneficial aspects associated with them, and have been shown to improve performance more than games played on and individual level.

It has been shown that video games can have a variety of benefits on developing the mind and can greatly improve one’s ability to think critically and make rational decisions. However, now the question is raised, how do we integrate video games into the educational system, and why is it detrimental to do so? While yes, it does seem that the education system is doing well on its own, however if teachers and educators are unable to implement new and upcoming technologies, such as video games, including the operations and usage of these technologies, “we risk creating a new equity gap that will only amplify the existing inequities in education” (Squires). As technologies evolve, so must the education system. Video games have become a huge piece of technology in our day, and to shut them out of the educational system would be cheating students out of their full potential.

Integrating video games is not, however, such an easy task. It’s more than just playing the right type of game, but it’s taking a game and teaching someone how to learn from it. Much like in reading assignments in English classes where you pick out morals and lessons that can be learned through the characters in the story, the same could be done through the right video games, however instead of just reading about the character and seeing what they have chosen to do in the story, the students would be able to make their own choices in the story, creating their own outcomes. Now imagine this, a class room full of students who played the same game, but made different choices. You could then have ethical discussions, not just on what the characters chose to do, but what the students chose to do and what their own personal decisions were.

There are many other ways that video games could be pulled into the educational system. As stated above, students could implement games pertaining to a subject in order to help them understand key points, they can help children with learning disabilities learn faster, and there are so many other possibilities. However, the purpose behind this incorporation is not to replace the current education system, but to enhance it; to make better that which could improve and amplify the amount learned and gained from schooling. Video games are not a fix all, and definitely have their time and place. To say that all video games are beneficial and provide educational value would be false, but there are many great games out there that can help students learn a variety of topics. If we can learn to use video games as something other than a pass time we can greatly improve the creative minds of our future leaders and drive those looking for a better future to the ideas that can lead us there.