Playing Video Games Can Teach You Useful Skills

Do you love video games? Have you ever wondered how video games are beneficial in life? If you've said "yes" to both questions, then here's some good news: Video games can actually teach you some life skills. You heard right! Video games can help you be more successful in life!

Call it far-fetched, but playing video games is more than just a casual pastime. Rather than fearing video games for being "immature" and "addictive," and in some cases "violent," video games possess great opportunities for players to polish up on certain life skills. Now, this isn't to say that video games are a perfect substitute for learning life skills through other avenues; people should still practice moderation in some cases. However, when played responsibly, video games can teach you 5 of the following skills in life:

Problem-Solving

Video games can help you solve problems more effectively. Many games include puzzle challenges that players can spend time deciphering. Plus, there are games that give players obstacles to go through. Puzzles and obstacles allow players to plan, adapt, and experiment with different ways on how to solve them in order to advance through the game.



Socializing

It used to be the assumption that video games made socialization impossible. With many games being offline, it's understandable that video games were seen as anti-social. However, in recent years, this stigma is now seen as obsolete.

In fact, video games are making socialization possible for players no matter where they are. For example, online multiplayer games have already made it possible for players to connect with and or play against each other in a match or tournament. Players can chat (typed or speech) in real time to their teammates during a game. So, instead of the outdated stigma of being anti-social, video games make it easier for people to communicate with each other in online games.



Concentrating

Need to concentrate on things more? Believe it or not, video games can help you hone your concentration skills. You heard right!

While video games can be seen as a distraction from real-life tasks, why not turn it around? Perhaps video games can help prevent you from falling for distractions? Many scenarios in video games require your full attention in order to complete a mission, a task, or puzzle. As such, players can learn to block out distractions, as they concentrate on the task at hand.



Multitasking

As video games grow more and more complex these days, players are experiencing more to do in said games. Many games will have you fighting off enemies, while navigating through a virtual world, and going through your inventory. Or, they might have you checking the score boards within gameplay. Nowadays, there are so many things that you can do in a single game, which allows for multitasking, which is something that a lot of people do nowadays at home, school, work, and so on.



Leadership

Finally, leadership is an important asset to have in the real world. For example, if you were a CEO in a company, you'll need to ensure that your company is running well, when it comes to your workforce, the product or service your company provides, and the clients and investors that you do business with.

With many video games, you can join online multiplayer matches, where you or another person acts as team leader. When you're a leader of an online team, you're able to formulate strategies, communicate with other players, find weaknesses and strengths within your team, keep the morale up, and keep other players focused on the task or mission at hand.

As such, CEOs, managers, directors, and team leaders in general can develop this skill in video games.

Conclusion

As you can see, video games have evolved to be more effective, when it comes to life skills. Instead of holding people back from learning useful skills in life, video games can be beneficial for the following skills, as described in this article:

1. Solving problems
2. Socialization
3. Concentration
4. Multitasking
5. Leadership

Whether you play video games as a hobby, or make a living doing so, consider learning something today!

Game on!

Guest Blogger:

Madeline Miller is a writer and editor at Essay Services. As a web developer, she specializes in hard coding and artificial intelligence implementation.