In 2020, Oxford Internet Institute of Oxford University, UK has released new surprising research (1) between playing games and wellbeing. The result said that: “time spent playing games is positively associated with wellbeing.” To collect people’s playing time, instead of giving Q&A about how much they play, the authors use industry data (called telemetry data) on the actual playtime of 3274 players. To collect players’ experiences how their feelings of autonomy, relatedness, competence, enjoyment, and feeling pressured to play related to well-being, the authors created a survey, through video game companies, sent to players. The research also has shown that there isn’t a direct proportion between the amount of playing time and people’s well-being. It means that players’ experiences during play may be more important than the amount of time they spend in games, those experiences are likely to make players feel well-being.
Come back time to 1998, a published study in the famous scientific journal Nature (2) showed that playing video games releases the feel-good neurotransmitter dopamine.
A study of the American Psychological Association (3) in 2013 showed the relationship between video games and problem-solving skills. The research proved that playing video games improve how a gamer deal with their stuck. The article also said that video games seem to be associated with enhanced creativity.
From the Official Journal of the Society for Neuroscience, a study published in 2015 (4) also showed that video gamers “specifically favor complex 3D video games performed better on a demanding recognition memory task that assesses participants' ability to discriminate highly similar lure items from repeated items.”
In this article, there is only some evidence from thousands of published research for benefit of playing the game has shown. From the results of the above studies, we can see that video games bring us many great things from mental, and physical to social benefits. Good or bad, it completely depends on each person’s playing habit.
“Games can be good for the brain.” It is truth has been shown by studies.