One of the big concerns for parents is if and how online games damage the child’s educational development, how time spent on online games reduces time spent learning, and just if there are any educational or developmental benefits to online games.
Untold Entertainment, whose motto is "the use of entertainment to improve, rather than degrade, the human condition" have come up with a way to help develop the child’s imagination and skills.
Ryan Creighton was with his daughter at a ‘game jam’ in Toronto when he got the idea for Games by Kids. Like a science kit that a family can use to conduct simple experiments on a lazy Saturday afternoon, he assures us that it will engage both the parent and child alike.
But are there generally any developmental benefits for children from online games?
Online games and video games can be considered here in the same mould.
According to the Entertainment Software Association in the US more than 68% of American households play computer or video games. And the effects of excessive viewing have been well documented – the journal Pediatrics showed a direct relationship between video game playing and attention problems at school. The study found that exceeding over 2 hours a day gave a 1.5-2 times likelihood of attention problems at school.
But it also turns out there are benefits too. The University of Rochester’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences found that found that video games help improve contrast sensitivity, or the ability to see subtle shades of gray.
Lauren Sergio from York University in Toronto found via brain scans “...non-gamers had to think a lot more and use a lot more of the workhorse parts of their brains for eye-hand coordination,” she says. “Whereas the gamers really didn’t have to use that much brain at all, and they just used these higher cognitive (centres) to do it.”
Employers including hospitals, the U.S. armed services and many police departments use video games to help doctors, soldiers and police officers work on skill development.
A publication in Nature magazine 2003 showed that action video game players have better hand-eye coordination and visuo-motor skills, such as their resistance to distraction, their sensitivity to information in the peripheral vision and their ability to count briefly presented objects, than nonplayers. Researchers found that such enhanced abilities could be acquired by training with action games, involving challenges that switch attention between different locations, but not with games requiring concentration on single objects. It has been suggested by a few studies that online/offline video gaming can be used as a therapeutic tool in the treatment of different mental health concerns.
Last week, Recyclebank, in partnership with consumer insights agency ROI Research and Google Inc., announced the release of a joint report, Using Games for Good: Motivating A Shift in Consumer Behavior with Social Gaming. The report, conducted over the month of April during Recyclebank’s nationwide Green Your Home Challenge, reveals that games –a widely accepted carrot –can be very effective in moving individuals along the spectrum of sustainability, with great potential to create widespread movements around social and environmental causes.
The majority (86 percent) of those polled agreed online games and contests can be a good way for companies and brands to inform and educate them personally, and 73 percent thought games/contests are a good way for companies to interact with consumers, in general.
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