Essays, Analyses and Meditations


Back to my essays | Back to the Philosophy pages | Author

The Cognitive Value of Videogames

  • Playing is widespread in the animal kingdom
  • Games, whether played in a courtyard or in the house, are a form of education.
  • Card games and board games teach strategy, social skills, even math, i.e. interaction and algorithms
  • Playing games is practice for higher-order cognitive tasks
  • Watching television and films is not as educational. If the program/film is intellectual, it might provide some other form of education (of the literary/historical kind) but not the same skills that one acquires through games.
  • Watching is passive (it dumbs you down), playing a game is active (it refines your intelligence).
  • In this sense, videogames might be the ideal mix of passive and active: partly related to playing card/board games and partly related to watching shows/films.
  • Or it could be the opposite, that the videogame player acquires insufficient amounts of both skills
Proof-edited by Alexander Altaras