Study shows that playing action games improves your brain, even as games grow more popular
Call of Duty just rewrote the history books again.
Reuters reported that the latest Call of Duty game raked in $550 million in its first three days of release, making it the biggest launch of an entertainment product in 2015. To put that in perspective, TechRadar describes it this way, “that’s more than Jurassic World’s $208 million and Marvel’s The Avenger’s $207 million opening weekends combined. Those films were the two biggest opening launches of all-time.”
Games hauling in truckloads of money aren’t strange anymore. In 2013, GTA 5 made $800 million in its first day and $1 billion in its first three days alone, making it the biggest entertainment launch of that year. And the trend will not be changing anytime soon.
What’s even more exciting is the increasing amount of studies revealing the positive impacts playing video games (particularly action games) has on the brain. The gist of the studies is that these games increase cognitive functions like attention, perception and coordination.
This can be traced to the level of hand-eye coordination that playing video games demands. The intensity of the games, and the ability of the player to keep track of the movement of his character (and every other thing on the screen), while responding with accurate button presses in split second intervals, wakes the brain up.
In short, when someone is playing an action game, his/her neurons are firing on all cylinders. And according to the researchers, this is a better exercise routine for the mind than regular brain training software.
So, will the continual record breaking sales of videogames lead to a general increase in intelligence? I’d like to think so. All the time I’ve spent with my games has to count for something, right?
