Video games are strong learning tools in our world today, even if they have violent elements in it. Though these games sometimes drag young people to stare at a screen for hours (Which I do sometimes.), they seem to teach things such as: hand-eye coordination, logical reasoning, math, reading skills, and overall strategy. Though some games seem to teach this more than others, all video games have some kind of learning quality. Below, I will explain two aspects: hand-eye coordination and math.
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First, I will explain the easiest thing to notice. "The coordination of the oculomotor and manual effector systems is an important component of daily motor behavior." meaning, hand-eye coordination takes a great part in our daily routine. This is noticeable in every game. For example: in a popular game named Call of Duty, when your opponent comes in to your line of sight, your quick reaction is to face him/her and eliminate the threat the they propose. This is due to your eyes and hands working together. Your eyes send a message to your brain showing you what is there, then your brain sends a message to your hands to take the necessary action. The reason why this is educational for people is because this helps make your "reaction time" become faster, and helps you work more efficiently due to familiar actions.
Now I know what you're thinking, "But you said 'familiar' actions. If they continue playing games, normal actions such as working will become unfamiliar. Thus, this doesn't help and this blog post is pointless." Wrong. According to this article, a gamer doesn't just become better at that one particular event, players also are able to pick up new actions much faster than non-players. This quote was the exact words posted in the article. "A new study led by researchers at the University of Toronto found that regularly playing action video games like 'Assassin's Creed' or 'Halo' makes learning new sensorimotor, or eye-hand coordination, skills easier." (Yes, I do know that it says "sensorimotor" and there is an awkward comma, but that is the way I found it.)
Now I will move on to another point, math. This is less noticeable in action games, but more noticeable in games called "RPG's", which stands for Role-Playing Games. These games are generally about starting out weak, then after playing the game for a while you get very powerful. The reason why this kind of game introduces math, is by the many numbers in the game. This is a personal example: While I was playing a game named "Borderlands 2", I joined my friends in attempting to defeat an annoying bunch of enemies named the "Ancient Dragons of Destruction." We did a ton of pre-planning. It probably wasn't necessary, but it definitely did help. We used math to help us achieve this. Since the enemies were going to be three levels higher than us, they would take 60% less damage from us, causing my weapon to do 4234.4 damage per hit instead of the usual 10586. Things like that.
Players learning math through video games is very hard to detect, this is due to the entire math equation being done in their head. Though these equations are normally subtle and only use basic math formulas, it definitely assists in math skills. This website shows a couple explanations from a mathematician from Stanford University. Keith Devlin speaks about how we all use math without knowing it, and that games could defiantly help improve these skills. If you wish to come in to more depth about his opinion and explanation, you can find his book for sale on Amazon.
Overall, video games can be an important tool to help excel in education. It will help in many skills and encourage your mind to work faster on many aspects of work. I don't recommend it for high levels of education however (Such as university.), as the mathematical aspects of video games do not go in to very complicated formulas. I am also suggesting that you have some game time every once in a while, do not dare think that I am telling you to replace the educational system with games.
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