During this period of quarantine and social distancing, it is vital for us all to keep in touch with those closest to us and to keep our minds active and healthy while staying in our homes. Video games are a perfect ways of achieving this by allowing a quick and convenient method of connecting with friends and family in a social, competitive way at the same time challenge our brains. Video games are now integrated more socially engaging components than ever with over three billion gamers worldwide, ranging from casual recreational mobile games to elite Esport professionals. With the strict social distancing restrictions in place, video games can help us to decrease the isolation effects of social distancing.
Even the World Health Organisation (WHO) has very recently encouraged people to play video games in a growing attempt to unite people around the world while keeping their distance to decrease the burden on healthcare systems and ultimately save more lives despite the fact that the WHO had previously labelled video games as a “disorder”.
Despite the common misconception that video games are solely for kids, video games have been proved to benefit people of all ages. In fact, the average age of gamers today is 35-40 years old with people playing a wide range of different games including all-time favorite of actions like Fortnite and League of Legends to retro classics such as Super Mario Brothers.
The benefit of video games is that they don’t require people to be highly skillful to master the technique; in fact, many games often adapt to the skill level of the gamer and place them with other gamers of similar level of skill ability in a competitive environment. While some games promote intense competition and require prolonged span of concentration, games like the recently released Islanders on the Steam gaming platform have been created to be less competitive, more immersive, entertaining and relaxing.