For gamers of a particular age, there’s a certain comment you were sure to have heard, usually from an older relative, as they watched you strumming away at Guitar Hero or Rock Band: “Why don’t you just learn to play guitar for real and learn an actual skill instead of wasting time on some video game?” While nobody (well, very few bodies) truly felt that mastering “Through the Fire and Flames” suddenly meant they could headline a gig, gamers of the series and the games it inspired still argued that there were transferrable skills, such as rhythm and timing, that actually were quite helpful, and now a recent study seems to show that sports gamers feel the same way.
According to a press release by the Entertainment Software Association, which studied gamers’ opinions on the positive benefits of gaming, more than half of all global sports gamers feel that there are tangible benefits to their skills in the real world version of video games, which arise from playing sports video games.
What The Study Said
The sports gamer data was just one of the many areas polled, as the study examined broader trends. Unsurprisingly, the top reasons given for why gamers play games were quality-of-life related, with having fun (66%), relieving stress (58%), and improving mental sharpness (45%) being the most common benefits cited. Players also believed strongly in the mental health benefits of gaming, with reducing stress and easing loneliness through connection with other gamers listed as major benefits.
How Can Video Games Help With Real World Sports?
For sports gamers, the over-50% data point stands out, and while it may seem a bit of a stretch at first blush to think breaking a 70-yard run with your thumbs can help you do it in real life, it’s not as divorced from reality as you might think. Here are three key areas you can benefit from playing a sports video game:
Building Your Reflexes
The ability to rapidly identify situations and react is critical in most active sports, and video games are long established as an excellent way to build up your skills. While the exact way you react in real life may not be the same, the ability to make quick decisions and react in an instant is transferable to the real-world courts and pitches.
Perseverance Development
To paraphrase a sporting idiom, it’s not about how many times you get knocked down, it’s about how many times you get back up. Trying and failing in a sports game only to come back stronger the next year teaches you how to keep going through sporting adversity.
Tactical Learning
The coding behind sports video game AI gets better and better every year, and that can make a sports game an excellent way to learn tactics. While Madden can’t teach you to drop a 30-yard dime between coverage, it can teach you to read the pre-snap coverage to know where that window is most likely to be.
