Why everyone loves playing video games

5 MIN. READ

With over 2.5 billion video gamers throughout the world, the video game industry is poised to be worth more than $90 billion in 2020. Why are video games so popular? It's turning out that they're for more than just fun.

Scientific studies have shown that video game play can improve hand-eye coordination and visual tracking. Some games have demonstrated educational value, either through specific content or by unleashing creativity. Others provide significant opportunities for family engagement. And the anti-social behavior supposedly induced by video gaming? Not proven according to the latest data. But, perhaps most importantly, people love playing video games because it helps them meet basic psychological needs.

Self-determination

In their book "Glued to Games," psychologists Scott Rigby and Richard Ryan argue that video games offer people opportunities to meet innate psychological needs. They base this on Self-Determination Theory, which posits that people are generally motivated by three things:

• Competence: People need to gain mastery of tasks and learn different skills.
• Connection or Relatedness: People need to experience a sense of belonging and attachment to other people.
• Autonomy: People need to feel in control of their own behaviors and goals.

While these three motivations differ in degree among individuals, any given video game can provide opportunities to meet these needs.

Competence

Video games can improve employability. Gamers aren't just having fun, they're learning valuable, transferable skills. And they're getting constant feedback that helps them improve.

Puzzle games create ideal IT personnel. Strategy games convert into ideal management skills. Even the military is getting into the game.

Online games especially promote teamwork. Together, gamers and their friends achieve goals, reach the next level, solve puzzles, build civilizations and learn to react quickly in changing situations. All of these skills are easily transferable to a teenager's or young adult's life.

Relatedness

Half of all teenagers use it to keep in touch with their friends. Gamers may spend up to 10 hours each week on this. What is it?

Fortnite. The wildly popular game might actually turn out to be a successful social network as well.

As the players wait to parachute into their mission, they chat. However, not all of the chatter is about strategy and not all of the teammates are already friends. Gamers talk about their lives, school problems and anything else that comes to mind. Teams may include one or two close friends, but they're also often comprised of friends from other countries and even total strangers.

Then the game begins. What it lacks in gore, it more than makes up for in camaraderie. By the end of the roughly 20-minute segment, players have found common ground, defended one another in battle and potentially built a bond - all without ever having met in person.

Autonomy

With a seemingly endless choice in gameplay, a quick look at some of 2020's anticipated releases shows that gamers have limitless autonomy when it comes to their game of choice.

Final Fantasy VII Remake offers eco-terrorists the ability to fight back against big corporations. Doom Eternal promises the ability to save all of mankind. Animal Crossing: New Horizons gives gamers the chance to build an idyllic farm - and pay taxes to a capitalist empire.

The common theme is that the virtual definitely crosses paths with reality, letting gamers play their hero of choice and save the world in their own unique way. Whether flying solo or working as a team, gamers build new worlds and sometimes fail, but always learn from the experience to play another day.

Stress relief

Anyone who has ever heard a teenager screaming at the gaming console, "Kill him! Kill him! I'm running out of life!" might come to the conclusion that video games are anything but stress relievers.

Current psychological studies disagree. In both competitive and cooperative gaming situations, video games can provide an outlet for stress and anxiety. Even competitive players may feel better about themselves after they work with their team to complete a mission together.

One reason for the positive nature of this outlet is that players can develop in-game coping skills that also translate into real-life situations. In other words, when a player screams, "Kill him! I'm running out of life!" they're really learning to ask for support from trusted friends and teammates. They may also realize that sometimes help arrives in time, but sometimes it doesn't. Either way, the player lives to play another game.

Mental stimulation

While some argue that video games impair cognitive functioning, leaving gamers with a short attention span, research suggests otherwise. In fact, video games can stimulate many different areas of the brain at once, potentially leading to an improved ability to solve problems quickly, manage "heat of the moment" stress and reason one's way out of a situation.

Equal social standing

Imagine battling personal demons as part of a video game.

That's exactly what creator Cornelia Geppert did when she devised "Sea of Solitude." During the main character's journey through a dark underworld, she realizes that all of the creatures are human beings who succumbed to their worst fears and anxieties.

"Sea of Solitude" is not alone in exploring the greater mental health issues of depression, fear and anxiety. Several other popular video games can help gamers through social anxiety issues simply by providing a positive outlet for otherwise negative energies.

Gamers who feel isolated at school may find that they can lose themselves behind the characters they create - characters who often embody the very qualities gamers wish they possessed themselves.

A player in another country doesn't know that a gamer who embodies courage could really have anxiety speaking to others. Other gamers don't know that a player who has everyone's back could really be fearful of social interactions in school. Gamers only know the game, and there's safety and equality in that anonymity.