Essay on the Benefits of Playing Games

Imagine you are standing across from someone else in the park. You two are the last remaining players left in the game of water pistol and whoever gets the other player out first will make their team crowned the winner. While you see your opponent, who is moments away from pressing the squirter button, you react quick enough which allows you to take out your opponent making your team the winner of this year's game and everyone begins to clap and cheer.  This is the excitement that teens feel when they play these types of games. These types of games are able to give teens the ability to have something to look forward to instead of having nothing to do during the last few weeks of school. Unfortunately, every activity known to humans always has its negatives but it just depends on how you view each game. After researching and using many different resources I’ve come up with my claim which is, I believe that teens should be allowed to play violent role-playing games.

One of the reasons that helps me believe this would be that it helps teach teens how to use their skills to their advantage. This is proven to be needed when applying for jobs and even just the real world in general. This includes skills such as strategy making, hacking/computer knowledge, and more. This was shown in the article “High-Jinks:Shoot-Out'' by Guy Martin when the author wrote “At 10:30 P.M, on a Wednesday, three of the four seniors,armed with Walgreens issued pistols, staked out  Cohen’s house in a blue Toyota minivan. The idea was to use a cell phone to call Cohens’ landline, posing as Cohens’ teammate Dominic, using Dominics’ caller I.D. The call had been engineered from a remote computer by a squad member with prodigious hacking skills.” Reading this shows that if a teenager was capable of doing such a complicated task in order to help his team win,  the teen will have a higher chance of joining an organization such as the FBI in order to use the skill for the good of mankind. This also shows that many other kids/teens that possess these types of skills can learn how to use them to the best of their abilities during the game which will prepare them for the real world that is waiting for them. Although some people might feel that these games can lead to teens not using their brain to play their games which “fries their brain”, this is proven to be false by the article “Video game playing tied to creativity” by MSU (Michigan State University), it is stated in the first paragraph that, “A study of nearly 500 12-year-olds found that the more kids played video games, the more creative they were in tasks such as drawing pictures and writing stories. In contrast, use of cell phones, the Internet and computers (other than for video games) was unrelated to creativity, the study found.” This shows that by allowing kids and teens to access to these types of games, they are able to not only to enhance their current skills that they have but they also have a chance to develop their creativity which allows kids and teens all around the world to have a higher chance to have a better future when they are older. Learning how to master these skills early on in life can also help teens get a better chance of getting a job that they will be happy with doing for the rest of their life in the future .  

Another reason why these games help teens would be that these games help boost communication and teamwork skills. This helps out teens who might not have the best communication skills and need that extra push in order to get to a good point of developing skills like this. Communication is also one of the main parts of the game that leads you to having a better chance of winning the game. If someone who has poor communication skills with people, has a desire to win, this could push them to try and make an effort to communicate with their teammates and people around them in order to achieve this goal.  This is shown in the article “Video games are transforming how we communicate with each other and they could fix a range of other global issues too” by Sussana Pollack when she states “Games possess more than just the power to connect us emotionally. Today, 63% of adult players play with others, often in squads that get together both online or in person. Brought together by servers and matchmaking algorithms, these strangers quickly learn how to work together to achieve a common goal.” This shows that when complete strangers are playing a game together, they all find a way to communicate in order to achieve their goal of winning. While raising their ability to have better communication with one another, these games also help teens make and build better friendships with their peers. This is shown in the article “High-Jinks:Shoot-Out” by Guy Martin by stating “Initially, each team of up to four students is given only the identities of its immediate prey.”Instead of making everyone play the game solo or teaming up people who don’t have good chemistry, this specific game allows the players involved to play the game with people the trust and people who have better communicate with each other. If teens develop these two types of skills, they will have a better chance of being able to communicate with those around them.

One of the last major reasons why these games help teens would be that these games teach them about discipline.  According to the article “High-Jinks:Shoot-Out” by Guy Martin, “Students of the 2009 teams, each put $20 for each team which made a total of $360 for the winning team to obtain.” This shows that even though each team knew that they had a low chance of winning, they still chose to give away their own money because it meant that they could also spend time with their friends and make great memories that will be remembered by each of them in the future.In the article “5 Ways Video Games Teach Self-Control Skills” by Dr. Randy Kulman, it is stated that, “Video games teach self-control skills in two ways: the first is in games in which players need to learn to inhibit, or stop, an action (maybe one that was used earlier in the game) in order to be successful. The second is in the games in which players must regulate their emotions to overcome difficult challenges.” This tells the reader that while games sometimes seem to become frustrating for people to play, it teaches us how to handle situations that also seem frustrating at first and how to conquer them. If both teens and kids learn about discipline and self control early on in their lives, they will have a better understanding of how to solve any issues they face in their future lives.

Although, this is only a short list of reasons why I believe that teens should be allowed to play violent role playing games, there are many pros and cons on this subject and many people have mixed opinions on this too. Rather it be that they fully agree on the topic of letting teens play violent role playing games or that they fully disagree with teens playing these types of games. Regardless of your stance on this topic, the majority of the teens who play these games are given an opportunity to learn how to use skills they possess in order to win and they just play to have fun which is why I believe that teens should be allowed to play violent role-playing games.