The Central Role of Learning in Videogaming

In the 21st century, being a parent means having to deal with buying, monitoring, and negotiating about video games.  A common question parents have is whether children can learn anything positive or of educational value by playing video games?  The answer is “Yes! Children can learn valuable skills by playing video games.

Over the past several years, video games have been the subject of heated discussions and debates in public and academic arenas.  Due to some very popular titles featuring violent stories, video games are usually considered a bad influence, contributing to the aggressiveness that children and youth are manifesting.  Certainly, there are video games that portray acts of violence and show aggressive models that may influence children and adolescents' aggressive tendencies.  However, a closer look at video games reveals a huge diversity among types, contents, and genres of this form of entertainment.  Maze games, adventure games, sports games, strategic games, and simulation games are good examples of game genres containing non-violent content.  Happily, non-violent games such as music and fitness games have dramatically increased in popularity in recent years.

Video games and learning

For a long time, simulations have been used for educational purposes.  Some of the first education-oriented simulations were aimed at supporting training in the military.  Thereafter, their use has been broadly extended to other fields such as medicine and business.  In these domains, simulations provide remarkable contexts that combine learning with practice and experimentation, allowing the acquisition of knowledge and the development of skills required by real-world scenarios.  However, while simulations have been more accepted as educational tools, video games have suffered rejection and resistance by the school community, due to their reputation as being violent and/or purely entertainment-oriented products.

What do we learn from games?

Video games are not only fun; people learn from games.  They have an extraordinary educational value that has been underestimated for many years.  Research over the past 20 years has shown that games can be used to support learning.  Children and adults acquire and develop new skills and knowledge when playing digital games. The development of strategic thinking, problem solving, planning, adaptation to changing contexts, and flexibility are some of the positive effects associated with playing video games.

Why we learn through games

Gaming implies learning, independent of specific game content and educational purposes.  During game-playing, the player is constantly dealing with a dynamic gaming world, whose status changes in response to the player's actions or due to the behavior of digital creatures endowed with artificial "intelligence."  Thus, step after step, the player has to understand what needs to be done, make decisions about how to employ the available resources, and carry out the planned actions.  All this is constantly done, until the player suspends activity or he/she wins or loses the game.