Contents
Why Do you Play Videogames
Recent Statistics suggest Video Games are enjoyed by 10.84 million people in the UK (myself included), which is more than one in every seven people.
With mobile gaming as well as console, video games are increasingly part of our life, and a significant part of how many of us spend our free time.
However, there can be stigma attached to gaming, and Gaming Disorder was recently added to the ICD-11 as a form of addiction.
We might experience criticism if we spend ‘too much’ time gaming, and often when clients first tell me about their gaming, I almost sense a shame in talking about it – with them wondering why they game.
Rather than shame, I find myself intrigued, and wanting to explore that aspect of their lives because how we spend our downtime really speaks to us about our needs and lives – we just usually don’t sit there and reflect on why we do things.
Some quick Questions
What games are you playing? The genre, the state of mind that the game puts you in; is it online? Multi or single player? Cooperative or competitive? Is this a game you’ve played before?
When do you play video games? Is it a mobile game you play briefly on the loo, a ritual for an hour or so when you’re back from work, a long gaming session on the weekend, a meetup with friends, something you play when you are stressed, or maybe as a treat?
What kind of Needs are being met with this game? And this will be the bulk of this article, because we don’t consciously go around saying “I’m going to play Dark Souls because I’m looking for a sense of challenge and mastery” or “I’m going to reopen a save on Animal Crossing because my life feels hectic, and I am looking to slow down and have some predictability”.
Aims
So when I say, ‘Why’ or ‘Therapeutic Benefits’; I mean, “what needs are being met in gaming”, and within that we might cover some of the dangers if we overly focus on that need, but the aim is to be positive and equip us with the gains of gaming.
My hope is that in reading this you will gain more awareness of the processes that are happening when you game, which will help you realise why you game and give you some control over it.
If you fancy a counselling session with me, where we use your favourite video game, or what you are currently playing, to explore aspects of yourself then I would very much love that. You can also do this same sort of reflective exercises with other hobbies or media you consume.
1. Dissociation & Escapism
Video games are incredibly engaging. A book uses your eyes to read and hands to turn the page, a film uses your ears and eyes, whereas a video game is using:
– Your Eyes – with vibrant images
– Your Ears – maybe you have headphones on to immerse yourself in the world
– Your Hands – on the controller
– that you directly control the story and how it plays out.
It engages your senses, your planning brain, your reactions, and we even begin to identify and project ourselves onto the protagonist in a way that doesn’t happen with other forms of media.
All of this creates an incredibly strong way to immerse yourself into a game world and leave your life in a process called Transportation.
In 2024, life can be hard, intense, and consuming. School, work, relationships, family, losses, health, dread from the news of the world around us, pretences on socials, a never ending ‘to do’ list, and the worries and mental health battles that can plague us.
When we have a lot of stressors in our life, being in them constantly can be overwhelming – as though diving without that vital gasp of air to keep us alive.
Video games can offer an escape from that; a chance to be someone else in a world with clear rules and no real consequences. A machine that we can turn on, whenever we are free, and quickly leave our own thinking mind to play as someone else. To be a character who will still face challenges and obstacles but has a clear path to follow and can overcome them for fun rather than face them as an overwhelming blockade.
I mentioned Dissociation. Dissociation is an unconscious method of protecting yourself from trauma or overwhelming information.
A sense of disconnection from oneself, as though things aren’t real; depersonalisation, derealisation, being an observer of yourself, on autopilot, or a numbness.
The thing about dissociation is that it happens without your control and can often be distressing, whereas disconnecting using video games allows a controlled break from reality to a different world that can shift your state of mind.
What I’m not saying is that video games are a proven treatment for dissociative disorders. Dissociative disorders often benefit from treatments that offer more grounding and exploratory work on what we are dissociating from.
What I am saying is that if we push ourselves, or the world is too overwhelming, and we don’t have a means of brief escape to protect the Self, we risk overwhelm, then burn out, then dissociation; and controlled dissociation through videogames offers that respite.
Escapism, or switching off through video games, offers other benefits too. Video games occupy much of the brain, but still allow us to process and think which can spur creativity if the break from them is controlled.
Play can also be restful, and that rest is needed to pause and regenerate when we have been working or busy.
It engages many senses and this can act like mindfulness where busy thoughts are left and you are fully in the moment with your character.
All of these are clear benefits from the escapism (or pausing) that video gaming can provide. The danger is if we prioritise escaping to video games so much that that it takes from our presence in reality. However, in sustainable doses, it can serve to help us be more grounded by resting from it.
So that’s the first need – are you using games as a way of escaping or pausing from life?
2. Mastery
The world is full of options – our career, hobbies, interests, time with family… and if we go on social media or the internet to investigate each of these choices, we will be presented by experts who seem to excel at those things – leaving us feeling naïve or mediocre, a feeling that only intensifies as you immerse yourself in an option and find out just how much you don’t know.
You may have heard it quoted that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert on something – an intimidatingly large number that only reinforces a reality that we are unlikely to have the time, dedication, resources, or opportunity to truly become a master in something.
Instead of being a master of a subject, we are met with competition in the real world, and difficulties in breaking though – often for reasons slightly beyond our control, all creating a despondency.
Introducing video games:
Do you want to be a Premier League footballer or manager? Pick up FIFA.
A skilled musician playing on stage? Try Rock Band.
A heroic fantasy adventurer battling against the odds? ‘Git Gud’ at Dark Souls.
A disciplined soldier with a rock steady aim? Play some Call of Duty.
Video Games put you in control of a character who is skilled at their craft; you are already a master and knowing what it is like to be the main character for once.
That sense of mastery is then even further nurtured as you navigate the world of the game. Your first time playing Dark Souls, you might die multiple times to the Taurus Demon, but on your second playthrough you know the gimmicks like the roof archers or plunging attacks – you can anticipate and dodge through it’s attacks, and take delight as massive chunks of its health bar fall to your gold pine resin coated zweihander.
What once was difficult, becomes easy and within a day of gameplay, you have learnt mastery. This is another need met by video gaming, and an appealing one – to feel a sense of mastery and progression that is difficult to achieve outside of gaming.
3. Levelling up
Gamification has become popular in recent years – the process of adding rewards, levels, or experience to tasks that are unpleasant to encourage us to perform them.
It’s taken from roleplaying games, where you start off a ‘noob’ adventurer, but in training you slowly progress in a way that makes you more powerful and gain different abilities with each level up.
In games like Skyrim, the more you use a skill – like brewing potions, firing destruction magic, or sneaking – the more you level up in that ability, making you better at the task and giving you ways to spend ‘perks’ to improve even further.
In games like Baldur’s Gate 3, based on DnD 5th edition, you level up when you reach certain xp thresholds that give your character new abilities, spells, health and opportunities for customisation.
Real life is more vague – I took up running last year, and I saw a lot of gains in the first month, but gains quickly become hard to quantify or diminish. You may have measures of improvement (like pace or distance) – but there’s no clear ‘levelling up’ in real life.
Furthermore, in real life, progress isn’t linear – you may go through seasons when you are learning a hobby where you improve greatly, then others when that improvement stagnates.
Secondly, levelling isn’t permanent in real life. With the running example, I am currently injured and it’s like going right back to Level 1; in a video game you level up your Endurance and you can sprint for longer, and there’s no way to lose that gain. In fact, part of the existential anguish of aging is the gradual decline in ability – particularly physical – compared to a game system where that time limit and decline do not exist.
Finally, levels in video games are tangible things that you can see – in real life we don’t know what level we are on as a whole or in different skills we possess, there are just vague subjective measures of how well we are doing.
So, is that a why you’re gaming? A need to advance and level up that real life can’t provide?
4. Optimising
Related to levelling is optimisation.
This may be by being efficient at a game, for example in ‘speed running’ by finding the optimal route to complete a level as quickly as possible.
It may be in planning how you are going to develop and level your character – the stats you’ll invest in, the items or weapons you want to collect, your build.
The build that you choose for your character can fill a number of needs such as roleplaying, challenge, transportation, and the achievement we can feel from reaching the goals we have set for our character as they level towards that ideal build.
Like with levelling, optimisation is much more vague or difficult in reality.
In a video game, there are guides written and a finite number of options of how to develop to meet the meta.
In reality, optimisation is much more uncertain for specific areas, but also generally. Focussing our mastery on one thin, also means sacrifice in other areas so we may (for example) be optimised to perform well in our working role at the expense of our family life, fitness, or hobbies.
So gaming provides a path for optimisation within a predictable repeatable world, where we can save, reload, and pause to explore our options and adjust to alter our build. We can become invested in research around how to alter our character and join communities of others who also optimise to succeed in the game. All of this, being much more accessible than optimisation in reality.
So again – perhaps a reason you game?
5. Exploration
One pillar, particularly of RPGs, is Exploration – the ability to enter a world different to our own and seek our new, exotic/novel, opportunities.
Perhaps it’s a complex RPG like The Witcher, where we’re transported into an entire world with its own environment, history, politics, enemies, and factions that we navigate as the protagonist, Geralt, and quests pull us to different lands.
It may be that we play a game like Farming Simulator, that isn’t an exciting swashbuckling adventure, but a an opportunity to explore a different trade that is so different to our normal life.
We might be playing a more casual game like Sonic, and different stages carry different environmental themes from a casino, escaping a volcano, an underwater level, or sprinting through an airship.
Exploration plays out with the player who completes each side quest, and get lost in the wonder of playing the game and discovering what it has to offer them.
It’s a stark contrast to the reality of Western Civilization where we ‘settle’ into one home in one city, find a routine in the same job, with a secure family, and similar activities. We might holiday a few times a year, but even then, the exploration and adventure is predictable and plans.
Videogaming gives opportunity to explore a world without Earth’s limitations; one that unfolds in reaction to you as the protagonist – and offers a freshness. So maybe that’s the need you’re meeting – you play video games for a fresh sense of adventure and exploration.
6. Roleplay
Roleplaying is pretending to be someone else, imagining and acting from that person’s perspective. You see this with tabletop RPGs like DnD, LARPing, and acting. Videogames also give you a great opportunity to roleplay; to be a character different to yourself and act how they might behave – embodying their character which might be quite different to yours. A game will have its own world and provides choices of how you behave in that world.
In Person Centred Counselling, there is a concept called Configurations of Self. The idea is that certain aspects of us are acceptable to certain groups and not others, or that we are particularly accepting of one way of being but introject that that behaviour is not acceptable.
It can be confusing, and result in different parts of ourselves that we often don’t get chance to express or experiment with. In therapy, that can look like giving those voices a chance to speak and dialogue, but in roleplaying it also gives those parts of us a chance to be acknowledged and symbolised.
Let’s say you are normally quiet, submissive, and fearful; how might it feel to play Ace Attorney – playing as a Pheonix Wright, a defence attorney, cross examining witnesses in a busy court, and screaming ‘Objection!’ as you confidently point out inconsistencies, leading towards a guilty verdict.
Roleplay enables us to try out lots of different aspects of ourselves. Sometimes we might play a character as our ideal – who we live up to being; sometimes a part of us we are less comfortable with openly and want to experiment with; and sometimes roleplaying as a character radically different to us can open us up to our potential.
Is that the need you’re meeting when you play games – to roleplay?
7. Testing morality
Videogames give you opportunity to commit atrocities you would never consider in real life. Playing Grand Theft Auto and going on a rampage, trying to get as many police after you as possible by robbing and killing innocent citizens.
Finding a bandit camp in Skyrim, and stealthily firing arrows at them, killing them all off before they’ve even seen you.
Playing Undertale, defeating cute monsters, only to find your innocent protagonist has decimated the monster’s homes – then replaying it to try a genocide run where you kill every monster and test out how that feels as the music steadily becomes darker and lonelier to reflect your character’s change in/loss of? morality.
Testing our morality can feel quite destructive, maybe even evil at times, but it’s done within the safety of a fantasy world.
The link between immorality in video games, and if it can cause real life violence or immorality has been very much debated. A 2019 Paper from Oxford University with over 2,000 participants tried to look at the question objectively, and found no link between aggressive behaviour in teenagers and whether they play violent games.
So let’s hypothesise on some further needs we might meet in testing our morality:
Firstly, the previous point within roleplay of testing out different Configurations of Self including those that are less accessible.
In Western culture, violence is almost never acceptable – except in some sports – yet it’s deeply routed in our evolution and history. To pretend humanity has no interest in violence or aggression is to switch off a part of us, and in fully accepting the parts of us that are hard to accept, we gain more control than if we repress it.
We can greet that potentially violent part of us as a helper rather than a raging barbarian within.
Secondly, it allows us to choose to be moral creatures.
I don’t steal – but is that because I morally object to it, or because I ‘shouldn’t’ due to law or consequences?
In playing a video game where I can steal and get away with it as a game mechanic, I am able to experience the possibility of doing this, which gives me control in reality – knowing that I could steal, but am choosing not to.
Playing with boundaries of morality enables us to own them and embody them for ourselves, and games allow us to play with morality.
Finally, in acting immorally in a game, it gives a vehicle for ‘unacceptable’ emotional self-expression. You may have heard it suggested to have a go with a punching bag or scream into a pillow when you’re angry – how about channelling some rage into an online game of Call of Duty or being a murder hobo in Black & White?
So is this the need? Are you testing, refining, expressing, developing, containing, and owning your own morality?
End of Part 1 if you are watching this as a video
Hazel, 2022 sites that excessive video game use can be harmful; but moderate can have emotional, psychological and social benefits. A meta-analysis of video games showed it didn’t have negative consequences by itself but can be a healthy coping strategy. It can make mood positive, help relaxation, reduce stress/anxiety, improve emotional regulation, reduce depression, increase self-confidence, increase self-esteem. It can also help socialising.
Enduring frustration and persevering
Kowal, 2021 mentioned that regularly playing video games can help with Attention Control, Cognitive Flexibility, and Information Processing.
8. Social Skills & Loneliness
Under roleplay I mentioned online Call of Duty, a Battle Arena or MOBA Game. Hazel et al, in 2022, found MOBA players had significantly lower psychological wellbeing which they hypothesis to be because of ‘toxicity’ & ‘harassment’.
A warning then: if you use video games as a relief of strong feelings like anger, then harassing players and being harassed is likely to make you feel worse.
This also highlights that some of the social interactions on video games will be superficial, competitive, harassing, and quite different to more nourishing face to face interactions.
So how do video games:
1. Help fill a need for social interaction
2. Develop social skills.
Social Interaction
In article on Oxford, I discuss the rise of loneliness and factors affecting it.
We live in a world where we are increasingly interconnected, but social interactions have changed now we meet less often in person – still recovering from the impact of the pandemic.
Furthermore, socialising has grown more expensive; we increasingly live in communities where there is less of a sense of community, and if we experience a disability there can be even more obstacles to socialising with others.
Video games have an answer to this; I used to play a small mobile game called Warlight based on the boardgame Risk – it enabled me to meet hundreds of other people across the world, play in games, create a clan, be creative, and be part of a community.
I’ve stopped playing, but to this day still chat with some of the people from that community.
You’ll hear stories of people meeting their marriage partner on Runescape, meeting up remotely every weekend to play FIFA, or just playing single player games together whilst chatting on Discord.
Videogames provide an accessible means to speak with others, and interacting with NPCs within a game’s world can also provide a stroke to our social needs.
This might be why you play games – to socialise.
Social skills
Social Anxiety disorders or phobias are common – with NICE reporting it as the third most common mental condition, affecting about 12% of the UK.
A fear around performing socially, of being rejected or embarrassed, or out of control in navigating social interactions that can be (like any phobia) debilitating and prevent you from meeting others or create a great panic and discomfort when you do.
It can add to the isolation or loneliness described before and block people from social gatherings or meet-ups that might ease that.
Video games give you control over social interaction when you speak with strangers – you can leave the conversation and disconnect if socialising feels too intense, you have a common interest to speak on within the game which reduces that sense of performance (as you already know about the game), and there isn’t the same pressure to talk or fear around silences because you can just play the game.
All of this removes a lot of those sensations experienced within social anxiety, which can stop the player from panicking socially, and so develop tolerance to social exposure and improve the player’s confidence to socialise outside of the game.
This same social exposure also provides practice at speaking to a variety of people within that safety of a familiar topic, so developing social skills.
Some games like Vampire: The Masquerade will also develop your empathy for characters and provide an opportunity to experiment with saying different things to them, which affects the outcome of the game and how that NPC feels towards you. It’s not uncomfortable, like social skills programs – you are roleplaying and within that learning how to socially interact.
9. Competition & Failure
Competition can be against others, against established records, or just yourself.
It may be that you’re in a tournament in Super Smash Bros competing against your friends for kudos,
Playing League of Legends for real world cash prizes in e-sports,
Maybe you’re trying to beat a speed running record in Mario 64,
Or just your personal best within a game you like – developing that same sense of mastery.
Video games were once a hobby, but now competing, setting records, or being a gamer on Twitch or YouTube has led to very real careers and income sources.
Furthermore, MOBA games have leagues and medals that highlight your skill; and most games in Steam will have Achievements as you reach certain milestones that show up in your profile. All of that can nurture the need to not just develop, level and gain mastery, but to be good enough to compete and find a niche you excel in.
Furthermore, the competition within video games is accessible – giving many opportunities to play against others or yourself, which you can develop at your pace.
I’ll never forget the rush as a teenager, in Old School Runescape, stepping out into the wilderness (the PVP arena) and gambling all of my gear by competing ‘head to head’ with other players hoping I’d defeat them and win what they were holding. Gaming, but also the rush of gambling.
Videogames also create a way to fail. Failure is part of life – whenever we learn something new as a beginner, we will not be perfect. We’ll make wrong or suboptimal choices and have setbacks.
For people with a more critical inner dialogue, or experiencing a sense of perfectionism, the reality of everyday failure can be intense and overwhelming – feeling personal as though they are wrong or a failure themselves and blocking them from trying new things out of that sense of embarrassment at not being good at it.
Neurodiverse people will often feel a sense of failure as they try to blend into a neurotypical world with foreign social structures, an intensity of sensory information, and less of a valuing of routine.
Video games are a way to fail – to start as a ‘noob’ and recognise that it is normal to be one; to make mistakes in the game or die and realise that we can still play and see it as a challenge rather than failure; to transcribe that to other areas of our life where we can try new things rather than holding onto a phobia of making mistakes.
In my video/article on Procrastination, I talk about procrastinating on making my first video because I felt it had to be perfect. I rewatch the unedited recording of it now and almost cringe at how it was (my first video), but it’s fine because it was a start, and we all begin somewhere. Fearing getting it wrong can paralyse us, and video games give us a safety to normalise getting it wrong and that not stopping us from trying.
10. Fun, Stimulation, & Depression
Videogames are stimulating, fun, and entertaining:
– The bright colours in “Viewtiful Joe”,
– The pressure of Elden Ring where you can’t pause and threats abound,
– The beautiful soundtracks of Final Fantasy,
– The addictive desire for ‘just one more game’ in Rocket League,
– The joy of swinging through New York as Spiderman.
This level of vibrancy, stimulation, transportation into the game, and fun are accessible and quick within videogames without the same level of responsibility, cost, or effort of real life and this is especially the case in depression.
One symptom of depression is anhedonia; the loss of interest in activity and an inability to derive joy from the everyday.
Another is the brain fog and a lowering of self-esteem that can make concentrating, self-appreciation, and making decisions difficult for a person experiencing depression.
Videogames can support depression by providing a moment of concentration, utilising many senses;
it makes decision making easy when you are playing the protagonist, and a sense of appreciation as you overcome each milestone.
Gaming can provide a sense of joy – perhaps nostalgically rooting back to play in childhood. A study by Kowal found that gaming in moderation can decrease the intensity of the symptoms of both anxiety and depression – both conditions most likely to affect people who use gaming to regulate them. It’s not the cure for anhedonia, but gaming can provide a relief to the intensity of it and moments of joy.
A meta-analysis of 12 papers by Ruiz looked at video games and depression. Wii Sports reduced depressive symptoms and increased health related quality of life, which was thought to be because of an increased physical activity around the game. Similar games like Dance Dance Revolution or Pokemon Go have also made fitness fun, which can be protective against depression.
Ruiz’s study likewise found other games that keep the attention focussed (like Plants vs Zombies or the platform game Boson X) reduced depressive symptoms and rumination.
So maybe this is why you are using videogames – it’s a way of surviving for you. You need stimulation and fun as a contrast to life; or to feel joy/progress/presence during numbness and depression, or just a way of leaving rumination or gaining vital exercise.
11. Mood Regulation
Something that fascinates me is the way we use media to express, process, and regulate our mood.
We feel scared and choose to watch a horror to enhance and symbolise that feeling, or a comedy to avoid and ‘cheer ourselves up’.
We feel sad, and listen to a sad song, our breakup tune, to help those tears flow and feel what’s there.
We exercise, and have a playlist in the background to excite and pace us; or maybe a podcast in the background as we cook to learn whilst we stir the spag bol.
The same is true for video games:
Hazel’s study of the psychological and emotional impacts of 2,107 adult gamers found 88.4% of people experienced emotional benefits – especially in music games, RPGs, and survival horrors.
So maybe life is a struggle, and you enhance that sense of struggle to better feel and symbolise it by playing a survival horror game like Alien Isolation.
Maybe, instead, you escape that struggle with something more relaxing like Animal Crossing.
Maybe you are grieving, and a game like Final Fantasy 9 helps with finding existential meaning and purpose in life, or Gris in experiencing the different stages of grief.
Maybe you are angry and want to express it violently in GTA, or calmly leave the worries of the world in No Man’s Sky.
Like any media, the games we play at different seasons of our life and when we feel different things speak to us – to enhance those seasons and moods, or to avoid them.
It can help with the Whys of gaming.
Asking ourselves: what did I feel before I started playing today? What do I feel during gaming? What has this game done with my mood?
12. Empathy for others (Psychosis)
Games don’t just expose us to a character’s experience, they allow us to control them and the people around them. In becoming the character we empathise with them in a way we wouldn’t in film or reading where you have less control of the character you project onto. This allows a deep empathy, and a scope to empathise with people groups that may be harder to empathise with.
Psychosis is particularly stigmatised amongst mental health symptoms. Sufferers can introject this stigma as them being somehow wrong, and this can block their engagement with support and isolate them socially. Furthermore, the experience of psychosis, hallucinations, or delusions can be difficult to empathise with for people without it.
A study in 2020 by Ferchaud et al got 198 people to play a video game called Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice which features a main character, Senua, who has an accurate empathic portrayal of psychosis – an ever-present obstacle she must navigate alongside her main quest, as voices speak across the room through your headphones as you play her.
So, this study got people either watching, or playing, Hellblade for 45 minutes. What they found was that people who played this game were more likely to experience “transportation” (an intense immersion) into the video game, as well as ’Identification’ where you take on the persona of Senua (including her psychosis). This resulted in a significantly deeper empathy than simply watching the game, and though the participants in the study’s stereotyping didn’t necessarily shift, there was a significant reduction in social distancing.
What they mean by “Social Distancing”, is that the participants would be less afraid or averse to getting to know someone with psychosis – it increased their connection with a sufferer which in turn increased their openness to getting to know others experiencing hallucinations.
So maybe this is a value you gain from videogaming – maybe less so the purpose or why, but a value: you’re increasing your worldview by empathising with people who are different to you.
13. Decisions
The Latin root of “Decide” is Decidere which means ‘to cut off’ and that’s what we do when we decide, we amputate or kill the alternate options. Decisions have an opportunity cost and need confidence in making one because decisions are rarely black & white, with there often being merit for both sides. Lacking confidence and certainty can make decisions difficult, and result in procrastination where our inaction saves us from the pain of cutting off alternate choices and sticking ourselves down a path we might regret. The existential weight of pressure to make decisions and move in a direction, alongside the reality that all choices are flawed can be overwhelming. Furthermore, we live in an age where there are an unfathomable number of options, and the plethora of choices can itself be paralysing – no longer do we just inherit the family business like we do a surname (John Smith the Blacksmith). So that’s the pain of decisions – and why ‘Cutting off” options is difficult in reality.
In games, decisions are also important. Which build do we go for? How do we navigate this obstacle? Which clan do I join? What difficulty do I want? But:
- The pressure is lower – we are cutting off alternate paths when we join the Stormcloaks over the Imperials, but we can always play the game again to see what a different path might look like.
- The choices are much less open – we have an illusion of being in an ‘Open World’ but the playstyles and choices are much less overwhelming than career options in Western Society due to the manageable limit of options.
- Time pressure and deadlines can be a moving factor in making decisions, which can feel abstract (for example, when are we officially ‘men’ – 14, 18, first job, house, child?), but in games we might have a Time Limit or Random Encounters that push us into making decisions at a pace that feels natural.
- Games are a closed system, so we can research options and read guides to come to decisions in a way that is optimised and unlikely to change (until the latest patch).
- Kowal said that “like play therapy, the avatars we play as allow us to be exposed to new situations which can challenge schemas and open us up to new ideas outside our limitations”. In other words, games enable us to be exposed to decisions we wouldn’t normally encounter, which can both improve our confidence as decision makers and our familiarity with new areas we need to make decisions on.
So maybe that’s what need you’re meeting in gaming? Making decisions confidently, developing your leadership abilities.
14. Trauma
A study in the JR Hospital in Oxford, from 2017 found that if you play Tetris within the first few hours of a traumatic incident (in this case, road traffic accidents) for 10-20 minutes you are significantly less likely to be impacted by post-traumatic invasive memories (flash backs).
Video games are a great way to let the mind wander. It keeps you engaged and the mind thinking in the background, where much of the ‘worrying brain’ is distracted by thinking about the game. It allows the brain to process bigger things within the safety and distance of the distraction that simple video games provide.
When I see counselling clients, for example, I’ll give myself some time to prep by having a look at my notes and bringing the client to mind. If we’re working online, I will usually then play Tetris (Doctor Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine), and I find it allows me to process and attune myself naturally without putting too much cognitive thought into it.
Likewise, if I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed after a busy day, playing an hour of video games can really help to dissociate from that overwhelm in a way that is controlled, and allow my feelings and mind to process in a gentle way at its pace.
So the next time you experience something overwhelming, have a hard day, or just want to switch off that thinking mind and give some space for that emotional mind to speak – have a go at Tetris and trust your body to process in the background. This may be another Why of videogaming – it allows you to process, particularly when the things you are processing are overwhelming if you were to give it all of your attention.
References
Ferchaud, A; Seibert, J; Sellers, N; Salazar, NE. (2020). Reducing Mental Health Stigma Through Identification With Video Game Avatars With Mental Illness. Frontiers in Psychology. Vol 11. Accessed on 30.8.24 from:
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.02240/full
Hazel, J; Kim, H.M; Every-Palmer, S. (2022). Exploring the possible mental health and wellbeing benefits of video games for adult players: A cross-sectional study. Australasian Psychology. 30(4). Accessed on 27.8.24 from:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/10398562221103081
Kowal, M; Conroy, E; Ramsbottom, N; Smithies, T; Toth, A; Campbell, M. (2021). Gaming Your Mental Health: A Narrative Review on Mitigating Symptoms of Depression and Anxiety Using Commercial Video Games. JMIR Publications. 9(2). Accessed on 27.8.24 from https://games.jmir.org/2021/2/e26575
Lyadurai, L; Blackwell, SE; Meiser-Stedman, R; Watson, PC; Bonsall, MB; Geddes, JR; Nobre, AC; Holmes, EA. (2017). Preventing intrusive memories after trauma via a brief intervention involving Tetris computer game play in the emergency department: a proof-of-concept randomized controlled trial. Molecular Psychiatry. 23. Pp674-81. Accessed on 15.2.24 from https://www.nature.com/articles/mp201723
Przybylski, A; Weinstein, N. (2019). Violent video game engagement is not associated with adolescents’ aggressive behaviour: evidence from a registered report. Royal Society. Accessed on 17.9.24 from: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.171474
Ruiz, M; Moreno, M; Girela-Serrano, B; Diaz-Olivan, I; Munoz, LJ; Gonzalez-Garrido, C; Porras-Segovia, A. (2022). Winning The Game Against Depression: A Systematic Review of Video Games for the Treatment of Depressive Disorders. Current Psychiatry Reports. 24(1). Pp23-35. Accessed on 7.9.24 from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8811339/
Simon is a Person-Centred Counsellor in Oxford working remotely and in person. He has lived in the county his whole life, and the city for almost 20 years. He appreciates the beauty of the city, nature, and connecting with people to help bring about meaningful change
