Video games, portals that take the hands of players and drag them into a world of pure imagination and curiosity, are the recreation of “books” during the years of the 2000s. For people to escape reality, they had to use the power of books written with the help of brilliant authors carefully crafting pictures of their story and transmitting them into the reader’s mind. This would most commonly be found in Portal Fantasy books, books that take fantasy to a whole different level (“Portal Fantasy”). These books paint images in the reader’s mind as they read through each author’s diverse plot (“Portal Fantasy”). Time has changed though, with the innovation of computers and other helpful gadgets in ordinary life, video games have emerged through these advancements. These days, video games have become so addictive and result in many people sitting for hours, hooked on their favorite video game. Through this, it could bring about positive or negative effects to either contradict each other or to support video games. Positive effects could really benefit the player throughout life, improving their brain’s functionalities. On the negative side, many are trapped, and it’s commonly seen through their emotional state and their grades in school dropping or staying below average. Positive effects could benefit the person in the long run, while the negative effects could be observed almost instantaneously. Video games bring about their own traits when exposed to a player, and provide another way to live life, that many struggle through today.

Video games are widely known to be very addicting towards many. In modern video games, the addiction doesn’t stop until the player decides that it is time to stop. Many games are infinite, due to a blurry ending or one that doesn’t satisfy the player which pushes them to continue (Conrad). While playing, players gain levels and with these new levels, a new horizon of opportunities are exposed afterwards (Conrad). For example, Minecraft, a very popular, unique game that was created in 2009, is a common used example for a game that is infinite. Players choose their way to play, and could decide when they want to move on. The real limit of Minecraft is the player’s creativity, and without creativity, Minecraft ends for them quite quickly. Unlike Minecraft, a wide spectrum of other games like to use leveling systems to give awards and to introduce new aspects to the game to push the players to play more. Alongside these games, others have real world connections, and add more content as time goes on to keep the game interesting (Conrad). Games are a new way to escape to different worlds, to make the player forget about real life for a minute and focus on something that really brings out the players’ real personality. With video games being one of the most addicting aspects of life, many suffer with their addiction, while others prosper.

Video games, a portal to millions of different worlds, being linked to one person, results in positive consequences as seen from the player’s world. Video games do affect the brain itself, as seen by the brain increasing in grey matter (Vince et. al.). With the increase of grey matter, it helps expand the space in one’s brain, memory, and learning skills. (Vince et. al.). Through a research experiment, there were two people, one who played Super Mario 64 for at least 30 minutes every day for 2 months, while the other group lived life without playing anything. In the end, they found that video games affect the prefrontal cortex (decision making and social personality), the right hippocampus (memory), and the cerebellum (muscular activity) (Vince et. al.). Through varying methods of study, such as this one, video games prove themselves to be good in the brain region of the body, but the physical region benefits alongside it as well. There are video games that make people exercise and keep them updated with their statistics through the game and this comes free, without a gym membership (Vince et. al.). These games keep the player motivated to keep going, and these games are good due to the fact that some people have tight schedules, so at least 30 minutes of these games could help out the body a bit (Vince et. al.). Video games could also help on the financial aspect of life as well. Video games could lead to players wanting to code and make their own games (Vince et. al.). From these dreams, they could make money and possibly be successful and notable in the future. Currently, YouTube has started to give people jobs to make money off of this. YouTube is a tough way to make a good, dependable salary off of just views and ads, but if the player is good and well-known in the community, other sponsorships could come along and provide them with more money by simply promoting them in their videos (Johansson). Along with YouTube, there are gaming competitions that could lead to real world prizes for the winning team or player (Conrad). With these real-world rewards, anything could be possible and they could become famous, alongside other celebrities that have earned their fame. Throughout the positive side of video games, they prove themselves to be a good way to spend life, in an enjoyable way, rather than doing something that one wouldn’t be too fond of.
Video games aren’t all that bad in the grand scheme of things, but they do bring about negative consequences. Many people, in fact 60% of Americans play videogames daily, and they develop bad habits for their actions (Fox). The World Health Organization have researched and said that many people that play video games prioritize video games rather than doing schoolwork or something of higher importance (Fox). The players would rather play their favorite video game for hours on a school day rather than working or studying for the next day. The big problem with video games is that it is a widely used measure of procrastination and through this, problems start to pile up and consume the player (Fox). While video games could help build up the brain, it could increase levels of loneliness and depression. From this, poor health conditions could arise physically or as stated, mentally (Fox). Energy spent playing video games could be spent somewhere else, and intangible rewards offered by video games is nothing when compared to intangible physical rewards (Fox). Video games also turn off parts of the players’ brains whenever they play, since most of the time other brain parts are on rather than the ones that matter the most (Fox). Overall, video games are really a lot worse than they seem, and from this, they tip the scales when compared to the positive effects.

Video games are a really debatable topic, with both sides having valid, respectable arguments against one another. Video games are a good way to spend a day, but having video games on daily could consume the player and their free time in the long run. With this happening, some could prosper with the use of video games as a job or by winning competitions to get real world prizes. But, video games aren’t as good as people might think, due to video games creating setbacks in the real world. Gamers would eventually start to lack the qualities an average person would have if they either controlled their habit or have not played video games before. Overall, video games are really important in many peoples’ lives and without them, life would never be the same.
 

Works Cited

Conrad, Brent. "Why Are Video Games Addictive?" TechAddiction. Accessed 10 Jan. 2019.

Fox, James. "Video Games Are Bad for You." The Signal, 24 May 2018. Accessed 5 Jan. 2019.

Johansson, Anna. "Here's How You Can Actually Make Money with YouTube." Entrepreneur, 24 Aug. 2016. Accessed 5 Jan. 2019.

"Portal Fantasy." BestFantasyBooks. Accessed 5 Jan. 2019.

Vince, et al. "Yes, Video Games Are Good...For Your Mind and Body." iD Tech, 9 May 2018. Accessed 5 Jan. 2019.