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Video gaming has become such a popular hobby in recent years that almost everyone enjoys the experience. From long, strategically dense games to story rich games and online twitch shooters, the genre has never known such breadth, diversity, and incredible scope. Video games are a multi-billion dollar industry, and for good reason. No other hobby can provide such a range of experiences outside of reading books. The tactile feeling a great video game gives, provided it’s quality and directed, can be almost incomparable to any other form of media.

However, the detractors still exist. To some extent, this is wise. Not everyone is able to control their gaming hobby, and many people are addicted, clocking up hundreds of hours a fortnight playing the latest releases. However, this is often a fringe group, and many people enjoy gaming responsibly, and we’d say beneficially.

For our reasoning on this last point, read the following article on the many cognitive benefits of online gaming:

Co-operation & Socializing

Many online shooters, from the wildly successful PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS to Rainbow Six Siege all require solid co-operation, teamwork and careful forethought. Even more importantly, they develop your social ability, as conveying the most important information in a small timeframe is essential to success. Even those who are otherwise socially shy will find this a platform to develop their social training. Of course, random online teammates can be a mixed bag, but if you find a good community or environment to play in, you will be sure to experience some wonderful social experiences. Over time, you’ll find that your confidence in speech grows greater, and you use more brevity in your sentence structure.

Reaction Times

We all know that reaction times are one of the main benefits of gaming. Even someone with no experience of console and PC play could watch someone handling themselves in game and recognize the skill on show. Reaction times are important, and they’re trainable through this medium. Online twitch shooters such as Counter-Strike Global Offensive or Quake can help a person’s hand-eye coordination to a great extent.

Accomplishment

Winning team matches can be profoundly satisfying from an achievement perspective. To get to grips with the games, using a service such as ILikeCheats can prevent you from being stomped online. Once you develop your skill and understand the mechanics, winning team matches might come naturally. Playing in ranked lobbies helps match you against people around your skill level. Slowly raising the ranks after solid, good play can help you progress towards something. While some might consider this a superfluous method of goal orientation, there are major parallels you can draw to real life. Overcoming an objective when you’re doing badly requires critical thinking, fast responsive solutions, and even thinking outside of the box. There’s truly no better microcosm to learning the value of small challenge achievement than achieving things in a video game.

Learning Alien Systems

New video games are often quite deep. They have systems that allow you creative freedom and expression in how you play, no matter the genre. Learning these alien systems and becoming competent in them can help you develop that attitude of competence in all areas of your life. Getting good at the unknown helps you develop tactics to research, practice and execute new skills well. There’s nothing that procedure can’t be adapted to.

So purchase an online game and try it today! You might just have more useful fun than you originally thought.