The Educational Boosts Video Games Give You

WACO, Texas (KWTX) -

LAST WEEK WE HAD A WIDE VARIETY OF BACK-TO-SCHOOL SEGMENTS BUT WITH MOST SCHOOLS RETURNING THIS WEEK, I WANTED TO TALK ABOUT ONE SUBJECT THAT AS ALWAYS HAS BEEN LEFT OUT. VIDEO GAMES. MORE SPECIFICALLY THE ROLE GAMES PLAY IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF KEY SKILLS AND EDUCATION POINTS IN OUR KIDS. " WAIT A SEC MR. HARDWIRED, DONT VIDEO GAMES MELT YOUR BRAIN AND KILL BRAIN CELLS?” FIRST OFF, MR. HARDWIRED IS MY FATHER, PLEASE CALL ME DR. HARDWIRED. SECONDLY, THAT COULDNT BE FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH. VIDEO GAME SHAVE BEEN SHOWN TO ACTUALLY INCREASE MANY CORE SKILLS IN DEVELOPING KIDS, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO; LITERACY, PROBLEM SOLVING, SPATIAL AWARENESS, HAND-EYE COORDINATION AND EVEN COMPLEX INFORMATION ANALYSIS. NO, NOT EVERY GAME IS A FANTASTIC LERANING TOOL BUT I’VE GATHERED A FEW I WNAT TO HIGHLITE HERE FOR. I’M ANDREW HAMILTON FROM HARDWIRED AND THIS IS YOUR BACK-TO-SCHOOL GAMING HOMEWORK.

1.MINECRAFT (CODING, PROBLEM SOLVING, CREATIVE THINKING AND RESOURCE MANAGEMENT; PLUS, SOCIAL)

If you have a kid of pretty much any age you’ve probably heard of Minecraft. The boxy survival building game lets players carve out an existence on a world. But don’t let its basic shapes and cartoony appearance fool you, because not only does this game hone skills in creative thinking, problem solving, and resource management. It also teaches the backbone of coding. Many schools that offer game development extracurricular classes use Minecraft to let students learn basic coding. The things they create would blow your mind, a fully functioning cellphone, iconic landmarks, even full rubegoldbergian machines. So, this is one that offers a lot of passive skill development and is worth letting the kids sit down for a couple hours to play.

2. PORTAL SERIES (PHYSICS, PROBLEM SOLVING, HAND-EYE COORDINATION)

The Portal Series is actually the first game I thought of for this list. It’s the OG first-person puzzle solving game and it’s sci-fi physics-based gameplay made it a no-brainer. The duology sees protagonist Chell taking on chamber after chamber of tests using her Portal Gun. Fire once to make a portal in one spot, and a second time to bridge the gap with another portal. Being a first-person shooter style game, naturally this one improves hand-eye coordination but it’s puzzling physics-based test chambers make it an excellent tool for teaching things like inertia, momentum, acceleration and gravity. The games antagonist GlaDos also makes an excellent coach in sarcasm. Plus, the best motivational speech involving life giving you lemons and what to do with those lemons. A great game to introduce physics concepts to your child without overwhelming them.

3. POKEMON (CATEGORIZATION, LITERACY, DATA TRACKING AND MEMORIZATION)

Okay, hear me out. Pokémon’s concept involves a 10-year-old going out Darwin style, to record data on every Pokémon in a given region. So right off the Zubat, we’ve got categorization skills but on top of that the type match ups make kids have to consider strength and weaknesses, giving them solid information analysis skills. The Pokémon series also features no voice acting which means every ounce of the game has to read, giving a secret literacy bump to your kids while they play. But mostly, even with over 1000 Pokémon to catalog you can bet these kids will come away with most of them memorized including key points of information for them. Memorization skills will no doubt benefit here. Pokémon may seem an odd choice, but it has been shown to improve all these things and also leads to a long-lasting love of collecting things.

5. THE TYPING OF THE DEAD

This one is an obscure one but way back in 1996 an arcade on-rails shooter was released in arcades, called The House of the Dead, featuring you taking on hordes of zombies with your gun and tactical bag of terrible voice-acting. Fast forward to 2001 and some genius over at WOW says “you what made this game lose popularity, it lacks an educational purpose. No more guns. Let’s make them fight zombies with literacy.” and the publisher, Sega actually went for it. Enter The Typing of the Dead, a sanitized version of the original to help teach keyboard literacy and accuracy. Instead of blowing a zombie away with a shotgun players enter words as quickly as they can on screen to take down the foul undead. It’s goofy but man does it work as a typing class. The characters even wear keyboards around their necks like some kind of power ballad busting keytar player. Truly a classic.

6. ANIMAL CROSSING NEW HORIZONS (BIOLOGY, AGRICULTURE, PLANNING, FINANCE AND SOCIAL SKILLS)

Capitalism can be a cold, unfeeling world especially for those with ludicrous amounts of debt...so Nintendo slapped a free vacation island and cute furry creature on it and somehow Animal Crossing makes that more bearable. This adorable game teaches the concepts of agriculture, community building, biology, home renovation, resource management, and project planning. But most importantly financial responsibility. See when you land on this island you gain a place to shelter yourself by taking a nice loan from a local trash panda. Want to upgrade the place? You’ll need to payoff your previous loan so you can take out another one to expand. Tom Nook is reasonable loan shark, he won’t come after you for missing payments, but he will halt all your progress until he gets what he’s owed. This game is an excellent way to introduce your kids to the wonderful world of loans and being frugal. Or a way to introduce them to exploiting a market to make millions in Turnip stocks. Either way.

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