Saying video games are a waste of time is quite a common sentiment amongst the older generation, but the fact is gaming can be quite important to your life, because video games have evolved exponentially over the last 20 years alone. Today we have games like Red Dead Redemption, which serves as a platform of sorts to tell a fantastic story, or games like Counter Strike: Global Offensive and DoTA that not only encourage teamwork, but also improves your hand-eye co-ordination.

But that’s not the only reason gaming should be encouraged in your daily life, gaming serve as an excellent stress buster, you’ve had a long hard day at college and now you’re back home and want an outlet to your frustrations, this is when you play games like GTA or Just Cause, and blow everything in sight to smithereens. Or you could just take a car, hijack helicopters from the roof of the car or just drive the car off a cliff and them jump out.

Games are also excellent tools to teach children about discipline and teamwork, and even among adults, it can be a tool to bond, unwind or in case of competitive games, an exercise in teamwork. Games like Assassin’s Creed can also be used as a way to teach history, as long as the teacher makes it a point to separate the fact from the fiction. Minecraft allows children to build whatever they want, which boosts creativity and teamwork, since they can plan to build stuff with their friends online. The scope of the stuff a child can build in Minecraft is tremendous, the screenshot below is just one example. 

Competitive Games like Counter Strike and DoTA are notorious for being hard to master, but the sense of achievement and reward for being good at these games are unmatched. Not only do professionals in these games make millions of dollars, these competitive video games are now being called eSports, and encourages teamwork and skill, you could even win money playing in local tournaments if you practice. 

Gaming has moved beyond the realm of being simple pixels on the screen, today gaming is used as a platform to tell moving stories, , encourage creativity in children and its good for your hand eye coordination.  

So, the next time someone tells you it’s a waste of time, make sure to inform them why they’re wrong.