14th April, 2008

Tonight I am going to write about a thought I had when I couldn’t sleep last night. Last night I began a train of thought about competition. I began to connect competitive sports for children and computer games. Society has decided that computer games [(especially ones of a violent nature) with the exception of educational games] are inappropriate for children but playing competitive sports like soccer is ok and actually encouraged. Now I can agree that physical activity for a child is important, especially for young children, teaching action re-action, for example “I kick ball, ball moves”, however in regards to a computer game a child will get similar action/reaction with “I press button on the left/character jumps”.

Now to come back to my connection between video games and sports. Both activities are beneficial. Computer games can promote good hand eye co-ordination, as does sport. Both activates have competitive attributes, to explain games will more than likely have a goal or objective as do most team sports. Admittedly active sports played in a team will encourage socialisation but most games now days have the option to be played as a group and I know from recently purchasing the Xbox 360 that one can play in a group against or with people from all around the world.

I have read an article that told of some video games have an ability to make the player become so engrossed in the game that the player’s heart rate will increase and breathing rate will rise causing the player to get an almost work out sitting in one spot. I can agree to this from experiences playing halo and battlefield 2 for example. These games will make me jump and re act to the game. I have not yet taken my pulse mid game but I can ensure that I will next time I play.

In addition, I know that the Nintendo Wii has interactive games like tennis and bowling, I do not have this console so this is only from what I can gather from television commercials and in store advertisements. With this in mind if one could jump up a little and move arms about will add to the above mentioned benefits associated with computerized games.

With this in mind playing a computer game offers socialisation, exercise, promotes hand eye coordination and also offers this with little or no risk of physical injury that could happen from being a part of competitive sport.

However, with this article in mind I would like to add that even though playing video games can provide the player with all these benefits I would like to add that sitting and getting a work out in a lounge chair, sports enable the player to stretch muscles and move muscles one would not be moving/stretching sitting still. Happy sports!