One of the great things about games, whether playing board games, tabletop role-playing games, or video games, is that you can learn from them and practice skills whether or not it is your strict intention to do so. Want to play for fun? You can do that. Want to focus on choosing games that allow you to practice specific skills? You can do that, too.

The Benefits

  1. Play is a natural human activity and games are an outlet for play
  2. Games are often educational and touch on topics of history, geography, mathematics, art, science, language, literature, sports, etc.
  3. Games exercise the brain and body by engaging logic reasoning, critical thinking, deduction, hand/eye coordination and manual dexterity, memory recall, strategic planning, reading comprehension, number/letter recognition, pattern recognition, color/shape recognition, and imagination
  4. Socialization is a natural human need and playing games is a great way to get face-to-face interaction with people
  5. Gaming can increase communication skills because many games require negotiation, persuasion, bluffing, and/or information sharing between players, not to mention the interpersonal communication that can naturally happen while playing games
  6. Games can promote teamwork and collaborative thinking, as well as how to win/lose and provide opportunities to learn from failure
  7. Games can tell stories, and just like reading, this can help us explore stories and learn to tell our own stories

3 Thoughts on “The Benefits of Playing Games”

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