Are there benefits of being a video gamer

Regular use of video games has been show to increase your ability to assess objects in your visual field. How you assess them depends on the game. If it is a game involving special relations, like Tetris, you will be assessing their shapes and the potential for them to be more useful to you in another configuration. This is a handy skill when packing a moving truck or moving furniture around the house. In an adventure type game where you use a variety of objects in your possession or in the game environment, you will be more able to find an item that meets the criteria of an item you need or to be open to suggestion by the objects around you for another way to solve a situation. MacGyver style! This is also associated with very rapid mental problem solving. Fight games, especially against other people, ideally multiplayer, seek motion and respond very rapidly and accurately to target a moving object and to track its path. They are also assessing the environment for use and threat. These skills are handy for real fighters and also for anyone who wants to catch flies. Video games are a hobby just like any other. Crossword puzzlers are able to think of lots of synonyms and sort them by word length mentally. This gets better with practice. Baseball players get better at baseball. Video gamers get better at skills that improve play ability. Don't expect to become a super ninja, a genius or an athlete from gaming. But, you may just become a very fast mental and manual responder and gain the ability to have incredible focus for the duration of a short task. Anything is better than sitting around watching prime time which requires no mental involvement at all.