There has always been a decent amount of controversy surrounding video games. “What do they contribute to society?” “Are they making my children more violent?” “They’re obsessively fun!” “They’re making kids dumber!” “They greatly improve hand-eye coordination.” No matter what question or statement you make about video games, the fact is that they have many positive and negative aspects, but they do contribute positively to society.

It’s true that video games increase hand-eye control. They even help improve the focus of some children. Many video games (educational games) are designed to help teach children specific things, whether it be adding fractions, learning to read, or solving complex problems. Education games aren’t the only games that teach children how to solve problems, however. These games have been proven to be so useful that there was a public school opened in New York called Quest to Learn that teaches children using learning principles designed from studying video games (Rheingold).

Video games can also contribute positively to an individual’s personality, self-esteem, and motivation. In a speech by Jane McGonigal, she points out four things that video games give people: urgent optimism, social fabric, blissful productivity, and epic meaning. Urgent optimism occurs all the time in gaming, and McGonigal states that the more someone experiences this in gaming, the more likely they will start to have urgent optimism in real life. These four things create super-empowered, hopeful individuals. Ideally, as they start to take the things they’ve gained from video games to real life, they will be able to solve real-life problems quickly and efficiently and will be extremely talented at working together to do so.

Video games are useful, and as technology advances and imaginations continue to grow, it is safe to assume that video games will only become more useful over time.