I have never been much of a gamer, at least not since PacMan and Space Invaders disappeared from the arcades (shortly before the arcades disappeared from shopping malls, which was not long before shopping malls went out of favor). I have played Call of Duty a few times, but without my son’s Med Kit to save me, I would not have lasted long. The life-like qualities of this and other newer games are astonishing.

Many of us view video games as a classic waste of time, something you do while sitting on the couch munching Doritos – say, for example, during a pandemic. They are often blamed for America’s obesity problem, as well as the lost-opportunity cost of not reading, learning a new language, or pursuing a musical instrument. Only more recently have psychologists begun to recognize some benefits of playing video games.

Video games have been cited as good training for manual dexterity and are correlated with surgical skills for advanced medical procedures. They have found use in physical therapy for stroke victims. They also improve brain connectivity – basically a workout for the gray matter in our skulls – aiding memories, spatial navigation, and muscle control. Improvements in vision, persistence and mental health have been associated with video games by various researchers. Most advanced multi-level video games involve complex situations, making them good tools for developing problem solving skills. Whether the psychologists publishing these studies were gamers themselves is unclear.

It is a safe bet that few if any of these benefits would be realized with video games which play themselves. Once such “game” that has held my fascination over many years is the cellular automaton conceived by Cambridge mathematician Dr. John Conway. <continue reading>