The electronic games rose in the 80´s, and they have established as a normal habit among people of different ages. Researches about negative and positive points of computer games have been done because of the popularity that computer games reached. Of course, these studies consider some points, for instance, time which a person plays, kind of game, age, personal behavior, and other aspects. Some years later, nobody could imagine that games have their good side, since only the negative side was emphasized and spread over.
There are more than 5,000 computer games in the market. Some of them are considered educative or simply inoffensive fun. A study done in the United Sates has showed almost 80% of the computer games preferred among youngsters present violence. Specialists affirm that aggressive people tend to prefer violent games. The more sophisticated games have superior graphical quality, then players interact with violent acts more realistically. In most of the cases, episodes of juvenile violence are related to violent games. More than 3,000 researches about violence in computer games were done. They concluded that there is a relation between violence in the games and increase of aggressivity of the players.
Of course violence is not the only problem identified in computer games. But, other points have been focused by specialists. They affirm that youngsters can present serious problems related to muscular tension, and predisposition to heart problems. According to researchers, one of the factors that cause the tension is the position of the players in front of the computer during a long time, concentrated on images and emotions. However, there are studies that show other panorama, completely different, associated to computer games. A research published by the Nature magazine confirms that play action games is good to the mind. The study point out the benefits acquired for people who stay a long time playing games, for instance, boost visual skills, logical and fast reasoning and ease of adapting to sudden change.
Another study in relation to games benefits was done by University of Rochester in New York. According to research, target-shooting and action games can improve up to 20% the visual capacity, especially concerned to recognize and identify letters. The researchers said that who play shooting and action games obtain better results in vision tests. Furthermore, the visual skills of non-gamers improve dramatically after just 10 hours of play action games. These visual skills are translated into real-life activities, not just playing games. However, specialists in United Kingdom questioned the conclusions of this study. According to Maggie Woodhouse (Cardiff University), the American researchers are confusing visual precision with visual search. Woodhouse affirms that the students are trained to execute fast movements with the eyes, and then they have to scan broad areas to find out target objects, so it is considered visual search.
In short, computer games are target of various researches that focus on their benefits or their troubles. Indeed, computer games can be considered a healthy activity, bringing some benefits, for instance, improvement of visual skills, logical and fast reasoning among others. But, of course playing for hours is neither good for youngsters nor for adults, because many psychological and physical problems may arise. These studies, concerning on computer games, are important, given that many people of different ages used to play games, and they have to be aware of the consequences of playing. So, the best and rational thing to do is playing computer games in a fit dosage, since everything must be done with moderation.