Despite the fact that video games have a purely entertainment status, their popularity has been put at the service of medicine, in order to increase motivation in patients. For example, the game Re-Mission was created for children with cancer. This is a shooter game, where you have to control a nanorobot inside the human body and destroy the cancer cells. Children playing this game learn more about their disease, the side effects of treatment, and the importance of following medical prescriptions. According to research, players (and there are already more than 200,000) in Re-Mission actually increase their faith in their recovery.
Many other games have already been involved in academic research in relation to the study of foreign languages, history, geography, mathematics, physics, etc. Some educators believe that video games can be a new tool to help in the learning of educational material. Although it is still poorly studied the impact of educational games, so that the question of quality control study material still open. Besides, it will always be necessary to find a compromise between entertainment and educational components, so I don’t think we should hope for widespread use of educational games.
As noted above, many publications reflect a one-sided negative view of video games. But to label them as “bad,” “good,” “aggressive,” or “social” is to overlook the many aspects inherent in modern games. People choose games with their advantages and disadvantages depending on their intrinsic motivation.
Undoubtedly, in the future, both advantages and disadvantages of video games should be investigated simultaneously in order to better understand their influence on young minds, including at different stages of personality formation. And the current system of labeling games according to age categories adopted by the game industry is not supported by any research.