Reasons to Play Games

People can play games for several reasons. They can be played in groups, online, or as individual activities. The games are played for both amateurs and professionals, and may include an audience of players or non-players. Some games are played to entertain children. They may be similar to toys in the sense that they can be played without restrictions, while others can be quite complex. Here are some reasons to play games for fun:

Research has proven that people’s brains are more efficient when playing action games. Action games require quick reactions, processing peripheral vision, and constantly switching between tasks. Research in 2003 showed that people who play action games are more efficient at processing complex information than those who don’t. They are also more skilled at estimating the number of objects in a scene, multitasking, and switching rapidly between tasks. But that doesn’t mean that games don’t have benefits.

In the early 1980s, consoles and computers began allowing players to connect to one another to play multiplayer games. The first game to use this function was MidiMaze, released in 1987 on the Atari ST. Using a MIDI-IN/MIDI-OUT port, up to 16 consoles could be linked. While the game was unstable and slowed down significantly, this was the first step to the deathmatch genre, which exploded in popularity with the release of Doom in 1993.