How To Actually Become A Healthy Gamer
Seriously. How the hell are we supposed to make any sense of video games as a whole? With the switch of a disc, you can go from the cute all-smiles world of Cooking Mama, making a ‘rainbow grilled cheese’, to vividly ripping someone’s spine from their body and filling the screen with gore in Mortal Kombat.
Not only are the games we play vastly different, but the ways we talk about video games are polarizing. There is a lack of consistency not only in the types of games we play but also in the way we understand the games themselves. Due to this, it is challenging to decipher how to be a healthy gamer and get the most out of your experience.
In 2010, Jane McGonigal gave a Ted Talk about the positive impact of playing video games. Thirteen years ago, she stated that, worldwide, we invest 3 billion hours per week into playing video games. On its own that statistic may be startling to hear for the average reader. Especially when you consider all of the urgent problems that our world faces.
Are video games worth investing all of that time into when there are more important matters at hand?
McGonigal’s main argument is met by surprise and even laughter from the crowd: “If we want to survive this next century on the planet,” she says, “we need to increase that total dramatically.” Specifically, she believed that the number of hours we play video games should be 21 billion hours per week by 2023.
Let’s take a step back.
Here’s a challenge: ask the mother of any middle school boy in the United States to see if they agree with McGonigal’s claims. Spoiler alert, it’s probably gonna take a while to find anyone who thinks that their kid should be playing MORE video games. Conversely, if you were to ask the middle school boy in question, you’d likely be met with an ear-to-ear smile at the idea that they should be playing even more.
If we are properly to navigate this landscape where do we even begin?
Firstly, it is required to acknowledge the legitimacy of video games as a part of the human experience. In 2020, Harvard’s Dr. Peter Grinspoon published an article titled, “The Health Effects of Too Much Gaming.” The article begins, “While gaming can be a fun distraction or hobby (and is even becoming a competitive sport on many college campuses), there are health risks that come from too much gaming.” (Grinspoon, 2020) Categorizing video games as a “fun distraction” to establish its context completely delegitimizes video games as a meaningful way to spend time. Video games are joy-invoking and bond-strengthening. If those traits don’t qualify something as a meaningful way to spend time, I’m not quite sure what does. Although this essay will rely on academia, it is important to understand that even at the highest level, our scholars have fallacies in their writing regarding video games.
Secondly, it is important to acknowledge that the definitions of healthy gaming are different from person to person. What are healthy habits for one person could be completely problematic for someone else. The process of becoming a healthy gamer requires reflection to understand habits, motivation, dedication, etc. From there, individuals can evaluate to see if those habits align with what truly makes them healthy. For the reflection process to be most effective, a deeper understanding of video games needs to be achieved.
Finally, and this is certainly some personal bias, moderation should not be an inhibitor of passion. Any article can tell you that the healthiest way to be a Gamer is to do it in moderation. There’s nothing wrong with that message. However, the simple fact is that millions of people have a strong passion for the video games they play, and are simply not gonna play in ‘moderation’.
This is an article for all gamers to achieve a deeper understanding of video games and then use their new understanding to reflect on their habits, and make positive change. If you have a strong passion, how do you pursue it in the healthiest way possible?
Now that we have that and (respectfully) challenging the rhetoric of someone with a significantly higher intellect than me out of the way, let’s take a look at how media scholars understand video games on a deeper level.
Spaces:
Game spaces are a spectrum. For example, the juxtaposition of Cooking Mama and Mortal Komat at the beginning of this article is effective because it is intrinsically understood that they are entirely different ‘spaces’ but both fit under the category of a video game.
Media researcher, Sky LaRell Anderson, conducted a study on the commonalities between college-level games courses and issues of course design. He writes that “Game spaces are best understood as a continuum, with physical spaces on one end of the continuum — such as living rooms or arcades — and virtual spaces on the other end, meaning digital, in-game spaces.” (Anderson 2019). Different spaces have different impacts on those who become a part of them. In other words, Anderson writes, “Game spaces operate by different rules, depending on the type of game space under discussion: educational game spaces differ from e-sports spaces, which differ from virtual spaces, and so forth.” (Anderson, 2019). This is at the heart of the difference between Cooking Mama and Mortal Kombat. The game spaces operate by vastly different rules which makes the impact of the game on the player vastly different.
How can you use this understanding to make yourself a healthier gamer? By learning to recognize how the rules that dictate the game space interact with the rules of your physical space, it will be easier to understand how the game may be impacting you. For example, time is a common element of game spaces. In the game Minecraft, there are day cycles (20 real-world minutes) that are a defining factor of the game space. As the player, you are simultaneously subject to time in the game space and physical space. This is where the reflection process becomes important. Some people may never be affected by the difference in time across spaces, while others may become so invested in virtual time that they neglect time in physical space. It can be hard to tell the difference between someone invested in what they’re doing and someone who is focused but lost track of time. There is no surefire way of recognizing the difference without self-reflection and communication.
-Recognize the rules that dictate the virtual space
-Compare those rules to the rules of your physical space,
-Then reflect on how the rules of both spaces interact with each other and you.
-Finally, through experimentation, create a balance across the spaces.
With the time example, creating balance could be something like setting timers in the physical space to make sure you do not lose awareness of it, but for players who do not lose awareness, timers could be an annoyance. Engage in reflection and do what is best for you!
Motivations:
How do we arrive at the virtual spaces we engage with in the first place? Motivation of course. There are infinite reasons why someone chooses to play video games, and their motivation is a strong indicator of healthy gaming. In a study on the impact of video games on adolescents, they found that “The most common motives for online gaming are: fun or social motives; gaming because of demands from others or to gain status; and to escape from other problems in one’s ordinary life.” (Hellström, 2015). While it is not the point of this essay to discuss gender dynamics in video games, it is important to recognize that there is a large disparity across genders.
What we know for certain, regardless of gender, is this: “Even if the gaming activities are the same, individual experiences of reinforcement from an activity may differ based on personality factors.” (Hellström, 2015). This is yet more evidence that self-reflection is an important part of becoming a healthy gamer.
Take escapism as a motivator for example. It is 100% reasonable to want to escape your reality to one where it is less stressful, but this mindset is potentially dangerous. The level of motivation to escape dictates whether it is healthy or not. “Individuals who played for more than five hours with low–medium Escape motives had no increased probability for depressive symptoms compared with non-gamers, whereas individuals who played for the same duration with high Escape motives increased their probability by more than four times.” (Hellström, 2015). Knowing where you are on this spectrum requires self-reflection.
Similar to how we interact with game spaces and physical spaces this becomes a question of balance. If your reflection process leads you to believe that you have high escape motives what changes can you make as a counter-balance? For this example, considering it is an indicator of depressive symptoms, do you play for less time so you have more time to confront reality or do you play the same and seek support from a friend, family member, or psychologist? Those are certainly not the only solutions, but they are responses intended to create balance.
The goal of the reflection process is always to create balance.
Physical Health:
When I originally planned writing this I assumed I would have a rather lengthy section about the physical impacts of gaming. But, in the spirit of this article, it really wouldn’t make sense to do that. There are a very large number of physical health concerns for gamers. Obesity, carpal tunnel syndrome, eye strain, tendonitis, musculoskeletal pain, the list truly does go on. Emphasis on one condition would only take away from another. If we know everyone’s experience playing is different, then the physical impacts will also be different.
Using an understanding of game spaces and motivation should be how physical health is evaluated. The more you spend time in game spaces, the more of a focus should be put on physical health. For example, imagine a gamer who dedicates 8 hours a day to playing because they want to play professionally. Firstly, we understand that they are engaging with a game space for a duration of time which makes them more susceptible to physical health risks. Second, we understand that their motivations are relatively high because they are pursuing playing at a professional level. The motivation level indicates that this player will likely not reduce the time that they engage with the game space. This person would need to recognize this and find ways to create more balance outside of the game space. This could be something like making sure to do specific workouts that engage the muscles that are neglected while playing.
Everyone has different physical needs that have to be met. Reflecting on how you engage with video games is a way to make sure that your specific physical needs are being met.
How to Actually Become A Healthy Gamer:
The simple answer is that there’s not enough research to know exactly how to be a healthy gamer. Healthy gaming is going to be different for everyone. We have to try and connect the dots as best we can by drawing commonalities between what we know to be true for certain and what our own experiences tell us. Finally, I would like to acknowledge that no child will be able to effectively go through this process on their own. They are still subject to the same impacts of the games they play as adults and they are capable of reflecting. However, they need adults with a DEEP understanding of video games to help guide them through that process and ask the right questions. Until we hold our academics and parents accountable for having a deeper understanding of what video games are, we can certainly not expect children to know how to do the same.
I hate to say it, but it sounds like the solution to this problem might just be a little bit of thoughtfulness, compassion, and having people who actually know what they’re talking about in charge. I wonder if that could fix anything else…
Works Cited
Anderson, Sky LaRell (2019). Crafting Courses as Game Spaces: Examining Video Games Classes in Communication, Communication Studies, 70:3, 277–294.
Hellström, C., et al. (2015). Effects of Adolescent Online Gaming Time and Motives on Depressive, Musculoskeletal, and Psychosomatic Symptoms. Upsala Journal of Medical Sciences, 120(4), 263–275.
Grinspoon, Peter. (2020) “The Health Effects of Too Much Gaming.” Harvard Health, 22 Dec. 2020, www.health.harvard.edu/blog/the-health-effects-of-too-much-gaming-2020122221645.
McGonigal, Jane, director. Gaming Can Make a Better World. TED Talk, Feb. 2010, https://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world?language=en. Accessed 16 Dec. 2023.
