A few decades ago the masses believed video games were a waste of time for lackadaisical youths to pacify themselves while ignoring their responsibilities as both kids and young adults. As more and more people started understanding the benefits of gaming so too did the perception of what a video game is and, most importantly, the benefits gaming can bestow on a person’s life changed. Hi, my name is James Bullock and I am a gamer who has spent the better part of my existence testing the laws of physics, exploring the vastness of a world ruined, and been a champion inside various arenas courtesy of digitized worlds both driven by reality and created through pure unbelievable ingenuity unlike anything seen by human eyes. And as a gamer I’ve discovered something else video games provide: life lessons. Today I examine how video games can make a sick person well.
Video Games Are a Form of Alternative Medicine
Sniffling noses, nauseated stomachs & hacking coughs so strong that one might need a little assistance when it comes to extra undergarments are mostly associated with the winter season. But as anyone who has lived long enough the grim reality of colds & flues both minor and severe that the chance of getting sick at any time of the year is a possibility. For yours truly, growing up during the early days of NES & 16-bit era of gaming the ability to spend time in the bed and actually enjoy the digital entertainment of video games was limited thanks to a mixture of wired controller cords being too short or the gaming system being connected to the family TV. As the years would progress I was able to attain other consoles and, most importantly in regards to this life lesson, handheld gaming systems like the Sega Game Gear and Nintendo’s Gameboy Color. The latter really stands out as the summer of 1999 saw me buy the deluxe version of “Super Mario Bros.” for the Gameboy Color that featured not only the original version of the game, but also its “lost levels” alongside various unlockables and printable objects (yes, there was a Gameboy Printer peripheral in the late 1990s – Nintendo, such an awesome company).
The Gameboy Advance proved to be the last gaming handheld I’ve owned up to this point; utilizing the system until the battery terminals literally broke from frequent battery changes over the course of a decade. On the day the spiritual successor to the incredible “Final Fantasy Tactics” was released exclusively on the GBA, I woke up suffering from a cold. Powering through the annoyance, I picked up “FFT: Advance” and spent the next three days dedicated to the struggles of kids pulled into the world of Ivalice (a major hurricane that next week made the GBA and “FFTA” my only form of entertainment). A majority of my first playthrough of “Grand Theft Auto: Vice City” was completed during a bout with the flu (the first day was me simply staring at the screen while going through the incredible musical & radio offerings “Vice City” provided). By focusing not on my sickness, but on the action flashing on the screen before my eyes made me realize that gaming is actually a form of alternative medicine. With endorphins exploding throughout the body when a player attains success in a game it’s almost impossible for the ill player to not recover even in the most minor of ways. So whenever you’re feeling ill & down, turn on the TV, power up that console, or grab that phone to play your way back to good health. But don’t play any “free to play” games – depending on your level of sickness, delirium could set in and you’ll end up with a negative bank account because those magic rubies are just too expensive to even be considered as in-game currency that any sane person would’ve implemented into a game other than the Canadian Devil & his minions.
Have you learned any major life lessons from playing video games while under the weather? Leave them in the comments below and, as always, thanks for reading.
