Video Gaming: Benefits outweigh costs?

I"m not a person who's good at computer stuff, and I've only played a few video games. Because of the society that i grew up from, I had this stereotype of people who play video games in Internet Cafe. I always thought video gamers in Internet Cafe were all bad kids who skipped classes and played video games 24/7. However, my perception of video gamers changed when I met my boyfriend. He was the championship of a video game when he was in high school, and he was so good that whenever he played in the public, he had different kinds of companies to sponsor all the equipments he needed. He never had to buy the screens or mouses, or even computers.

One thing I noticed the difference between me, an old school person who knew very little about video games, and him, a professional gamer, is that his hand-eye coordination is a lot better than mine. Also, the way he thinks is a lot faster and more practical than me. In general, he is a more intelligent person in general compared to me.

On the other hand, because of all the media theories that I studied in my other communication classes, I know that many scholars have claimed that video games have negative effects on not only the players but also the society. Some say kids may be more violent because of violent video games, while others claim that players might become anti-social because of the large amount of time in playing the games. Still others say children are less intelligent because they have less time to spend on reading.

This is a debatable issue that everyone is interested now. Although I do not play games, or I play very few games (the only game I play is Little Big Planet from PS3), I'm more on the side of the gamers. In my opinion, gaming has more benefits than costs if people play it in a moderate level. Let's not talk about video gaming just for now. Everyone knows that drinking water is good for human bodies, but what if a person drinks too much water? I actually read a news about a person who drank too much water for too long, and he eventually died from this. I also know from my HK classes that if a person work out too much or too intense, he or she might have body damages. There are so many examples out there that tell us the lesson. Doing something in a moderate level is usually good for people, but when we do it too much, it will backfire like the water example and the workout case.

Playing video games is the same in my opinion. People who play video games in a moderate level have better hand-eye coordination, shorter reaction time, and they are more intelligent in some perspectives. On the other hand, if a person spend too much time on playing games instead of doing what he/she has to do, the negative effects are unavoidable.

So, at the end, I have one question to those addictive gamers: Don't you feel sick after sitting there for 12 hours straight?

I guess not everyone can do this. At least you'll need a very strong bladder first.