Video Games: Pros and Cons

Did you know that almost 91% of American children between the ages of 2 and 17 play at least ONE  hour of video games PER DAY???
They fuel a $11.7 billion domestic video game industry!!

As a child, I had always dabbled in a couple video games here and there, but never was something of my forte. I always preferred to outdoor activities or girly dress up games. However, the technological advances video games have made in the past decade has surpassed any amount of creativity a child could image that their daily game could posses.

Another really important aspects addressed is the  prevalent violence included in them. Violent video games. Violent video games have been blamed for school shootings, increases in bullying, and violence towards women. Critics argue that these games desensitize players to violence, reward players for simulating violence, and teach children that violence is an acceptable way to resolve conflicts.

Negative evidence of violent video games include:

1. California passed a law in 2005 that would have required violent video games to include an "18" label and criminalized the sale of these games to minors. On June 27, 2011, the US Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in Brown vs. Entertainment Merchants Association  that the law violated free speech rights. 
2.  In 2008, 298.2 million video games were sold in the US, totaling $11.7 billion in revenue. Six of the top ten best-selling video games included violence, with four of the games carrying a "Mature" rating recommended for persons aged 17 and older.

On the other hand, there has been positive feedback to these games shown, including: 

1. Video games often reward players for simulating violence, and thus enhance the learning of violent behaviors. Studies suggest that when violence is rewarded in video games, players exhibit increased aggressive behavior compared to players of video games where violence is punished.  
2. Violent video games teach youth that violence is an acceptable conflict-solving strategy and an appropriate way to achieve one's goals.A 2009 study found that youth who play violent video games have lower belief in the use of nonviolent strategies and are less forgiving than players of nonviolent video games  These two weeks of research, I decided to focus on the aspect of video games as that is what I plan on creating later on. This research has been more dense heavy as there is such copious amounts of data out there that it was hard for me to start.

I think that this research is crucial to my project since I want to create my own video game later on. I think that addresses the Pros and Cons of video games in my research will be important as it will help me decide what aspects I want included in my game. For example, I addressed earlier the onset of increased violence due to its appearance in video games. Therefore I decided, that for my game, I will focus on something else for cognitive brain function instead of violence.

My next steps in the process include further advancing my coding skills and beginning to program the game. There are several online game creator websites that maybe helpful to my use. I will first want to experiment and tinker with them to see their use and play. However, the most desirable result would be to create my own video game as that would be the most genuine and hard working.

Research and Development

Since my project is so comprehensive, I decided to first start researching more in-depth of cognitive brain function, especially on how video games affect the brain. This step is preliminary and helps me to provide the basic knowledge I can branch the production of my video game later on.

In my initial research process, the first question I asked was ‘Do these games works and how do they do it?”

I separated the video games into separate categories- based on what they do and how they specifically target certain brain functions: For example….

Memory: Short-term memory, working memory, and remembering names.

• Games in this category include Pattern Memory, Simon Memory, Trolley Dash, Flipped Out

• Games in this category include Cube Fit, Bubble Field, Worlds Hardest Game, Table Tennis, and Shooting Ride

• Games in this category include Brain Racer, Chess/Checkers,

• Games in this category include Bejeweled, Candy Crush, Tetris

•  Games in this category include Hangman, Diner Dash, Scrabble, and Word Searches

Concentration: Focus, concentration, and attention span.


Problem Solving: Logical reasoning, quantitative reasoning, and arithmetic skill.


Thinking Speed: Visual perception, information processing, and spatial orientation.


Mental Flexibility: Planning, task switching, and verbal fluency.



As of right now, I think that I have effectively been researching more about my topic and haven't had that many setbacks. I anticipate more setbacks to arise once I am done researching and began the programming to create my game. Although I still don't know how far along I will get, I want to be able to create a fully functional video game by the end of this semester.

So far, with learning more about this topic, I have become more and more interested and definitely want to continue on!

The next steps in my project include to finish my research and begin brainstorming possible game development ideas.

Background Information and Purpose

Hello everyone!

I was introduced to Genius Hour/Passion Project/20 Time in my Anatomy & Physiology class by my teacher Mr. Orre. This is my blog to help track my process and share my experiences in doing this project.

This project entails allowing 20% of class time for students to pick a project in their interest and to develop an outcome by the end of the semester. This project allows for creativity and exploration of what students have an interest in or are passionate about, a break from the seemingly endless stress in a high students life.  20% Time in schools has been gaining momentum around the country and many students and teachers have shared their experiences. This idea came from Google's own 20% policy, where employees are given twenty percent of their time to work and innovate something else besides their current project. Once the results of success were shown, it was introduced to other high-tech business and quickly started to gain recognition.

At first, I was quite hesitant about this as I have never done something of this nature before at school.
I never considered myself as creative or "thinking outside of the box" type of student and was unsure of what was to happen in this project.
When I first started looking into ideas, my ideas were quite scattered and didn't know how to narrow my interests. I looked into kids......nutrition.....health......neuroscience......computer science......
I was unsure of how to connect my ideas together and to create a project that would best encompass these ideas together to produce a project that I was equally passionate about and could equally learn the most from the outcome.

After much thought and consideration into this project, I finally came up with an idea I wanted to execute. My project idea is to create/program an simple web game with the purpose of increasing cognitive brain function, especially geared towards children.
This style of games has emerged in recent years and has increased popularity through social media and technology. Games like Luminosity, Elevate, Brain HQ, etc, targeted this idea of creating games/exercises that target brain areas such as memory, attention, and processing speed. Direct results from players have shown that these games do work and have extensive scientific research behind them.

To do this project completes many different steps and will take a lot of time and research in my own time. I am willing to so this as I believe this topic is very interesting, will help me learn a lot in the process, and is definitely something I am passionate about.

• First, I will research more in depth to understand cognitive brain function and how the brain functions. I will focus on the topics of memory, concentration, problem solving, thinking speed, and mental flexibility. This knowledge in neuroscience will help me in the process when I am trying to create a game. 

•  Next, I want to learn basic computer programming and game development skills so that I can adequately create a simple game using my skills. I believe that this step of the process will be the hardest as I currently have limited knowledge in computer science and this is definitely not an easy subject to pick up upon. 

• Lastly, I want to create a simple web game by combining the first two steps and to create the final outcome. Once this is done, I wish to possibly test this out on a few people, ranging in age, and test the results.

I know that this project entails a lot and am ready for whatever obstacles come my way. My goal is to finish creating a game but if I do not get to finish my game by the end of the semester, I hope that I will at least finish the layout/story board of my game so that I can easily program it in my own time later on.

I will track my progress and achievement through bi-weekly posts on this blog and to share my experiences of what I currently learn or what obstacles I am facing.

I am excited and nervous to embark on this journey of my 20 Time Project. I am excited to work on this project and gain knowledge and am to see the final outcome. On the other hand, I am nervous as to how I will be able to accomplish such tasks, manage my time, and make sure everything is thoroughly in depth to the best of my ability.