IST 605: Educational Benefits of Video Games

Video Games have been around in some form for decades. The very first digital game, “Bertie the Brain,” was created by a Canadian engineer named Josef Kates. Other experimental games were created over the next couple decades, ultimately culminating in the commercialization of video games as a public entertainment good in the 1970s thanks to the advent of arcades. After surviving a near fatal crash of the industry in 1983, video games went mainstream with the arrival of the home computer and subsequent dedicated gaming consoles. By the 1990s and early 2000s, computer games had emerged with the express purpose of educating youth. Games such as The Oregon Trail and the Carmen Sandiego series were wildly successful in the classroom, and thus emerged early discussions of the video game industry in educational contexts. Fast forward to today, and the video game industry is a massive multibillion-dollar sector of the global economy. As each generation of gaming has boasted increased immersion and creativity, and generations of children raised on gaming now age into adulthood, scholarly discussion around the social, physical, psychological, and educational impacts of gaming has grown louder, as has scrutiny over the industry itself and its practices and shortcomings.

Today there is a growing consensus through both new and old studies that video games, though having their own drawbacks like anything else, have potential to serve as powerful and effective tools of education. This guide is for those of you who seek to join the discourse around this topic through your own research, whether for school, work, or leisure. Whether you’re approaching this this through a positive or negative lens, or whether your focus is in education, psychology, or even the STEM field, the goal of this LibGuide is to provide a launching pad to jump-start your research and discovery process. Whatever your project is, I hope you’ll find the resources provided here to be useful to you. Good luck!