TED TALK: Tom Chatfield chats about the benefits of gaming

I’VE always believed that games can be highly beneficial in many ways. I remember always trying to justify why I played games so much to my folks at a tender, young age. Apart from improving basic hand-eye co-ordination, I argued that I was learning a great deal about history.

Sid Meier’s Civilization was my main ammunition for this argument, but even World War games with real historic footage and snippets of factual information made learning an incredibly engaging and fun process. There is even the chance that gaming could make you a braver person in the real world.

Tom Chatfield gave a TED Talk this year about the benefits that games can have on the way the brain learns new information and responds to stimuli in both the virtual and real worlds. He suggests how universities and business can learn from gaming by applying some simple techniques.

The video takes a few minutes to get into the juicy bits, but it really is interesting stuff and well worth a watch. Enjoy!

Tom Chatfield: 7 ways games reward the brain

About this talk
We’re bringing gameplay into more aspects of our lives, spending countless hours — and real money — exploring virtual worlds for imaginary treasures. Why? As Tom Chatfield shows, games are perfectly tuned to dole out rewards that engage the brain and keep us questing for more.

About Tom Chatfield
Tom Chatfield thinks about games — what we want from them, what we get from them, and how we might use our hard-wired desire for a gamer’s reward to change the way we learn.

About TED
TED is a small nonprofit devoted to “Ideas Worth Spreading”. It started out in 1984 as a conference bringing together people from three worlds of Technology, Entertainment and Design.

That’s www.ted.com

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