Games
Games... they aren't just for kids you know. Cyber-cafe and LAN gaming centres thrive on this premise. Modern games aren't just time wasters. They educate too. Okay before you parents turn up your nose and frown upon this statement, consider the following:
Accurate
Modern games, in order to engage the player in the game fully, try to be "immersive". As such, games do a lot of research into the subject material in question. Hence, even if the game is fiction by nature, it will still be based upon facts. An example - The Journeyman Project. This game is about a time-traveller (fiction) that must travel around the timeline to fix problems to save the world. The time periods are painstakingly researched (facts). As such, even if the kid (or adult!) playing this game has no interest in history, after going through this game he would have come out of it learning a little bit about history.
Realism
Modern games embed real-life physics. The most prevalent games using this technology are those First Person Shooters (eg, Half-Life and their mods, Deux Ex etc) and Flight Simulators. The Flight Sim category is even more detailed in the sense that not only do they model the world outside the cockpit, but the plane they are simulating is researched thoroughly to bring the player as close to "the real thing" as possible. Modern combat flight sims are so "realistic" that it has been commented by real pilots that the only thing missing is the G-Forces during flight. Everything else (unclassified materials, that is) is so close to the real thing. As an example, when Longbow 2 was released in 1996, Gulf War veterans who flew the Apache AH-64A into battle had *flashbacks* of the war when they tried this flight sim! The night fighting they saw through the cockpit of the game is almost as eriee as when they were in Iraq.
Co-ordination
At the very least, people who play games tend to have more co-ordinated hand-eye reflexes and better motor skills. People who play TOO MUCH games will develop problems in the wrist, or may develop vertigo (motion-sickness). As the old adage goes - too much of a good thing is bad for you.
Updated (November 13, 2004)
Found an interesting Instant Messenger called XFire.
Works like ICQ, MSN or a whole host of other Instant Messengers out there.
Only difference is, it allows you to view which games your friends are
playing and thus join the same server as he is. Check out the website
for more details.
Here's my gaming mini-profile from xFire:
My Current Rig
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Dual Core
Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H Rev 1.1 Motherboard
AMD 780GM Chipset
4GB DDR2 800 RAM
ATI Radeon HD3200 (embedded)
Logitec Extreme 3D Pro
Logitec MX-518 Gaming Mouse
TrackIR head tracker
Right at the beginning of September 2008, my PC died on me. Thus, I went and got a new one. However I didn't get the best of the best due to budget constraints. At best the current PC is considered a "budget PC", which, incredibly, outperformed my older "top-of-the-line" system which I bought 5 years ago.
I also bought The Logitec Extreme 3D Pro, which is a USB Joystick. However, I haven't used it in a long time because I haven't really been flying much (fighter sims). The other day when I was thinking of starting playing flight sims again, I found that the throttle controls went haywire, and I don't know if I should bring it in for servicing, or just forget it and get a new joystick.
If I do get a new joystick, I'd be eyeing the Saitek range instead.
