Can Gaming Be Good for Your Brain? (ft. a Game Designer) (Pt.1)

But one of the most interesting kind of overlaps between our work would be we talk about play quite a lot as something your brain needs your brain needs to play all the time in fact it's one of the two rocks of well-being the idea of playing i think that obviously me and andy we work a lot in schools i think play in quotes for for children for students is much more kind of accepted as something that needs to happen that we need to take part in obviously in it's literally called playtime and you have a playground in primary schools you know like it's something that's so kind of focused on and and pushed for younger people but i think for adults it's the kind of benefits of it are underutilized and when i say play i don't mean you know playing tag although obviously if you want to play tag or it like that's great do that but i also mean like play isn't just playground games play can be board games play can be video games we're going to come to play can be football matches or aggressive sport like that is such an important part of a healthy body and brain and we'll dive in a little bit into the neuroscience there but i just want to get your kind of is is that what drew you to becoming a game designer pavel that kind of that influenced that idea of play yeah yeah

actually i think it's one of the the core things which is is the idea of of like play as an exploration space so a way for a way for someone to enter into a into a realm that being something that has like its own unique set of conceptual rules and roles and dynamics and be able to kind of explore ideas like safely like without like without that kind of without the cons obviously the consequence of real life so when you're a child and when you see children playing they they often take on the roles of like family members and or they take on the roles of like authority and like in criminals, I guess like cops and robbers or so when you're, when kids are often playing, they're exploring like social dynamics.

They're exploring how like the consequences of actions within a given social dynamic or a given social context.

And so like you can, you know, by, by, by playing, by, by acting in those kinds of safe spaces, you get to see like, you get to see kind of, how certain actions within certain consequences unfold and essentially play out.

And so, yeah, for me, I think the thing I love about games, and of course you get this in other forms as well, is the capacity to take on a role of some degree.

So obviously it might be more abstracts, i mean something like chess is quite clear i guess it's a general but it's still quite abstract game or it might be like very clearly like a role player game where you're very very much a particular character or you might be managing a city or something but like so you're taking on these roles and by taking on these roles you're you're sort of like memetically experiencing how like how those how those kind of roles like like process and make decisions and kind of interpret the like context and situations around them so and that for me is really interesting because that's where you get insight because that's where you're suddenly thinking like okay wait a second right if I change this thing then like that will affect this, this, and this in a, in a negative way, but it will give me this benefit elsewhere or whatever.

So you're making these constant costs, like kind of cost benefit decisions, but you're understanding it in a kind of, in a way that feels tangible, I guess, because it's, it's like a world or a content sheet.

Yeah.

So yeah, for me, for me, like that is the thing, like that's the amazing thing with, with games and the most exciting games for me are ones where you get to experience a world that you might not otherwise get to experience and you get to see the way, like see, like the, like see, like gain a perspective of other people, like that you wouldn't necessarily be able to do.

so that's that's kind of yeah it's like priceless i think that's awesome that's