This article was written by By George Honiball (Industrial Psychologist and HR Exec of Incredible Connection, with thanks to Pippa Tshabalala of Wits University)

The gaming industry in the USA is now, in some respects, larger than the movie industry with sales in excess of $22 billion in 2008 (23% greater than in 2007). Recent research found that gamers in the USA spend over 200 million hours each day playing computer and video games, and by the age of 21, the average American has spent more than 10,000 hours in this pursuit – that’s five years of full-time occupation in a typical 40 hour week. In peak times, over 450,000 users are connected simultaneously to online Internet games in Taiwan alone. World of Warcraft (the largest Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game or MMORPG and current Guinness World Record holder) has in excess of 11 million subscribed users – that’s the same population size as Greece, Chad or Cuba! The main factor leading to the exponential growth of this online gaming community is increased broadband access.

South Africans are finally going to have greater accessibility to the online world thanks to the arrival of the Seacom cable in July 2009. For some, the excitement about this new development is beyond comprehension. “My dial-up connection still works fine…” But the South African community is in desperate need of this technological gateway. We need to consider the fact that half of our population was born into a world that already had cellphones, personal computers, CD players, microwave ovens and the Internet. This younger generation is far more accepting of new technologies and innovation, but traditionally limited and expensive infrastructures have prevented en-masse exposure of our youth to the exciting world of virtual reality.

Is this necessarily a bad thing? Teachers and parents have a number of concerns regarding children playing computer games, the most common being that they encourage violent and aggressive behaviour. Other concerns are that they turn children into lazy couch potatoes who only want to sit in front of their PC’s or TV sets instead of playing outside or engaging in sporting activities, and cut them off from socializing with their peers.

Proven benefits of this form of entertainment however, are increased motivation, improved learning, concentration and attention, better communication skills, enhanced thinking and greater problem-solving abilities. Multiplayer online games also promote collaborative learning. Gaming also teaches a new form of digital literacy that helps deal with information and representation, a skill that many teachers and parents may not have at all!

As participation in gaming is on the increase, studies show that the motivation to attend school is in a steady decline. The billion-dollar question is: How can we harness the excitement and engagement of the youth spent in playing computer games for positive educational purposes? Children tend to avoid games that are overtly educational, preferring the more popular types of games that bend or even dismiss social rules such as action/adventure or role-playing games. These games do not fit into strict curricular standards and become difficult to implement in the classroom. Research found that these recreational games actually facilitate learning better than educational ones as they developed better reasoning and anticipatory thinking skills.

Gaming has been used for decades for training purposes. In the 1980’s, sophisticated flight simulators were developed to train airline pilots and newer and dramatically improved simulators are used today not just for commercial purposes, but also to train fighter pilots. Armed forces are now routinely trained in sophisticated virtual reality simulators that can take them from the forests of the Amazon jungle to the deserts of Iraq in a matter of seconds. These simulations teach soldiers habits that help them to respond to situations on their first day of combat as if they had been there for a week. Games have been used to cure arachnophobia (fear of spiders), teach students history, train physical skills (such as balancing etc.) and provide mental stimulation to reduce the negative effects of ageing.

Many studies differ in their opinions on how learning can take place through gaming. Some argue that gamers learn as they play, others believe that it is only by de-briefing and unpacking what happened after the experience that learning really takes place. There are those that place great emphasis on actual game content while for others, it is the experience of playing the game that is the most beneficial.

A movement called “Games With A Purpose” (GWAP) is attempting to utilize the energy expended in gaming to perform tasks that computers currently are unable to perform. A good example of this is the Google Image Labeler (go to images.google.com/imagelabeler to try it out for yourself). So far, in excess of 200,000 users have helped to add over 50 million labels to online images. Other GWAPs include Peekaboom, Phetch and Verbosity (to find out more, go to www.gwap.com).

Open-source initiatives such as Wikipedia, Linux and others of the same ilk, also encourage the computer literate generation to use their time productively by offering advice, providing information or developing software that is distributed freely to other users. For example, Openoffice (openoffice.org) has free word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, graphics and database management programs available free of charge, and is fast becoming a competitor to Microsoft’s Office software. Openoffice has been developed over 20 years and works with other traditional file formats as well. Other sites such as Filehippo.com and CNet.com also host free software that include virus protection, audio and video software as well as game demos.

What does the future hold? Will computer games be used for selection and recruitment purposes in businesses? Will students have to successfully complete a video game instead of passing an exam? Will we be able to attend virtual lectures given by people such as Albert Einstein, Nelson Mandela, Donald Trump and Bill Gates, where we can not just watch a DVD but actually interact with the esteemed lecturers, ask them questions and hear questions from other students? Wherever technology takes us, South Africans need to get connected as never before to keep up to date with the rapid developments taking place globally. Ignorance is NOT bliss!