The Power of Games

At VRTogether, our mission is to help people flourish through games. We believe that gaming is one of the most effective ways to create a meaningful impact on people’s lives. We also believe that virtual reality should be our primary platform for building and delivering these experiences, ensuring we make the strongest possible positive difference for our players.

What is a game?

There’s a common misconception that games are only for children or involve nothing but shooting aliens, battling dragons, and other fantastical elements. As a result, many people hear the word “games” and immediately think,

 “But I’m not a gamer!”

Yet games have evolved. Digital games today come in all shapes and sizes—everything from daily puzzles like Wordle, to classics such as Solitaire, social games like Roblox, where young kids can hang out together online,and even massive titles like Fortnite or Call of Duty. At VRTogether, we consider “games” to mean interactivity: software experiences that respond to your actions and adapt to how you play. By that definition, nearly all of us play games in one form or another.

One of the most remarkable strengths of games is their interactivity. Whether you’re playing a quick round of Solitaire, tackling today’s Wordle puzzle, or battling it out in Fortnite, you’re in a conversation with the game. It adapts to your actions, and you adjust your strategy in response—something that doesn’t happen with more passive media like books or movies. Because this back-and-forth exchange is at the heart of games, they excel at teaching us new skills. After all, learning happens effectively when we’re actively engaged and adapting, and that’s precisely what games encourage us to do. [1,2]

We learn by doing, and doing is what playing a game is. Every game requires the player to learn how the game is played. Great games require the player to expand their knowledge, perspective, and/or execution of playing the game to become a master. Now take a moment and think about the inherent nature of games…games are inherently educational. Make the game about city planning, and you have Sim City, you also have a tool to teach about complex systems, city management, and urban development. Make a game about guessing words using clues from previous guesses and you are playing Wordle, but you are also expanding your vocabulary and engaging in healthy cognitive activity. 

To Play a Game is to Learn

Learning is a fundamental part of being human—whether it’s formal education in school, developing a personal skill, or learning to navigate life’s challenges.  Games also inherit from movies, books, and other media because they tell stories, have beautiful visuals, and wonderful music and sounds. Good games combine learning with qualities from other media to provide memorable experiences you want to come back and play again and that you think about when not playing it. 

In the gaming industry, these engagement and retention techniques are often geared toward maximizing profit. But they can also be harnessed for creating positive outcomes. If you’ve ever gone through physical therapy or tried to stick to a new workout routine, you know that one of the toughest challenges is simply maintaining those habits. By contrast, it’s much easier to keep coming back to a good game. That’s precisely our focus at VRTogether: How can we design games that not only captivate players but also meaningfully enhance their lives?

I set out to write this blog about both games and VR, but there are so many things still to say I’ve decided to break it into multiple posts. Next time I hope to discuss why virtual reality is our primary technology through which we build and deliver games to achieve our greatest impact.

Thanks for reading.

-Richard

1. Schultz S, Larson J, Oh J, et al. Participation in cognitively-stimulating activities is associated with brain structure and cognitive function in preclinical Alzheimer’s disease. Brain Imaging Behav. 2015;9(4):729-736. doi:10.1007/s11682-014-9329-5

2. Video games can change your brain: Studies investigating how playing video games can affect the brain have shown that they can cause changes in many brain regions. ScienceDaily.