Boost your brain power by playing games

Games can't win. On one hand, online surveys are suggesting that games make kids perform poorly in school, yet on the other their so powerful they can cause a paranoid schizophrenic to kill his grandmother.

Of course, we don't wholly buy into either of these extremes, and also like to concentrate on something the mainstream media fails to report; the more positive aspects of games. For example, here's seven ways you can use games to keep your brain in shape.

1. Play Brain Training

Designed to be played for just a few minutes a day on Nintendo’s DS console, Brain Training offers a series of quick mind tests to give your brain a workout. As you train each day, your ‘Brain Age’ decreases. That’s a good thing, by the way.

2. Run a players’ guild

Created by massively multiplayer online games, the leading guilds are extraordinary organisations. Essentially, they’re groups of hundreds of people dedicated to achieving ‘firsts’ within the game. The first kill of a dragon, for instance, or the first group to enter a dungeon. To run such an organisation, you need the ability to resolve disputes, babysit new members and more besides. It’s a perfect training ground for honing your management skills, and big business is beginning to notice. Apparently.

3. Nuke the world

Think you’ve got a stressful day job? Try running the world. The Civilization series of games asks players to take a small tribe of rock-wielding cavemen into space, founding cities, building monuments and discovering technology along the way. It’s a massive intellectual challenge, with difficult decisions to be made at every step of the way.

4. Sink a cargo ship

It’s long been acceptable for pilots to train in simulators, but can we train ourselves with virtual problems? The answer is yes. Take Silent Hunter 3 and 4, both submarine simulations; the former putting you in control of a U-boat sinking Atlantic cargo shipping during WW2, the latter asking you to hunt Japanese carriers in the Pacific theatre. At the hardest levels, the games ask you to plot your own torpedo intercepts, using basic trigonometry. There’s even an in-game protractor. It beats maths homework.

5. Run a city

How do urban planners come to their decisions? How, indeed? SimCity 4 is a game that makes you mayor of an up-and-coming neighbourhood. It’s almost on-the-job training for city planners and a useful first entry point for debating local issues. It’s a game that can teach social empathy and scientific enquiry.

6. Enter a Zen state

Your unconscious mind functions in very strange ways. Fast-paced games such as Quake III or Unreal Tournament can encourage an almost Zen-like state, where instincts override normal decision-making. Psychologists describe this state as ‘flow’, where players allow their unconscious mind to take control of their reactions. That unconscious mind can be trained and games offer the perfect route.

7. Complete a bestseller

The biggest selling games, such as the Zelda series, demand hundreds of hours of concentrated decision-making. It’s easy to get stuck, which is where FAQs come in. Fans write comprehensive solutions to every game, and they often tot up to thousands of words. One player-authored FAQ to Grand Theft Auto clocks in at 83,000 words, each sentence a solution. That’s the length of a good novel.

Tim Edwards contributes to Windows Vista: The Official Magazine, and is the Deputy Editor of PC Gamer.