I’ve been playing video games for a very long time. Back in my Stanford days, the very first commercial video game–The Galaxy Game–was located at the Coffee House in the student union, and I played it often to take a quick break during my many late-night study sessions.
While I doubt these games made me any smarter, the breaks from my studying I took to play them were a source of immediate–if short-term–mental refreshment, preparing me for another round of studying for some economics or biology or Latvian language test. And just maybe I scored better on those tests the next day.
