One of my hypothesis on why games are not only useful as learning tool for mammals (lion cubs practice hunting skills by play fighting for example) but that serve as entertainment to children and adults, specially in the modern world, is that they activate exercise neurological pathways for problem solving that we don’t normally come across in our modern lives.
Just like we can get addicted to the gym because we are able to push our bodies in ways we aren’t able in our daily lives, but were common to our ancestors, games can serve to exercise areas of our brains that aren’t usually being used in daily life. Now, these may vary depending on the job, social networks, and other entertainments (some people still like to hunt for example) but generally games offer an opportunity to solve puzzles, make spatial, temporal or spatial-temporal logical decisions, practice Machiavellian intelligence by trying to figure out what the opponent is thinking (theory of mind) and tricking them or out maneuver them, fast reaction like a first person shooter, tribal building and organizing attacks such as in strategy games or MMOs.
Examples:
- Say you have a first person shooter were you’re trying to hit a target from a distance, and there may also even be a delay between your missile hitting the spot, so you need to aim not were they target is, but will be. This would have been something our ancestors would practice with missile weapons in war or hunting. How many opportunities do we have in our daily lives to practice this type of skill, and yet there’s many evidence that males specifically are hardwired for this type of spatial-temporal reasoning which was an evolutionary adaptation that came about two million years ago in our evolution (source, source, source). This might be one of the reasons why men in particular are obsessed with first person shooter games that follow the same mechanics: Run, point, shoot, kill, repeat. You’re in reality practicing neurological pathways wired to do such activity, but that most of us aren’t able to perform in our modern lifestyles.
- Lets say you’re playing a game of chess, or any strategy game in general. A big part of the game is trying to figure out the intention behind a certain move, outmaneuver the opponent based on what you think he’s thinking, and based on this create your own deception. This goes back to the necessity of social animals, and humans in general that aren’t autistic to imagine what the other person is thinking and act accordingly(autistic completely lack or have a hard time with getting inside other peoples heads and is one of the prerequisites to be diagnosed with autism). A level of Machiavellian intelligence is found at some level in all social animals, and it was specially prized by the ancient Greeks in their mythology and histories and the Norse religion. Generally in modern society lying and tricking people isn’t seen well upon (and can have serious social consequences in your reputation at best) and being in direct confrontation isn’t part of our daily lives, but there’s evidence that these are also mental processes that humans evolved to have (source, source, source). Games are a socially acceptable place to attack and deceive each other.
- Strategy games may also allow us to practice pattern recognition and strategy in general. If you work as a manager you might have enough of this in your daily life, but if you’re an employee working on a repetitive job you’re most likely not exercising this ability, these are also evolutionary skill ingrained in our DNA which was vital to our survival (and the higher a persons IQ, the higher this ability is). This is another example were our modern society may have eliminated a skill we evolved to have (or greatly enhanced it, think of trying to follow marketing, political trends, or the financial markets or working with big data), but don’t have the ability to practice in our daily lives (source, source).
- Fast paced games like shooters or racing games allow us to make fast reactions in fractions of a second, something we aren’t normally able to do in our daily lives since we aren’t trying to hit stuff and or avoiding being hit at high speeds.
- Many studies have been done on how many people feel less connected to a community and social networks and technology may be culprits for this. But many social games may serve as a way to create your own tribe (which your work or daily lives may not completely make you feel a part of) with a group of close friends organizing yourselves to achieve X task. Human evolved to be tribal (source) and social games could be a form to exercise this evolutionary need.
So the basic premise is as follows: in a similar way that the body has requires to exercise and this need is encoded in our DNA, so do certain aspects of our brain which evolved to handle complex skills (spatial-temporal reasoning, theory of mind, Machiavellian intelligence, social communities, fast reaction time, tribalism, etc). We may or may not find ways to satisfy the need to exercise these mental skills hardwired through evolution in our DNA in our modern lives. Games therefore, are like a mental gym exercising the said skills mentioned above, which may be fulfilling a biological necessity similar to the need to run and lift heavy weights, which we normally don’t get in our modern lives unless we deliberately seek our out. Games are addicting for fulfilling the need to exercise these evolutionary hardwired skills the same way a gym works to satisfy our physical hardwired evolutionary needs.