Playing Video Games Can Boost Human Creativity

According to new research by Iowa State University, playing video games which foster creative freedom helps to increase human creativity under certain conditions. The study conducted on players who play Minecraft with and without instruction, along with who play a race car video game or watch a TV show. Those playing Minecraft with no instructions turned out to be the most creative. 

Released in 2011, Minecraft has sold more than 100 million copies, now has around 91 million active players monthly across the world. The game allows its players to build with a variety of different blocks. Due to compulsive features, Minecraft seems like a virtual lego world which lets players create anything with their creativity. 

In the above-mentioned research, experts from Iowa State University divided participants into two split groups: one with and one without instruction while playing the game. 

The level of creativity among participants

The study was carried out on 352 participants. After playing the game or watching TV for 40 minutes, the participants were asked to complete several creativity tasks. One of them was making a creature from a world much different than the Earth. Researchers regulated that the more similar to human shape it looked, the fewer players scored.

As a result, participants playing Minecraft under instruction appeared to be the least creative. On the other hand, those without instruction had the most innovative performance. 

The explanation for the finding

Scientists stated that almost all video games granted players certain levels of creativity. Even in the first-person shooter games, players are inspired to come up with strategies, as well as look for their advantages in combats. Traditional views about video games can be wrong, as it depends on how people practice a game, not what they practice that defines benefits the games could bring. 

However, there remains no clear explanation for the research result. Scientists assumed that being told to be creative limited the players’ options while experiencing the game resulting in low creativity. It’s also possible that players spent so much “creative juice” on in-game moves that they run out of the innovativeness after completing the game.