Sympathy and Empathy

Researchers designed a game called SPARX to help treat depressed teenagers. The players had almost double the total recovery rate when compared to the conventional treatment group.

Games that are popular or involve social mechanics can help with making friends by giving access to the community that forms around the shared experience. 

Gaming conventions, online multiplayer sessions, and competitions all help players meet new people and make friends with a common interest. 

Addiction can include:

• Addiction as a moral transgression, like excessive drinking or drug use.
• Addiction as a scientific disease, which characterize alcoholism and drug addiction as biological.
• Colloquial violation, which applies the term to almost any fixation. 

The idea that someone can be addicted to a behavior, as opposed to a substance, remains debatable.

• Excessive gameplay is a symptom of a larger problem, like anxiety or depression.
• The fear of possible addiction arrises from moral panic about new technologies, not scientific research or clinical data.
• Making excessive gaming a disorder can harm the gaming industry by stigmatizing their products. 

Whether it's powering through the many dungeons of Hyrule in a Legend of Zelda game or trying to complete an especially difficult assignment at work, you're not going to accomplish it all in one day. 

The key to getting through it all is to remain steadfast and keep moving forward, no matter the difficulty. Procrastination certainly doesn't help; it'll still be waiting right where you left off. 

If Team Fortess 2 has anything to teach, it's that even the motliest of crews can win the day when they work together toward a common goal.

Sometimes the best teams come together from different walks of life, so don't be afraid to bring your cocky Scout and your experimental Medic even if it seems they won't work well together. 

Kids have been naturally avoiding schoolwork or household chores way before video games came in the picture.

And moderate video game playing, less than three hours a day is not an addiction but can actually be beneficial for the cognitive and reflexive development of kids.

There are certain psychological needs that kids look for:

• Competence: Kids need to compete, grow, and attain mastery over tasks.
• Autonomy: A sense of freedom and control.
• Relatedness: A want of being worthy to others while wanting others to matter to us as well.

Thinking for yourself and going outside your comfort zone might lead you to untold treasures.

Just as you will often find a rare and incredibly powerful item in a random closet, you can find a job or a new relationship in unexpected places. You’ll never know what you may find if you don’t go out there and explore.

There are rules to everything, and understanding the underlying system, makes it easy to find loopholes and exploit them.

In real life, there are many predictable situations and in most cases there is an easier way to overcome them if you know they are coming. You have to pay attention and exploit them within reason.

Private messaging services like Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp are where private interactions happen and people are comfortable sharing details in private group messaging.
There are new applications like Tex-Rex, The Infatuation, or Community which are helping brands penetrate this private space.

Micro-communities are platforms where people gather around shared interests, beliefs or passions. Some examples are Facebook Pages and Groups, Instagram Stories, Slack and Youtube.

Brands can tap into this by partnering with influencers who have the kind of demographic they are targeting.

Games are optimal learning environments:

• Feedback loops are short, fast and adapted to your skill level.
• Challenges grow as you develop new skills.
• Failures are learning opportunities because every time you make a mistake, you get a hint about how you can do better next time.

Boredom is what we feel when our brain decides that there's nothing worth learning. It's the brain searching for new information.

And even games become boring at some point because they eventually run out of things to teach you. That's when you stop playing.

The best way to help others is to teach them to rely on themselves. There’s no better way to lead than setting a good example of how to be independent. 

And better thinking leads to better communication. When you become a better writer, you can easily express yourself and start making connections. That will improve your career in ways you never imagine.

When your eyes are closed, your brain isn’t working as hard to filter out visual information. So: 

• Use one screen, one browser window, and one computer program at a time.
• Keep your physical and virtual desktop tidy.