Member-only story
Research now backs up everything we geeks already knew: Gaming is GOOD for you! From improving your mental health, pain management, and even boosting rehabilitation after surgery, science is proving more and more how gaming has the potential to do great things for your health. The secret lies in “how” you self-medicate with games, both computer games AND tabletop.
Last year (Oct 2019), I presented a panel at PAX Australia, alongside three amazing professionals with plenty of experience and understanding in this exact field: Aleesha Shimeld (Registered Psychologist); Jaime Lawrence (Game Developer and former manager of Good Games Australia); and Pritika Sachdev (former Community Manager at CheckPoint). We had a lively discussion about the many ways gaming can help us, supported with research and examples from our own experiences.
Thanks to our participating audience, we came away with some great suggestions for games and how to make them work for our benefit. To be honest, we could have kept talking about this until late in the night but time constraints and scheduled travel arrangements said no. Instead, I have the opportunity to collate all of our discussion here, for those who want to check their notes, and those who wish they had been there-a common cry from PAX Non-Attendees.
