Dear Eric,

How is everything going? Have you been studying hard lately? I remember you always complained to me that math was hard. Guess what, I found out that it seems math has some connection to your favorite eSports game. I bet e-sports games are just a way for you to entertain yourself, you may only know that people who study well usually are very good at playing games, but did not think that these games can actually have a potential positive impact on your math performance.

In fact, most people do not really link e-sports games to academic performance, or to say they only think that the addictive nature of e-sports games will lead to a decline in academic performance, which is a common sense for us. However, they do not look at e-sports games dialectically. E-sports games are not exactly the so-called "electronic opium", actually they can serve as valuable products that bring benefits to our minds in some conditions, and it doesn't mean that simply playing games will improve our thinking. You might need to think more about how e-sports games affect you when you play them, start with these aspects analyzed in my article, it will have a certain change on your mindset. To be more specific, stop passively accepting the joy that the eSports game brings you, start using your initiative to enhance some of your thinking skills while you are playing these games, consider the game as a learning tool, which in turn will improve your math performance.

To demonstrate this thesis, we should first break down the problem into pieces: the game, the subjective initiative, and the math performance. Let’s start with math first. As a college student, I'm sure you've been studying math for quite some time. In the process, we all meet two kinds of people who are good and bad at math. As peers, we usually think those who are good at math are smart and definitely like to think and study, but specifically what skills we need in our thinking to learn math well, we do not know.

So, let's take a look at what literature is available on the web that explains the capabilities needed for mathematics. A study from Mathematics Education Centre, Loughborough University mentions three cognitive factors that are important for learning mathematics, which are Working memory, inhibition and shifting, and summarize them as Executive Functions. Working memory involves holding and manipulating information in mind, inhibition helps suppress distractions and control impulsive responses, and shifting enables the flexible switching of attention between different tasks or concepts (Gilmore, Cragg). These three cognitive abilities provide us with a new way of thinking, we can reasonably deduce that if we focus on developing these cognitive skills or related abilities while playing eSports games, the chances of learning math well will certainly improve, or are moving in the direction of learning math well.

However, here comes another problem: can we really develop these cognitive abilities when we “actively” play the game? This is when we need to understand what capabilities the eSports game will require of us. If eSports games don't train us at all in these abilities, then the argument is meaningless. But it’s very clear that video games can have a big impact on the human psyche, we just don't actually know what specific effect eSports games can have on human cognitive characteristics.

So our job now is to find something that could proof eSports games can have an impact on cognitive abilities of people. Here comes one most representative research. A study done by Duke University shows that gamers perform better than non-gamers on lots of tasks that set to test their attention and perception skills, which seems to indicate that games may improve and sharpen their attention skills (Clark et al). This literature is most relevant to Executive Functions. We can see the three cognitive abilities are all related to attention. When holding information in mind, suppressing distractions, or switching attention between tasks, we all need to train our attention. In this way, it does make sense that the eSports game can provide us with the opportunity to exercise these cognitive skills.

Having known that eSports games can train our attention, you may feel that this is not very effective in improving your math scores. This is because you are still missing a very important part, the mindset. We all know that a good or bad state of mind affects our thinking very much when working on problems. Can eSports games solve this problem? By chance, eSports games can also train our mindset. A research from Radboud University has shown that the players would positively return to the task and do things with a positive emotions when they deal with failure with excitement, interest and pleasure (Granic et al). Just like sports activities, it cultivates our spirit of defiance. This is very important for learning mathematics.

After we know that eSports games can equip us with these abilities to learn math well, like a study tool, the real challenge is how to use our initiative. A research proposed a learning approach that combines online game-based learning with a viewing-summarizing-questioning strategy to address many of the learning problems that existed during the epidemic (Chang et al). We can learn from them, using the viewing-summarizing-questioning method to learn while you play the game, which is to summarize what you have done in the game and bring up some questions, like whether your attention is distracted, how your mind has changed and how to regulate it, whether there is a mistake in the choice at the critical time, etc.

However, you might feel it's easy to get hooked on playing the game and might forget that you're here to learn these skills. I don't think you need to worry too much about addiction, the point is you really have learned something from it. Also, it is well known that studying is energy consuming, you are studying while playing the game, will be much more tired than if you only play for fun. The chances of getting addicted to the game are much smaller at this time.

At this point this question is fully explained, we can draw this conclusion: We could summarize the strengths and weaknesses of our performance while playing the eSports game as a way to practice our ability to learn mathematics. And I'm glad you're following my lead and seeing this whole process. I bet you have gained a lot. You can continue to discuss with me if you have any new ideas.

Yours,

Chengze