Video games, as it turns out, will not rot your brain. Quite the contrary. From Reuters (Abridged):

Video game playing may fulfill innate human need

Playing video games can satisfy deep psychological needs and, at least in the short term, improve people’s well-being, new research shows.

The more a game fulfilled a player’s sense of independence, achievement and connectedness to others, the more likely he or she was to keep playing, Dr. Scott Rigby of Immersyve, a Florida-based virtual environment think tank, and colleagues from the University of Rochester in New York found. And the more fully a player’s needs were satisfied, the better he felt after playing.

“We think this is really one of the first validated models of what is going on psychologically when people are playing video games,” Rigby told Reuters Health in an interview. To date, he noted, research on video games has focused on their potentially harmful effects, such as promoting social isolation, addiction, and violence.

“Video games we think have tremendous potential to impact people, particularly today’s video games which are incredibly rich and complex,” Rigby said. “This creates very fertile ground psychologically.”

Mastering challenges in video games can be a healthy way of coping when opportunities for feeling independent or competent are scarce in the real world, he argued.

“Video games in some ways are very good at satisfying these psychological needs,” Rigby noted. “Often times real life is not as clear…real life often can make you feel ineffective.”

For this reason, as a public service, I bring you Line Rider. I can’t host it here, by request of the author, but go check it out anyway. You draw a line and a guy sleds down it. Awesome.