IndexReview of literatureVideo games and flowPractices adopted/testedReflectionVideo games have been part of my life since I was young. Some of my fondest childhood memories involve my dad and me spending time together as I forced him to play The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for me for what must have been the fifth time. I'm 22 now and Ocarina of Time is still my favorite video game because of the nostalgia it brings me. While I've never been the best at video games, I treasure the time I've spent playing with my friends and family, and with the people I've met through our shared passion. Since video games are such an important aspect of my life and I spend so much time playing them, I started to wonder if I could benefit from my hobby, if I would be able to be mindful while playing them. This article will look at the effects of mindful video games on the body, the different mindful video games on the market, and my experience with mindful video game play. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get Original EssayLiterature ReviewThe first video game made its debut in 1958, when physicist William Higinbotham created a tennis game very similar to Pong titled Tennis for Two (Tretkoff, 2008). Since then, video games have grown exponentially, improving both gameplay mechanics and graphics. However, video games aren't always just about platforming or shooting; developers have recently taken to the video game market to bring a new set of benefits, such as giving the brain a mental workout. In addition to this, the researchers analyzed both the positive and negative effects of playing video games, as well as their surprising relationship with mindfulness. In a world where, according to a 2013 study, more than 1.2 billion people play video games, it's no wonder that game developers are looking for ways to de-stress consumers and that researchers are finding surprising results on mindfulness and video games (State of the Online, 2013). Although the research behind mindfulness and video games is a fairly recent phenomenon, there are many studies that have discovered how video games can help people achieve mindfulness. Positive Effects of Gaming and Mindfulness There has been a lot of talk in recent years about how video games are linked to aggression and that numerous violent crimes are the result of exposure to violent video games such as Grand Theft Auto. Many believe that exposure to this fictional violence desensitizes many to violent acts such as murder and bloodshed. Although there is data to suggest a correlation between playing video games and aggression, especially in those who are already aggressive, correlation is not the same as causation (Anderson & Dill, 2000). It is ignorant to claim that all people who play video games are aggressive. This blind denial ignores many of the positive mental health effects of playing video games, many of which are similar to those of mindfulness. Lucid dreaming is the phenomenon of being aware that you are dreaming in a dream. Both mindfulness/meditation (Stumbrys, Erlacher, & Malinowski, 2015) and video game playing (Gackenbach, 2006) have been positively correlated with increased frequency of lucid dreaming, a potential indicator of the development of consciousness. Both playing video games and practicing mindfulness have been linked to improved and reduced moodof stress. According to a study conducted in 2009, electroencephalological changes during gaming were consistent with improved mood and decreased stress levels reported by participants (Russoniello, O'Brien, & Parks, 2009). Similar effects have been observed when participating in mindfulness meditation (Wright, Day, & Howells, 2009). Video Games and Flow Video games have been observed to be positively correlated with the experience of flow (Sherry, 2004). According to its author Csikszentmihalyi, flow is described as the balance between skill and difficulty used to describe the state of awareness experienced by athletes when they feel calmly and consciously immersed in their sport (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997). These are also characteristics of mindfulness (Marks, 2008). Video games are related to athletics in this sense as they both require a lot of concentration and practice. Like anything, both of these activities can be improved with practice, until the player can perform them almost effortlessly, in a calm and collected manner. Due to the fact that many people discard games where they fail to develop a flow, it is believed that many modern game developers create their game with this in mind. (Csikszentmihalyi, Abuhamdeh, & Nakamura, 2005). In 2011, Gackenbach and Bown conducted a study in which they attempted to examine the mindfulness of video game players along with related immersion and presence factors through five questionnaires. The researchers hypothesized that hardcore gamers would report being more attentive than those who didn't play video games as often. It was found that those who were considered hardcore gamers based on frequency, number of games, and duration of play scored higher on the immersion/absorption and presence scales. They also found that only certain types of mindfulness are associated with playing video games; scale for analyzing mindfulness during gaming found a positive correlation, while their broader mindfulness scale only found a positive correlation between hardcore gamers and playing without judgment (Gackenbach & Brown, 2011). Practices Adopted/Tested When choosing how I wanted to explore mindfulness' With regards to video games, I chose to adopt two types of practices: one in which I incorporated mindfulness into the video games I usually play, and one in which I tested video games made specifically for practicing mindfulness. I chose these two approaches based on existing literature on video games. By analyzing the literature, I found that there were two basic categories that I could easily incorporate into my daily lifestyle. To incorporate mindfulness into the video games I already play, I chose to listen to my body to intermittently take breaks and regulate my emotions. To test video games made with mindfulness in mind, I downloaded the Flora and Pause app and used it to help with procrastination. I chose to incorporate mindfulness into the games I already play because I felt it was the most applicable type of research I could conduct on myself. By incorporating mindfulness into games I already knew I liked, I felt like I could apply the techniques to almost every game I played. They were more general techniques applicable to a wide range of video game genres and people. For this particular practice, I chose to incorporate mindfulness techniques into the game Overwatch. Overwatch is a game created by Blizzard Entertainment in 2016. It is an online first-person shooter where two teams of six with a variety of characters with different abilities face each other . opposed to each other. I chose touse Overwatch for this practice because it's the game I've played most recently and it's also similar to other types of video games I play. With this, it's not uncommon for me to play in two-hour intervals without a break, not the healthiest practice. Additionally, this is a game I can easily get frustrated with, whether it's a particularly long losing streak or comments from other players online. For this practice, I incorporated two mindfulness methods. First I decided that I would take a break after every match. Each match lasts between six and 20 minutes, with a long interval between each match. This was the perfect opportunity for me to get out of the chair and stretch rather than continue to sit, as discussed in Boice's “Write In Mindful Ways” (Boice, 1994). Between games I would get up, stretch, and walk around my apartment a bit until the notification for the next game appeared on my screen. Second, I limited the overall play time to much shorter increments of about thirty minutes at a time. Instead of playing straight away for two hours, I set a timer for thirty minutes and stopped playing when the timer went off. This idea was also taken from Boice's article, which harked back to his discussion of how you can be more productive if you simply do something a little every day instead of binging (Boice, 1994). Although this study was not related to writing as Boice's article was, I felt the idea was still very applicable; I hypothesized that I would feel less stressed and perhaps win more games if I didn't overplay the game. I incorporated these methods for two weeks, playing Overwatch almost every day after class. I used the first week as a baseline, in which I did not incorporate any of the above methods. For research purposes, I limited myself to a full hour of gameplay. I played as usual, without stretching between games and without taking a break. I logged my data on a spreadsheet on my phone where I recorded how I felt after each game and whether I won or lost the game. I also recorded how I felt at the end of each daily section in more detail and any particular thoughts I had about that session. During the second week I incorporated the above tactics. I still played for about an hour every day, but I divided the playing time into two 30-minute slots: one after class and one in the evening. I also chose to get up and stretch after every game. As with the first week, I recorded my mood and win rate after each match and session on my phone. During each week, I managed to complete about four rounds per day. There were a couple of limitations with this first practice. Firstly, it wasn't always easy to try to qualitatively record how I felt after each game and session. Even though I could record where I felt tension with a body scan, there were only a certain number of words I could use to describe myself (stressed, tense, relieved, cheerful, etc.), even when writing small paragraphs. Because of this, I may not have been able to fully explore my feelings. Secondly, I didn't always have enough time between games to stretch and record how I felt. Because of this, some of my relationships were shorter than others. This would be more avoidable in offline video games with a pause function. The second practice I adopted was analyzing video games made specifically with mindfulness in mind. I chose to incorporate it because I wanted to see how fun and well made these video games could be,and to see whether there was a bright future for them or not. If mindfulness could be successfully incorporated into video games, many more people could be exposed to the idea of ​​mindfulness and focusing on their bodies and the present. The two games I tried were Flora and Pause. I looked at three factors while playing these games: the look, the mechanics, and whether or not they successfully incorporated awareness. Flora is a free mobile game similar to Forest; the player starts a timer to start growing a tree. If the timer is stopped early to play on your phone, the tree dies. The goal of the game is to create a beautiful forest by incorporating both virtual and real incentives (your money goes towards planting a real tree). I played this game intermittently for about two weeks whenever I needed to work on homework. For each task I set the timer for fifteen minutes and then put the phone away. I chose to work in fifteen minute intervals because of the advice given in Boice's "Write In Mindful Ways" about being more productive when writing in smaller increments(Boice, 1994). I kept mental notes about my experience with the game. Pause is a mobile game that costs $3 in the Apple Store. Players are tasked with moving their finger across the screen very slowly. As long as the player can keep up with the slow pace, the colored spot on their fingertips continues to grow. It's a very simple game, but it becomes more difficult because you want to speed up your movements. The game tries to get its players to slow down and take a breath, moving with their natural body. I played this game once a day for a week and took mental notes about my experience. Although I did not perceive many limitations in this part of the study, I noted that my opinions could be biased. As someone who considers himself a seasoned gamer, my opinions on the game might have been very different than those of the more casual audience these games were intended for. With this in mind, it was difficult to be objective. To analyze my results with the video game I played regularly, I looked at the notes I had taken each day and compared the baseline week to the experimental week. As for the number of games I won and lost each week. For the baseline week where I didn't incorporate the mindfulness practices, I won 11 games and lost 17. For the second week where I incorporated the practices, I won 13 games and lost 14. As for how I felt After each game and session, I noticed that I overwhelmingly reported feeling more tired at the end of the one-hour sessions during the first week than during the thirty-minute sessions during the second week. Rather, during the second week, I tended to report looking forward to the next session or feeling satisfied with myself. I didn't report feeling extremely positive emotions like happiness or joy for either week, but the emotions tended to lean towards whether I felt more satisfied or less. As for the debriefings after each game, I found that I tended to get more and more tired after each game, using more vocabulary as the recordings went on. I also reported feeling more and more tension in my shoulders and lower back after doing a body scan as I played, although this didn't occur as much during the second week when I took longer breaks and stretched . For analyzing the two conscious video games I played, I will retrospectively report on three factors: howhow the game looked, the design and how well it incorporated awareness. As for the Flora game, I found that I really enjoyed it. It was a very simple game, but one that you only have to rely on when you need to be aware of certain aspects of your life to avoid procrastinating. The game was visually very appealing and incorporated simple yet elegant designs and interfaces. I liked the fact that the longer you played, the bigger your trees got and the more variety of plants you got. As for the game's design, the developers had a very simple goal in mind and managed to achieve it. The menus are very intuitive and tell you where you can start the game the moment you download it. The fact that you could offer real money to plant a tree as motivation was a nice touch. Lastly, I think the game did a good job of incorporating awareness. It takes a lot of work out of you, making you decide whether playing on your phone is more important than cultivating the forest. By having the forest of living and dead trees in front of you, you can really see how much you procrastinate in a visually interesting way. I found that seeing all the dead trees in my yard served as good intrinsic motivation to focus on homework rather than my phone. Pause was similar to Flora in that they both work on very simple concepts. I found that over time the uniqueness of this game wore off and I didn't enjoy it as much. The look of the game was beautiful, relying on a simple display and ever-changing shades of blue as you grew the mass at hand. The movement and growth of the blob was very smooth and visually appealing. As for the game design, the game started with a little tutorial to get you started before starting out on your own. It was an interesting concept that was executed well. Finally, it's obvious that this game was made with mindfulness in mind. I found that my breathing slowed down a bit as I moved my finger with the drop, because I was afraid that breathing too irregularly would ruin my movements. It made me very aware of my breathing, heart rate, and how they affect my fingers. A statistics page helps you be aware of how often you stop for breaks and how your movements change as you go along.ReflectionI enjoyed this little research project. Not only has it allowed me to gain insight into some of my personal gaming habits, but it has also allowed me to practice helpful tactics to allow me to be more mindful when playing video games. Part of me is always a little guilty when I play for long periods of time, believing that I will always be able to spend my time in better ways or that sitting for so long is bad for me. By incorporating more breaks into my play time and reducing the amount of time I play at a time, I can reduce some of the guilt I feel. Before this study, I had never taken the time to sit down and find out how bad these binges made me feel. While video games are great for helping me relax and have fun, I've realized that I should listen to my body more and stop playing when it says it's tired or stiff. These practices might even help me win more games, as stretching is proven to release dopamine and increase blood flow throughout the body while reducing tension. If I were to repeat this particular aspect of the study, I would like to explore more video game genres. For example, do taking breaks and stretching have less effect on calmer genres of video games such as puzzle games? I also think it would be interesting to consider the possibility of putting.