E-games can help children improve early reading skills: expert

The E-video games industry in Pakistan is expanding and gaining the support of the federal government.

Federal Minister for Science and Technology has recently said that the government has made a platform for E-gaming and he urged the youth who are not interested in studies to join the platform and earn foreign exchange for the country.

“The video game industry is worth 90 billion dollars. There is an annual growth of 20% [for the video game industry] in Pakistan,” said the federal minister. “The companies working in Pakistan are telling me that we have more jobs available than people,” he continued.

Psychologist, Fatima Karim, while talking to ARY News said playing a target-oriented video game can help children improve their early reading skills with the support of parents and teachers.

She said rather than being anti-social and time-wasting, online gaming can actually build social skills in children adding parents should discuss with kids the dangers of sharing personal information through gaming servers and chat rooms, even with friends.

“All we need is time management for our children.”

A technology expert and game developer Ferhan Aqeel said that there are multiple benefits of playing transformational games which are designed to create engaging and immersion learning environments for delivering specified learning goals.

He said many video games can teach kids how to delegate, work as a team, and prioritize, adding, internet-enabled games that let kids play with their real-life friends often require collaboration and division of tasks to beat the level.

Referring to Fawad Chaudhry’s statement about $90 bn dollar market of the gaming industry, Aqeel said that there are two things one is playing the game and the other is developing the game and the overall worth of the market is $185 billion.

He urged the parents to put check and balance on their children and allow them to play games as it generally improves skills.