Should video game studies be incorporated into the school curriculum? 

For reasons that are too many to count, videogames are more often than not considered 'less than' by people who haven't had much experience of them, hence the most common response to the question of their potential usefulness to education generally being - 'of course not!' But videogames have a lot to offer, and are versatile in ways that most other media aren't, and that's why I absolutely think there's a case for adding them to the school curriculum.

For starters the mechanics of videogames actually allow for a lot of exploration and development of logic and mechanical skills. Sandbox games such as Terraria and Minecraft promote creative problem solving by allowing the player to build, explore and make decisions about what they should be doing next - whether it be finding sustainable food sources or defending their homestead. It may even help with knowledge of geology or zoology - though I didn't believe silverfish were real until I was fourteen because they were a mob in Minecraft, so it might be worth taking that with a pinch of salt.

Co-operative games also promote collaboration and the strengthening of social bonds when played with other people. Overcooked, Unravel 2 and the seemingly endless array of Lego games lay out puzzles and levels that you can only complete and progress through if you and your partner talk and coordinate how you're going to approach the situation you're faced with. If one of you fails, you both fail, and your teamwork will definitely have improved by the end of it. There's also something horrifically bonding about playing the It Takes Two section where you rip apart the stuffed elephant together. I still have nightmares.

Finally, who could forget about the wealth of narratives, characters and stories that can be explored through playing videogames. The way arcs and themes are portrayed is seen as a completely legitimate study when it comes to books, why not with videogames too? Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, wherein the death of one of the two brothers you play as being felt physically though the half of the controller you used to move him becoming useless serves as a powerful and heart-breaking metaphor for grief, can only be experienced through this medium. And hundreds of titles like Red Dead Redemption 2 with its masterful storytelling, or Hollow Knight with its endless worldbuilding that you find in fragments during your exploration of Hallownest are just as beautiful, affecting and thoughtfully crafted as any novel.

There truly is no reason to keep pretending that videogames are any less rich or dense that any other form of media, not when there's so many amazing new ones releasing every year, and maybe that essential first step in the right direction is incorporating them into the school curriculum.