Why You Should Play CS: GO and How it Can Improve Your Intellect

Spending time devoted to improving your intellectual capabilities is always time well spent. Even if you’re not planning on taking any tests in the near future, improving your mental faculties can help you better solve problems in your own life; it can improve your memory and ability to concentrate and help you make smarter decisions that can have far-reaching impacts on your health, career, and relationships. 

The human brain is a magnificent thing, but it does tend to lose some of its ability as a person ages. Maintaining prime mental function has thus become a major focus for a lot of people, especially considering how long the average person lives in this era.

Most people already know about the importance of taking care of their brains. What they don’t know is that supporting your mental capabilities doesn’t have to be drudgery; it can actually be a lot of fun. There are countless games and activities that help sharpen your mind that are also enjoyable to play. The following will explore just one way you can give your mind a little bit of a boost: playing CS: GO.

What Is CS: GO?

CS: GO is the online nickname for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. It’s a video game that allows for multiple players to get involved. It’s a first-person shooter game that involves two teams being pitted against each other in objective-based games. This means that in addition to all the hand-eye coordination and focus you need to employ, you also need to become good at anticipating your opponent’s moves.

What If I Can’t Access CS: GO?

If you’re having trouble tracking down CS: GO, there are some nifty tricks you can use as long as you have an internet connection. Not all online content is available in all countries for a myriad of reasons, but a simple VPN will allow you to identify your devices as being in a location where access is allowed. If you take a moment to learn about the most reliable VPNs for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, you’ll find something that fits with your day-to-day life. VPNs are also massively beneficial for a whole bunch of personal data and security reasons.

Improved Attention And Focus

While decreasing attention spans has been a popular topic of conversation for a while, video games are not the culprit for it—just the opposite, actually. Video games require intense concentration and focus and have been proven to help people improve their ability to pay high-quality attention to something for a longer period of time. Beyond this, studies have found that the areas of the brain that are responsible for attention are more efficient in gamers; gamers tend to require less activation of these areas to stay focused on a given task.

Visuospatial Skills

Visuospatial skills refer to someone’s ability to recognize and respond to spatial relationships among objects. Having strong visuospatial skills help with tasks like driving, painting or drawing, traveling (and not getting lost), staying balanced, recognizing faces, and reading. While we tend to take these skills for granted, they are a huge component of safety and work performance and also are radically reduced when someone has Alzheimer’s. Keeping visuospatial skills strong can help a person lead a healthier, more comfortable life, but can also help them solve daily problems with ease.

Improved Memory

Video games often demand a lot from people’s memory. There are maps to remember, quests, tasks, nasty tricks pulled by the opposition that needs to be avoided, and much more. All of these elements come together to form a workout for your memory, helping you improve brain function in the areas that impact memory. Typically, people lose about 12% of their memory performance between the ages of 45 and 70, but studies found that just 30 minutes of gaming for two weeks can engage the brain’s hippocampus and improve memory test scores by 12%.

Improved Decision-Making

Decision-making is an integral part of life. If you struggle with it, you’re likely going to be struggling with all areas of your life. If you’re good at making decisions, you’re likely going to be alright. Fast-paced games like CS: GO demand that players stay alert and make decisions quickly in order to survive and win. Studies have found that improving your ability to make decisions while gaming (which is a natural outcome of gaming regularly) helps you make better, faster decisions in your non-game life.

The above list should have given you examples of how CS: GO can help improve your mental faculties. Gaming needs a critical reappraisal within mainstream culture. Not only does it help improve all the areas of the mind that degrade as you age, resulting in brains that stay younger for longer, but it also helps bolster relationships and social skills when working with others is required.