Why games are important ?

Why Are games important ? 

Games have been loved by males since the beginning of time. Today, professional sports alone comprise a $600 billion industry. Males participate in and love the majority of these games. It is undoubtedly true that females love games as well, but boys play them with an intensity and investment of self that can border on the ridiculous to most girls. It is not often you see two 8-year-old girls rolling on the floor, physically fighting because one of them beat the other in a video game, but parents of male siblings close in age can easily identify such an instance.

The vast majority of organized movement activities that boys participate in are built around games. While many girls might be quite happy to participate in a group or a dance class where there is movement but no game or competition, most boys would not. They want more than being with each other: they want to play against each other. The game becomes the organizing principle for much of boys’ social lives.

Boys will play games even when no one else is around. Dr. Leonard Sax describes an experiment where they placed individuals in a room and gave them plastic rings. They also gave them a small plastic post and asked the subjects to place the rings on the post. This puzzled many of the participants who asked if they were supposed to do anything else. But there were no other requirements; they were simply to toss the rings on the post. Researchers then observed what happened when they left the subjects alone with the rings. Almost all of the females looked at the rings, tossed them on the post from a short distance away, and then sat down and waited for the researcher to return. Not one male did this! All of them started to toss the rings on the post, moving father away each time in an effort to see how far away they could stand and still hit the post. The activity was not complete for these males without it becoming a game.