Games are not accused of anything - both that they romanticize violence, and that they badly affect underage users (and adults too). How about praising games for those times when the skills they teach help people out in times of need? For example, the hunting rules learned in World of Warcraft helped the Norwegian teenager and his sister survive, and the Mario Kart lessons saved the child and his relatives from a car accident. More examples of the benefits of playing games are in our selection.
Counter-Strike and Grenades
Beloved by many, Counter-Strike is regularly targeted by politicians and the media, but in April 2013, the "contra" saved the lives of three guys in the city of Mandaue in the Philippines. The teenagers found a plastic cookie box in a vacant lot with three bronze-colored metal objects in it.
They took out one and almost started to clean it on the ground, but fortunately, 12-year-old Jose Darwin Garciano was with them, who identified the objects as grenades, often seen in Counter-Strike. He stopped his friends, convinced them to put a dangerous find, and then all three turned to an adult passerby for help. He, in turn, called the police, who defused the grenades.
Games and car crashes
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Portable consoles are also capable of helping out owners in difficult times. In 2010, a kangaroo who jumped out onto an Australian country road at night was run over by a car carrying two adults and three children. The collision was of such force that the car rolled over several times before stopping. While the father of the family unbuckled his seat belt and tried to pull out 6-month-old baby Joseph, 7-year-old Christopher Miskovets freed himself and helped 5-year-old brother Dillon. Then, using Nintendo DS screens instead of a flashlight, he climbed to free the unconscious mom, successfully unfastened her seat belt and helped her to recover and get out. For this he received an award from the local authorities, and his parents now hardly reproach him for his interest in portable consoles.
Christopher with his family after the award.
However, a smartphone could be in place of DS. But Matthew Krizhan, a survivor of another accident, is firmly convinced that it was not in vain that he spent hours playing games in childhood. In January 2011, on a highway near Guelph, Ontario, Canada, a sand-laden truck crashed through a concrete separation barrier and flew into the oncoming lane. Krizhan was just driving along it and at the last moment he managed to dodge the colossus rushing at him. As he later told reporters, time seemed to slow down for him and the reflexes trained thanks to video games did their job.
And Texan Ben Rose had an accident right at home. In December 2015, he was quietly playing the recently released Fallout 4 on Xbox One when a car rammed the wall of his room. Rose commented, "You play Wasteland and then your home becomes Wasteland." As a result, the Texan injured his back and the Achilles tendon on his left leg, but, according to him, things could have been much worse without a special gaming chair. It took the brunt of the blow and prevented Ben from getting under the car.
As it turned out, the culprit of the accident mixed up the gas and brake pedals, and even went without insurance. Because of this, Ben could not count on compensation, but friends-gamers organized a fundraiser for his treatment and home repairs, and Microsoft and Bethesda sent consolation gifts.
Dota 2 and heists online
Game streams help catch criminals. In June 2014, Nikki Elise was streaming Dota 2 in Tempe, Arizona when two burglars broke into her house. It was later revealed that their target was to be another house, but they had the wrong address. The bandits decided not to leave empty-handed and began to rob Nikki, unaware of the included webcam. Viewers on the stream reacted quickly: someone from Europe called America, and there they passed the information to the police. The guards managed to detain one of the attackers, the second managed to escape.
Games save from fire
In another case, Internet players had to save a person not from robbery, but from fire. In 2011, in the American city of Spokane, Washington State, 51-year-old disabled Robert Chambers played the browser game Evony.
Robert Chambers.
His wife, Patricia, went away to take her grandchildren to school and left the toaster on in the kitchen. He caught fire, but Chambers could not call the firemen - due to illness, he was unable to reach the phone. Then the man asked for help in the game chat and provided the address of the house. Gamers from Texas and Indiana, that is, from the other side of the country, responded to his call. They called emergency services and they sent a distress call to Spokane. Firefighters arrived at the scene within 10 minutes and safely extinguished the fire. Robert's wife admitted that after the incident she stopped hating her husband's hobby for games, because they saved both his life and their house.
And sometimes, to prevent tragedy, you need to stay up late playing games. This is exactly what happened on Christmas night 2013 with Jacksin Wood of Danville, Kentucky. In the middle of the night, 12-year-old Jacksin was distracted from the games by the smell of smoke: an icemaker caught fire in the kitchen. The boy tried to extinguish the flame, but quickly realized that he could not cope alone and woke up all the relatives who were sleeping in the house. Firefighters who arrived quickly extinguished the fire that engulfed the kitchen and part of the first floor. It turned out that there were no smoke detectors in the house, and if Jacksin was asleep, the family could die.
A similar case occurred in February 2013 in the state of Tennessee, neighboring Kentucky. 6-year-old Taylor Hendrix also noticed a fire in the attic late at night and woke up his grandfather and grandmother and four other siblings in time. But the house, alas, burned to the ground.
Pokemon Go helps people and animals out
There are several sad stories associated with the mobile AR game Pokemon Go, released in July 2016, but there are also many good ones. For example, on July 18, 2016, just 2 days after the release of Pokemon Go in the Czech Republic, one of the users was looking for Pokemon in the vicinity of the town of Kosmonosi and came across the insensible bodies of two men. It turned out that they were very drunk, and one of them also broke his head when falling to the ground. The player called the police and doctors, who helped the unlucky revelers.
Pokemon Go also helped save the animals. In the same year, a player in the town of Portalegre in Portugal, instead of Pokémon, found a kitten stuck behind a junction box for electrical wiring. The guy called his parents, local firefighters and the police. Together, they pulled the baby out, and the gamer's family left the poor fellow to themselves.
And in another Texas city, South Houston, as many as 27 animals were rescued on the same days. Sarah Perez and her friend Matthew Teague, while playing, came across a cage in the park, inside which 20 hamsters and 7 newborn mice were swarming. There was not a soul nearby, and only a little bird food and not a drop of water remained from the food in the cage: apparently, someone had left the rodents to die in the heat. Fortunately, all the animals survived and found shelter at the local zoo department.
Psychological help on the Internet
Sometimes good advice is enough to save a person's life. In 2011, a 14-year-old Canadian teenager played with a friend from Texas on Xbox Live, and from the conversation, he realized that he intended to take his own life. The guy turned to his parents for help, and they called a police officer. The officer, who had experience in this kind of negotiations, talked for 2 hours with a Texas gamer via voice chat and managed to dissuade him from suicide.
Zhenghua Yang in 2019.
And Serenity Forge founder Zhenghua Yang had a different experience. At 18, doctors diagnosed him with a rare blood disorder - idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura. The doctors said that Jan's chances of being cured are incredibly small and that he could die at any moment. Ian spent two years in the hospital, whiling away time in the vastness of League of Legends. Friends did not visit him, some even thought that he had already died. But one of the playmates literally saved Yana's life: he turned out to be a medical scientist and brought the guy together with one of the world's best hematologists. Under his supervision, Zhenghua gradually began to recover and the only thing he regrets is that he never learned the name of his savior.
Of course, people played the main role in these stories. Games acted only as guides and allies of those who did not get lost in a dangerous situation and managed to save themselves, their loved ones or absolutely strangers. However, take video games out of the equation - and all these cases could end up much more tragically.
Alexander Koinov
