By Kairouan Boin, Year 12
Video games have long been criticised for allegedly having harmful impacts on one’s health. Video games, however, can offer a lot of advantages for both physical and mental health.
My interview was conducted with Yallen Pedersen, a Year 12 Campus des Nations student. On top of that, Yallen is an elite athlete, Playing at Meyrin football Club in B-inter and he is considered one of the best in his respective league and the canton of Geneva. His talent did not go unnoticed and at a young age, he joined Sports +, an athletic program created at Nations for elite student-athletes. Being a member of the very demanding program, Yallen has had to find ways to unwind during whatever free time he has. For him this came in the form of video games.
Yallen is an advocate of the positives of video games and hopes his interview can shed some light on a scrutinised topic.
Yallen: “Video games are a source of escape for me. I have six trainings a week, a match on the weekends, and an infinite amount of homework and assignments due during the week. When you are someone like me who has endless days, a creative world fitted with amazing open-world maps with great characters brings me a sense of joy. After an intense game against a hard opponent in football there is nothing better than to sit down and play a couple of hours of Call Of Duty with friends, cracking jokes and just having a good, positive time. Video games have such a big range of genres to choose from, it has a game for every mood you are in, and every story you want to explore and it does so whenever you want it. The great thing about video games is that you choose when you want to play and what. You have freedom over everything that happens. Personally, what I play most are multiplayer games as they allow me to connect with friends when they might live at a long distance and just socialize with people on the server. It’s also the most fun game mode where memories are created.”
