The Queen is Watching...and Hopefully Exercising Those Muscles
Would I recommend this game? Yes, yes I would. Has it been helpful to me? Let's see.
In my high school years, there was a growing argument among the adults and parents that video games caused kids to be violent.
Our obvious refutation: "I play video games, and I don't feel the urge to kill other people in real life!"
It's a healthy argument, but really - what is one person's testimony? So scientists studied the effects of video games on cognition, and I remember for some reason or another looking into these studies in my passionate exploration of neuroplasticity.
Maybe because I wanted to see if Lumosity's ads were factually on point, or if my strength in spatial memory was being exercised through the game Apex Legends, and if I could somehow help my dad improve his horrid navigational skills. Either way, I read the research.
I bring this up now because of a game my best friend urged me to play. I tried it, got hooked, and spent the good chunk of last week playing it instead of writing and publishing on my blog. I hope my addiction gave me some cognitive exercise or else I threw some hours out the window for simple fun.
It's called The King is Watching, and it's a strategic game about defending your castle against enemies like goblins, dragons, mages, and horrific entities. The twist of this game that separates it from the gaming market is that the supplies, troops, productions, everything, is dependent on the king - you - watching them. The king's gaze is your gaze, and in a setting of about twenty square tiles, you can only look at three at a time. That is, until you have enough gold or wheat or clay that you can upgrade your gaze. The production of your troops is dependent on your gaze, and the elimination of your enemies is dependent on the troops, and the troops are dependent on the production of basic materials like wheat, wood, iron, gold, water, etc...Everything takes time to be made or harvested, from as little as five seconds to as much as much as twenty-five, and everything costs something, and you can only get what you want by putting your gaze on it. Kill enough enemies and you can get rewards that either upgrade your troops, production, or gaze.
Honestly, each round does take awhile. You're looking at sitting in one place for one, maybe two hours a round. But you hardly feel it. You get the feel-good dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, and endorphins hit from the short, small rewards and the longer, better rewards that you save up to get. You can choose your enemies and your rewards, and you can plan for the long-run and the short-run and feel proud when you've hit your goal. In the game, you can pass time as normal or speed it up in the intervals between enemy arrivals. Time in the real world passes by so quick that by the time you're done with one round, you're wondering when exactly the sun did go down.
So, would I recommend this game? Yes, yes I would. Has it been helpful to me? Let's see.
In my research for this blog post and from the past, the effects of video games on cognition has been mainly done on older adults, seniors and such. For good reason: In older age, they are at risk for developing cognitive diseases like Alzheimer's and their mental faculties can slip more easily. So if video games could replace or complement medication for these diseases, that would be great for hospitals and families. It would also give a good argument to let kids play more video games as well.
These studies were done in the early 2010's and onwards, with more meta-analyses being conducted in the 2020's. They showed that there was a benefit to cognitive speed, attention, and executive control, but with understandable limits. It depended on the game and its rewarding play mode. Games that rewarded your attention for a long amount of time could increase one's focusing skills, and games that rewarded quick processing speed could certainly exercise one's ability to process and act on information in a timely manner. And when additions are added to a game's plot, you have to practice adaptability to continue playing and being rewarded.
Take away the bells and whistles, and it's operant conditioning. It works on dogs, it works on goldfish, and it certainly works on humans. And if we're talking about operant conditioning, then in the end these improvements to cognitive skills will continue as long as they are rewarded. Just like training a dog, it's all based on time and reinforcement.
Not only that, but the practical applications of these cognitive improvements really are dependent on the game played. Processing speed 'muscle' exercised? Then yes, processing speed improved. But not general intelligence, or broad memory improvements. What's used is what's improved, and the rest stay the same.
So with a game that's all about strategy, I should be gaining some muscles on my core cognitive skills: short-term and long-term planning, decision-making, flexibility/adaptability, working memory, inhibitory control, attention, pattern recognition, and mental simulation.
For the record, mental stimulation is the part where you run scenarios in your head, the "what if" scenarios that for people with anxiety drives them crazy. This is the skill that gives you dreams or nightmares of tests, work, more gaming, real-life-stuff. This is the skill that runs in the background of your mind.
After playing the game for so long, these scenarios have popped up in my dreams and drifting thoughts that I have developed strategies and won games through the mental evaluation of plans and predicting outcomes. It's pretty dang great what rumination can do on the side of good.
Nevermind the fact that I have OCD, so my rumination is usually working with the dark forces of evil.
Practicing all these skills, gaining all the rewards I've won and obtained, definitely increases my sense of pride and confidence and fun. It's definitely like injecting dopamine and all those happy fun chemicals into my bloodstream, and when it's all over I wish for another hit so I don't feel the chemical fall.
But I still do my house chores. I still feed the cat and myself. I still do my job and teach kids. So it's not a bad hobby or way to pass the time, right?
That's true, if I've got nothing else to do. But I want to write, and I want to crochet a dragon plushy, and I want to watch some shows, and I need to read a book from the kindle I borrowed from my friend to read that book. I also need to worry about other adult responsibilities, like health insurance and bills and credit card debt and friendships and relationships.
So can my strategic thinking muscles apply to real life? I'd like to think so. I cleaned the house early so I could relax earlier, I did the laundry so I'd feel less stressed out about my clean clothes situation when I go out later tonight. I cooked last night so that I had enough money saved for eating out tonight too. Now I'm wondering what I can do to maintain or strengthen relationships and how the heck to tackle health insurance when my psychiatrist won't take the insurance I'm thinking of getting on once I turn twenty-six?
If the game could increase my intelligence, that would be very helpful right about now.
One thing I do have to call attention to is the placebo effect, where a person thinks something is working for one reason - like taking medication - when it's entirely another reason - their brain thinks they took medication and acts like it did, but they actually took a sugar pill.
Accounting for the placebo effect is why there are many tests and trials and studies on the effects of video games on adult cognition. After all, given a game with so many bells and whistles, there's a lot of factors to take into account and assign blame. There are many reasons that these cognitive muscles could be improved, and it doesn't even have to just be from the game.
Maybe the adults are taking better medication. Maybe they had a happy thing happen to them before they played the game, or maybe they're thinking about something else while playing the game that also includes using those strategic skills. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
With this in mind, one could say the benefits to playing video games may be misattributed or overestimated. After all, you get the same thing playing football or board games (although with football you also might introduce traumatic brain injury). I'm not going to say you can't get the same benefits doing something else. But older adults that can't play these physical sports or workout and exercise their actual muscles could find a real benefit in playing video games that works out their mental faculties. Their bodies may be betraying them by aging and breaking down, but that doesn't mean their brains and minds have to.
When I played Apex Legends in high school and college, it wasn't so much strategic thinking that got rewarded. In a fast-paced first-person shooter game that's either team versus team or player versus player, the rewards went to those with better muscle memory, spatial memory, adaptability, processing, attention, and decision-making under pressure. And that's just on your own. Playing with others, you flex those social skills - cooperation and communication. You exercise inhibitory control, (try to exercise) emotional control, and hearing when you think someone called your name (like your parents or your partner).
I enjoyed these games for the first-person factor of it, feeling like I had these cool abilities and was a badass with a good kill-death ratio. My dad went into these kinds of games - his choice was Call of Duty - for I suppose that same reason. Does he get the cognitive benefits I do?
I'm not sure. But I also think he needs to take medication anyways, since my mental shite came from his genes for the most part. Emotional control is questionable, and I know blood pressure is a condition that older adults need to be aware of.
Maybe he should instead play The King is Watching too?
Disclaimer/Don't get me wrong: everything good and fun should be in moderation. Just like with painkillers, one can develop an addiction to anything that gives them dopamine or makes them feel good and let it control their life choices and future. I do not condone addiction.
Citations for the science (not in alphabetical order):
Anguera, J. A., et al. “Video Game Training Enhances Cognitive Control in Older Adults.” Nature, vol. 501, no. 7465, Springer Science and Business Media LLC, Sept. 2013, pp. 97–101, https://doi.org/10.1038/nature12486.
Zhang, Fan, and David Kaufman. “Physical and Cognitive Impacts of Digital Games on Older Adults.” Journal of Applied Gerontology, vol. 35, no. 11, SAGE Publications, July 2016, pp. 1189–210, https://doi.org/10.1177/0733464814566678.
Toril, Pilar, et al. “Video Game Training Enhances Cognition of Older Adults: A Meta-Analytic Study..” Psychology and Aging, vol. 29, no. 3, 2014, pp. 706–16, https://doi.org/10.1037/a0037507.
Powers, Kasey L., et al. “Effects of Video-Game Play on Information Processing: A Meta-Analytic Investigation.” Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, vol. 20, no. 6, Springer Science and Business Media LLC, Mar. 2013, pp. 1055–79, https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-013-0418-z.
Boot, Walter R., et al. “Do Action Video Games Improve Perception and Cognition?” Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 2, Frontiers Media SA, 2011, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00226.
Sima, Richard. “Video Games May Be a Surprisingly Good Way to Get a Cognitive Boost.” The Washington Post, 21 Dec. 2025, https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2025/12/21/video-games-brain-cognition-boost
