Today’s Solutions: December 14, 2025

While video games are mainly a source of entertainment, new research suggests some games can also get your creative juices flowing. In a recent study, researchers from Iowa State University found that video games such as Minecraft may help increase creativity when players are given the freedom to play as they want, with no instruction.

The new study looked at 352 students at the university who were randomly assigned to four groups. Two of the groups were assigned to play Minecraft, a virtual Lego-like game where you can build anything you can imagine. But while one of the groups was asked to play as they wished for 40 minutes, the other group received the instruction to play as creatively as possible. A third group was asked to play a racing car video game, which doesn’t allow players to be as creative as Minecraft, while participants in the fourth group were asked to passively watch a television show.

After 40 minutes of play or watching TV, the participants completed several creativity tasks, one of which involved drawing a creature from another planet. More human-like creatures scored low for creativity and those less human-like scored high.

The findings showed that the participants who were randomly assigned to play Minecraft without any instruction received significantly higher scores on the creativity task compared to participants in the other groups. Whether this actually means playing Minecraft will make you more creative is still debatable, but it’s definitely something to keep in mind.

Solutions News Source Print this article
More of Today's Solutions

Scientists build first fully human bone marrow model to revolutionize blood d...

BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM In a transformative leap for regenerative medicine, scientists have developed the first entirely human-engineered bone marrow system. This ...

Read More

7 cold and flu season mistakes doctors want you to quit making

BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM You’ve heard the warnings: cold and flu season is no joke. But despite our best intentions (and fully ...

Read More

Three ways we can repurpose closed department stores

40 percent of US department stores have closed their doors in the past five years, but the question remains: what do we do with ...

Read More

Hubble takes beautiful image of galaxies “dancing”

The Hubble Space Telescope ventured into space over three decades ago in 1990, and has observed around 50,000 celestial bodies to date. During this ...

Read More