A human being has an inner and an outer brain. The inner brain is responsible with emotions and basic needs like hunger, thirst, sleep etc. The outer brain is the part that is responsible with taking decisions.
The outer brain can control the inner brain. For example, if your leg hurts, you can try to ignore the pain by using the outer brain while your inner brain is saying that you should suffer because your leg hurts.
The connection between what I said above and Hearthstone is that Heahtstone is only using the outer brain. The game is all about decisions and it’s highly stimulating the outer brain, exactly the part of the brain that makes us smart.
How is this different than playing other video games or doing activities that are about decision making?
Hearthstone is all about decisions, not emotions at all. If you lose, it’s because you made a mistake or more (you took a bad decision). Or obviously, you had bad luck with cards.
However, you can still lose without doing a single mistake. That’s the main purpose of the game. It’s educating your outer brain to play without mistakes.
And if you play Hearthstone and you try to play without mistakes, that thing will go beyond the game, even IRL (in real life).
You are basically educating your outer brain to take the best decisions and dominate the inner brain that is all about emotions. And that makes you smarter.
What is you opinion?