We now turn to the motivational, emotional, and social benefits of playing video games. It is important to highlight an across-the-board difference in the amount, breadth, and quality of research that can be found on these topics. Whereas cognitive mechanisms may be more easily isolated and tested, the motivational, emotional, and social effects of gaming are more complex and harder to disentangle. Thus, research programs in these latter areas are only now beginning to gather steam. As a result, our claims about these latter benefits are more speculative, but the nascent research suggests immense promise for both theory development and practice.