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Correlations Between Video Games And Academic Achievement?
mozzer asks: "I'm doing an independent study course in university, and I'm writing an article on video games and academics - basically seeing if there's a correlation between the two. My prof suggested I take a sample of upper year, business strategy students, and see how well they fair at a strategy game (like Starcraft) and then compare how well they do in the game, to how well they did in the class. The question I'd like to ask is: What game do you think would be good to use? I'm afraid people might already know how to play Starcraft, which will skew the results (considering it has a fairly steep learning curve for new players). Or if there are any other ways we could test this sort of thing?"
Might want to try something with a faster learning curve, and maybe something a little bit more general. Simcity maybe? Tetris would be a great example I think, but you might have problems finding people who've never played it before.
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If my second year at university is anything to go by, there will be a strong negative correlation. The longer we all spent on networked computer games, the less time we were working, and the worse grades we got.
"moo" - cow 3, 1906
-Crypthanatopsis
-Crypthanatopsis
I highly recommend freeciv for this one. It's got all the strategic elements of starcraft (and then some) and it will allow more actual planning rather than quick reflexes as starcraft requires. There are more dimensions to measure too, such as what successful academics spend their time researching, building, or planning in the game(i.e. what they value in the mock civilization could reflect what they value in the real civilizaion.) Plus, as the name says, the game's free :-)
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
A) do those who do well at the game have good grades?
B) Do those who do well at the game have poor grades?
C) Does doing poorly at the game indiacte a lack of interest in the game versus the course?
D) Do those who do well in class do poorly at the game?
E) Does the game become so addicting that the students stop going to class and justifiy it as 'research time' (gaming time) consequently trashing thier grades altogether?
I am not sure what this guy is really asking. I think mixing games into class is a double edged sword. The games themselves may have pertinent value to the syllabus of the course but it is not hard to get really addicted to one of these games and end up consequently destroying a full schedule of classes.
Prospecting Stinks. Stop Wasting Time on Cold Calling.
I'm working on a games review site - Meltdown Gaming - (yes, that was a plug), and of the games we've been reviewing, I'd think something more along the lines of Airport Tycoon or maybe Stardock's The Corporate Machine excellent business sim would be more along the lines to judge dollars and sense.
:)
Or, just put them out on the streets, with a copy of Dope Wars. (for Win95, now! whoo!)
For even more fun, pit the CS students against the business majors - have one semester's class project be to write a business sim the next semester's class has to successfully complette in order to pass... *evil grin*
Or even better - have them attempt to start thier own successful dotcom...or is that already an accepted practice?
Yert
Truck driver, plumber, Linux systems engineer.
Also, how are you going to get serious students to waste time learning a difficult game (you can't eliminate them without skewing the data)? I'm not familiar with the game but a "fairly steep learning curve" doesn't sound promising, and if they just spend a small amount of time learning the basics, it doesn't necessarily indicate how well they would do as experienced players.
Finally, they may have little interest in the game to begin with, which can seriously impact how well they do, regardless of their inherent ability to do well at it.
Overall, you have a tough job ahead, if you want results that have any real meaning.
Forgot, The Incredible Machine might be a decent test of intellectual abilities. Plus it's not as well-known as Tetris so you might have a large pool of people who've never played it.
Of course, for pure problem-solving, there's always Infocom...
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No, no, have them play Starcraft. Have them play it every day for two straight days, with only a four-hour break for sleep. Then, on the day of their final, have them play Starcraft instead of showing up.
That's what I did, and it had a *very* definite corellative effect on my grades.
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
Aren't most professional business people strategists when it comes right down to it? Should I buy this stock or sell this one? How should I promote this product? Will it appeal to my target consumer group? Oh, and isn't day to day business a bit like a war simulation? Take out your opponents before they can take you out >;) Imho, any strategy game will do as long as it requires some foresight. ~Dyrandia
My best guess is that video games do not significantly improve most college students' grades. Let's take a sample question from a hypothetical test:
(20 points) Cite evidence that ancient Egyptian society was composed of Africans rather than Caucasians, and explain the impact of this anthropological theory.
Now, let's do a sample experiment. Play Starcraft for three hours. Then, write an essay on the aforementioned question. See how you do.
Perhaps, though, you want to know whether studying for school improves one's ability to play video games.
Let's do another sample experiment. Play ten games of Pac Man. Then, spend three hours studying ancient Egyptian culture. When you're finished, play another game of Pac Man and see if your score is any higher.
I haven't done these experiments, but my hypothesis is that the two are probably so closely linked that every second you spend thinking about whether the Sphinx is a black man will raise your score at least 20,000 points.
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
It's all about interactions with fellow human beings. The hardest bit about business.
Ok, this is a true story and its kind of hard to believe.
;-)
I am an expert Super Smash Brothers player and I'm friends with people who all take the game VERY seriously. Anyway, we play every friday at one of the dorms at the university I attend.
I found that the more I attended these sessions which could last up to 5-6 hours at a time the better I did in my classes. I don't try at school normally...I enjoy school just grades aren't my thing I guess; but when I would play this game more I would do really well. My Bs and Cs would become As and A-s with no real additional effort involved. Weird, huh?
I would tell people about this and no one would believe me save one who offered me some advice: if your grades are better the more you play that game, you should just play it constantly...like 16 hours a day
I'm not sure if its really related to this whole thing but I think its a cute story anyway.
Best wishes,
Jon
Someone who would more or less be more likely to get better grades in school, probably wouldn't be playing many video games. Har har.
that's besides the point. I found a good game of strategy to play is Q2: CTF. Not only does it test your reflexes, but there are people that are good. There is strategy with railing people at just the right moment. You are constantly thinking as quick as possible, paying absolute attention to everything going on around you. and you are killing people at the same time. Stupid people don't excel in this game. I found quite a few worthy challengers. I am glad there's at least one older game still kept alive.
Oh yeah, I play Q2 constantly, and i'm making about a 3.8 GPA.
Don't forget Heroes of Might and Magic 2, 3 or 4
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
Your students will really have something to chew on there. The presentation and interface is really simple, but the economic, diplomatic, strategic and even religious models are extremely complex. A knowledge of economics is necessary, and so is a grasp of history. Computer Games Online gave it 4.5 stars and had this to say: "Europa Universalis plays simultaneously at many different levels and constantly demands a great deal of situational awareness. It's more Imperialism than Civilization, though more complex than either. The economic system is the heart of the game. It's robust enough to accurately model development from the late Renaissance all the way through Mercantilism to early Colonialism. The game nimbly keeps track of a staggering amount of minutiae such as the inflationary effects of excess liquid cash, intergovernmental loans, trade policies, and a comprehensive list of commodities. While this sort of micormanagerial detail will usually fall below your radar in terms of management, it can have a serious impact on your foreign policy and statecraft. You will not feel bogged by these details, however-they are simply available for consideration whenever needed. "
Strategy Gaming said: "So what we are left with is a massively complicated game interweaving elements of religions, politics, colonialism, conquest, technology, and militarism taking place on a multifaceted map with layers of trade relationships, alliances and political relationships, while the map is constantly being expanded through exploration - in short, there's literally something for everyone. Wars, as is the historical fact, should typically be the last resort as their cost and consequence make the gains rarely equal the expenditure. A good player will be able to keep in mind the different venues of competition, and a weather-eye on their predicted opponents in each of these areas. Keeping ahead in this game is an extraordinary challenge, and I found myself constantly pausing the game to issue orders. The only thing I haven't been able to test in this beta is the multiplayer, but the developers have made it clear that it's been kept in mind. They are clearly aware that no matter how good the AI is - and it is, believe me (I confess I've actually asked one of the programmers if anyone has won the darn thing...and this is in beta) - this game will shine most brightly with humans running each of the player states."
And pc.ign.com: "I'm glad to see that the religious aspects of the game are equally important. Each nation has a particular religious identity (various types of Christians, Muslims, Sunni, Shia, etc.) and that identity influences the way other nations treat you. During the game, a few historical events will shift the religious balance to one side or the other. After the Reformation, for instance, Catholic countries can convert to Counter Reformation Catholicism. If a Counter Reformed Catholic nation defeats either a Protestant or Reformist nation, the Counter Reformation Catholic country can force the defeated nation to adopt Counter Reformation Catholicism as part of the peace settlement. And this is just one small example of the depth of the religious model in the game."
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Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
okay, the main question in this article seems to be asking for suggestions on what game, or even sort of game, to use. So a bit of analysis first...
:)
What we seem to want to find out is whether an aptitude at academia equates to skill at gaming, or if the inverse is true.
The game required will need to be quick to pick up, but also quite challenging early on. For non-(regular) game players, I'd imagine this translates to something not too esoteric, with a simple interface.
What sort of game you choose depends really on what aptitude you're looking for. Puzzle/problem solving? Hand-eye coordination and reflexes? Adaptability to a new environment?
If you want to go for something puzzle-like, which would supposedly show an aptitude for problem solving, organisation, and forward-thinking, i'd recommend something tetris-y. try to choose one they probably haven't played before, what about Bejeweled?
For something more action-packed, it's got to be a first person shooter. This is both immersive and fast-paced. So Quake, or something similar - don't make it too complex with tons of weapons, environmental issues etc (eg, Unreal). If you're looking primarily for results on how people adapt to this sort of game quickly, i'd suggest just throwing everyone in a deathmatch and see how they perform. You could then correlate academic proficiency with their kill rate.
Hey, if only i'd been ble to use a "frags per minute" score instead of something like a GPA...
Games like simcity, starcraft, etc, have more complicated interfaces and more things to learn before you can properly play - to non-gamers this may be daunting and frustrating, so unless you're looking at how well they can *understand* games, as opposed to how well they can *play* them, i'd recommend steering clear of them. They also have a much longer learning curve, and can be influenced more by previous experience.
Best of luck, this sounds like a great project, and please let us know what the results are!
/Fross
Qix came out as an arcade in, err, 1982? Something like that. It got ported to practically every system in the 80s and several in the 90s as well. Most of the followups just added extra features, but didn't add much to the gameplay.
:>
It is of course available on MAME, so that may be an option. And yes, it is a very good choice for this sort of thing - quick and easy to understand, but tests many areas of gaming, with a long skill curve
/Fross
i se alot of psots about the corlletation of plaeing a lot of videyo gamze and doing poorly in youer studies.
as an englash major, i play alot of videyo gamze and i donot theenk they have hurt my studees one bit. as a mattar of fact, i theenk i have a signigifant advantege ovar my peers, beeng that i haev larned how to commnucitate in the infarmashun age (i no computars are the next big thing).
har har all of yuo hoo skoff at me. i will shooot yuo wiht a rale gun.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
It seems there is no english translation, hence I would recommend all german speaking slashdot readers to get it; its written for a more general audience, not only psychologists, and it can help you to identify personal problem solving and project managment difficulties.
Obviousman is obviously not obvious enough
It wasn't clear to me whether this independent study is in the realm of psych, sociology, anthro (ack) or otherwhat -- But if you're trying to get really specific data on the correlation of academic aptitude to gameplaying aptitude, you'll be running into the intelligence / performance / motivation problem, which could really obfuscate your data. That is, namely, the some people are good at things either because they're intelligent or they're motivated (or both). There are competitive people who will try to win everything the walk into, whether they're smart or not, and other people who are not motivated, at leats in every competitive environment, smart or not. Let's not even start on the definition of intelligence! I think you might run into the problem that the people who are motivated to win at starcraft or freeciv may not be the people who are motivated to do well in school. Or rather, that this correlation may not match up at all with aptitude. I apologize for the pessimistic-ness of my message. I guess that if this is in psychology, I'd try to set it up so that you can weed motivation from aptitude somewhat, like asking the testees to perform both academic and vidgame excercises for similar rewards. If you're in more of the anthro/soc rut, you might want to consider just interviewing people: equal numbers of B-school (wait -- oh, btw, B-school students aren't actually paradigms of academic excellence. I'd go law or med school, pre-med... somesuch)... um, equal numbers of students who play games and don't (get hours they spend on games, schoolwork, etc, and grade-averages) and just compare them. That's also much simpler. For anyone who's interested -- this is just one of the reasons why IQ scores don't mean feces. I wish I had the bibliography in front of me -- you'd be astounded at how exactly utterly nil the value of IQ scores are. (Sorry MENSA.) ~B
While a steep learning curve can be a bad thing, I think that in this case you could use it to your advantage.
You could use a complex game, like StarCraft, but less well known. I believe FreeCiv was mentioned, but I don't know enough about it to be able to assess its suitability. Anyway, the main requirements of the game are that it should be complex, not too well known, and customisable Deep strategy would be desirable, but not essential. Anyway, the test would involve introducing the test subjects to the game, and giving them a week (or so) to familiarise themselves with the controls.
At the end of that week, you then throw them all in at the deep end (if it's a multiplayer game, then ideally against each other) on a new, custom map (or equivalent, if the game isn't map-based) that you can guarantee that none of the test subjects will have seen before.
How well each person does will be a measure of several things:
As far as I know, a game like StarCraft could fulfill this, as the week's learning time would even out the disparity between those familiar with the game, and those totally new to it. Maybe a week wouldn't be long enough, but that's the general idea.
HTH
Reality is the ultimate Rorschach.
Why only one game?
You could choose a selection of different genres of game, then you could check for correlation between genres of game. I suggest you try a selection of the following:
This would make it easy to bulk out your essay if you found you didn't have much to say. You could also, for instance, have them play Counterstrike. You could have a team of non-academics versus a team of academics. Better still, you could have two groups, one where all the academics' computers were in the same room (so they can communicate easily) and the non-academics are divided up, and the other group doing this in reverse, so you can see if academics communicate more effectively and other such things.
Or maybe I have no idea what you want.
Michael
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
one way or the other, what will it really mean? Having majored in finance and having played a few of these types of games it's pretty clear that there is little in the curriculum in most business courses that would apply to these computer strategy games. For one, a large part of running a business comes down to operational skills (i.e., the day to day elements of making a product and/or providing a service with the zillion problems that ALWAYS pop up), which is well outside of the scope of most of what is taught. I also don't think games really test these kinds of skills. For one, they're largely tactical, in my opinion, despite their title. Secondly, most of the rules behind these games can be reduced to simple algorithms. Once you figure out the algorithms approximately, you're set. So much of the game is wrapped up in figuring those out. The only way I can see a business degree possibly helping much is in knowing some of the fundamental concepts behind those algorithms. However, those are so fundamental in my opinion as to be taught in introductory level courses, many of which many people already know.
I think that might take quite a bit of business student personhours to do well.
In order for the results to be somewhat meaningful you will probably want to have plenty of business students. I would think at least 80.
The students need to play multiple games too so that one fuckup doesn't doesn't infludence.
Also, it might be better to have two different video games, if you can use the business students that long. That will help cut down on the quirks that people may have and the strategy defiencies of a single video game.
For the selection of the game, if students are unaware that they are going to be playing a video game you could ask them first to write down all the strategy video games they have played and eliminate the ones that people have played. If someone has already played the particular video game it will really throw off the results so obcsure games may be better. If the business students are not international in background foreign games may be a source.
This sounds like an interesting project for an independent study. I would suggest talking with a couple professors in sociology for some tips on running this experiment and also designing questionares if necessary.
Without a doubt, this has to be one of the best "buiness strategy" games I've ever played. Oh, and it's fun too. :)
RFC2119
X-Com is a good turn-based strategy game, it wasn't too popular when it came out (c. 1994?) but it was _very good_. You had to direct the actions of a team of scientists, police, firemen, and military personell to contain and cover up an alien invasion...
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Play Six Pack Man. I
Cheers,
Lars
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Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
there's plenty of strategical thinking in that game
Only for newbies. Once you're good at it (> 20 hours of play), Tetris does not involve all that much strategy. Eventually, placing the next tetramino becomes almost a reflex action. Some newer versions of Tetris try to break this up by adding bonuses for forming 4x4 squares (The New Tetris), chain reactions (Tetanus, Quadra, The Next Tetris), "magic" items (TetriNET; DuelTris for Apple IIGS; Tetris Jr.), or distracting display effects (TOD; Tetripz).
Like Tetris? Like drugs? Ever try combining them?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Way too many people know Starcraft, as the asker points out. There are thousands of almost completely unknown games out these. For every hit game, at least 10 flops are released. Use some of those to at least get the previous experience bias out.
If you want to run an experiment, you don't want something with *more* dimensions! You want something with one, or two, at most!
Maybe something like Tetris, which has two dimensions; critical thinking, and reflexes.
Or something like Solitaire, which involves planning and resource management.
Try simple games, like Pacman, etc.
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
Even with smilies, this is my problem with the entire idea. Life is not a zero sum game, but almost all "strategy" games are. You want to be the last one standing. beat all opponents. Drive everyone out of a living, or possibly out of existance. These are not (IMHO) useful attitudes to take into the real world in almost any career. A "prisoner's dillema" type structure I think would be better correlated with useful management skills.
Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
If part of your class invovles doing scientific studies then your professor (if he knwos) sahould be teachign you how to do scientific studies.
This apriori poll has no scientific controls. Its results are thus meaningless.
That said, if it gets you a grade, then go for it.
So here is a suggestion for a scientific way to do your study.
(1) Recruit a significantly large body of students with an equal exposure to both video games and the business strategies you want to test comprehension of. The simplest solution is no exposure to either.
(2) Give them all a quiz on the business strategies in question.
(3) Devide them into two groups with abotu the same average original scroes. Have one group play StarCraft for, say, 2 horus a day for a week.
(4) Give a new test to all of them. Look for a significant improvement in the relative score of the group that played vs. the group that didnt.
Whatever you do PLEASE don't do a *bad* study and write an article about it. The world doesn't need one more bad, boiased peice of psuedo-science.
Look at the differenes, in any,
Any FPS is completely out, because:
- Anyone who's ever played ANY FPS game will have an advantage simply because they'll know how to move, shoot, and look around.
- Newbies to FPS games tend to sit still and operate like a rotating turret until they move to a new spot or get spawnkilled.
- FPS games also cater to certain types of personalities. Early performance at an FPS game will be much more heavily influenced by one's personality profile than one's inteligence.
- The test here is induvidual strategic coordination. In the games you mentioned, most of the strategy is executed by team coordination.
- The offensive strategy of most begining players is the same one they use on their desktop. Point and Click. Their defensive strategies usually involve hiding. Regardless of strategic ability, most beginners will start out just like this with very little deviation.
I'm thinking that a game like Populous: New Begining might work, but it's 3D engine might complicate things too much.Everybody knows that ancient Egyptians were Caucasians, in fact I remember quite distinctively from my history lessons that Cleopatra had blue eyes and was married to Richard Burton.
X-com: Ufo Defense.
You have to manage resources, conduct reseach, hire and trin people, outfit your squads to maximum effect and have a good grasp of tactics.
The combat portion of the game is turn based so 'twitch' gamers won't have an edge and the time spent out of combat can be slowed down to give yourself time to think.
I read somewhere that the USAF used this game as a test also.
Later,
ErikZ
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Instead of finding students and then seeing if they play games well, what about finding gamers, and seeing what their grades are? Wouldn't that be easier, than trying to introduce people to a game they may not have played before in their life?
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?