Slashdot Mirror
Study: Playing Computer Games Makes Kids Smarter
Nightspore writes: "The Sunday Times is running this article on the results of a study by the Economic and Social research Council (ESRC). The study found that, 'people who play games regularly seem to develop a mental state that we have seen before only in serious athletes or professionals such as astronauts, whose life depends on concentration and co-ordination ... Their minds and bodies work together much better than those of most other people ... They had more friends, were better adjusted and tended to read more.'" Hey it's just a study, but it's amusing.
I think there's some confusion about cause and effect here. It's probably much more likely that less sociable people are gravitated towards online gaming. I myself have never been very social and not the best communication skills, but that was well before quake. Of course, once I started college and met a bunch of Quake addicts in person, my social life skyrocketted.
"Maybe the fact that i've been been in a gifted program for education since third grade says something"
Well LA DEE FRICKIN' DA mistar smartie pants! You think you're the only one? I bet if we took a poll on /., the minority group would be the ones that ARE NOT (or WERE NOT in most cases) in a gifted program!
I think he meant he was in a "special" program.
Yours may be the dorkiest comment I've ever read. Kudos!
There's a correlation between the sales of ice cream and violent crimes. Does this mean ice cream causes violent crimes? No. It just means when it's hot outside, there are more edgy people and more people buying ice cream.
Just because people who play video games more tend to have more friends, are better adjusted and tend to read more, is no arguement for game playing increses studiousness and better socially fitted. In fact, it might quite possibly be the opposite. People can come up with all the hypotheses they want, but it's very hard to make a convincing argument.
please drink a large amount of vodka to wash down a bottle of sleeping pills. you aren't tooting your own horn by listing your accomplishments, you are an asshole who wants to let someone know that you percieve yourself as *greater* than they are. if you were really intelligent you would get a laugh from such lame posts and move on without taking the time to discredit someone else.
"Me? Slightly drunk and with hardly a wink slept all night from the gaming the night before, I managed to walk away with a 1420 or so. eh? eh? " sound like another lame college kid subtly bragging about being a nerd who drinks... bah...
"Bryce did her research by visiting computer gamers, often during regional or national competitions around Britain"
So the majority of the surveys were taken at lan gaming competitions by competitive players. Of course "cyberathletes" like Thresh who compete at these events will have attributes in common with sportsmen, but most gamers aren't like that.
Taking the data from such a limited population makes the results unrepresentative.
"certain situations, and also insinuates that i have poor verbal skills?"
/., the minority group would be the ones that ARE NOT (or WERE NOT in most cases) in a gifted program!
/. score above as well...please back up your claims with numbers. Me? Slightly drunk and with hardly a wink slept all night from the gaming the night before, I managed to walk away with a 1420 or so. eh? eh? Oh yeah, being fourteen means SQUAT, everyone has had the chance to learn everything they needed to by then to ace those SAT's.
hmm...since when did "I" officially become lower-case?
"Here are the reasons these things dont apply"
'dont' what word is that again? Oh wait, that's right, it's a CONTRACTION! You're (yes, it IS the correct You Are you're) missing an apostrophe!
"Its not about them "just not understanding""
Hmmm you mean they don't understand how l33tx0r c0unt3rs7r1|3 is? Oh yeah, and if you DO play counterstrike you should be shot, then hung...and maybe quartered too!
"Maybe the fact that i've been been in a gifted program for education since third grade says something"
Well LA DEE FRICKIN' DA mistar smartie pants! You think you're the only one? I bet if we took a poll on
"Or how about this: I've been given numerous state and county awards. "
hahahahahaha not I'd be careful...not exactly a compliment considering how easy such awards are to get 'mano.
"I have also taken the college SAT's and have scored higher than the average college bound senior (and im fourteen by the way)"
ummm yeah, whoooeeee it seems like the average 'college bound senior' (gee, umm...I wonder where you got that quote from??) isn't so smart really...I mean, really! That could mean you got a score of 1005 or so (bah, close enough for government work!)...again, most people on
"Poor verbal skills? hah. Games might not be the best way to learn english, but from my experience they dont really detract. Of course there are allways exceptions, after all i cant say that Doom really taught me anything except having a blast on the computer. Ive played untold hours of games, some for more than 3 days or more total (that happens when you try to completely beat certain Role Playing Games). But i can definitely speak to someone both precisely and eloquently."
You know, grandiloquence is more than the just using big long words...as a good friend says, 'what's the use of responding with a paragraph when a sentence will do?' Using big words usually just makes you look stupid in most casual social situations...and no, pretending to be a shakespearian (hmmm close enough) character with the 'thou's and 'thee's and the nose thumbing and the 'wherefore's and all that jazz doesn't make you seem smart either.
"Parents are allways telling kids to take responsibility for their actions, lately, all i have seen from parents is pointing blame, be it at the Media, at games at whatever. How about picking up a book and reading it with your kids, and i mean often too, not once a year. Talk to them, and maybe then they wont be "less than ready to live up to their full potential"."
DUH TAKE RESPONSIBILITY...why are you blaming it on your parents?! Did I wish I had? hell yeah, even though I did a lot (and unlike you I will not toot my own horn by listing my accomplishments...!!) But after careful and copious thought, I have decided that the only one to blame for anything in my life is me. In fact, I have and always have taken a laissez-faire, c'est la vie attitude towards life, and only fairly recently realized that...in the wonderful words of Tom Lehrer (the mathematician/entertainer that EVERYONE should know!)..."Life is like a sewer, what you get out of it depends on what you put into it".
As for myself? I will continue playing games, but along the way I will continue to do interesting stuff as well and if life takes a turn for the worse, I'll just roll with it and see if I can't find some silver linings in the clouds.
PS
So perhaps gettings smarter makes people more violent.
I certainly feel more inclined to kill people the more I learn about them.
Note to Nintendo - I will purchase a Game Cube as soon as Mario Kart is released for it, and not a moment sooner. Please make it kick ass.
Thanks,
Don Negro
Don Negro
Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall
all I have to say to that is.... "HEAD SHOT" and... "M-M-M-M-M-M-Monster KILLL"
You're talking about adult gamers who play online -- while the study here was of normal kids playing the whole spectrum of games.
Most games, still, are not this kind of online environment -- for one thing, just about every console game isn't an online game, and often console games are multiplayer.
I would definitely agree that becoming obsessive about online games might reduce your ability to deal with the rest of the world. It's the same as becoming addicted to any online environment; are obsessive online gamers any different than obsessive IRC addicts or IM-heads?
None of this applies to a bunch of kids clustered in front of the Playstation, though.
It seems it never fails, the post that corrects someone else always contains a mistake of its own.
I'm sure I'll see mine about .01 second after clicking "Submit".
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Perhaps. I'm only an expert on the parts of language on which I'm an expert. And self-appointed at that.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
LOL
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Bryce did her research by visiting computer gamers, often during regional or national competitions around Britain
The population of interest is computer gamers but the sample is taken from those gamers who go to competitions. Therefore the sample is not random and one ought not make conclusions about all gamers based on gamers who go to competitions.
A recent study by the Home Office indicated that those who regularly played computer games when young were more likely to go to university and get a better-than-average job
Someone already mentioned correlation != causation, but I'll elaborate. Television sets are much cheaper than computers and internet access; also, university attendance is very much correlated to income. I don't have survey data to back this up, but it seems that income ought to have been considered to make sure that it's not a lurking variable. (affects both variables but is unseen)
</soapbox>
hmm.. i can see how this would work based on the games from the mid-eighties (pacman...
Yeah, if video games really affect kids can you imagine the result of Pacman. We'd all be hanging out in dark places, eating pills, and listening to electronic music... =P
anyone tried using smileys in RL ;)
Yea, I just smile.
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Delphis
Delphis
Plenty of people see a correlation between video games and violence and draw the conclusion that video games cause violence, so this isn't any worse.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Actually, more people that have used computers are alive than dead, so you have no proof that all computer users will die!!
If you're referring to the situation: start of round, move, attack, end of round... keep in mind the rules are an approximation of what happens, as much as the q3a field is divided up into locations of finite accuracy (ints), where in life location is a vector of floats of infinite accuracy...
My interpretation of the event you described would be "chao-baz continues his lightning-like movement across the room, striking an opponent who saw him coming and has begun to..." and continue with the enemy's action... the difference between that and a charge (moves half distance before and after the attack) would be "chao races across the room striking his opponent, who attempts to..." enemy's attack of opportunity "before chao lunges out of range". The difference added with tumbing is that the enemy has no chance to react.
Hey, what about D&D? That helped me get a head start on my math way back when. I hated to add and multiply. D&D game mechanics gave me a better head for numbers.
The only thing video games did was drive my ambition to hack warez that I downloaded and squeeze every last bit of juice out of that crappy old OS (DOS).
Just because factor A and factor B are both present in something, it does not mean factor B was caused by factor A, or vice versa. They could both be merely caused by a third, unseen factor. Yeah, that's a bit like saying 99% of criminals eat sliced bread, therefore eating sliced bread incites people to commit crimes. :P
My journal has hot
Bullets do.
:)
(That's a link for all of us old-timers out there
deus does not exist but if he does
Playing video games might make them smarter but it also makes them KILLERS! What price do we have to pay to have smarter kids? WHAT PRICE?!
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
I think back to the days when Mortal Kombat (as the prime example) was being fiercely attacked by parents afraid of the hordes of violent predators video games were making of their children. Funny thing is that obviously none of them evert tried playing these games (or at least not long enough to do well and understand it), and they were all very stupid people with wild imaginations.
I can't help but think of a parallel between these overly concerned parents and the type of people that watch a LOT of tv.
Do you ever watch the evening news? Try holding a straight face when there's LIVE BREAKING news outside the bookstore about a woman that might be missing for a couple days. Everything the talking heads say must be said with a most serious attitude. The news anchor doesn't have time to tell if the story has any truth to it.
It's a lot more fun to watch stoned. You can at least laugh at it.
We all know it though.
A specific real-world example (my own experience):
I played, and I still do, a *lot* of Civilization as a young lad. I later on read the works of Niccolo Machiavelli (The Prince, The Discourses).
The truly scary thing is that I kept thinking of Civilization the entire time and the information made a lot more sense to me after playing all of those hours. (my conservative estimate: 3 or 4 months worth, but I hauled that number out of my ass)
I had a better understanding of his works simply because of my experience in that game and what's more, my strategies in said game have changed, so that I am a much better player because of it.
Of course, reading all of that has ruined me in that I now tend to write really long sentences, though I haven't yet achieved the one feat that I have only seen from Machiavelli and Dave Barry, which is, of course, the 1.5 page sentence, in which the author creates an extraordinarily long sentence, containing much information, all the while being grammatically correct, and conveying one basic idea in a surprisingly clear manner, such that the reader, after having read it, actually goes back to see where said sentence began, and reads it again, just to make sure that the sentence is, indeed, that long.
Whatever, it has been my own anecdotal evidence (sic, I'm trying to say, "my own observations are that") computer game playing, while improving hand-eye coordination and strategic thinking, (does) limit normal social interaction.
Modern computer games train gamers to work withing the systems of chat room, message boards, and other onliine forms of communication. (however,) in a classical social situation (dinner party, traditional work meeting, academic classroom, etc,) the result that I have noticed is that the gamer is:
I am concerned that we are developing a culture, that's already overrun the walls of the petri dish that is the 'Net, of people capable of making their own assessment of self-righteous high-brow palaver that is really merely another attempt to build a wall around the kid protecting him from new ideas.
This is just my agenda. This is just based on anecdotal evidence. So it must be true, right?
mefus
--
um, er... eh -- *click*
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
Heh, once I start a character in Angband I can't rest until he's won or bought the farm.
:)
If I have red eyes, you know I've succumbed.
Er... I'm working a hobbit down the levels, right now.
I'd be less embarrassed if I wasn't too old for this.
mefus
--
um, er... eh -- *click*
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
Huh, I thought Heidegger was The One.
mefus
--
um, er... eh -- *click*
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
Johnny Haquer gestures fluidly.
The earth elemental hits you. (more...)
The earth elemental hits you. (more...)
The earth elemental hits you.
you die.
mefus
--
um, er... eh -- *click*
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
I love you. Do you have a twin sister?
--
If a tree falls on an anonymous coward yelling 'first post' in the forest, does anybody hear?
A lot of that may depend on the game. I know Frogger makes me feel dumber than a sack full of hammers, while dopewars and nethack tend to give me concentration headaches.
Dopewars especially makes for a fine memory/gambling/perceived violence buzz.
After all those hours spent sitting on my ass playing games, any suggestion that it was a good use of my time will be warmly welcomed.
All I needed to know about sex I learned from Leisure Suit Larry. Who says games aren't educational?
That's right, always use a condom. =)
"There is a diminishing return on caution."
In other news... looking at porn helps relationships, because it helps with hand/umm... coordination, and gets people more in tune with their bodies.
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I think the unwillingness to communicate is not because they feel that other people just do not understand. It is more because other people just aren't intelligent enough
I think I am a fairly loud person, but I find myself suddenly quiet in some social settings where I feel that the 'audience does not measure up!'
Live today. Tomorrow will cost a lot more!
For those of you who don't listen to BBC Radio, it's a comedy programme billed as 'the antidote to panel games'. Amongst other amusements (most notably, the seminal game 'Mornington Crescent'), it has a round where the four panellists make up a sentence between them, adding one word each in turn, with the aim being to avoid completing the sentence. Admittedly, it makes for far less grammatical and logical sentences than those of the authors mentioned, but it's a whole lot more fun :)
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
hand/eye != foot/eye
:)
you may be able to move your hands well, but that doesn't mean you can kick
i know i have good hand/eye coordination, but my arm/eye coordination sucks
Need a Catering Connection
I play cut-throat like that in clan matches or in serious honor duels. But in regular deathmatch play I'm usually honing one particular skill, like Rocket Dodging, or Sniping, or some other thing I think I need to be a little better at. So I usually will spend a game or two sucking while I use only one technique, or run around in the middle of fire fights trying to predict rocket fire. Then, just to teach the other players a lesson I'll win by a hefty margin.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
I 've hit the Zone in Q3:A... That place where everything is reflex, where no one on the map can even touch you. You win games by 30 or 40 frags over the second place person and barely get touched. You breeze through crowds of enemies leaving only a fine mist of blood in your wake... Then 3 hours later you finally snap out of it drenched in sweat, heart pounding, on a massive adrenaline high. It's just like running a marathon or competing in an all day martial arts tournament. It's great!
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Juggling improves hand-eye coordination too. Try to launch 3 objects (2 in one hand, one in the other) into the air and catch them 20 times w/o dropping them. My 5th grade teacher would give 6 A's to anybody in his class that could do that. (That was about 1994-5, and my best is 428 tosses).
If I'm not mistaken, you just used all of those terms you claim to never use -- 'u or ur, or lol' that is. youer? Thats kinda 'leet :)
Rod Taylor
haha... Every played a lan party with some real money riding on it? Believe me, theres no social interacting beforehand. Everyones in a state of parallysis as they worship their deity, relax their brain and do finger stretches and pushups. Afterwards -- once the gloating winner is gone with all the money -- the real interacting occurs. Come to think of it, it's almost like poker night.
Rod Taylor
>>Well, I'm not a "leading professional" of the type the article refers to (being a sysadmin is RARELY life-threatening), but I can assure you that playing FPS games enhances your ability to concentrate and solve problems quickly.
I take it you don't have the same users I do.... Man can they be dangerous if they don't get immideatly what they want....
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
Relax, we understand j00.
Even Wizardry had cheat modes. There was a particular squence of actions that would make evil ninja's very wealthy allowing you to traing them to a high level.
I hope I'm remembering this correctly, its been a very, very long time.
...you should have said, as you writely noticed
I got your original play on words, but this would have been evern funnier.
If it wasn't for Pong, I'd be probably be Jerry Springer.
nah...that doesn't work, ok you can go away now.
is that you IANHARD???
It seems more likely to me, that only smart kids could play the games. That is, you had to be smart enought to setup the game (particularly troublesome in the old days), before you could play it.
Of course, that's when you get accused of cheating and kicked...
Yeah, bla bla Colombine bla bla.
What about the people that don't make it into a hundred tear-jerking articles?
Dammit! I was just going say that!
"Video bona proboque; deteriora sequor." -- Ovid
All I needed to know about sex I learned from Leisure Suit Larry. Who says games aren't educational?
The greatest mystery to me is that people pay for this kind of flawed research. I mean, I can't even remember one which wasn't flawed/biased in one way or another.
I think that's exactly the reason people pay for it. That's why these studies are almost always so flawed.
Game Industry Exec: "Here is a $300,000. We'd like a study exploring how video games make kids smarter, and, umm... improve sexual performance among adults. Oh, and I believe you might find that they reduce cholesterol too. Check that out. Thanks!"
- Isaac =)
Most computer games are good for developing concentration. The ideal is to obtain a zen-like state which figther pilots and athletes usually describe as being "in the zone". This is when you feel like you are inside the game, everything is reflex and the outside world disappears. I believe this is a talent which is definately not developed by most other typical teenage activities like watching TV, socialising, etc. I agree that the degree to which game players learn to concentrate will give them a great edge in other skills.
However, I'd still have reservations about having kids play lots of computer games. For one thing, zoning out is only good for some real world skills. If you want to be a pilot or racing driver it's great and for programmers and other technical people it's good too, however for other jobs it may be a bad thing. I feel that I do it too much (I'm an engineer), it makes me concetrate on some details and forget others.
I'd also worry about the type of games. It's not the violence that concerns me , but the mindlessness of a lot of current computer games. Strategy and RPGs may be very good for developing a wider range of skills, but FPS games only involve a small amout of tactics beyond blowing away anything that moves. So, you may be zoning out but only processing very simple actions.
Of course, this is only based on personal experience. YMMV.
"Hey its just a study, but its amusing."
I can accept a few then/than mistakes from Taco, but grammar this bad is crazy. Maybe someone needs to do a study to see if playing computer games makes grammar worse.Better to stay silent, and let people think you're an idiot than to open your mouth and remove all doubt
Guns don't kill people ...
ratty
the rodent in the machine
The greatest mystery to me is that people pay for this kind of flawed research. I mean, I can't even remember one which wasn't flawed/biased in one way or another.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
No technology is inherently evil. They're just tools that we can use and build upon. Some inventions like biology warfare might seem completely wasteful, but it can also be seen as just a study.
What matters is people, our intentions and the knowledge with which we carry them out. With a bad intention, anything may become a murder-weapon. With bad knowledge we cause accidents.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
It's also important to make a difference between short-term and long-term effects. The usual short-term effect of avid gaming is to become unsocial in RL. However, I don't believe this is a long-term effect of an otherwise social person. Of course, extreme exceptions always exist.
;), but perhaps not so much over a longer term.
There's also a difference between being social online and in RL. I believe a person can be influenced by online activity so much that it has an effect on RL behaviour (anyone tried using smileys in RL
All in all, the interactions and changes that may occur are so complex, there's no way you can draw any real conclusions from it other than we're all different from eachother.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
His point was that the boy had no interest in math because he saw no use for it. When he got a use, he quickly learned what he needed and continued to study math.
So instead, next time, I suggest you take a pause and do a little reasoning before throwing out obvious flamebait as a reaction to something nobody said except in your mind. (That roleplaying games are good for kids because this boy got interested in math because of it. He never said that.)
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Yours contains a meta-mistake, in that there is no mistake.
-no broken link
Small correction, I believe ebonics was what you were referring to. eubonics is the language of the EU (if not esperanto) ;-)
I believe that the mental state they refer to is similar/related to (if not the same as) Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's flow states as first outlined in his book, Beyond Bordom and Anxiety.
In my own work, I have used this concept and have concluded that gaming is similar to athletics (and other activities) in that participants are active and get into this flow state. We have all "been in the zone" at one point or another where we play the game and tune out everything else and do not have to deliberate over the best move, but can tell almost instincively what do do next. This is a couple of the criteria for what is called the flow state.
The book Beyond Bordom and Anxiety is an interesting read if one is interested in such things.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
For me, I always type a complete thought. I never use "u or ur, or lol" or anything shorthand. I feel it is more personal that way. It has gotten to the point where I can't say "you're" anymore because it sounds too much like when people misuse the spelling "your" so I say "you are" or "youer" to distinguish between the two.
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It's OK to be social, just don't tell anyone about it.
i can see how this would work based on the games from the mid-eighties (pacman, bubble bobble [classic], 1942 etc).. i guess, the basis for this study is on what the "leading professionals" did in the mid-eighties.
... most of the games of that era had AIs so dumb that you could run up monstrous scores just by memorizing a pattern of play. Frankly, I didn't game much back then because the games were not challenging enough to hold my interest.
Well, I'm not a "leading professional" of the type the article refers to (being a sysadmin is RARELY life-threatening), but I can assure you that playing FPS games enhances your ability to concentrate and solve problems quickly.
I gamed some in the late 70s and early to mid 80's
Now I don't game at all online because of a slow connection at home so LAN parties are the only times I play multiplayer. The result of this is that I sorta suck at multiplayer games. So what? I have fun, and my opponents get some relatively easy frags. This does NOT make me a homicidal maniac.
It's refreshing to see that some psychologists (especially British psychologists) were able to overcome therir innate prejudice against anything that smacks of violaence long enough to take an objective look at this subject.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins,
utter rubbish
your life does depend on it, when you're on an unreal tourney map with about 10 homocidal maniacs. kill or be killed man.
You have kids that are old enough to play (and presumably understand) Alpha Centauri, and you played Warcraft II in high school? Well I feel old.
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Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Is this how raves got started?
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Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delenda est Windoze
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
Sure, thats possible. It's also possible the kids physical health are degenerating and although they will be very capable in the mind, they will also have a weak body.
... No time."
The lack of exercise when growing up will most likely have consequences for the health later in the life.
The human body is constructed to be moving. Not sitting. I guess the americans in particular, have noticed this the most of all the current civilisations.
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"Too late
Concorde pilot Christian Marty, moments before the supersonic jet crashed into a hotel in Gonesse on the outskirts of Paris.
"mom, it'll increase hand-eye cordination and concentration ! " - huge line I gave my folks begging for the original Nintendo.
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How long have you been listening to the world's famous?
'Bout six weeks.
Six weeks!
Despite the fact that they are rare, you do not see the media giving tons of coverage to every person struck by lightning. People by now realize that even though being struck by lightning is rare, there is nothing spectacular about it. So the media doesn't cover it. If only the media would get over shark attacks. Sheesh. In any case, many people play video games, and many of them have different reasons for doing so: hobby, relaxation, obsession... Which type of person a media outlet chooses to cover as representing "gaming" tells more about the media outlet than it does about gamers themselves. Thankfully this article was mostly positive. Maybe I won't feel so sheepish about admitting to other adults that I play video games.
I recall that the study mentions that obsessive gaming is not good. It is important to have friends and have other interests, and computers should not be written off as not-important. My parents instituted a log system for me back in the days of the NES (nintendo entertainment system) and we would laugh about the bad japanese-to-english translations even as 2nd graders. My parents (smart people too) did take an interest in me, and made sure that I didn't play video games for too long, and that is a good thing (although I didn't understand why). I am interested in reading, computers (and assorted console systems), running (varsity in high school), choir, techno music, all the while doing quite well in school.
Notice that TV does not enter into the picture here. That is the real killer of intelligence. That's another debate.
I can still relate to obsessive gamers (sometimes I'm ashamed to admit it) as I too wanted the latest and greatest systems, yet I can relate to a lot more varied people as well due to my varying interests. If anything playing games has just added another type of person to the people I can be friends with: Gamers, and computer 'geeks' (in addition to other stereotypes such as athletes, musicians, vocationally oriented automobile fellows, and ravers). I'm a good example of this study, but I think that my parents regulating how much I could play had a big hand in it too. kninja
Friday night I was playing UT after work and the weirdest thing happened. There I was siting all by my self in the office, and BOOM! I WAS IN THE ZONE. Faces, low grave, 50% falling control. I got like ten flags in a game with over 15 people, and killed everyone in my path. IT WAS SWEET. p.s. I love that game
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
I, too, feel I've "been there", only with Half-Life (record 40 kills to one death or so; more specifically, the Jailbreak mod, which I've since taken over as coder for); however, I must say that the ideal state is, in fact, only half-way inside "the zone". You need to be able to react instantaneously, to control your motions precisely...but at the same time, you need to keep a third-person, objective viewpoint of the game. As I see it, gaming breaks down to a small number of important, general skills. (All examples are oversimplifications.) The first is raw mental speed; by that I mean the ability to process information and react quickly. He who fires his railgun first wins. The second is parallel thinking; that is, processing more than one bit of data at once. He who fires his rocket, predicts where his opponent's rocket will land, and strafes to the other side while switching to and firing with plasma rifle wins. The third is abstract thinking. Being able to think of Quake's physics model in its own terms helps a lot when trying to dodge a rocket coming your way. The problem is, these skills are (for the most part, arguably) talents, not acquired abilities. Thus, people who possess these skills would make good gamers; people who do not would make poor gamers. The study got the cause/effect relation backwards. I also must say that intermediate and advanced play are different worlds entirely. For an intermediate player, there really may not be any more to the game than simple practice. At the next level, however, the "practice makes perfect" mantra no longer holds true; much like a hacker's larval stage, there has to be something to trigger a transition. Personally, I believe my transition resulted from experimenting with different elements of the physics model through Oz Deathmatch, and thus beginning to understand the game at one less level of abstraction. The difference between levels of play could be compared to the difference between a casual viewer of a movie, and an analyst picking out themes and symbolisms (I am the latter; movies made for it are *much* more interesting that way).
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A picture is worth 500 DWORDS.
It depends very highly on the type of game and the setting.
The online games do require some quick typing. I've noticed some people don't use the ultra-shortened convential typing, but use military acronyms and so on. I've also noted that on less fast-paced online games, people tend to write out full sentences more often and converse better.
When I used to play games all the time, I was drawn to more strategic games, and not always war-oriented games. My first good computer games was Balance of Power, in which I had to think strategically with no violence. As time went on, I got a number of simulators with very complicated strategy guides that taught me a lot about how to think critically.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
I haven't read the title, tough.
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nyri
If my kids get a hold of this one, I'm done for.
Seriously, I'd rather they play video games (especially ones like Alpha Centauri and Riven) than watch TV. But I'd rather they be involved in electronics or tae kwon do or ultimate frisbee too. Too much of any one thing can be detrimental... I know from my unfortunate summer of Warcraft II in high school.
OK, what could I possibly say about this? How 'bout "DUH!". Anyone who plays video games a lot could have told you this. It's the old "video games build hand-eye co-ordiation" thing. The other thing that doesn't seem to be mentioned is how RPG, puzzel games, and especially the Zelda series (at least for me) build logic skills and skills of observation that I think would be hard to get in other places.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Sure boss,I am just improving my mind and I have a web page that shows it!
main(i){(10-putchar(((25208>>3*(i+=3))&7)+(i ?i-4?100:65:10)))?main(i-4):i;}
As trollish as this is, it is also quite true.
;)
I have a bladder the size of a football
Who needs bodily functions, sleep, food, all for the weak!
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
I'll borrow the spirit of my 1st year Psychology prof for a moment for one important message:
95% of people who died from cancer ate bread.
The *only* way to be sure that bread causes cancer is to EXPERIMENT. 1 large group eats bread, 1 large group doesn't, compare the numbers. Anyone who reads this study and spreads the word that games make you smarter:
Please don't be a doctor! Last thing I need to hear now is computers are gonna kill me.
(After all, 100% of computer users die)
But if everyone plays video games except you, then you'll be the maladjusted one.
You: "Hello, good sir. How are you this fine day?"
hax0r1: "whatx0r?"
hax0r2: "what j00 say!?"
hax0r1: "I will own j00000!!!"
You: "Um... excuse me. Do you speak English?"
hax0r3: "Let's g0. This l00z3r doesn't speak 1337."
You can make a study that proves just about anything. As for the social thing, I think there is a large differnce between how console games and PC based games are precived. if you play games on a PC your a geek, nerk, ect..., but if you play games on a console, "Whoa that guys cool!" But that might just have been when I was in school, I'm 18 and a sophmore in college. It also might be part of the mooch factor, "He has a playstation, if I act like I like him, he'll hook me up!"
If it wasn't for Pong, I'd be probably be on Jerry Springer.
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
Isn't this someone's sig? I'm sure they'll be so happy you jacked it and got the karma, hehe
Twitter.com/TrentonHyatt
ROFL. It's like a distilled version of natural selection.
"Scientists have found that children who scratch their ass for 1 hour every day instead of watching television are smarter that children who don't."
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A couple quotes from the article that disprove this hypothesis:
"Their minds and bodies work together much better than those of most other people."
"Bryce did her research by visiting computer gamers, often during regional or national competitions around Britain"
What her research proves is that gamers who are talented enough to play at "national competitions" have better hand-eye coordination, reflexes, and quicker responses. Duh, I already knew that. She should study me -- I play games constantly. And I lose. Badly.
Rather than studying people who excel at gaming she should have studied people before and after they took up gaming. The unorthodox and obviously biased means in which this study was carried out suggests the author was only fishing for a catchy headline.
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As a fairly hardcore UT player...I think you're basically correct. My personal observations on the 'net and in the corporate environment tend to agree with you.
pi=sigma{n:0-infinity}[(1/16)^n][(4/(8n+1))-(2/(8n +4))-(1/ (8n+5))-(1/(8n+6))]
Little kids that grow up on Duck Hunt kill people!
actually, the brain is mostly fat( so exercise would be a bad thing?).
The Government has conceded that yes, Video Games make kids smarter, but they also make them more violent. Therefore, a request has been sent to all schools, warning them of the possible criminal activity of those "smart" kids.
Dragon Magic
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different. -- Earl of Chesterfield
Sample size is a more complex question. Remember this, though: sample size is independent of population size. When flipping a coin, 15 flips (samples) will tell you with a great deal of certainty whether the coin is "fair". It does not matter how many "coin flips there are in the population" (infinite? :). If gamers were selected at random, 100 could be way more than enough. In fact, 35 could be plenty. Depends on how many degrees of freedom...
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...or better read?
I remember back in the late 80's studying for Higher Physics, and reading a couple of pages of my textbooks while my ZX Spectrum games took 5 minutes to load...
An excellent way to break up time spent studying and time spent relaxing (playing "Lords of Chaos", for example)
Through the rest of the afternoon, through her trip to the market in downtown Kinneret-Among-The-Pines to buy ricotta and listen to the Muzak (today she came through the bead-curtained entrance around bar 4 of the Fort Wayne Settecento Ensemble's variorum recording of the Vivaldi Kazoo Concerto, Boyd Beaver, soloist); then through the sunned gathering of her marjoram and sweet basil from the herb garden, reading of book reviews in the latest Scientific American, into the layering of lasagna, garlicking of a bread, tearing up of romaine leaves, eventually, oven on, into the mixing of the twilight's whiskey sours against the arrival of her husband Wendell ("Mucho") Maas from work, she wondered, wondered, shuffling back through a fat deckful of days which seemed (wouldn't she be the first to admit it?) more or less identical, or all pointing the same way subtly like a conjurer's deck, any odd one readily clear to the trained eye.
I hope to God your mis-spelling of 'write' is an attempt at humor =)
Smarter... faster reflexes... and deadlier :)
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
In fact, you're still skipping a logical step. It could just mean that those smart people who happen to play video games do better at it than everyone else (i.e. smart people could even play games less than others). I'll bet if you did a study at the world bowling championchip you'd find the contestants were also brighter in other areas. This does not necessarily mean that bowlers are smarter than everyone else. [bowlers, please disregard last sentence. It was a comment I pulled out of my hat, not one meant to be flamebait].
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
Or do smart people play more games? Things like computer games and athletics develop ability to concentrate for longer periods. But, this development could just be the result of a long attention span wanting to be worked on. The brain is like a muscle, it wants to be worked out to become stronger.
There is a certain scientific approach to the claim that video games help kids and adults develop better reflexes and hand-eye coordination, but that's no surprise, and it's completely different from claiming it makes them "smarter".
Wizardry... Mission Asteroid... it's just not the same anymore...
not to say I don't love Alpha Centauri
Slightly (OK, very) OT, but your subject reminded me of a wonderful report that came through the IBM Infoman heldesk software I used back in my days of *shudder* corporate IT support. Infoman had a very limited length description field for each ticket, which made it difficult to input a meaningful description. I can't remember what the exact fault was in this case, but the description in the summary field read:
User reports that text has been trunca
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I would be a paid subscriber if Taco and Hemos weren't such cunts
I am convinced that having played Donkey Kong when I was young helped me develop early my barrel-avoiding, ladder-climbing and blond girl-rescuing abilities.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Like I said, my thoughts were based on my own experiences. I'm glad to have a contrasting opinion. Thank you.
I think it's important to have friends, to make time away from the computer, and to enjoy other forms of entertainment besides the computer and the TV.
Frankly, I'm not blaming this on gaming. I'm just stating what I've observed, the relationships that exist between poor communication skills and gaming, and a simple justification for each observation.
You're insight that parents are the key to successful childhood development shows that you are wiser than your age (14?). My mother is a 3rd grade teacher in the ghetto in California. I grew-up in similarly under-privledged areas. The children that succeed, no matter their habits, are the ones whose parents care for them and take an active part in their development. My mother sees this first hand in her classroom. The disciplinary cases have parents that are hardly present in their child's education. The model children have parents that come to her and ask for summer activity ideas, volunteer in the classroom, or simply attend semi-annual parent teacher conferences.
We've got a long way to go, and I'll be either senile or in the grave when the time comes.
Either way, it wont matter to me.
But how will such colloquialisms effect the advancement of our soceity and technology?
Let's face it, the Internet is developing Eubonics. How many speeches, patent applications, journal articles, and other forms of communication have you read that have been written in Eubonics?
Very good point.
It's interesting to ask if chat rooms are making us a lesser society or if chat rooms are bringing together otherwise socially disenfranchsied people.
Perhaps a little of both, but the latter makes me feel better about the technolgoy.
I'm not going to draw any conclusions about this study without thinking more.
However, it has been my own anecdotal evidence that computer game playing, while improving hand-eye coordination and strategic thinking, does severly limit normal social interaction.
Modern computer games train gamers to work within the systems of chat rooms, message boards, and other online forms of communication. When the gamer is in a classical social situation (dinner party, traditional work meeting, academic classroom, etc), the result that I have noticed is that the gamer is:
1) Less social. That is, less likely to interact with other people because, for lack of a better phrase, the other people "just don't understand."
2) Think less critically about the situation. They become uninterested in anything that doesn't relate to current games or to the prospect of new games.
3) Have poor verbal skills. Nearly all computer games operate without a verbal component. The verbal skills of the gamer atrophies.
I am concerned that we are developing a culture, that is growing, of people who are less than ready to live up to their full potential.
This is just my concern. This is just based on anecdotal evidence. I accept the fact I may be totally off base.
...they just maim a lot of people's feet.
If you see games as a tool to teach people to persevere, overcome and work hard then yes, cheat codes are a negative thing.
However, if you see games as something to have fun experiencing then cheats are generally a good thing. They're a tool to skip frustrating, badly-balanced areas of a game and get to the fun stuff; a player who's really enjoying a game generally won't resort to cheating.
Now, all kids have to do is look up the cheat codes for God mode, and get after it with a BFG
Are you really bemoaning the fact that today's lazy kids don't work as hard at playing games?
By playing Unreal Tournament, the next time I go on a hihg-school rampage, I've got a less likely chance to get shot by the cops.
Or wait, bad analogy. Here's a better one:
The next time some crazed maniac goes on a high-school rampage, I'll be more able to escape the gunfire...
Heh, you play a whole different kind of game than I do.
:)
In my view, the key to deathmatch is weapon control. I know I'm not much fun to play against (according to my fraternity brothers from college), but I can absolutely dominate a game by never letting a weapon sit on the ground. I do not (!) camp, I tend to run around like a madman grabbing all the power ups laying around and tend to play a strict denial game.
This allows me to make up for my complete lack of skills by being utterly abusive. I never involve myself in a fair fire-fight. I maintain control of the powerful weapons, and when I kill somebody, I know that they are suddenly at their weakest so I make a run to a spawn point in hopes of waxing them again. Failing that, I head to the weapon I think they are heading for and try to pick them off while they blindly dash for the RL.
Its a completely different gamestyle, and I think the combination of skills and strategy could make for a fearsome (perhaps, professional level) player. You should really adjust your strategy, and if you are as tactically good as you say you are, well fuck, who needs a day job
Tim
I think Merle Haggard wrote the longest sentence, in Mama Tried: "I turned 21 in prison doing life without parole..."
We'd all be hanging out in
dark places Check (no sense in dumping more watts into the only airconditioned room in my apartment)
eating pills Nope.
listening to electronic music I've got Tangerine Dream's Le Parc queued to go. Got a problem with that?
But don't forget the ghosts. (I've got a big whacking stick ready for them!)
Other than that, I can say that playing video games hasn't affected me a bit. Writing them, well...
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Where else are they going to learn how to strafe-jump while reloading their M4 and taking out the enemy positioned in an elevated position? Well, aside from high-school that is...
Are you really bemoaning the fact that today's lazy kids don't work as hard at playing games?
I say, this deserves at least ONE "+1 Funny." I haven't laughed this hard for a long time.
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
Maybe the well-adjustedness of the subjects is what led them to be involved in tournaments in the first place. Which came first, the sociability or the 18hrs per week of gaming? The study doesn't indicate at all, and isn't designed to prove, that games lead to smarter or more well-adjusted kids. It just indicates there might be a correlation. Correlation != cause and effect. Maybe the kids are more polished & smarter than the norm because they're in a higher, more-privileged socioeconomic class, which having a computer still tends to indicate unfortunately.
hmm.. i can see how this would work based on the games from the mid-eighties (pacman, bubble bobble [classic], 1942 etc).. i guess, the basis for this study is on what the "leading professionals" did in the mid-eighties.. unfortunately, i dont see the average "quake" or "unreal" player ending up in such a position. if what they say is real - we're gonna have to watch our backs in ten years!
>>They could both be merely caused by a third, unseen factor. DRUGS! :D
Anti-emulation progaganda, anyone?
(Do not sign anything.) -- Fell, Planescape: Torment
Now, all kids have to do is look up the cheat codes for God mode, and get after it with a BFG.
Click here or here.
If it wasn't for Pong, I'd be watching Survivor and Jerry Springer. Thanks!!!
The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from. - ast
> people who play games regularly seem to develop
> a mental state that we have seen before only in
> serious athletes or professionals such as
> astronauts
Well, the answer is obvious.
Professional or olympic athletes have approximately 20,000 hours of practice by the time they get to the top levels. Astronauts practice for thousands of hours to perform chores for one mission.
What's the common ground? Kids play games for thousands of hours.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
Yes, and the existance of this article is yet more evidence that the press is in the entertainment business, not the information business. I don't understand why such a P.O.S. article would get posted to /. - Someone is asleep at the switch.
"Their minds and body work better together"
Is that just another way of saying Quake improves hand-eye coordination? If so, all I have to say to this is...
"Well duh"
"Faith is the last resort of a desperate man" - Me
Obviously several thousand TKing, laming, generally sucky Tribes players were left out of this study.
Good analogy though.
God spoke to me
Playing games makes them smellier, though.
Have you BEEN to a 250-person LAN? 250 games, one can of deodorant - it's a nightmare.
--This post is about truth, beauty, freedom, and above all things, Karma.
-- This post is about truth, beauty, freedom, and above all things, Karma
Well, after making a bunch of DooM maps in 1994 & 1995, I felt that I was ready for an internship with a local architect. After all, not everyone can figure out the difference between a room and a sector right? You've got to be pretty bright to understand all those item codes too. Yup, and every level must have an exit. Very important.
I figured that there couldn't be that much difference between working in DoomCad and some fancy-shmancy professional 3D design tool. If I can design a sliding door in Doom, it must be easy to do the same in the real world. Right?
The architect turned me down. So I made a map of his office, and 1 week later I was there to give him my own interpretation of the Columbine treatment.
Just kidding.
pressure/grep
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Microsoft Fucking Sucks!! Up The Penguins!!
One study says playing games makes kids intelligent. Other studies have found it makes 'em critters aggressive. Now, i let's hope we can build enough jails for all those upcoming ultra-intelligent psychopathic serial killers(tm).
+++ath0
I'm often tempted to say that 'the way nature intended it' is 'good' but this alone is far too simple a point of view I believe. After all, we are part of nature, we create much of the environment around us, like a bear creates his own cave pretty much. Does the fact that a bear lives in a cave make him an unnatural being? I think not. Similarly, I don't think the 'things' we create around us make us 'unnatural' neccesarily.
However, nature has a way to deal with excesses of particular things/species in ways we often cannot fathom. Mind you, 'video games' by my earlier description have become part of our 'nature'. Violence has ofcourse always been part of our nature.
Nature encourages improvement. Nature encourages better adaptation to the world we live in at any particular moment in time. However, nature also kills excessive cancerous species. So, a very interesting (well to me:) thing to wonder is when nature is still nourishing us, and when nature will start turning against us.
Do video games create supersadistlittlehitlers that will kill us all, or enough to get the numbers right again? Maybe, and maybe they are just yet another innovative tool to make humans adapt even more to their increasingly competitive environment. Video games have been around for quite a while, it would be far more illustrative to see 'where are all those videogame players from back then now?'. Was Bill Gates a fanatic video game player? Larry Ellison? President Bush? I don't care much about a bunch of kids having supernatural reflexes because they play quake often, blah. Where is that report that links 'ideas' to 'reality' ?
Mum: Johnny, are you gonna take that gameboy with you to class?
Johnny: Yes mum, the researcher said I'll pay better attention if I play games.
Mum: Ok.
Mum: Johnny, start doing your homework or you'll have no time.
Johnny: Mum! The researcher told me that playing games will improve my intelligence so I'll be able to do my homework much faster!
Mum: Ok
Mum: Johnny, turn the game machine off and go play with your friends.
Johnny: But mum, the researcher said that I'll have improved social interactivity if I play games. [*BANG* *BANG* *NUKE*]
Mum: Ok
Mum: Johnny, it's time for dinner!
Johnny: But mum, according to the research I'll be able to improve my bodily interactions if I play games, so I'll be able to adjust to hunger.
Mum: Ok.
Of course, reading all of that has ruined me in that I now tend to write really long sentences, though I haven't yet achieved the one feat that I have only seen from Machiavelli and Dave Barry, which is, of course, the 1.5 page sentence, in which the author creates an extraordinarily long sentence, containing much information, all the while being grammatically correct, and conveying one basic idea in a surprisingly clear manner, such that the reader, after having read it, actually goes back to see where said sentence began, and reads it again, just to make sure that the sentence is, indeed, that long.
the master at this was this guy, who wrote one sentence (either in "the sound and the fury" or "light in august" or maybe "absalom, absalom!", i forget) that spans ~3 pages or so. Every lit. major tries to do this at least once, but all of them fail in the one pre-requisite, i.e., being William Faulkner. (Although David Foster Wallace has come close.)
anyway, after reading the article, wouldn't it make more sense to assume that the smart kids (e.g. ones who would find "news for nerds" insteresting) would be indoors playing games and not outdoors? all games give different types of education, i'm pretty sure that if you spent 60 hours playing Mario Bros. or something you would probably get dumber instead.
-d.
--
Slashdot: When News Breaks, We Give You The Pieces
FreeBSD for the impatient.
I wonder how the game Virtual Valerie fits into this study....
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
Does this mean when tax time comes around I can deduct the cost of video game systems as an educational expense?
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
If we are to believe all these different studies, there'll be thousands of super-intelligent serial killers in the future. Scary.
Today's generation of disenchanted youth knows the importance of strafing when holding up a convenience store.
:)
Kudos to you Doom! Kudos to you Quake!
I'm just suprised we haven't seen a spark in the number of chain-gun incidents in police reports
:)
PS. For all of you just an alt-tab away from an FPS: Yes this is toungue-in-cheek... sheesh!
I could be mistaken, but I'm fairly certain that Dostoyevsky has a sentence that long in Crime and Punishment. Just my two bits.
Virtue finds and chooses the mean.
Aristotle, Ethica Nichomachea
Does this mean if I play Quake for 72 hours straight I'll be able to find a way to circumvent any type of encryption AND use my superior hand/eye coordination to kick the shit out of all the federal agents who come to arrest me?
http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article
The study was funded by 500 British elementary school students who pooled their lunch money all term.
"traditional pastimes such as reading and television" If that's the population you're comparing against, no wonder the outcome of the research. Try comparing with kids that are active with the boy scouts, or are part of a soccer team. Not that I dislike the outcome of that research of course..