Body and Brains of Gamers Probed

ElvenMonkey writes "The BBC News is reporting about researchers at the University of Hull who are performing what they call the first scientific research into what actually happens when you play computer games, using a method called 'mood testing' (previously used on athletes.) Hardly surprisingly results so far show that we don't like losing, and that gaming puts you into an altered state. I can see it now.. computer games, the next designer drug."

Comments

computer games, the next designer drug...

[Anonymous Coward]

"computer games, the next designer drug"

not that far fetched considering they let burn victims play video games because it helps distract them from the pain.

Video games are a terific distraction from a lot of things.

Interesting, but nothing really new

[Second_Infinity]

How many of you have been immersed in a game of [whateverFPSyouPlay] and someone walks by and says something to you. You respond 2 minutes later, not realizing that much time had passed. Obviously an altered state of mind (or reality at that point). Show us something REALLY interesting, like how much fat is burned during an intense 5 hours of counterstrike. Show us if we have to worry about high bloodpressure from the games (disregarding inactivity and weight problems in the study).

Re:Interesting, but nothing really new

[Chi Hsuan Men]

I think the altered state of mind would be the most interesting part of the entire study. After all, I don't play video games to burn fat and calories.

Getting into "the zone" is something atheletes and researches have been curious for decades. Easter cultures have been interested in it for much, much longer. The Japanese call it "mushin" or "no mind", that is, the body and mind acting in perfect harmony together, so no error can be committed. Michael Jordan has often spoken about being in the zone. Tiger Woods has been there often. Perhaps the most recent athlete I have seen the zone? Carlos Arroyo on the Cuban Olympic team against the U.S. in Athens. He couldn't miss.

The only problem is, no one really knows how to get there. Meditation is one way to do it, and is the preferred was of practicing to get there. Sitting very still and not thinking of anything is a very difficult chore, hence why katas were developed (the element of exercise combined with moving meditation).

I think studying gamers' brain activity while they play is one way to figure out how to get into "the zone". After all, there is minimal motion involved and most of the effort is exerted by the mind.

Re:Interesting, but nothing really new

[aardwolf204]

"The Zone" is a wonderful place to be, and you can find yourself there doing anything from reading, to running, to coding, or gaming. However, once you realize your in the zone you are more connected to reality and the zone may suffer, IMO. Its interesting to draw analogies to lucid dreaming, when you realize your dreaming and can do anything you wait in your dream (except read a book, but who wants to do that in a dream?). But its not the case for being in the zone.

When I find myself in the zone I try to quickly forget it and focus on the task at hand, whether it be gaming or coding. There is nothing more upsetting then playing a game and being in the zone only to have someone interupt you, and if you lash out they have no idea what your talking about because to them you were just sitting there playing a game. very annoying. I also find that if I *try* to get into the zone I'm unsuccessful. Its something that must naturally happen.

Moral of the story: Try not to realize you are in the zone when you are, but thats like trying not to picture a penguin drinking lemonaid. (Gotchya!)

Correlation vs. Causation

[webword]

"Scientific testing of physiological and psychological responses, or "mood profiling", could help developers robustly plan which games will be hits."

While I believe this is very interesting I have a hard time understanding how they are going to map mood to design. Some people might be in the zone and very angry at the same time. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Furthermore, this smacks of correlation only, not causation. Determining mood is like checking your horoscope: you might get correlation but is there really causation? Put another way, can you really reverse engineer a mood to figure out what characteristics of a game will be useful for other future games, and in turn, expect success? The causal chain is weak, if you ask me...

Goes beyond that

[Ra5pu7in]

The altered state can last beyond the time playing the game. There have been times when I have played a game like Tetris (wonderfully addictive) for long hours on end. After turning it off and going about other activities, I find myself trying to fit thoughts into place - turning them this way and that. It's the "Gaming Zone" in which things are done almost without conscious thought.

One thing that makes this more obvious is to take someone who is used to playing alone and talk to them as they try to accomplish the same task in a game. Chatter can bring a gamer out of that altered state and frustrate the living daylights out of them. Unbelievable how hard it is to jump from platform to platform if someone is demanding some of your attention.

But is this useful for game development?

[CFresquet]

I don't see anywhere in the article where they claim that their results are any better than simply asking the player "Was this game fun to play?"

Said question is already asked of focus groups extensively during development of games.

The methodology the article provides isn't going to provide any better feedback to the developers than the way we already do it -- it just lets them put nice graphs and numbers up that tell us what we already know.

Yes, it is interesting to know that the psychological reactions to playing computer games are similar to the psychological reactions from playing real-world sports, but that doesn't give us a better process for making computer games than we have now.

Add to that the fact that often 75-90% of the game development has to be finished before you really have something playable that could be used for this testing. It is only after the majority of the game is done that user feedback actually becomes useful -- before that what you have is a pile of compiling code that only superficially resembles what the final product will be. Come up with a system that we can use on a game design document BEFORE we spend a year programming to the alpha stage of the game and you will have something useful.

Basically, I get the impression that the people behind the study don't really understand how computer games are actually made.

Re:gaming as a drug

[Bricklets]

Dude, it's not a drug. In fact, it sounds an awful lot like an athlete getting into the "zone." Nothing new here. I've heard this before, except that study was done on some Virtua Fighter professional player. Something about an increase of alpha waves or the sort.

Altered State...

[Universal Nerd]

You know, I have a secret.

I've never had the need to take any drugs, other than booze, because I'm a hardcore gamer. I get such a rush playing that I find myself totally walled off from reality while I'm fragging.

The rush I have is sort of like the one Alex has in "The Clockwork Orange" (the book is a lot deeper into the pleasure he's having but the movie version captures the soul of it, especially the scenes in the hospital bed in the end). I should add that I don't go around beating people up for fun, but I found that Anthony Burgess (and Stanley Kubrick) depicted the rush of pleasure in a way that almost mirrors my own.

Booze only hightens this effect and I don't even need more than a couple beers to sharpen my senses.

Mind you, I'm not a very good gamer and when I'm drunk I suck even more but the rush, OH, THE RUSH!

I confess, FPS games are my drug.

Re:Altered State...

[snuf23]

Oddly enough I've found a couple of drinks improves my game. I know, I know go ahead and call bullshit if you like - but virtually every time I've hit top position in quake 3 or battlefield I've been at least a bit drunk.
I attribute this not to it improving my motor skills in anyway but in that it loosens me up and lets me get absorbed in the game. I find it easier to focus in and kick ass.
I also tend not to get frustrated as easily - I tend to get revenge.

Re:gaming as a drug

[KDan]

Tell that to those people who come out of planet evercrack after having lost 2 years of their life to a complete fantasy. For those who have read Red Dwarf, the "Better Than Life" volume, doesn't it seem obvious that games - especially the graphical MUD (ok, call it MMORGP if you feel like twisting your tongue) type - are heading straight that way? Considering the social symptoms that these games are already having in Asia, I don't think it's far fetched at all to imagine that within the next decade certain types of games will start to be treated like controlled substances.

Daniel

Re:Maybe, but...

[Espectr0]

The effect can also be the opposite for those who are not native speakers of English.

True. I am venezuelan, and i learned english at a local academy, but there you don't get taught slang, l33t, or other colloquial stuff.

Who said GTA can't teach you anything? I learn from those haitians everyday

Drinking and Gaming

[drpentode]

I'd love to see someone do a study on drinking and gaming. I've noticed I'm much better and first person shooters when I've had a few. I suck at racing games after drinking, though.

Re:Mother's Opinion

[Paleomacus]

Why is that?

I would guess that it's the same reason people talk dirty during sex.

I will let the reader reconstruct the train of thought that brought me to that conclusion.

Re:gaming as a drug

[gurkha711]

This is what the psychologist Csikszentmihalyi (1993) refers to as "the state of flow"; when this happens, you find a number of clear characteristics of the experience:

1. Clear goals: an objective is distinctly defined; immediate feedback: one knows instantly how well one is doing.
2. The opportunities for acting decisively are relatively high, and they are matched by one's perceived ability to act. In other words, personal skills are well suited to given challenges.
3. Action and awareness merge; one-pointedness of mind.
4. Concentration on the task at hand; irrelevant stimuli disappear from consciousness, worries and concerns are temporarily suspended.
5. A sense of potential control.
6. Loss of self-consciousness, transcendence of ego boundaries, a sense of growth and of being part of some greater entity.
7. Altered sense of time, which usually seems to pass faster.
8. Experience becomes autotelic: If several of the previous conditions are present, what one does becomes autotelic, or worth doing for its own sake. (Csikszentmihalyi, 1993, p.178-9)

The fact that you still retain many of the details in your memory marks this as a significant event, which validates both the article and Csikszentmihalyi's hypothesis.

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Csikszentmihalyi, M.(1993) The evolving self. New York: HarperCollins