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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."
WTF? The article mentions nothing about bleeding eyes?!
Well, I am glad that they finally figured out what most of us mother's have known for a long time. Have you ever tried to talk to your kid when they are playing a game? Or, have you ever heard a group of boys ages 11-14 play Halo? Yikes!!
I'd like to see the brain readings when a console game gets started up. Nothing like seven unskippable splash screens in a row to really affect the enjoyment of a game.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
>>computer games, the next designer drug
Just as well computer games arent addictive.
*cough evercrack cough*
Body: fatter
Brain cells: fewer
Skin tone: paler
Wallet: less money
English skills: worse
Based on this, the researchers have hypothesised so far that the psycho-physiological impacts are similar to physical sports.
That if we have more games like Dance Dance Revolution, or VR games where we move... we'll be healthier on the whole?
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"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.
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).
Sex feels good! (Readers here will have to take my word for it)
What is after that?
Chocolate is addictive?
Feh.
method called 'mood testing'
After the title incuding the word "probe" I read this as "wood testing" and was very disturbed.
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Video games already are the best contraceptive on the market.
"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...
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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.
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
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.
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.
Little Bricklets
if you go by the definition of "drug" as anything that alters your body chemistry nearly everything IS a drug.
;)) participate in it thereby rounding out the bell curve of addiction, where as heroin use is nowhere near as pervasive as sex. it attracts a certain personality and usually someone predisposed to addiction.
it's those with dependency problems that blow things way out of proportion AND attract the most attention. it'd be a sad day if video games start getting regulated like any other drug.
sex is addictive as heroin. yet it's not regulated (yet). the difference being that most normal people (/.ers excluded
it's nearly the same w/video games. they're not the problem, they're the symptom of something larger.
for a minute there, i lost myself...
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.
Ash nazg durbatuluk, ash nazg gimbatul Ash nazg thrakatuluk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul
English skills: worse
The effect can also be the opposite for those who are not native speakers of English.
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
Carpe Diem
This seems to be a similar state to that of having sex, or so I've read. Could anyone confirm that?
No, I believe none of us can confirm that for you. Sorry.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
Anyone else find it odd that a self-proclaimed mother would use the name "enforcer999" online?
Jeez, maybe that little "M0rpH3uS69" punk I fragged the other day was actually the nice old lady down the street!
xXx-juggalo-xXx: fuk!!1 enforcer999 iz a sniper bitch!
enforcer999: Don't swear, Jason! And don't call your mother a bitch!
xXx-juggalo-xXx: wtf mom! you play cf?
enforcer999: That's right, kiddo! And *you* are up past your bed time! Turn off that computer right now!
xXx-juggalo-xXx: fuk!!
enforcer999: pwn3d!
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
Stephen R. Schaffter schaffter@schaffter.org http://www.schaffter.org