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Video Game Conditioning Spills Over Into Real Life
doug141 writes "Lessons learned in video games may transcend computers, PlayStations and Wiis. New research suggests that virtual worlds sway real-life choices. Twenty-two volunteers who played a cycling game learned to associate one team's jersey with a good flavored drink and another team's jersey with a bad flavored drink. Days later, 3/4 of the subjects avoided the same jersey in a real-world test. Marketers and lawyers will take note."
did one jersey say "coke" and the other "pepsi?"
I can really only conceive of this as somebody trying to drink a cycling team's jersey that has been stuffed into a glass with the subtitle "PIC UNRELATED"
It seems very strange to suppose that intentionally creating an association between visual and taste stimuli would magically not work, just because a video game is involved.
I mean, people have been learning things on television screens for decades. And projection screens for decades before that. What on Earth is surprising, or even interesting, about showing that putting a game controller in a person's hand doesn't thwart this method of learning?
-Peter
This has nothing to do with "lessons learned from video games" and says everything about the power of marketing.
The shouldn't come as any surprise. Computer simulations are routinely used for training and conditioning in a variety of situations from flight training to military applications.
I've avoided Jersey all my life. No news there.
Of course we're affected by all media around us. Be it games, movies, advertising, written, spoken, everything. Our brains are wired to pick up as much information as possible in order to make wiser choices.
But behavioral preference and turning people into something is not the same thing. I personally think violent movies are just as bad/harmless as violent games. But surely the think-of-the-children zealots will keep doing their thing, just like they always have...
.: Max Romantschuk
Twenty-two volunteers who played a cycling game
Good to see they're using a nice large group of test subjects.
Even though they were playing a video game they were being given real-life swigs of a drink while they played. So what the subjects were actually doing was building an association between a real-life experience and an image on the screen - which is completely different from building an association from nothing but a video game.
The last thing the videogames industry needs to every game festooned with ads for products the gamers would never buy in the first place.
First you bitch that you want the virtual worlds to be as realistic and lifelike as possible.
Then, you bitch that there are now ads in your virtual world, which of course is nothing like the real world(yes, that is sarcasm you smell)
(Goldmember) This is no pleasing you.
I disagree. I think it would be cool to quest for the great Coca Cola of the mythical Eastern elves in war craft. Maybe the new armor in the next expansion will be branded by Nike. Then they could release real live limited edition collector versions of in game products. I see this being something you game nerds could really dig on.
I mean, should we not say "parent take notes?", when we here on slashdot keep saying people to pay attention to what kid plays ? Or even why not buyer-beware or "everybody should pay attention" or whatever ? Why the immediate jump to marketing (consumerism) and lawyer (sue-happy) ? Or could you at least add an emoticon if you were sarcastic ?
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I think Under Armor would be a better tie in than Nike......
Grand Theft Auto taught me that if you shoot the hooker, you can get your money back.
On the other hand, my eye-hand coordination often amazes people. And my locational/directional skills are quite good as well. None of the rest of my family can claim either of those.
In addition, I've learned quite a bit about history, politics, art, language... You name it.
So yeah, experiencing things makes you learn from them. No big surprise there. But don't go forgetting that learning can be both good and bad.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
I like ads in games, but only if I can shoot them.
The last thing the videogames industry needs to every game festooned with ads for products the gamers would never buy in the first place.
I know, I'm never going to buy "bad flavored drink" no matter how many jerseys I see it on.
I think you may be draws a faalse dichotomy.
The first one is probabyl refering to look (tectures) and physics, while the second is advertising.
At least when I say 'real as possible' I am referring to look and behavior of objects.
I don't mind advertising, just as long as it's a natural fit in the game, and not some 10 second cut scene of someone drinking a soft drink.
Of course that won't happen becasue advertiser want to 'grab your eyes' and in order to do that they must stand out. So instead of a racing car with stickers from advertiser you would expect, we will get flashing ads, ads on the car radio, ads when the character watches TV, and so on.
Plus, if game companies want to be advertising companies that gets eys with games, then games should be a hell f a lot cheaper.
Google is an advertising company that get's eyes with a free and simple to use Search engine. A search engine that cost a big ol' pile of cash to run.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
First you bitch that you want the virtual worlds to be as realistic and lifelike as possible.
Then, you bitch that there are now ads in your virtual world, which of course is nothing like the real world(yes, that is sarcasm you smell)
What? Who wants games to be as "realistic and lifelike as possible?" I want GRAPHICS to be as realistic as possible, the actual content and gameplay can and should take liberties. Example: mirror's edge would be a terrible game if you randomly landed wrong, broke your femur, and had to spend months of real game time doing therapy before you could continue. Rock band would suck if you had to spend hours upon hours practicing, only for the band to break up and the game to be over after one gig. Super mario bros would have sold zero copies if the italian plumbers had to face a clogged toilet rather than saving the princess.
Jesus man, what kind of boring ass games do you play? Games are SUPPOSED to be unrealistic in that they take the boring or annoying (read; ADS) out.
(Note that if you were joking, little too subtle there, and the insightful mod didn't help.)
I remember after HL2 first came out and I'd been playing it a lot. I was walking through my parking lot at work, a helicopter flew nearby. I found myself unconsciously looking for places to hide and estimating when I could get a good firing angle on it.
I'm tired of the "X/Y/Z doesn't affect me" mantra. Everything affects you.
Does reading slashdot 12 times a day affect you? Yes.
Would reading the entire constitution of the US everyday affect you? Yes.
Does skipping a night of sleep affect you? Yes.
Does holding down a full time job affect you? Yes.
Does playing video games affect you? Yes.
Everything you engage in affects you. It's called being human. It's not a question of whether something affects you, it's a question of whether you are mature enough to recognise HOW it effects you and make appropriate adjustments if necessary.
The insistence that you are somehow superior to every aspect of life and can only be affected if you allow it is just immature arrogance.
Faith is a willingness to accept something w/o complete proof and to act on it. Reason allows you to correct that faith.
<sarcasm>Good to see they're using a nice large group of test subjects.</sarcasm>
The article is here: http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/reprint/29/4/1046.pdf
Could you please point to which of their inferences you think breaks down because of statistical problems caused by the sample size?
If no such problem exists, the sample size was fine.
I recall reading a set of guidelines for writing psych papers (discussing and critiquing an article). They said quite explicitly that complaining about sample size was about the cheapest shot available, so don't do it unless you can really back it up.
To the mods who think my parent is insightful: could you please spell out to me what the insight is? Because I haven't seen any problems with the sample size, only an unsubstantiated claim.
It really depends. Correct product placement in some games does make the virtual world more immersive. You should hop down to gametrailers and take a look at the new Yakuza game, where when you walk into a supermarket, there are high-rez versions of a number of products (but all within context). The same could be done within Dead Rising without upsetting the gamer. Now I agree, I don't want totally out-of-place adds in my games, but in some contexts, it actually works pretty well. If a game does have to include adds to bolster it's revenue stream and can't gracefully include it in the game world, they should just add it as a footnote in the loading screen. There's little harm in that, as you're already waiting.
I don't mind advertising, just as long as it's a natural fit in the game, and not some 10 second cut scene of someone drinking a soft drink.
Of course that won't happen becasue advertiser want to 'grab your eyes' and in order to do that they must stand out. So instead of a racing car with stickers from advertiser you would expect, we will get flashing ads, ads on the car radio, ads when the character watches TV, and so on.
I think racing games are a natural fit for ads. Actually many games could do it. What would you need? Internet connection, storage space, and a variety of ads. As a company pitching to advertisers, you say that you have a such and such formatted texture that appears X number of times in a game, or X number of times on a given track and stats show that players race the track Y number of times. Well, when you start the game, it would check for updates and download the selected ads and where they go.
You don't have to have flash ads or interactive anything. You just give the ad companies a selection of textures that are currently in the game that they'd replace/update with your stuff. Racing games would make the best place to introduce this. The second best place would be sports games in any arenas. You just have a selection of ads on the arena walls.
What the ad company will really want though, is to have their logo on your med pack or part of the game where the player actually has to hunt for the ads. Actually there are several good ways of doing that. Number obvious is hide the item/chest behind the ads. You've got to find the certain ad to find the certain power up. Find a real world drink add, find a drink behind it.
Fun racing games you could have short cuts or power ups behind the sign so you have to find that coke sign and ram through it. I'd try to find a way where one of the ultimate weapon was named after our product. You don't want that Japanese sounding sword; you want the Dr. Pepper sword.
It seems very strange to suppose that intentionally creating an association between visual and taste stimuli would magically not work, just because a video game is involved.
And, yet, when violence is involved everyone on this site strongly presumes that there is absolutely no link between stimuli that rewards violent or aggressive behavior and real life aggression. Not a smidgen, not an amount that almost all sane people can control and thus not an amount that has marginal effect on society. None.
'Cause everybody knows that the issue is all about evil politicians and busybodies wanting to control your life. The subject is always black and white -- never gray.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").