Wednesday 21 April 2010

Games Don't Make You Smrt

"The largest ever investigation followed 11,430 people over six weeks to see what effect, if any, playing brain training computer games would have.

While players got progressively better at the games, the gains were not transferable, Nature journal reports.

Players gained nothing in terms of general reasoning, memory, planning or visuospatial abilities, experts found. "


/// If that is the case, then i'm guessing that Violent games don't make you violent, Stealth games don't turn you into deadly ninjas (sorry Sketch) and Driving games won't turn you into the next Lewis on the track. But what games can do is make you feel happy, sad, angry and a whole range of other emotions, but let's not kid ourselves here that they are any better for us than a homeopathy 'medicine'. Games are games are games, and in the same way Monopoly doesn't turn you into the owner of Canary Wharf, nailing some n00b with a head shot at 1000 yards has no transferable skills in the real world.

Games are nothing better or worse than virtual crack, and the sooner we admit that to ourselves the better.

[mobiletone] IQ of 145 and none the better for it.

5 comments:

  1. Is that IQ score before or after a six week gaming session? :)

    You'd be surprised how good one of my kids is at "Skirmish" [Laser Tag] after developing skills playing first & third person shooters. Learning about cover, angles, & flanking transferring well into real life! Mind you, that is not to say the skills were or were not present before playing on a console-based game.

    The results of any test of this nature are flawed because you cannot take the same individual back in time & not allow them to take the six week test to see if a different outcome would be achieved.

    BFN,

    fp.

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  2. @ fp - it was after a 48hr Samurai Shodown session and a bucket of fried chicken.

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  3. Gaming has taught me not to stand near explosive barrels when baddies fire bullets at me.

    On another completely different note - has anyone here tried the Skate 3 demo that's been on the store since Thursday? Boy was I looking forward to this (loved the concept, look and control scheme of the last 2 games but hated the poor frame rate that has plagued the PS3 versions and made it unplayable). Anyway, Boy was I disappointed! Damn you EA!!!! You apply a level of polish to the in-game graphics and menus. You introduce even more characters on screen at once and the frame rate suffers even worse than it did in your last 2 instalments. I'm pissed because I would really like to see a decent skating game. There's no hope for Mr Hawk anymore as that series went crap and now EA are, well doing what EA do best - making games for the Xbox 360 and then spending 2 weeks porting it over to the PS3 and not bothering to address any issues that pop up. Seriously I'm not over-exagerating. The frame rate sucks soooo bud that the game is unplayable as far as I'm concerned.

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  4. @ reakt - this is the limited of my mad sk8r skillzors

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qR7yua6MM6w

    it is a well known fact that i am historicaly bad at skating games, like my brain cannot make the connection between flying around on a plank with wheels defying gravity and my known understanding of possible physics.

    bmx/biking games though i totally 'get', time for BMXXX 2 HD redux i say! :)

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