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Study: Playing Computer Games Makes Kids Smarter 201

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i-knew-super-mario-bros-made-me-smarter dept.
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.
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Study: Playing Computer Games Makes Kids Smarter More

Study: Playing Computer Games Makes Kids Smarter

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  • Re:Let's not be hasty (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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.

  • Re:Let's not be hasty (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    "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.

  • Re:quake? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Yours may be the dorkiest comment I've ever read. Kudos!

  • A thing about correlation... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    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.

  • Re:Let's not be hasty (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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...

  • An interesting article but... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "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.

  • Re:Let's not be hasty (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "certain situations, and also insinuates that i have poor verbal skills?"

    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 /., the minority group would be the ones that ARE NOT (or WERE NOT in most cases) in a gifted program!

    "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 /. 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.

    "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

  • Cause and effect? (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 22, 2001 @02:01PM (#68591)
    So perhaps gettings smarter makes people more violent.

    I certainly feel more inclined to kill people the more I learn about them.
  • Two words: Mario Kart.

    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

  • 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.
  • hallowed be, not by.

    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".

  • Perhaps. I'm only an expert on the parts of language on which I'm an expert. And self-appointed at that.

  • the statistics nazi says... (Score:4)

    by Malachite ( 8328 ) on Sunday July 22, 2001 @03:30PM (#68598) Homepage
    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>

  • Re:quake? (Score:3)

    by whydna ( 9312 ) <whydnaNO@SPAMhotmail.com> on Sunday July 22, 2001 @02:20PM (#68599)
    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
  • ... and Hitler, well, he happened to think only aryans were human.

    While amusingly he himself did not even 'measure up' to the aryan 'ideal'.

    --
    Delphis
  • anyone tried using smileys in RL ;)

    Yea, I just smile.

    --
    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.
  • 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.

  • Role Playing Games (Score:5)

    by TeknoDragon ( 17295 ) on Sunday July 22, 2001 @02:01PM (#68605) Journal
    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
  • Bullets do [imdb.com].

    (That's a link for all of us old-timers out there :)
  • 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?!

  • 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.
  • i absolutely agree. RPG's helped not just in math and reading but also served to build a knowledgebase for different mythologies and some also tried to work a bunch of physics in that gave me a base of understanding.

    the most important skill, as i see it, was the problem solving using an arbitrary set of rules. ie given the thief's scale walls, the magician's 4 spells and your ball of wax you have to storm a castle. figure out a creative way to do it.

    that and it kept me out of drugs until later in school which I think was a good thing.

  • Civilization and Machiavelli (Score:5)

    by jfunk ( 33224 ) <jfunk@roadrunner.nf.net> on Sunday July 22, 2001 @02:18PM (#68611) Homepage
    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.
  • I'm going to draw some hasty conclusions about this study without really thinking about it:

    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:
    1. More observant. That is, more likely to observe people's interaction with one another because, for lack of a better phrase, other people "are always stuck in promiscuous mode."
    2. Think more critically about the situation. They become bored and distracted in any conversation that seems to be something pieced together from old Friends re-runs or excerpts from cooking books.
    3. Have superior verbal skills. Nearly all computer related activities are text-based and expose the young gamer to myriad literary styles.

    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*
  • 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*
  • So would you say CTP gave you the memes to wrap your brain around history?

    mefus
    --
    um, er... eh -- *click*
  • Huh, I thought Heidegger was The One.

    mefus
    --
    um, er... eh -- *click*

  • Re:wow (Score:1)

    by mefus ( 34481 )
    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*
  • No, they shoot dogs!

    I love you. Do you have a twin sister?

    --

  • 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.
  • Small potatoes. For REALLY LOOOOOONG sentences, no one beats Hawthorne. Frex, in the prologue to THE SCARLET LETTER, there is a grammatically-correct sentence that is over three PAGES long, in very small print. You've been warned. :)

  • 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. =)

  • In other news... (Score:5)

    by interiot ( 50685 ) on Sunday July 22, 2001 @03:13PM (#68622) Homepage
    In other news... looking at porn helps relationships, because it helps with hand/umm... coordination, and gets people more in tune with their bodies.
    --
  • 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!'

  • ...and no-one's mentioned I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue yet!

    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 :)

  • Comment removed (Score:4)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday July 22, 2001 @02:45PM (#68625)
    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
  • 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

  • Re:quake? (Score:5)

    by Kintanon ( 65528 ) on Sunday July 22, 2001 @02:49PM (#68628) Homepage Journal
    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
  • 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).
  • Relax, we understand j00 [megatokyo.com].

  • Leisure Suit Larry (Score:4)

    by Ukab the Great ( 87152 ) on Sunday July 22, 2001 @03:41PM (#68643)
    All I needed to know about sex I learned from Leisure Suit Larry. Who says games aren't educational?

  • Re:Playing games does not _make_ people smarter (Score:3)

    by isaac_akira ( 88220 ) on Monday July 23, 2001 @03:16AM (#68644)
    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 =)

  • Zoning Out (Score:3)

    by Alpha State ( 89105 ) on Sunday July 22, 2001 @03:34PM (#68646) Homepage

    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.

  • 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
  • Yours contains a meta-mistake, in that there is no mistake.
  • 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.
  • 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.
    --------
  • 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.

    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 ... 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.

    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,
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Still the obsessive will exist. (Score:5)

    by etymxris ( 121288 ) on Sunday July 22, 2001 @02:15PM (#68667)
    They noted one teenager who played for 70 hours and had withdrawal symptoms when he abstained for 3 days. When you see someone mentioning such an extreme case, it is clear they have an agenda to push. There will always be people who are very obsessed with any thing of their choice. It could be a rock star (groupie), their weight (bulemic), or any of an infinitude of things that a person can be obsessed about. The fact that such a person is mentioned along with normal gamers just exposes the researchers hidden agenda.

    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 think a lot of people are being hasty.

    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

  • What about Lan parties? You can't get much more socialy intereacted then cheering at someone a few feet away when you blow there head off. And also what happens before, and after the game starts can count as social interaction.

  • 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).
    ------------------
    A picture is worth 500 DWORDS.

  • Don't tell my kids! (Score:3)

    by hoegg ( 132716 ) <ryan.hoegg@NoSpAm.gmail.com> on Sunday July 22, 2001 @02:58PM (#68674) Journal

    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.

  • Re:Let's not be hasty (Score:5)

    by startled ( 144833 ) on Sunday July 22, 2001 @02:25PM (#68679)
    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."
  • If it wasn't for Pong, I'd be probably be on Jerry Springer.

  • 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."


    ---

  • 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.


    ---
  • I can't help but think of all the kids considered in this study. Plenty of kids I grew up with went home and did nothing but watch TV. Given how large the penetration of TV is I can't help but think that anyone who doesn't watch a whole mass of TV is at a distinct advantage.

  • Re:Role Playing Games (Score:3)

    by IronChef ( 164482 ) on Sunday July 22, 2001 @05:53PM (#68688)

    D&D and Gamma World was some serious motivation for developing reading and writing skills. I discovered those games at a fairly young age and I give them some credit for boosting those skills.
  • 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 [dragonmagic.net]

  • Makes us more intelligent... (Score:3)

    by Gordonjcp ( 186804 ) on Sunday July 22, 2001 @03:14PM (#68694) Homepage
    ...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)
  • It just means smarter kids play video games.

    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].

  • Do games make people smarter... (Score:5)

    by SouperMike ( 199023 ) on Sunday July 22, 2001 @02:09PM (#68700)
    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.

  • Neither, it turns out... (Score:3)

    by mblase ( 200735 ) on Monday July 23, 2001 @06:11AM (#68701)
    Read the article more closely, fellas.
    Youngsters who play computer games regularly but not excessively also tend to have more friends and be better adjusted than those who make do with traditional pastimes such as reading and television.
    That's compared to non-interactive activities like reading and television, not more-interactive activities like sports and playground play.
    "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," said Jo Bryce, who led the research. "Their minds and bodies work together much better than those of most other people."
    So they develop better reflexes and thumb-eye coordination than people who watch TV passively, which is no surprise. But that's not the same as being more intelligent or better educated.
    She found that although there remained a minority of gamers who were obsessive, the majority had a healthy mix of other interests and varied social lives. Playing games helped them to do better in other areas, including schoolwork.
    So people who play video games obsessively still rot their brains, but kids who practice healthy moderation do well. So what? Seems to me that kids who practice any activity in moderation with other activities will do well.
    Mark Griffiths, a psychologist at Nottingham Trent University and an expert in computer gaming, found recently in a study of 800 children that those who played games "moderately"- no more than two hours a day-tended to do more sport than those who played no games. They had more friends, were better adjusted and tended to read more.
    Of course, it's also possible that not being interested in sports shares the same cause as not being interested in games. This study was not scientific; it didn't raise one group of kids with video games, one group without, and expose both groups to an equal amount of other social activities. Correlation does not mean causation.

    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


    --

  • It's true ! (Score:3)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Sunday July 22, 2001 @04:18PM (#68704)
    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.
  • 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.

  • Let's not be hasty (Score:4)

    by Eharley ( 214725 ) on Sunday July 22, 2001 @02:02PM (#68710)
    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.
  • It's a different sort of violence. You have bullying violence, commited primarily by brutes who feel stupid and take their anger out on other people. Then you have criminal mastermind violence, commited by people who are smart enough to know what they're doing, and have some reason for doing it. The columbine shooters killed for vengeance, serial killers kill because of insanity, and Hitler, well, he happened to think only aryans were human.

  • Kids that grew up on Quake don't kill people... (Score:4)

    by mike260 ( 224212 ) on Sunday July 22, 2001 @06:49PM (#68714)
    ...they just maim a lot of people's feet.

  • Re:Games and Learning (Score:5)

    by mike260 ( 224212 ) on Sunday July 22, 2001 @06:40PM (#68715)
    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...

  • Re:Cause and effect? (Score:3)

    by Schwarzchild ( 225794 ) on Sunday July 22, 2001 @08:56PM (#68717)
    Don't forget that Hitler was also artistic and was a painter. I remember hearing something that if his paintings were better accepted he would never have become a dictator but perhaps stayed a simple painter.

  • Re:Role Playing Games (Score:5)

    by triticale ( 227516 ) on Sunday July 22, 2001 @02:43PM (#68720) Homepage
    Hey, what about D&D? That helped me get a head start on my math way back when.

    I knew a young man who was homeschooled in the unstructured mode - pointed toward resources and encouraged to learn. He had no interest in multiplication until discovering D&D at age thirteen, at which time it took him two days to "catch up with his grade level.

    Last I heard he was a geometer by trade; writing software for math visualization.

  • Bryce did her research by visiting computer gamers, often during regional or national competitions around Britain, and giving nearly 100 of them a series of psychological tests and questionnaires.

    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.

  • Nintendo power, anyone?

    Anti-emulation progaganda [slashdot.org], anyone?

  • Re:Role Playing Games (Score:3)

    by totallygeek ( 263191 ) <sellis@totallygeek.com> on Sunday July 22, 2001 @02:07PM (#68734) Homepage
    I definately agree about D&D helping with learning. No telling how many times I looked up the origins of the monster names in different mythologies. If I just had Google [google.com] back then...

  • Games and Learning (Score:4)

    by totallygeek ( 263191 ) <sellis@totallygeek.com> on Sunday July 22, 2001 @02:00PM (#68735) Homepage
    I look back at the time I spent on Zork...good night, I read all kinds of things to work out problems. Then, Wizardry...the mapping, the remembering spell names.

    Now, all kids have to do is look up the cheat codes for God mode, and get after it with a BFG.

  • Correlation does not mean causation. Amen.

    Note that the link given was not to the study itself, but to a newspaper report on the study. Reporters and editors might have butchered the facts. But if it was described accurately, the UK gov't just wasted a research grant.

    What particularly bothered me was all the claims of better skills being "developed". You can support that claim only with a longitudinal study, where you measure the abilities of your test and control groups repeatedly over a period of years. Then, if the two groups had the same scores at the beginning and different scores at the end, you might have actually proved something. If you randomly picked who went into groups x1 (gamers) and x2 (TV-watchers), and then sent a large man out to shadow each test subject and force him to conform to your plan, it probably did. But when the groups are self-selected, it's possible that choosing x1 and developing more y are both due to z, which you don't know enough to measure. And in a cross-sectional study (that doesn't follow the subjects over time), choosing x1 was quite likely related to having more y in the first place.

    For example, although it's not surprising if shooter-type video games improve eye-hand coordination, merely showing that gamers average better ehc doesn't tell you whether gamers developed that from gaming, or the uncoordinated just bombed out of the games and went back to the boob tube. To me, showing that moderate video gamers go out for sports more makes it seem likely that they were better coordinated to begin with. (E.g, terrible coordination kept me out of sports as a kid -- and if video games had been invented, I don't think I'd have been racking up the record scores. D&D, in the original text-based version, was a game I really could get into -- but I was too adult by then to have the free time.)

    As for intelligence, it's obvious that smart kids select challenging entertainment, while boobs prefer to watch the boob tube. It wouldn't be suprising if it also works the other way around (games increase intelligence) but you can't prove it either way from just a correlation. Likewise, video games quite likely increase your ability to concentrate, but you'd see the same correlation if people who couldn't concentrate didn't play the games.

    So this really doesn't say anything that a reasonable and unbiased person wouldn't have guessed in the first place. The only reason the authors (or perhaps just the reporter?) seem surprised is that they were biased against "geeks" going in. This report, devoid of real information as it is, might help dispell that prejudice. Bookmark it and beat the geek-haters over the head with it regularly -- they're too dumb to see the flaws, right? 8-)

  • If it wasn't for Pong, I'd be watching Survivor and Jerry Springer. Thanks!!!
  • 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.

    Well, maybe computer games, but if you want to see a social video game, just get out your N64. With its 4 controller slots standard and TONS of REALLY FUN 4-player games, the N64 is a great party gaming platform. Me and my friends have hours of fun playing the likes of Goldeneye and Super Smash Bros.

  • The video games/movies/TV paradox of whether it's 'good' or 'bad' for 'children' is a very challenging one to consider. First off, when I read 'children' in the context of these kind of reports, I always get a bit paranoid. The reporter, knowingly or not, is then trying to reach our emotional side, as opposed to our logical side. I would much prefer to find out how the violence influx of all these media is influencing us, whether adult, child, male, female.

    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' ?

    • Imagination is more important than knowledge.
  • Hitler, well, he happened to think only aryans were human.

    I don't believe that Hitler's psychosis was quite so cut and dry. Being that he was most likely half jewish, he knew that he couldn't be one of the Aryans that he thought and spoke so highly of.

    Hitler's hate of Jews was very similar to Charles Manson's hatred of blacks. Manson believed himself to be half black as well.

  • Re:Cause and effect? (Score:3)

    by No Tears In The End ( 452319 ) on Sunday July 22, 2001 @07:58PM (#68761)
    There seems to be this fallacy that only dumb brutes are violent. If you look at the recent examples of the Columbine killers, or if you go back just a decade or so you have Colin Ferguson and Ted Bundy, both of whom were very intelligent, yet they were still murderers. The ultimate example of this is Hitler, I don't think that anyone will dispute his intelligence, but being smart didn't make him any less of a monster.

  • 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 [amazon.com] 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 [whitehouse.gov] instead.

    -d.
    --
    Slashdot: When News Breaks, We Give You The Pieces
  • 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! :)
  • 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?
  • Whatever. I can see cheat modes making things easier, but really, not all games even have them, and many that do require you to *earn* them. Besides, with the BFG comment, you're comparing two different genres. Games like the Zelda games still require plenty of cognitive thinking skills to figure out the puzzles, etc. The internet does make it easier to find walkthroughs and guides, but they've been around for a long time too. Nintendo power, anyone?

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