Image: CHRIS WHETZEL
In Brief
Today's Lesson: Call of Duty
- A body of recent research shows that playing certain video games improves vision, attention, spatial reasoning and decision making.
- More than 90 percent of children play video games, and adults do, too: the average gamer's age is 33 years.
- The games that have the most powerful neurological effects are the ones parents hate the most: violent first-person shooters.
I am in an overgrown lot leaning against an eight-foot-tall shipping container. I look both ways, weighing my options. A man with an assault rifle is looking for me, just as I am looking for him. Hoping for a better vantage point, I run toward the abandoned car to my right. A metallic bang rings out as my opponent's shot hits the wall I have just left. I dodge around the next container, then circle behind it. Raising my M16, I peer through the scope as I run. There he is! I hit the track pad of my laptop hard and fast, but my aim is wobbly. I miss. He spins, fires, and I'm dead.
So ended my introduction to first-person-shooter video games. Clearly, I was not very good. With practice, I would probably get better. What is less obvious is that a decade of research has shown that if I spent a few more hours playing Call of Duty, I could improve more than my aim and the life expectancy of my avatar. Aspects of my vision, attention, spatial reasoning and decision making would all change for the better.
This article was originally published with the title Brain-Changing Games.
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11 Comments
Add CommentMy one experience with early "virtual reality" was a game where the only thing I could do was shoot something, preferably the person who was trying to shoot me. or the pterodactyl that carried away whoever it could. I had expected more and better options. My ideal would be a game where everyone plays for personal points, by which they can better play the game, and/or community points, by which they create a self-reinforcing, positive feedback win, or, lacking sufficient community points, a similar dramatic collapse. Mediocre community points means the game goes on forever, sort of like life.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust read about this in a norwegian newspaper, and I have to say I am very surprised that World of Warcraft and Call of Duty, etc. is mentioned, but nothing about Starcraft which in my opinion is far more demanding when it comes to multitasking, overview, and pretty much everything. Could be interesting if you incuded that game too.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRead the print version and I have bad news for Lydia, if you want to get rid of the impulse boys have towards violent games, it's going to take generations of breeding. Breeding for gentle boys who don't get excited about exciting things; trying to convert them isn't going to do it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou're not going to turn young boys into young girls, not without a lot of matching of mates and keeping track of descendents.
Totally, I use video games to sharpen my perception of supermarket tabloids.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe need to practice with digital weapons so when soceity collpases we can handle the real thing in a fight for survival of the deadliest.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDo we need the weapons and shooting? Probably not. Do we need more insight into the pattern recognition and search processes that we use while gaming? Absolutely yes. Games like these, from Solitaire to Starcraft II, are perceptible exercises in Game Theory, situational mazes with dead-ends, do-overs and winning ways out. I am hard pressed to think of any real-life situation that does not correspond in a general way to the reaction strategies of video games. They demonstrate the progressive development of expertise, and probably, with sufficient variation (of game type) they lead players to extract generality.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is a shame that video games are chiefly designed to induce player satisfaction and excitement. They could easily be better than that.
Once you have 'pressed the button ' to take even a
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this'virtual life', you have crossed a barrier/ Rubicon of
conciousness!
As Hitler's dreaded SS had too!!1
Wake up - Please!
That game you seek would be called poker.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCommunity points in the present worldwide culture, are of course, financial currency.
The above debate on violent video games has been reduced to a duality. On one side are the impulsive and more animalistic behaviors. On the other side are the more conscious intentional behaviors.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe question is how do video game players tame the beast within. Man versus his instincts is the age old dilemma of civil verses brute. Humans cannot have a society where the majority of the men are hankering to kill each other. Can society have evolved so much more readily than man has evolved? If so, the violent video games are a good outlet for men.
If the violent video games are just mere escapism, there is no problem. Those who play the games will be benefited. If the violent video games are creating an over-masculinized gun culture that is threatening to erupt at any time, the video games probably aren't the greatest thing for a civil society to have.
Thus, it has to be determined whether the video games are simple escapism or if they are breading a culture of gun toting testosterone filled men that build their identities around stereotypical action men.
The above debate on violent video games has been reduced to a duality. On one side are the impulsive and more animalistic behaviors. On the other side are the more conscious intentional behaviors.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe question is how do video game players tame the beast within. Man versus his instincts is the age old dilemma of civil verses brute. Humans cannot have a society where the majority of the men are hankering to kill each other. Can society have evolved so much more readily than man has evolved? If so, the violent video games could be a good outlet for men.
If the violent video games are just mere escapism, there is no problem. Those who play the games will be benefited. If the violent video games are creating an over-masculinized gun culture that is threatening to erupt at any time, the video games probably aren't the greatest thing for a civil society to have.
Thus, it has to be determined whether the video games are simple escapism or if they are breeding a culture of gun toting testosterone filled men that build their identities around stereotypical action men.
The above debate on violent video games has been reduced to a duality. On one side are the impulsive and more animalistic behaviors. On the other side are the more conscious intentional behaviors.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe question is how do video game players tame the beast within. Man versus his instincts is the age old dilemma of civil verses brute. Humans cannot have a society where the majority of the men are hankering to kill each other. Can society have evolved so much more readily than man has evolved? If so, the violent video games could be a good outlet for men.
If the violent video games are just mere escapism, there is no problem. Those who play the games will be benefited. If the violent video games are creating an over-masculinized gun culture that is threatening to erupt at any time, the video games probably aren't the greatest thing for a civil society to have.
Thus, it has to be determined whether the video games are simple escapism or if they are breeding a culture of gun toting testosterone filled men that build their identities around stereotypical action men.