Positive Effects of Gaming
chrisWhite
Littleton, CO
I'm writing a paper and giving a presentation defending video games and talking about the positive effects video games can have. Any buddy have any thoughts on the issue or seen any research done in this area?
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I have not read this, but I understand this book took the stance that violent video games do not warp our youth. Perhaps it would be worth the read?
http://www.amazon.com/Grand-Theft-Childhood-Surprising-Violent/dp/0743299515
From my experience growing up, I found video games to actualy be far more intelectualy engaging than television. Perhaps not as good as reading a novel, or study, but when you weigh it against America's favorite evening passtime, how could you not think gaming is better for you than passively watching poorly made "reality" TV shows, or cookie cutter sitcoms?
Fact, Games force you to actively think and solve problems, TV, does not. I learned to create and read maps playing games like Zelda and Final Fantasy. I did far more active reading playing old nintendo games where most of the dialouge was text driven (and still is on many first party Wii games), then I would have done watching the Dukes of Hazzard.
Modern games can even offer a great creative outlet. Take a game like Little Big Planet, with its user created content.
Also, games encourage people to interact more than TV or film, weather its the wii with two people bowling and having a laugh together, or its an internet PC based community of gamers together online, gaming brings people together.
Oh and video games teach end of world apocalypse skills. So when the world is consumed with radio active super creatures and zombies the gamers will have the theoritical skills needed to survive.
These skills are being fostered within the computer game genre. Yes, kids should go out and run around, play games involving balls, Frisbee, jump rope, sand boxes, swingsets... let them play house or star wars or knight/ princess. But when the sun goes down, the temperature drops below freezing, the sun bakes the soil into hard rock, or when the rain and winds howl outside... don't let them stop being creative. Don't sit them down infront of a TV. Break out the board games, the interactive video games, the activities that let them expand their minds.
The key is, as with many other things, moderation. A child that never uses a computer or watches TV will miss out on just as many things as one that never plays outside. When it rains, let them watch a bit of TV, or play a computer game, or envite a friend over to play a board game. When it is beatutiful out, play outside for a while.
People make fun of the "computer geek kid" for being pale and frail. Well, the same people make fun of the kid that has no idea who Hannah Montana is or who Darth Mall is...
Computer games are just another activity... they can help craft your personallity if that is all you do but any activity can do that with extreme exposure.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=gaming+positive+behavior&btnG=Search
Cliff, I've seen that book come up a couple of times as I've been researching, I don't have time for it with this paper but I really want to read it now! Just ordered it.
The problem solving, logic and puzzle skills are definitely the biggest area that I'm going to focus on and they've clearly been instrumental in my field as a 3D guy and in the skills that I have.
What I love is how widely problem solving skills appear in the gaming world. Tactics, spatial engineering, complex systems and economics show up heavily in RTS and X4 games. History and geography are also often part of those games too, I spent a couple years around Junior High researching the crap out of ancient history because I fell in love with it via Age of the Empires.
Then you have puzzle's that require memory, spacial and causal reasoning in platformers, RPG's like Zelda and even the FPS games so many people immediately write off.
Reading and narrative structure are also areas that I think games are uniquely good at because they are interactive and you are able to change things and learn from what you do differently. Certainly books at literature have edges against gaming as well but I think it would be very easy to qualify games as better then TV and Movies from this perspective.
Teamwork and social skills are a huge part of social gaming these days. The level of team synergy and communication required for something like Left 4 Dead are huge, as are the social structural aspects of MMO's and clans.
Sure there are plenty of unhelpful games out there, but you can say the same exact thing about any other form of media. As for games being too violent or otherwise objectionable, well, that's why games are rated just like film and music. Any parent who can't take the time to look at the box are negligent and abusive (okay, so I'm not a parent so I'm probably just saying that out of idealism).
Really this is a moral issue at this point, right? I actually think that games can actually help construct solid moral frameworks and worldviews. With social games you need to treat your team members and the people you interact with well or you won't do very well (Xbox live being an exception). Then you have so many of these games that give you the choices of whether you want to be 'good' or 'bad' and you see the direct consequences from all of your choices. But unlike real life you don't have to live with them, you can try it both ways. Mass Effect is a really good example of this.
That's my—way more than—two cents on the subject, I've been thinking about this a lot as the paper has approached but I think it's a valuable conversation to have as gamers internally and to help us speak intelligently so that we can change the misperceptions the wrest of the world seems to have against us.
Side note, any of you guys listening to A Life Well Wasted? It's excellent and the third episode was a gold mine for me hearing about places like Stanford dedicating so much effort to game history and analysis, really interesting stuff.
Me too...
I think that drawstring bag is around here somewhere...
That sounds awesome prime, I intend to do the same thing for the most part. Avoid TV! I don't even watch TV. I don't want my kids too, either. If I had any anyway.
My kids are going to grow up into total game and anime geeks. Just you wait. The good thing about it? I imagine when they hit their teens instead of spending $50 a night going to the movies, pizza, and getting girls pregnant they will spend $50 on the newest RPG and spend the next two months in front of the TV playing it, lol.
Benefits: At a young age they have a much greater attention span than their peers (think toddler-preschool age). We always got amazed compliments from preschool teachers about how attentive the kids were and how much calmer they were than other kids.
They don't buy into american commercial pop culture; they could care less about branding, etc. (read: you can buy the cheap bagged cereal and they don't care, and they don't scream for some particular brand of food when you're shopping)
Those are just a couple examples of benefits when they're young children. They compound as they get older; you begin to see that your kids are turning into young adults who don't care about celebrity gossip or reality TV or other pop culture drivel that ultimate leads to vapid nothingness; they don't know who the people on the covers of magazines at the supermarket are.
Ultimately, it's a total win, in my opinion. I highly recommend it.
For me, playing first person shooter games increased my analytical skills and quick decision making ability. I play Call of Duty on the Xbox 360 and have racked up almost 80,000 kills. Since I started I've noticed my ability to read a situation and react quickly with a smart decision has increased 10 fold. I don't think this is from practicing the game because a random human opponent never plays the same way twice. I attribute the ability to training my mind to predict and out think the situation much like an airline pilot. I play all sorts of "violent" games and have since I was a child when the original street fighter and mortal kombat came out. Never have I tried to decapitate a person in real life.
My 8 year old son has a gaming pc, his own xbox 360, and a ps2. He plays online many of the same games I do minus a few I think are unfit for his age but I own (ex. GTA 4). Some games do have swearing and violence but I have taught him there are some words he will hear in his young life that are for adults only to express themselves in casual situations, he hears them and ignores them. Those ultraconservative types would assume he fails in school and is antisocial and violent. He is actually the sweetest little boy, makes great grades, is an excellent reader, has never sworn where i or anyone could hear it, and I have to get on to him for not taking up for himself when he should (so much for being violent).
I allow him to play gears of war 1 n 2, call of duty 4 and WaW, halo 2 n 3, and many others that i have played and beaten before him. It's my opinion that blaming games for a childs dysfunctions is absurd and that they are trying to cover up the real issue of conservative oppression. Molesting little jimmy saturday night then shoving god down his throat on sunday is a sure fire way to turn him to satan and when the child goes to school wearing black and kills some kids everyone blames the CD in his audio player or the games he owns. I have proven that good parenting and educating your child in real world morals can allow them to be a good person no matter what they see in entertainment, a well rounded child can differentiate between entertainment and reality.
good luck on your study.
Ha, that's actually a really interesting point that I hadn't thought about but is really relevant right now. Good call!
siruspernot & primesuspect, you guys both sound like really fantastic parents.
I love it Prime, it sounds like you're raising clones of myself.
You know what's funny siruspernot? I was invited to play some paintball one day and I fought against professional paintball instructors. I have never played paintball in my life.
I kicked their asses. I chalk it up to too much Counterstrike. It sounds crazy but it's a true story. Who da thunk sitting in front of a TV aiming with your mouse translates to real world running, dashing and aiming with a gun-like device?
Columbi-- er, too soon?
I'm kidding but in some weird sense, FPS HAVE helped me with cross fire, pinning down the enemy, good cover tactics... but there is no correlation between aiming on a PC and aiming with a gun (marker).
Because all the Doom they played - including the custom Mod they made - prepped them for real-world tactics.
You got me to bite. 2/10.
back on topic.
Sorry I'm late to this party, but I'll toss mine in as well.
As everyone has said before me, video games are far more beneficial than watching TV. I can't even stand to sit and watch television for more than 15 minutes, it just seems like a complete time waster. Have you ever looked at the face of someone watching TV? They're zombified, completely out of it. Gaming has cognitive involvement, TV requires none of the sort.
And having met Primesuspect's kids I concur, raising children without TV seem to yield incredible results. His kids are awesome.
Icrontic is a single massive example regarding the positive effects of gaming. Though the site wasn't founded around gaming, many members found their way here because of the medium. I discovered the place through TF2. This community is probably stronger because of all the gaming it does together. And gaming brings together 50+ community members from literally across the globe to hang out, drink, build, and game together at the yearly LAN.
And CB is right, Childs Play is a GREAT example.
Regarding reaction time - I've been in situations where my improved reaction time and situation awareness abilities have save me from potential personal injury. Avoiding car accidents, specifically. Mostly in situations involving ice and cars sliding, I find I enter a strange subconcious mode where the event feels in slow motion. I look at the situation, see all my options, figure outcomes and decide upon the best low-risk solution. All of that happens in the blink of an eye, and post-event I'm always astounded at just how much work my brain accomplished in that quick moment. I'm sure that kind of critical thinking can be attributed to video games.
And think of positives in a career sense. Video games led me to discover an incredible world of creation, storytelling, and presentation that I would have never though existed otherwise. I used to do a lot of CAD studies in school and thought that to by my future career. But soon after that I discovered mod tools for Half-Life and Quake 2. I started to apply my 3D knowledge to mapping, modeling, and content creation. That eventually led to the study of real time graphics, and then animation. Though I don't know if I'll ever work in the video games industry itself, video games did help me discover what it is I want to do with my life. It's a medium that allows creation and exploration, and because of that many people have discovered and focused careers around games.
Not to devalue what happened at Columbine either, I live 10 miles from the school, I had a friend who played baseball with one of the killers, I've known people who went there and I've walked the memorial. It was an absolute tragedy but I take issue when people blame the shooting on Doom, there was so much more to their story then the fact that they played a violent video game.
Lynx, I'm fairly certain my ability to analyze a situation very quickly has been improved my gaming, I'm not sure whether it's helped reaction time in driving specifically but I do attribute it as a major factor in that I've staid calm and reacted rationally in every emergency I've had while driving or otherwise.
They always say the mind acts like a muscle. I believe if you regularly exercise yourself in high pressure gaming situations you can act more clearly when one arises in real life. I believe you train yourself to think at elevated adrenaline levels leading to the "feels like slow motion" situation. It "feels" like slow motion because the brain subconsciously evaluates, formulates, and reacts all in an instant. This is how you can tell a newb player from a vet in call of duty 4, the speed at which they home in on and engage a virtual combatant. This method of thinking could be applied to various aspects of reality in non-violent ways, sports being the first thing in my mind.
It's all complete bullshit. Ten years out, the press and the police finally get their story straight about Columbine and prove what every gamer and bullied-as-a-child adult already knew: Nobody but the clinically insane make the jump from pixels and punches to massacre.
see: http://bit.ly/voOLa
Bottom line is this. If the Columbine murderers had any difficulty separating fantasy from reality at that point in their lives, that they were so detached from reality that they felt in some way they could re enact a game, then they had far deeper emotional problems that their family should have noticed and addressed. Something detached those kids emotionally, to no longer value life, perhaps not fitting in, or not being tended to by their parents, the feeling of isolation, it has a kind of effect that often ends badly, if not in murder, perhaps drugs, perhaps suicide, people engage in various self destructive behaviors when they feel that detachment. And instead of looking at it as human nature to need things like nurturing and kindness, we look to make a simple and idiotic excuse, like "the game, or the music, made him do it".
How else could millions of people play that game never to walk away from the computer desk to practice what they do on screen? Its a matter of being well adjusted, and having a fundamental understanding of the value of life. Those kids were obviously lacking, and it had nothing to do with the game.
Much of my thinking on this kind of subject is geared to the Golding, Lord of the Flies analogy. Take someone, moral, sane, decent, and strip them of certain basic human requirements, society, supervision, guidance, and what will often ensue is ugly. Try to understand these things all you want, but the reality, and the truth of it all is extremely ugly, and we don't want to face it, so instead we try and scape goat whatever we can to keep from looking in the mirror. I believe we fall out of the womb selfish, fundamentally flawed and evil, but we learn good, and we ultimately subscribe to it through the help of our society, be it parents, friends, for some its religion, but ultimately our nature is not kindness, love and forgiveness, those things are learned, and they take more effort than our natural tendencies. Its an ugly human reality, and frankly its harder to face, than just blaming the game.
One could argue that video games are bad simply on the merit that they waste more hydro then watching TV or listening to the radio etc... It'd be hard pressed to counter that argument. So what are you actually defending them, you gotta pick a point.
Cliff, I totally agree with your analysis of their depression and detachment. I will say that I can understand why the parents might not have picked up on it and I know this from personal experience. When I was about 13 I started suffering from depression and, at points, I was almost suicidal—though never violent—and remained in this state for nearly a year before talking to my parents and getting the physiological and emotional help I needed and it's something I've had to be careful to monitor ever sense. But, during this year my family and friends had no idea whatsoever that this was going on. I had a very close relationship withy my family, and as a homeschooled student they had much more opportunity to monitor my life then most parents.
All this is to say, while I think parents are probably a bigger factor in this then video games ever were it isn't always fair to think that parents should be able to pick up on everything. Now when their kids start bringing guns and and explosive materials into the house, well, maybe they could have paid a bit more attention to what was coming in.
Kryyst, we were defending games from mass-media misperceptions. This was mainly in regards to violence but we touched on a few other things. We talked about parents responsibilities in actually looking at the box and the ESRB ratings before buying their 12 year old a rated M game and talked about the lack of meaningful evidence linking violent games with aggression. The studies that do support that link don't have long term and wide enough data to make a meaningful case as a causal relationship instead of a corollary.
Most of that was done by another person though and I contributed a counter argument talking specifically about what the good effects games can have to help balance the argument.
I don't have a copy of the final paper but I'll post it up when I do if anyone's interested.