Are You Game?

This July, Discover magazine came out with an article suggesting that some video games might actually be good for people (shock!).  If you've spent more than two minutes on this site, you know I'm an avid gamer.  I'm also committed to parents and children having strong relationships.  This is the first in a series of essays on connecting parents and their gaming kids, helping parents understand gaming and sharing in beneficial games with their kids.  This article looks at research showing gaming can be beneficial and then suggested some games that are good for the brain (at the end, so feel free to skip down).

If you want to read the Discover article  online, you have to register and pay $1, but below are many of the salient points made in the story.  In short, studies suggest:

• Games promote learning and increased visual perception
• Gamers can become more social, more confident and better creative problem solvers
• Skills developed in games do translate to life outside the game
• Games are addictive (which can have positive or negative results)

(For advice to parents with kids who game and suggestions on which games are best, scroll down to the next section header.)

The story opens with professor James Gee of the University of Wisconsin and his research into video games and their impact on the brain. Early studies of gaming show that as gamers practice, they're able to reach higher levels of skill while using less energy in the brain.  Gee suggests that this is because they're learning.  The Discover author writes: "He found that even escapist fantasy games are embedded with one of the core principles of learning -- students prosper when the subject matter challenges them right at the edge of their abilities."  That's called the "regime of competence" and Gee found it's built right into games, that slowly increase in complexity so the players, ideally, stay at a challenging level, but are not overwhelmed or bored.

The articles goes on to say, "Among all popular media today, video games are unique in their reliance on the regime of competence principle."  That is, movies, television, and even books, don't increase in complexity at the rate that games do, letting the player master one level of difficulty and then springing another order of complexity on them.

Speaking about the skills gamers develop, Gee told Discover, "They're going to think well about systems; they're going to be good at exploring; they're going to be good at re-conceptualizing their goals based on their experience; they're not going to judge people's intelligence just by how fast and efficient they are; and they're going to think nonlaterally.  In our current world with its complex systems that are quite dangerous, those are damn good ways to think."

The article also cites a 2003 study from the University of Rochester finding that gamers scored dramatically better on quick visual recognition tests than non-gamers -- even in cases where the "gamers" in the study were not long-time players but had only engage in gaming for one week.  Discover summarized: "Games were literally making people perceive the world more clearly."

Shawn Green, one of the researchers in that study, described the result of further research on gamers and non-game application of their skills: "The learning induced by video-game playing occurs quite fast and generalizes outside the gaming experience. Our tests were quite dull and unlike gaming itself. ... clearly, whatever it is that gamers learn transfers to situations hat use different tasks and different stimuli."

Two other, independent studies, confirmed those results.  In one, cited in the Harvard Business School Press book Got Game: How the Gamer Generation Is Reshaping Business Forever, Discover says, "The gaming population turned out to be consistently more social, more confident, and more comfortable solving problems creatively.  They also showed no evidence of reduced attention spans compared with nongamers."

Of course studies have also proven that video games are addictive.  Gaming releases more of the neurotransmitter dopamine into the brain, which is invovled in reward seeing behavior and exploration, but also involved in the mechanics of addiction.

For myself, I find that gaming is challenging, intensely enjoyable, and addictive -- though not any more addictive than caffeine or sugar. It's a great reward to set out for myself when I have other tasks I'm not eager to do.  And I've also discovered that there are natural satiation points; if I game for a few hours and pay attention, there comes a point when I'm ready to stop.

Here's my advice to parents with gaming children:

1. Steer your children toward positive, challenging games (suggestions below)
2. Know what your children are playing and what they like about it. Use metaphors for the game around the house. (For example, in most games characters gain "levels" as they advance, which is usually called "levelling up." So, when it's time to do the math homework, you could talk about it being "time to level up in math." Other games like "the Sims" have players managing a world, which can be applied to managing the cleanliness of a room. CAUTION: this will only work if you can really appreciate what your child is acheiving in the game world. If there's any sense of condescension, you will be shot down.)
3. Let them teach you the game
4. Create a clear system of tasks and rewards so they know what they have to do to earn hours of gaming time. Don't be stingy with game time.
5. Talk to them about how it feels, physically, to game (sometimes energized, sometimes tired, sometimes miserably cramped from sitting too long, etc.) Help them to understand that there are natural stopping points and learn to be able to stop themselves. Emphasize that the game will be there and let them know that you're not opposed to them gaming.
6. Look for bridges between skills they practice in the game and real-world applications and help them to experience their own growth.

Which games?

The Discover article lists four top brain games:

1. Black & White - in which you play a god trying to manage an island population and competing with other gods.
2. World of Warcraft - my current favorite! A huge online game world with an intuitive interface that challenges players to team up with each other, complete complicated quests, and even learn a trade.
3. The Sims 2 - Create and manage households on a cul de sac. Hysterical and complex.
4. Katamari Damacy - Roll a sticky ball through a cartoon world, a unique game experience.

Other games that I've enjoyed or heard good reviews of include (with the caveat that I love fantasy games and therefore am biased):

1. City of Heroes - Like World of Warcraft (WOW) except within the superhero rather than fantasy genre, you create a hero, increase their power, and team up with other players. This is an MMORPG (massively multi-player online role-playing game) and also in this genre is Everquest II (and the first Everquest) which I also recommend but like less than WOW because it's less pretty and less intuitive to learn.
2. Tetris (also mentioned in the Discover story) - fit geometric shapes together at increasing speeds, mesmerizing. There are also a bunch of pattern recognition games available online, such as Alchemy.  Not as complex as some of the other games below, but I find when you get hooked on one you play a few different kinds, which has to help with visual perception and learning.
3. Prince of Persia - you navigate through an enormous castle trying to rescue a princess and in addition to challenging fights and intricate acrobatics, you can scroll time backwards for a few seconds, adding another dimension to the game.
4. Fable - not the most complicated fantasy game, but the choices you make move your character toward good and evil and change his appearance to match.
5. The Final Fantasy games - at least in the later editions of these games you can play more than one person in your party, increasing the complexity of thinking involved in playing. Dungeon Siege has a similar one player controling multiple people setup.
6. Diablo: Lord of Destruction - An earlier game from Blizzard, makers of World of Warcraft, that's easy to learn and contains many different kinds of experiences.
7. Age of Mythology - (and Age of Empires and related strategy games), just plain fun, opens to door to learning more about mythology, and works on strategic thinking.