Playing action video games may be bad for your brain – loss of grey matter
cbc.ca
cbc.ca
A subsequent randomised longitudinal training experiment demonstrated that first-person shooting games reduce grey matter within the hippocampus in participants using non-spatial memory strategies.
And the rest of it, which changes the whole character of the article...
Conversely, participants who use hippocampus-dependent spatial strategies showed increased grey matter in the hippocampus after training. A control group that trained on 3D-platform games displayed growth in either the hippocampus or the functionally connected entorhinal cortex. A third study replicated the effect of action video game training on grey matter in the hippocampus. These results show that video games can be beneficial or detrimental to the hippocampal system depending on the navigation strategy that a person employs and the genre of the game.
http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/mp201715...
Interesting study, terrible article.
What games DON'T require spatial memory? I'm having a hard time thinking of one.
I'm more concerned for people that drive around using a GPS in an actual car and somehow never learn the city layout.
I'd like to see more large scale adventure games like this.
Games depending on such GPS systems tend to be significantly hampered by its removal (which makes sense), and thus such basic removal is rarely a sufficient fix.
The only reason I'd imagine BotW might work fine is that Nintendo has made open(ish) world games before, and as far as I can remember, have never made much use of such systems. More likely than not, the game was designed without markers, and markers added after the fact; which is clearly untrue of most other modern open-world games
It's been a long time since I touched the pro circuit of any game, but in Q3 the best players were the ones who could predict where you were in addition to where they needed to go. Pretty different skill, and it took a ton of very dedicated practice.
I.e. In the COD4 campaign you don't need to know the map, you can just blindly run through the level killing what's in front of you until you hit a progress trigger.
It seems to me like games like Portal / Talos Principle / Amnesia would rely on spacial memory more than most games out there. Can anyone confirm or deny if this hypothesis is correct?
Especially if players don't take time to gain a degree of mastery with the game and move from title to title.
My first questions were: "How was this measured/detected? How might I know whether I used these strategies when I play games?"
The answer from your Nature link is very detailed, too detailed to reproduce here. See the section titled, "4 on 8 virtual maze". IIUC they partitioned the groups into "spatial" vs "response" learners by determining whether they navigated a maze while using a memorized sequence of landmarks or without.
Other games encourage you to plan long term and work within systems.
I think these exercise very different parts of your brain - is it possible there's simply a trade off here?
On the other hand, single player in call of duty is about the most mind numbing thing it's possible to play, there's no competition, it's just kill guys and advance in a straight line. Would be interesting to compare with more competitive or open world games.
I'd argue that spatial and temporal considerations are critical in PUBG. Sure, it's not real-time strategy kind of planning, but understanding your exposure to others based on elevation & movement speed, resource management, blue/white perimeter placement and strategy to get to the objective while avoiding enemy LOS does encourage higher order thinking.
- Becoming pregnant reduces grey matter[0].
- Watching porn reduces grey matter[1].
- Heavy use of Facebook reduces grey matter[2].
- Tweeting while watching TV reduces grey matter[3]. etc etc etc.
[0] https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/12/pregnancy-brain-mean...
[1] http://www.iflscience.com/brain/researchers-find-association...
[2] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166432817...
[3] https://www.fastcompany.com/3036198/people-who-jump-from-scr...
[0] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/teenbrain/work...
"Thirteen first-person shooting games from the Call of Duty, Battlefield, Killzone, Medal of Honor and Resistance: Fall of Man series were chosen based on their highly similar gameplay tasks and demands. Participants only played the single player campaigns and did not play any multiplayer components of the games."
Single player for most of these games is very boring and requires little thinking. They need to add another category to this study where they are playing competitive multiplayer fps. Maybe even specifically strategy game types like capture the flag.
90 hours in the gym @ 3 hours / week = 7.5 months of exercise
At this point one expect to see physical changes in the mirror.
Why would it be any different in the brain?
A much broader implication may be that dedicating around 90 hours to something is the point at which your brain will start to show physical signs of adaptation.
>For example, real time strategy games such as Rise of Nations have been shown to have positive effects on both visual attention and executive function.53 However, the impact of such real time strategy games on the hippocampus remains to be determined.
The study only looked at first person shooters like CoD: Modern Warfare 2 (action training) third person platformers like Mario 64 (mario training) and first person RPG shooters like Borderlands 2 (aRPG training). It only links to another study that allegedly looked at strategy games.
Especially stuff related to "race realism" and various forms of sexism.
Its like kryptonite to the shit spewing gamer bros.
The sad thing is nowadays this is bullying, sexist, racist, trolling and so on. It just made me laugh. I think the trash talk was always in this community.
This seems true, considering John Gabriel formulated his Greater Internet F*ckwad Theory[0] way back in 2004. But it's not a good thing. Some people just want to play video games without being subjected to racist, sexist, and ableist harassment.
It is absolutely ridiculous that someone who has never seen me, met me, know where I live, any of my history, my sexuality, my family can possibly achieve any of emotion that could ever be taken seriously enough to be considered bullying. It is stretching the term almost far enough to be meaningless.
If I have a party on PS4 or am on my usual Mumble lounge its typically by the book raid planning. I've seen videos of really inappropriate and childish banter on other games so I know how bad it can get.
1. One, or multiple, bad teamates make the match not at all fun (because the game snowbals heavily)
2. It wastes an 30-60 min of your time on a match predetermined to lose
3. The games are primarily played with randoms, and the matchmaking system has never been any good (starting from the original kick anyone who has to dl the game in wc3)
4. Player age ranges drastically, and younger players tend to be both worse and prone to raging (often fueled by their own misplays)
And you always get people who are relentlessly trying to avoid any kind of contention, which is more irritating than anything else.
FPS games really only feature points 3 & 4, as they're predominantly solo experiences (except by taunting the enemy).
But, imo, these things are both natural to the way games are designed, and really are not as bad as made out to be. Its an inherent piece of the games, and anyone going in with antithetical ideals is simply trying to play a different game (which is what the LoL anti-toxic developers pull, consistently misunderstanding the game in terms of its community, design and balance, as they try to rip apart the game to meet their ideals).