The effects of Portal 2 and Lumosity on cognitive and noncognitive skills
sciencedirect.com
sciencedirect.com
1) Their reputation really has been damaged over no HL3/Dota 2 money grabs.
2) That they can't just publish anything onto Steam anymore with little to no upfront communication.
3) Not all monetisation models are viable - especially with the recent loot-box fiascos. If they wanted a card economy the game should've been free with random cards, with the option to purchase cards to have your own collection.
The past few months they've definitely started to change over the response to Artifact. Dota Underlords was shipped in only 5 months, so it just shows what they're capable of with a little pressure.
They did extensively test Artifact but user testing will get you stuck in local maxima. You still need someone with a good wholistic vision to make a great product.
Holistic?
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/06/01/411231029...
Valve also has a unique decentralized structure where teams work independently on games, as has been noted many times before with their handbook (not sure how accurate that is today). So it's possible you're just seeing the results of a completely different team.
Also, there's a community-made HL3[1] in the works!
BlackMesa (a fan remake of Half-Life 1 on a modern engine) is outstanding.
They also employed YouTubers as actors which made the game bizarre to play since they were the type you were likely to know if you play games.
https://twitter.com/marc_laidlaw/status/900902074954661888?s...
It was released after Marc Laidlaw (writer of Half Life 1 and 2) had resigned due to the constant postponing of Half Life 3 and the erosion of Valve's original values as a company.
It was really sad, but also provided some a much needed conclusion. I could finally say "it's over, half life 3 isn't coming". And even if it does eventually get released it won't be made under the vision of its original spectacular writer.
Can't watch with sound at the moment to confirm it's a good video, but this comes up in youtube
The big difference between Portal is, Quake is a multiplayer game where you're playing against a human in real time and there's no backup plan of being able to Google an answer if you get stuck. You either practice and get better or get utterly destroyed. It's really a good case for overcoming challenges and persistence.
There's 1v1 matches where you need to memorize maps to such a degree that you can almost navigate them blind folded. You're also dealing with timing multiple items down to the second, predicting where a human opponent will go, mastering each weapon in every scenario to maximize damage output while minimizing damage input and also generally having a high level overview of how the match is going to figure out when it's worth taking risks or play it safe.
That's just the mental side of it too. Then there's needing very good reaction times and dexterity to aim quickly and precisely and each weapon has its own style of aiming (flick shots, precise tracking, projectile prediction, instant hit scan weapons, etc.).
And then there's other variants of the game like 4v4 TDM or capture the flag that share similar challenges as above but now it's amplified because you're playing with a lot of people and you need to make very interesting decisions with powerups.
All of this happens within seconds and becomes second nature once you've played long enough. It's actually almost unbelievable that a human brain can react so quickly and become so well adjusted to navigating a high speed virtual world under pressure. A lot of these Quake games were played at live events with hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line before e-sports became as huge as it is today.
I will say, I played Vader Immortal recently and it comes closer than anything else I’ve tried, though it’s still not quite as good.
Regardless of which title you think is better, though, I think the morale is clear. Never pay more than $20 for a computer game.
https://i1.theportalwiki.net/img/f/f0/Space_core_babble19.wa...
This game's dialogue is still unsurpassed.
The following finding also continues to be interesting: “More remarkably, we found that playing an action video game can virtually eliminate this gender difference in spatial attention and simultaneously decrease the gender disparity in mental rotation ability, a higher-level process in spatial cognition.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/17894600/
Now, if those problems being solved in games or otherwise are limited in scope, well so are the gains achievable.
So, the question then is, how to APPLY that to a general set of problems. Not how it affects the brain doing a particular task. For instance, teach a man to fish salmon then ask him to take that knowledge and figure out how to catch whales or even plastic pellets in the ocean?
Or how about if one study math how can it increase ones art ability or vice-versa? It changes perceptions etc. Seems common sense to me I dunno.
Not sure how one can be science-minded and make statements like that. The entire point of scientific studies are to either verify the reasons for things that we may think are intuitive and also explore when that ends up falling apart (which is obviously when things get more interesting). Pretty sure it was "common sense" that the Earth was flat and that the Sun revolved around Earth not too long ago.
That's the tricky thing. As far as we know, IQ is the best proxy for general problem solving ability. From what I've read/heard from intelligence researcher; however, is that while you can train folks to excel at certain types of problems, it doesn't really improve one's general problem solving ability.
Think of an IQ test as a random sampling of problem solving exercises of various types from the domain of all possible problem solving exercises. Now imagine generating a whole bunch of such tests, and then using those tests on a bunch of people to setup your distribution (i.e. set the IQ scoring for each test). While it is true that in general the scores are going to be highly correlated across tests, each test is going to have a different composition in terms of the kinds of problems it presents. From what I understand, training may help on certain classes of problems (and thus on particular tests) but there isn't any training that will meaningfully improve the average of all your scores across all of the tests.
I don't want something that's addictive and fun, heck, I'd never get anything else done.
It made it's way around the room as we talked and no one could figure it out. As soon as it came to me, I saw clearly exactly what needed to happen to solve it, and within seconds it was solved. I still think it must have been all the Portal 2 I had been playing.
What would the play curriculum be?
Minecraft
Portal 1 & 2
The Talos Principle
Infinifactory
But the best foundation for the mind, I think, is to keep younger kids IRL, let them make up their own games, and keep it physical and outside as much as possible. Much of our human consciousness involves moving around abstract space, analogous to physical motion, and so learning to move and think IRL is vital to developing consciousness, wherever it may eventually play.
Baba is You
Factorio
Shenzhen IO
7 Billion Humans / Human Resource MachineAdditionally, there are multiple Easter eggs peppering the game that take some amount of subversive reasoning to see or touch.
There's a "solve the puzzle as presented" level of reasoning, and there's a "break the puzzle" level of reasoning. Some puzzles have a "get the tetromino" solution, a "get the star" solution, and a "get somewhere I shouldn't be able to reach" solution.
For instance, have you found the Space Core, from Portal 2, in The Talos Principle?
He also enjoyed Braid, but many of the puzzles there were a bit too hard for him at the time. Maybe we should try again. And he's taken an interest in all the Supermario games now.
Educators don't usually consider fun to be important for learning.
That's quite unfortunate. I think fun is absolutely crucial to truly learn something.
Start out ordering tacos for lunch. End by smuggling someone out of Venezuela via the Orinoco in a narco-submarine, with paramilitary groups ready to execute you if you mistranslate something.
Maybe in slightly different categories: Fez (~2D), Mirror's edge (parkour), infinifactory. The Stanley Parable as well, perhaps?
Then there are numerous 2D ones, and I'm pretty sure I am forgetting some that I have in my library. Portal isn't unique, but it has one of the most dynamic and entertaining narratives. It also spearheaded a whole lot of "portal clones", which was nice to see, as I quite like those puzzle games.
https://stabyourself.net/mari0/
Also, the other stabyourself games are great too.
I recommend the Talos Principle, even though I haven't finished it yet. Some challenges are quite hard, and it has even more spatial reasoning than portal. Here also, enigmas revolve around getting you from point A to point B, but you usually have to carry along some tools to help you. This often ends up being a variant of the Hanoi tower, or the wolf, goat and cabbage, but in a space with more than one dimension, unlike those classic riddles. And there is some lore hidden in the game world that can be quite interesting to puzzle together.
Now, if you want more portal, the game modding community is quite profusive around Valve's IP. You have Portal stories: Mel, Aperture tag, Portal: prelude. The quality is often worse than complete games, but the puzzles can be quite challenging.
"Each participant spent 10 h in the study, which spanned four separate sessions in the on-campus laboratory of the university, across 1-2 weeks. Each of the first three sessions lasted 3 h. Session 4 lasted one hour - solely for administering the posttest battery. At the beginning of the first session, subjects in both conditions were asked to read and sign the consent form. After signing the form, subjects were randomly assigned to one of the two conditions. All subjects were then administered an online set of pretests. Once they finished the pretests, they logged in to play their assigned game for the rest of the first session. They continued to play their assigned game for the entire second and third session (for a total of 8 h of gameplay). During the last session, they completed the online set of posttests."
"Before and after 8 h of gameplay, subjects completed an online pretest and posttest battery of tests measuring our focal constructs and their relevant facets."
Session 1 is probably about 2 hours of "training", with the rest of the time eaten up by the pretest and consent paperwork. Sessions 2 and 3 would be be almost entirely training (3 hrs each), which gets you to 8 hours of training in 3 sessions, leaving the last one for just the post-test.
Raven's progressive matrices, Insight Test, Remote Association Test
Spatial cognition:
Mental rotation test, Spatial Orientation Test, Virtual spatial navigation assessment
I know that successfully completing a task(s) just before a test will result in better performance on tests, and failing will result in poorer performance.
A very valid question indeed.
"3.4.3. Enjoyment item
After participants in each condition finished their 8 h of gameplay and before the posttest battery of tests was administered, we presented an item to players concerning their enjoyment of the assigned game. This was a single self-reported response to the statement: “I enjoyed playing (Portal 2 or Lumosity).” The 5-point Likert scale ranged from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree)."
"The measures were controlled for player enjoyment in all models (when significant) to rule out any effect enjoyment might have in learning gains. That is, based on participants' responses to the statement about enjoying their assigned game, for Portal 2 participants, enjoyment M = 4.32; SD = 0.93, while for the Lumosity participants, M = 3.50; SD = 1.05. The difference between the two groups' enjoyment is significant, with a strong advantage for the Portal 2 group: F(1,73) = 12.69; p < .001. Cohen's d = .83, which is a large effect size."
"Enjoyment was a significant covariate in the VSNA ANCOVA model"
I forget the behavior / explanation but if you take two groups and have one successfully complete tasks, and another unsuccessfully, and then test them both you'll find the folks who just previous to the test successfully completed tasks will do better than those who were unsuccessful.
From his comment
Scientists do not have unlimited resources or sample sizes that are unlimited. They make do with what they can and an 8 hour study does produce results worth looking at. No logic says otherwise.
> We needed at least 34 participants per condition to estimate moderate effect sizes in our analyses, with a power of .90.
Or maybe the humorous absurdity of a testing-obsessed "abusive mom" computer makes people relax more in actual testing situations. I suspect these sorts of aptitude tests get a lot of their power from the intimidation factor.
Hello and welcome to the Aperture Science computer-aided enrichment center.
I wonder if there was cake at the end.
sigh...
Wow, they totally fell under my radar, which is impressive when they own the #1 game distribution platform in the world. I remember seeing mention of Artifact, but didn't notice DOTA at all.
The Portal/Half-Life universe (they're the same) itself? Absolutely.
If they give us Half Life 3 in the form of a VR game I'll be extraordinarily disappointed.
> In this study, we tested 77 undergraduates who were randomly assigned to play either a popular video game (Portal 2) or a popular brain training game (Lumosity) for 8 h.
This paper is pretty simple, it's just a straight-forward before-and-after test. They are holding a lot of factors constant and not doing an observational study, so 77 is actually a fine sample size for something like this.