Video gaming may be associated with better cognitive performance in children | Hacker News Reader

Video gaming may be associated with better cognitive performance in children

nida.nih.gov

451 pointsgmays316 comments

I credit RuneScape with teaching me the value of delayed gratification and basic economics. I credit competitive Halo 3 with teaching me team building and strategy skills. I credit StarCraft with training my mind to travel at warp speed.

Honestly. My video game experience was instrumental to my success so far in life. This is not surprising to me.

I learned one of the most valuable lessons of my life from RuneScape. My brother and I, playing for years, had amassed something like 100k gold between the two of us. We wanted more gold and were reading a guide online about to get it. The guide recommended a simple process of buying and selling coal in a kind of arbitrage trade. My brother and I were torn if we should try it, reasoning that if it were so easy to make money then everyone would do it. But, on the other hand, the guide seemed like it should work.

In the end, we just followed the guide, and it worked exactly as promised. In literally a day we 10x'd our RuneScape gold to well over a million and had basically unlimited funds from running the coal trading arbitrage the guide described for as long as we played the game.

It's hard for me to put this lesson into words exactly - but it's something like if something seems like it should work explore it and find out if it does. But also something like "Don't discount something for being too obvious." This has helped me in my career where it seemed like there were obvious opportunities for something that were in front of me so I just did the obvious thing and wound up getting richly rewarded for it. This kind of idea was on my mind in most of major life decisions too.

It's an old joke: An economist is walking down the street when he steps on a $100 bill lying on the ground. He spots it, but decides to keep walking and doesn't pick it up.

“After all,” he thinks to himself, “if that had really been a $100 bill, someone else would have picked it up already!”

It took me until this moment to finally realize this joke relies on inefficient market to work. Consider: what if everyone in the joke's universe was a rational market actor? The $100 bill would lie there until it got consumed by rats or otherwise destroyed by natural events. For the economists' reasoning to work, there must exist some actors who don't reason this way, and instead pick up the bill on sight.

How does this translate to the efficient market hypothesis in general? Not sure, but if I were to dig down into how rational actors handle such situations, I'd expect to discover the math works out over continuous domain, and the joke is a paradox because we tend to think of money in discrete terms.

I think it's a good example of how rationality is a construct. We arbitrarily choose which rational framework makes the most sense in the situation and apply it.

Do you want to rely on the prior actor framework, or the react to what you see framework? That decision is not rational.

I don't think I'd go this far.

In the EMH people do still trade, it's just that only those with new information trade profitably.

In the joke scenario, as a parallel, you just need the economist to model that there's a chance they are the first person to see the bill.

Then you have a game theory game, where your chance of being the first person to see the bill depends on what everyone else thinks their chance was to be the first person, and hence did or didn't pick up the bill.

Then there is some optimal mixed strategy where people try pick up the bill with a certain probability, and it all works out.

One wonders if the effect you're describing isn't the reason that self-directed entrepreneurship seems to be on a sharp decline in the developed world. Believe the media, let alone the internet, and one would imagine we have 8 year olds building nuclear reactors and curing cancer, in their basements. So how can this hare brained scheme you have ever possibly work? Surely somebody else would have done it by now.

> Believe the media, let alone the internet, and one would imagine we have 8 year olds building nuclear reactors

On the one hand, we do[0].

On the other, what you're describing is why I don't feel bad about the fact that, 15 years after I had the idea, I've still not learned to use MHD modelling software to experiment with an idea I've had that might make fusors a little more interesting.

[0] ok so they were 12 not 8: https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/2020/10/middle-sch...

That is what I was referring to. Building a fusor is not a demonstration of genius so much as it is a demonstration of resources. You need thousands of dollars in parts (at least as his was built) and a significant degree of knowledge about safely managing radioactivity and handling electrical components carrying lethal levels of voltage.

None of this is obtained from genius, but from a father who's experienced in such and most likely an engineer. And I think this is why these sort of tales never have the implied follow through. The unstated implication is '12 year old builds nuclear reactor in toy room' is 'imagine what he'll be doing in 5 years!' And, the answer? Shit posting on Twitter, getting political, and trying to make a AR/VR startup.

Not exactly the Atlas upon which the world can comfortably thrust all of their hopes and expectations upon. And nobody is. Ramanujan [1] was a once in a millennia level of genuine abnormal genius, and he dedicated his entire life to a single pursuit. Yet even that mammoth of a man could but scratch the surface of that which is out there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan

Many times, the best solutions are very simple. These often seem obvious in hindsight, but were at the time either non-obvious or dismissed prematurely.

What was the scheme? Buy coal certs at 800 per and sell at 1k?

I've forgotten the exact prices at this point (I want to say buying mid-20's per and selling mid-30's but that may be complete misremembering). The basic idea was hanging out in the dwarf mines where people are mining coal and giving low offers on coal, with a promise to increase price if they can sell in quantity (and in certs). Then, just turn around and sell the certs, once you had a lot of them, at a higher price in Varrock town square (or similar).

One other reason we thought this wouldn't work is that it seemed to us buying in large quantity should get a discount - bulk discount, right? But that wasn't the case. It was cheaper, per unit, to buy hundreds of coal than tens of thousands.

way to figure out the efficient market hypothesis and why it could be wrong at such a young age!

In the same boat and it is great until I run into a more complex multi-faceted problem, pick a solution and end up 30 miles down the road before I realize I need to backtrack and try a different one.

If my childhood had more books and boredom I might have the patience to spend longer in the planning stage and less enthusiasm for the drinking coffee and pounding out a solution stage.

Mine had a lot of books and boredom.

I rarely regret just getting things done. Excessive planning is a much larger issue. I find it's usually better to just do something twice rather than spend too much time thinking about it.

I've been thinking this a lot lately.

One absolutely fantastic upside for just getting it done is that even if you have to redo it from scratch, you have so much better real-world understanding of the problem space.

I'm inclined to think that this applies to majority of the things we do, but is often brought up regarding building products in the idea that one should build the first prototype quickly, just to be scrapped so the final solution can be built from clean slate, benefiting from all the knowledge the prototype helped us gather.

Most often, in my experience at least, the knowledge one gains from actually doing the thing (even badly) surpasses anything that could have been gained with excessive planning. To actually work, genuine effort including some planning is definitely needed, but I don't think that's too high a bar. At least not when compared to the skills and knowledge one would have needed to achieve the same success with "just" excessive planning up front.

My experience is that this works for following semi-intuitive man-made flowchart type activities (e.g. fixing a car). For truly novel endeavors with high-risk (e.g. if the risk is breaking something irreplaceable), the planning is essential.

Same. I suffer from analysis paralysis.

My two biggest childhood hobbies were reading and video games. Frankly, grand strategy games like the Civilization series and simulation games like SimCity taught patience and planning much more effectively than any of the books.

What the books taught me was how to write clearly, if with a somewhat unorthodox style. Turns out that's extremely important for a software engineer.

I credit eve online with teaching me how to run complex and effective counter intelligence operations but I've yet to use it in real life :(.

On the other hand how to inspire people and the importance of operational doctrine has been massively important.

Also spreadsheets..

EVE online taught me how CEO’s feel when one of their minions starts talking to them, and they have no idea who the person is, nor who hired them.

Also the value of realtime market information.

EVE online taught me that you can be CEO while being unemployed and living in a crappy appartment.

This is hilarious to me.

I love reading about eve, but I can't imagine ever having enough free time for it

> Also spreadsheets..

The best skill in life

> I credit RuneScape with teaching me the value of delayed gratification

I credit RuneScape with teaching me to write Java code to write bots to do the work involved with the delayed gratification.

Then eventually created a GP selling business online.

Also led a PvP clan and ran a PHP forum for it.

The RuneScape metagame was where I acquired real-world software development skills.

Learned Java as a first language to write bots back in 2009. Present day, I’m 1.5 yrs into writing a market analysis/flipping site for OSRS, and it’s been a great way to play with time-series stuff, sysadmin, and front-end.

Gotta credit a good chunk of career success to RuneScape as well.

Something like ge-tracker? I always thought it sounded fun to work on something like that, but also a ton of work for a game I'd probably be bored with way before I'd be able to finish anything tangible. I'm guessing there's decent potential for profit though, so that might be a good motivator.

Yep, same basic premise as GE-tracker with higher detail visualizations and fancier stats/feature engineering on top. Flipping to max cash became a pandemic hobby of mine, so I started off with a handful of homerolled spreadsheets/Jupyter notebooks to cover blind spots that I felt GE-tracker was missing, and eventually decided I could make a better version of the same recipe on my own.

I'm happy you got all of that from video-games and in no way I'm advocating against video games for everyone.

But, in my life, I credit sports for everything you said.

With the added benefit of a healthy neurology and biology in general. Something video games - and the digital world, as a whole - have been demonstrated to be detrimental. I mean, by serious studies.

Studies don’t investigate something as complex as the total impact of video games or anything else in all contexts.

You get individual studies of the impact in terms of say specific reflexes or some aspect of depression for some subset of games, but you would need a comprehensive set of studies for every single context to build a holistic picture which we simply don’t have.

Occasionally it’s enough to find major downsides such as with smoking’s really negative health impacts and say it’s not worth it. But for most things, including video games, there isn’t a single overwhelming downside just some negatives and other positives.

People want a black and white world where they can say “_ is good/bad,” but in the real world meat, carbs, video games etc isn’t that simple they are good and bad at the same time. Many people would be better off by reducing meat and carb consumption but that doesn’t mean a worldwide ban on consuming them is a good idea.

> Studies don’t investigate something as complex as the total impact of video games or anything else in all contexts.

Why not? What's the purpose of saying it's good for cognitive performance if cognitive performance isn't tested seriously?

Try at least two or three dimensions of it. Outside the video gaming context of course.

Otherwise just say: video gaming is good for getting better at video gaming.

That would be an honest conclusion.

> Why not?

Because there are simply far to many variables involved. On one dimension you have type of game, but that variety impacts everything else.

Mario Party and Call of Duty for example may impact peoples emotions differently.

Tetris and StarCraft are both test actions per minute in a different way which may mean different things for reflexes etc.

Hours per week are another dimension, someone spending a few minutes per day playing Wordle is obviously different than someone who only works a part time job to have more time for their MMO addiction.

Finances is another dimension with actual free games being well free but some people spending their life savings on loot boxes in “Free to Play” games.

Degree of socialization is again varies wildly with a surprising number of marriages starting from MMO’s but single player games obvious don’t have that.

Exercise is another with some people getting a real workout playing beat saber and others getting embolisms from sitting to long with their addiction.

Etc etc.

I agree that the digital world can have detrimental effects, but I don't think it's alone in that. I have many friends, a brother, and a wife who also credit sports for all of the above, with the added benefit of a the trauma and lifelong pain from the injury that forced them to quit. Books honestly seem like a complete win. Hopefully my daughter will benefit from the safest parts of all 3.

Agree that reading books is a great habit to take.

It's sad that an injury from a physical exercise can cause a lot of trauma indeed, but I don't think practicing it is inherently bad because of that.

An accident can happen related to anything in life. People die from coconuts or tree branches falling upon their heads. We won't say trees or coconuts are inherently bad because of that.

Are you including “basic economics” in the list of things sports taught you? Curious how that would be learned.

If you look closely, it isn't hard to see that sports became major industries, collectivelly moving trillions of Dollars worldwide every year.

If you are interested in economics, you can learn a lot from it.

In an intersection with behavioral economics, you can even learn a lot of business from observing sports.

I credit Civ I with my almost failing my GCSEs, but I guess I did okay in the end. But then I have in the decades since avoided games I could happily play all night :).

Same here. I credit competitive gaming scene for teaching me all kind of skills. I was never a sports guy. But when I start to watch how ppl train, compete, strategize and work in a team, I realized that so many meta attributes are crucial for one's success

You should credit your parents with allowing you to have so much free time and good nutrition.

Or in most cases, it's parental neglect with both parents working full-time jobs with barely enough time to take care of themselves?

Books and video games were my way of being 'out of sight, out of mind' as a kid. Sadly, the less interaction I had with my parents, the more peaceful my life. I loved being left alone during the summer time.

From what do you infer "in most cases"? What are your statistics?

Parental availability has been steadily declining for decades - the same decades where video game usage took the place of other activities. You can do your own research. If it's difficult to get hard data, use soft data and draw inferences, but don't invalidate what data we clearly have and from which plenty of valid use can be extrapolated.

I credit

- AoE for laying the groundwork of my love of history and archeology.

- Skyrim for making me finally learn how to create 3D art, which I still do as profession today.

- All those weird Japanese games that tell you that you don't have to conform to the predefine notion of what should and shouldn't be videogames.

Of course it doesn't replace real learning. It's hilarious when some gaming-addicted argue that 'videogames made me smart! see that research!'

Hell no Bob, smart people out there spend most of their time learning and play videogames just occasionally.

I credit Age of Empires 2 for teaching me about managing an economy and medieval history. I credit Age of Wonders for teaching me what strategy really means.

Lots of other great games helped me build my English skills, most of all The Legacy of Kain series.

I used to play a lot of RPGs on the gameboy, but my English was still not good enough so I avoided reading. Sometimes I had my gameboy and a dictionary and I'd translate NPC dialogue one word at a time.

I remember Final Fantasy 1 on gameboy had a surprisingly open world and I could walk all over the map, and it had random monster encounters. I'd be fighting a lengthy turn based battle about every 20 steps, and it could be way above my level, and I was completely and utterly lost!

I spent so much time on that game. But I never progressed far into the quest. Playing it as an adult I realized one random NPC says there's a hidden cave to the east, and if you never read it's pretty much impossible to find.

Similarly in Pokemon, bumbling through caves in the dark until I go out the other side through sheer luck and grit. Turns out the move Flash just lights up the cave.

I had a similar thing happened with Zelda for the original Gameboy. There was some mobs in one of the first dungeons, that needed to be killed in a particular order, written on a plack. I spent months on and off trying everything, but it took a older friend borrowing it until I got past it.

And Age of Wonders taught me that building a Wonder always let's you win. But I also yet have to find an opportunity to use it. Maybe I will build one in my garden and WIN!!!! I just need a 1000 wood, 1000 Food, 1000 Gold!!!

I have a vague memory of playing ‘Uprising’ and having no idea what the flavor text on the screen said. Somehow I made it work.

I credit Quake Live / OpenArena for teaching me anger management.

Some games do but I've seen people roam aimlessly in FPS~ games (say assassin's creed, GTA), without even much fun, to the point I was questionning the potential benefits.

Later in life I also realized how 'real life' is a lot subtler than it appear. Using a weapon, being far out in the woods, crafting tools .. which are all things I did in video games but had no relation to the real life versions.

Makes me curious to try runescape though

Quake III Arena / QuakeLive training for mind warp speed and hand/eye coord.

Games showed me simple way on how to get better at things - just do it everyday, either practice or read about it

watching eSports showed me how big difference mentality and attitude makes

i credit the original sid maiers pirates in teaching me at least some english, you swashbucklers and cutthroats.

SC2 is probably the most likely to produce entrepreneurs.

H3 taught real social skills and teamwork.

I was a Master SC2 player and strongly disagree with this. SC2 is heavy on execution and ops, which are not good 0 -> 1 skills. SC2 also has very short feedback loops and no long term consequences.

The things I will say it has going for it is that it has an extremely steep learning curve and you have to grind. Though many other games also have these attributes at a sufficiently high level.

The reality is that most people who are very good at video games wouldn't be able to maintain the long-term discipline or focus to run a company, nor be able to handle the responsibility of leading a team.

Engineering games, like Contraptions or bridge buildings, were helpful for me.

Roguelikes produces explorers and risk-takers.

Civilization 1 was my introduction to world history.

I sunk a decade into civ 2. Oh man, the memories. I wish gog would acquire rights to release that abandonware with soundtrack and everything. Running it yourself requires running it on top of win3.1 in dosbox now days, and it's still janky. I would legit pay $60 for a perfectly working copy.

/s I credit Civilization 1 as well. Or should I credit my parents who had PC/XT at home when the price of PC/XT was that of 3 new (soviet) automobiles? /s

My son started playing games (with me) at 4 yo (partly because we were all locked indoors for months on end).

Anecdotally - and providing you use some discretion as to choice of game - I’ve found it absolutely fascinating to watch both the pace of development of problem-solving skills, and some of the frankly astounding leaps of logic and intuition young kids are capable of. I vividly remember one rock-moving puzzle in Breath of the Wild that had me stumped until he piped up with a proposal that turned out to be the correct solution. Fascinating stuff.

What games do you recommend for kids of that age?

Fun question! I would suggest the following (in no particular order), subject to the proviso that you do need to be sat next to them to help manage frustration, especially in the beginning (although my personal take is that they shouldn’t be left to play by themselves at all at that age) - particularly as they learn the controller, general video game conventions, and the specifics of each game:

- Breath of the Wild - Animal Crossing - Stardew Valley - Minecraft - Super Mario Odyssey - Super Mario 3D World - Rayman Legends - Ratchet & Clank - It Takes Two - Slay the Spire - Journey - Spiderman and Miles Morales

My son’s favourite superhero - far and away - is Spiderman, in large part thanks to the PlayStation games. Pretty great role model. Kids find swinging through the city utterly exhilarating.

It Takes Two was such a fantastic, memorable experience for both of us - he still talks about it months later. It does require quite a lot of a kid, though - better for when they’ve got a year’s experience.

And trying to catch all the insects and fish in Animal Crossing kicked off a passion in him for the real things, to say nothing of what it taught him about animals generally, time and seasonality.

A Nintendo Switch is probably a good place to start, although as he gets older I’m encouraging him to move more over to the PlayStation (partly because it’s so much cheaper over time!).

Switch Joycons are great for small hands, too, although most kids seem to be able to manipulate a full-size controller by age 4-5.

Enjoy!

I also recommend the Switch to begin with. The one that can be hooked to a TV - children will throw stuff to the ground, by mistake or purposely. You'd rather have them throw the control pad instead of the full console.

While I love Breath of the Wild to the death, its combat is rather difficult and somewhat realistic from the start, which might be a turnoff ("scary monsters keep killing me"). It also has lots of written dialog, which may be challenging for a 4 year old. Definitively this one has to be played with an adult.

Super Mario Odyssey is a much better intro game for a 4-year old. It also has combat (complex combat, with all the "possessed enemy powers"), but it introduces all its mechanics extremely gradually (starts with one-attack button, on a safe environment, and builds up from there). The game works well without paying attention to the dialog at all. The cartoon looks is also more child-friendly. At 6 years old my son can do air tricks with Mario that I struggle to do. It is a jewel of a game.

Animal crossing is fun. I worry a bit about the "materialistic/accumulative" parts of it ("gotta have more stuff!" here's an ice-cream shop stand that does nothing) but the insect and fish collection things are great. Again it will require some reading in order to advance.

I have not played Slay the Spire myself. Isn't that too "brainy" for a 4yo?

Oh I forgot to mention: Picu-nicu is a great "my first platformer" game, definitively recommended.

Is It Takes Two about a married couple and their struggles? Isn't it made for couples? I could be wrong. What is that like for a child? Did it spark a lot of questions about marriage or anything else? Or did the eyes of a child ignore any adult themes and he only cared about the gameplay?

In our case, the adult themes went straight over his head and we just enjoyed the (frankly terrific) team-driven gameplay. The art style is very cutesy in a way that seems to appeal to kids, and there’s no swearing in the dialogue.

Ymmv, though, this stuff is highly subjective. If you’re particularly concerned then better just to stick to Nintendo first-party stuff - their whole brand is built around keeping everything wholesome.

My kid loves Unraveled on the switch, he asks for it all the time. It’s a cute co-op puzzle platformer.

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At young ages, I say give them an old-school Nintendo, or N64 etc. Little/no advertising, monetization of your kid's attention, whatever. If they're not on the web or at school yet, they won't even know they're missing out on more modern systems.

Or some similar setup where there's no online, no monthly charge, no pay-to-win, and instead the child gets to play a carefully crafted game, hopefully an awesome one.

I also think (offline) minecraft is great at that age.

Agree completely! My 6 year old thought the original Wii is the pinnacle of gaming, even told me to treat the controllers gently since he's gonna pass it on to his kids, and they will pass it to theirs - that seemed so obvious to him.

Of course, a few months ago his "girlfriend" down the street got a Switch...

My kids have been enjoying this online remake of LodeRunner. [0]

It's fun because I have fond memories of playing it on the Macintosh Classic II as a kid.

They like making custom levels for each other, just like me and my siblings used to do.

I was also happy to find an ad-free Minesweeper remake on Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Page. [1] They like the maps game from that page as well.

[0] https://loderunnerwebgame.com/game/

[1] https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/

I played LodeRunner on the NES.

My 4yo son loves the N64, but he plays nothing but Smash Bros.

It’s not like I don’t understand, but it still feels mildly wrong.

He'll branch out when he gets a little older.

My two kids have enjoyed the iPad game Inventioneers, about making zany Rube Goldberg devices out of a wide variety of objects.

The recent puzzle game Railbound is fun, with some very tricky puzzles.

* * *

Instead of video games though, let me highly recommend the physical logic puzzle games by the company SmartGames, most of which are excellent.

Raf Peeters, one of their puzzle designers, has a nice website with some back story about many of them, https://smartgamesandpuzzles.com

Wow, I love those Raf Peeters games! More than one of them will end up under the Christmas tree for sure.

Cuphead is absolutely the best game I ever played with my kids. This is one of the only games that allows you to play together with your family/friends offline. No screen split. I haven't seen such a gem for many, many years.

Cuphead is the game that can easily inspire people to become game developers.

Fun fact: the entire game was hand-drawn. The authors took the inspiration from the cartoons of 1930s.

That is... A bold choice depending on the kids age...

though I guess they'll be better trained for when they tackle dark souls...

The Freddi fish games by Humongous Entertainment are really great at that age. They are simple point and click adventures by Ron Gilbert with fun characters and a lot of interaction on the screen. Easy to get for cheap on Steam or sometimes in bundles and I've been impressed with how quickly it developed puzzle solving skills with my nephews.

Once the child is a bit older, the Pajama Sam serie is also great.

Spelunky HD! Easy to understand and control, terribly difficult to master. I started my oldest on it when she was 4 and she beat it for the first time around age 6. Now she tears through it like a ninja master. She also enjoyed Bit Trip Runner 2 when she was 3-4 yrs old.

The idea that it took 1/3 of her life-so-far to beat the game is kind of hilarious.

I have tried a lot of stuff, and I believe Lego Marvel Super Heroes (or other similar Lego games) are absolutely perfect for a small kid. There are infinite lives, and you can play co-op where you can do all the hard stuff while they enjoy the ride. Eventually they will learn by seeing you do stuff, and they will learn and want to do it too. It is truly amazing, a very forgiving game for a 4yo.

As a side note, my son learned this using a fight stick, since "move the stick in that direction to make your character go to that direction" is easier for them to comprehend and associate than using a dpad. Also way easier to hold with hittle hands.

Hey there, sitting here with my awesome 5yo and we can answer this one.

Some games we recommend (platform we played it on):

Cave Story (PC, was free on Epic)

Shovel Knight, Treasure Trove Edition (PC, Steam)

Castlevania Symphony of the Night (ios, ipad)

Minecraft (ios, ipad)

In general, most Nintendo made and published games tend to be great for kids of all ages. Captain Toad Treasure Tracker for problem solving, Mario Maker 2 for dexterity but also once they get comfortable with the game they can make their own levels and express themselves, Legend of Zelda Link's Awakening for the same reasons the above person noted Breath of the Wild. Switch Sports is great for getting your kids into sports that you might not normally have access to (like volleyball).

As mentioned, Zelda Breath of the Wild is a great game for kids, even as young as 4-5. My kid is 6 and had an amazing time with it, as did I.

My then 8yo daughter who is behind in love with horses saw me riding a horse in botw. Zero experience with video games she picked it up and spent six months working at it so she could get a horse.

Completing shrines so she could get enough stamina to tame the horses.

She has collected all the rare ones now.

Starting at around 5 or 6, Minecraft is fantastic.

My son finished Lego City Undercover at the age of 4, turning 5. It was the first game he played. Highly recommend.

I’ve found that the same games I was playing around that age are actually still fun - Commodore 64 games. Basic, non-distracting graphics and simple joystick controls make things easy for young kids.

The logical journey of the zoombinis

My son loves the various Lego games (Lega Batman, Indiana Jones, Avengers, etc).

Minecraft in creative mode

Can you recommend any games / platforms for a kid at that age?

Read about the methods: They used visual cues on computer screens to test who was better in responding to visual cues on computer screens.

Let me guess.... The kids who were experienced in responding to visual cues on computer screens scored better (－‸ლ)

How could you!

I'll add the classic comment here: "correlation does not mean causation".

Maybe it's the kids with better cognitive performance that like videogame better. I wouldn't find that unlikely considering it's more mentally stimulating than other "real-world" activities.

Also, I personally learned to code by writing bots for an MMORPG, so I definitely owe my career to videogames.

From TFA:

"researchers stress that this cross-sectional study does not allow for cause-and-effect analyses, and that it could be that children who are good at these types of cognitive tasks may choose to play video games."

Video games are more mentally stimulating than non-screen-based activities (building a fort, catching animals, reading a book)? People with better cognitive performance prefer more external mental stimulation? I didn't know any of that.

Your classic comment certainly stands, though. It could easily be that e.g. the large gender difference between the gamer and non-gamer groups alone can account for the difference. Many likely confounders aren't mentioned in the study at all.

But whether or not there's causation involved, this study tells us precious little about gaming and "cognitive performance" in general, since the stop-signal and n-back tasks they used have obvious connections to gaming but very little relevance to most other areas of cognitive functioning (of course kids who play video games for hours every day will probably respond quicker to which way an arrow on a computer screen is pointing).

This was mentioned in the article.

Plus I am not sure that this is "better" cognitive performance, vs just "different". Perhaps kids who don't play video games are better at e.g. music? The article doesn't go into that.

Likewise I am not sure that video games are necessarily more stimulating that other real-world activities. Sure there are lots of boring things we make kids do, but there are also other joyful things that they really like too which are "real world" (adventure playgrounds, lego, swimming parks etc)

Causality also doesn't need to be unidirectional. Perhaps cognitive performance has an impact on video gaming, but video gaming likely also has some impact on cognitive performance.

I play Serious Sam to better focus on other tasks. I do so because I cannot walk long hours as I did before for exactly same purpose.

If you ask me, I'd better walk. But I can't.

Walking releases brain-derived neurotrophic factor, playing FPS does not.

As an allegedly gifted child: School was boring/not challenging enough. While video games progressed as fast as made sense.

I absolutely think that it's your PoV that's correct rather than the articles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUjYy4Ksy1E

I owe my career to World of Warcraft. Started running my own server in 2008 when the burning crusade was released on my ADSL connection for friends, then I started "scripting" shit in C++ (server software is a good framework (CMaNGOS)), so while it was compiled in it wasn't really like writing C++, never had to think about ownership, threading, lifetimes etc...

Eventually I stared messing about more inside the framework, now I work as an SRE for a streaming service. Never pursued software development as I thought I was too stupid, and now pay would be too shite as a junior dev :)

In a sense Blizzard entertainment just happened to "save my life" (I'm certain I would have a dogshit life without this, many reasons).

I think more games should embrace modding like Blizzard games do/did with maps, workshops (while not being minecraft).

Blizzard doesn’t embrace what you did, running a private WoW server. If they could have, they’d have shut you down. Certainly though it sounds as if your server was simply too small for them to ever notice. They focused their legal efforts against large private servers that sold access.

Yeah in the WoW case they didn't embrace it, but Warcraft and Overwatch has workshop solutions, that's what I was referring to. (Understand since I didn't mention it that it wasn't obvious, wrote the reply on my phone).

Always amusing when I see yet another person who started their coding journey writing RuneScape bots, seems like a really common path within a certain demographic. (I'm assuming RuneScape here because it was the largest bot community I was aware of but I suppose there could be others)

I'm another one who was introduced to tech through gaming (RuneScape) and to programming largely through RuneScape macros. There are literally dozens of us!

I had an access to personal computers in my school after classes, most of the time we were gaming. After some time teacher said that games are not allowed anymore except ones we wrote ourselves. That's how my software engineer career started.

Maybe it is more of a gender difference. I have yet to encounter a boy who doesn't like some kind of videogame but not so for girls... But this would mean that intelligence in not distributed equally among gender.

I agree that intelligence is not a prerequisite for interest in games. Pretty much every boy in my school when I was growing up liked games and wanted to play them, and many of them were as thick as a plank.

I would also add that it's impossible to find direct causation in psychology or sociology because it's impossible to have all the variables when it comes to humans. So this is the best we can get.

Careful now. Self-assortment into those who don't play at all and those who play at least three hours per day? There's good reasons to think those weren't otherwise equivalent populations in the first place. I'm buying "associated" but any sort of claims about effects from the games are going to have to come from elsewhere.

There are enough signals in this paper to warrant caution, although the paper has a careful title, as well as abstract. I congratulate authors with that, but it hasn't stopped this crowd from overinterpreting the results.

First, they don't measure general "cognitive performance," they measure something very specific, this one: https://www.cambridgecognition.com/cantab/cognitive-tests/me.... That task is very close to video gaming. I know of another study that shows that FPS gamers have a somewhat better peripheral vision. It makes sense that playing games improves reaction time and control on some tasks.

Second, the difference between gamers and non-gamers on this task is very small: 299ms vs 307ms. That's really far below any interesting effect. Effects in fMRI are not interesting: it is unknown what a larger signal in a certain area means. You cannot draw conclusions from it.

Third, the statistical logic is the classic NHST with all its problems. They even commit the error of drawing conclusions from lack of significance.

Fourth, they don't give specifics, but potential confounds were modelled with some linear modelling. It's highly unlikely that the effects of those external factors are linear, and there aren't many of them. There are however some really large difference between the groups (parental income, sex, and watching video/streaming).

Concluding, there's no reason to suppose the effect must be attributed to video gaming, and certainly not that it is positive for general cognitive performance.

Would you assume the same thing about playing a musical instrument or playing a sport? What is playing video games except practicing cognitive performance? It works spatial reasoning, logic, dexterity, problem solving, reactions, etc.

> Would you assume the same thing about playing a musical instrument or playing a sport?

Yes, of course. Musical ability is well known to be closely associated with mathematical ability. Musical achievement is not known to be closely associated with mathematical achievement; people tend to do one or the other.

But this already tells us that playing an instrument will predict better cognitive performance for reasons unrelated to the work you do to learn the instrument.

I would not assume that playing a sport predicted better cognitive performance, but I obviously would assume that playing a sport intensively predicts better athleticism -- independent of the effect of practicing sports -- than avoiding sports does.

Yes, but for different reasons. Playing an instrument or sport means you're more likely to have a non-poor family with parents who have time to spend with you.

I think having parents who can help you develop a growth mindset is awesome and something generally reserved for upper/middle class parents. The part where your mind grows comes from practicing. So practicing video games is the same as practicing sports or instruments, the games encourage you to keep pushing yourself in the same way that a coach or teacher would.

That sounds like wishful thinking in a Dunning Kruger kind of way by somebody who never played physical sports on a competitive level.

Video games are a non-social controlled environment with obvious and predictable goals, similar to gambling. Gambling encourages a person to keep pushing themselves for a positive outcome but that alone does indicate any form of personal advancement.

Sports and music require development of skills, often with coaching by a human, and requiring long periods of independent practice without any kind of immediate feedback. In sports it takes years of investment to get good (less than excellent). If a given video game took years of investment to complete the current level almost nobody would play that game.

Absolutely. Saw a study a few years ago that finds that school music program participation is significantly correlated with parental wealth, which raises all kinds of confounding factors depending on what's actually being measured (e.g. Was the kid 10ms slower because they didn't get a good breakfast? Or mom got home late from her 2nd job and interrupted her family's sleep?)

could be kids who have access to a console and have several hours a day free might be in a different socioeconomic environment?

but with cheap phone games, maybe not. hmmm...

I’m inclined to disagree based on antithetical first hand experiences. In fact the only console we ever had growing up, my father smashed in front of us after a year because all he gave a shit about was our grades. When a few classes started slipping he blamed the box.

Also, “associated” is different from “causality”, right?

I had a similar upbringing. Video games and TV were blamed for bringing down our grades, and were extremely restricted. We never had a console. Dad would come home and put his hand on the TV to see if it was warm, and ground us if it was. I was allowed to spend time on the computer if I was writing BASIC or playing something "educational" (like Carmen SanDiego, or Oregon Trail). The occasional Sierra game slipped in. The first real game machine I was allowed was a Game Boy, when I was 12.

For better or worse, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have become a coder if I'd had access to lots of games in elementary school.

Anything with a screen has to be treated as having an asterisk *.

How is the alternative not?

Studies also show that taking university level maths in preschool is associated with better cognitive performance!

One thing I remember from childhood is playing console games at houses of friends who owned consoles. They would be masters of the game and I would pick up a controller and from lack of experience feel completely lost and useless at the game and lose interest quickly. There's seems like there would be a self selection where those who can fall into the learned behavior of the game/reward cycle (console or phone easy access) can get lost in it for quite a time barring supervision. The study itself also mentions confounding things like higher percentage of gamers in study being male (so maybe gender plays a larger role than chance), weird memory effects like the video gamers being better for a short time at start of testing but falling off rapidly versus non gamers being able to continue at a higher level. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...

It’s true that correlation isn’t causation but I think, in moderation, games do improve cognitive skills. If it becomes something the kid does all the time, then I think the lack of balance does more harm than good. Moderation is all things.

I dont understand what you're getting at. What are the "reasons to think" that the populations are not equivalent? The study controlled for parental income, sex, age, BMI, IQ.

I doubt those controls are sufficient, individual-level IQ measures are very variant and likely incomplete, so there still could easily be pre-existing differences the controls can't sort out

I'm not seeing your point. Are you saying it is not valid because you doubt if such a study could show anything, or are you saying that you would design the study differently?

The study is what it is, I'm not saying anything about its validity, we were talking about possible interpretations of it.

The point is that we need to be careful not to take this data as implying that games cause better performance, only that it's correlated with it; guelo pointed out the study does control for BMI/IQ/etc, but I think that this is still insufficient to claim any kind of causation there*. We know nothing at all of the counterfactual world where those same kids didn't play games.

* Even if IQ tests were a message from the heavens saying THESE KIDS WERE DESTINED FOR THE EXACT SAME LEVEL OF COGNITIVE PERFORMANCE AT BIRTH we would still know nothing about causality, because there may have been something else in their lives that caused both the game-playing and the better performance.

I’d be a very different person without games when I was young. Got me into programming, thinking beyond my immediate reality… etc. More stimulation is probably good for development, that’s how pathways form, I have been told.

Call me armchair “points out the obvious parts then gets pessimistic guy,” but we’ll likely never actually know if it’s a correlation in the time period that’s more consistent with like… the nutritional availability and parenting habits. Or for that matter The Osbornes going off the air?

I suspect that a lot of our policy actions must be suspiciously based on suspicions until we make a major breakthrough in neurology or statistical analysis. Do what works for now.

Seems like brains that are engaged have better outcomes than passive ones, let’s do that for now!

I’d be a very different person if I played more video games when I was young.

I spent a lot of my time outside exploring and playing games with my friends. Later in college when a lot of my peers were playing counter strike all day long I got into programming because I always wanted to learn how to do it.

I lived in apartments with not many play opportunities during my childhood, but virtual worlds provided pretty much that play environment for me (of course, with different risks and less whole body physical activity). The game was Tibia (it still exists), and it required a lot of planning, had all elements you'd want children to be immersed in, like:

in-game mysteries (is it possible to solve X or Y quest, get a certain item, and so on?), some of which persist today (probably the remaining ones can't be solved),

social interaction: you needed to trade with players for almost everything -- buying all equipment, even to use magic you were required to trade unless you could make them yourself),

in-game economy, mechanically, the game wasn't too hard, it was very well balanced; a big element was finding where you could be more efficient to sustain your own advancement through the game; trading was a major gameplay element,

making friends: for many, this was really the point of the game, just meeting people, talking for hours, finding where they came from (often distant countries I'd have no opportunity to visit); most activities greatly benefited from a group, although you could solo;

coordination: you needed a really good attention and coordination to play in certain situations; most of all, you needed to understand your capability and the requirements to make sure you didn't lose weeks or even months of progress (the death penalty was something like 10% of your total playtime!).

It's hard to overstate how much growth it afforded me and by brother -- the lessons are too numerous to cite, from interacting with people to managing risk on everything you do. We did recognize, even at the time though, that it could get us 'hooked' in a bad way -- and that the game was ultimately limited and there was a life outside (other activities) with a greater horizon. My brother just quit completely one day to never return; I always kept visiting the world out of curiosity and nostalgia. It really felt like having a wild virtual childhood. I still think about people I've met in that world some 20 years later.

Unfortunately, some of the aspects that enabled this experience have been degraded significantly. The greatest loss was probably due to cheating and bots. Cheating was already possible, maybe right from the beginning, but it took a long time to develop and become widespread. At one point though, almost every serious player was cheating, and a significant portion using bots to automatically achieve high levels with low risk (or just amass fortunes and transfer to "clean" characters). Seeing no great alternative, the developer (Cipsoft) started to understandably introduce the various cheating systems (automatic aiming and item usage, etc.) into the game itself, reduce death penalties, and so on. It also copied other games that have automated markets and so on, and for a while bots almost ruined the game (only much later they got a deal with BattleEye that significantly improved the situation -- but the game was already changed). The game now is much less wild and much more like a single player experience.

One very interesting aspect of the game is how much this wilderness is important but still very troublesome. The risk is what teaches risk management; but it also enables other player abuse. The possibility to kill and get killed was very scary (of course, maybe not as scary as many IRL risks), but it also built serious trust, when you had to trust your friend wouldn't turn against you for personal gain, find who to trust, etc.. It really showed what's ugly about humans at the same time as what's really amazingly beautiful -- some of the most kind and selfless people I've met were playing that game (and also a handful keen to set you back a long time just for pleasure). I think one way or another everyone that played it learned the value of cooperation in some way. I thought it was my yardstick of civilization to see if people would kill for fun when "it's just a game" (with serious in-game consequences for your victim) or act cooperatively -- I thought the ideal game was not one where you can't kill one another, but one you can, but almost no one does (I never subscribe to the notion that in game killing was "a fun part of the game" -- although I did see the allure of the loot; after all, not killing was also part of the game; in any case, you could always stop playing or opt for non-pvp servers, which most of my IRL friends did -- but I refused).

A very interesting experiment just in life, is the least I can say.

Note: There is a spiritual successor of the classic game going on in https://medivia.online/ Be warned -- this kind of game is as much of a time sink (and perhaps as addictive) as it sounds; but if you feel ready for this sort of experience, it seems still possible; I haven't ever played Medivia.

Huh, my immediate assumption was income played a huge role but the video game cohort had poorer parents.

The gender difference is huge though, the nongaming cohort had 288 males and 840 females while the gaming cohort had 372 males and 307 females.

Also, I'm a bit confused why they just dumped anyone with between one and three hours of videogame playing a day.

Discarding all the moderate users seems like a design flaw. A possible effect on cognition is a fairly natural question for regression.

Maybe you saw it in the text but, "This threshold was selected as it exceeds the American Academy of Pediatrics screen time guidelines, which recommend that videogaming time be limited to one to two hours per day for older children."

The thought process I can sort of imagine is that the tests are fairly costly and the hypothesis they're testing is that more play than the official recommended limit should decidedly give detectable impairments to cognition. (Seems they could have rejected that, if they'd had comparable groups in the first place. Now I'm not sure what it says)

There's already some people who they seem to have testing data for that aren't included in the final comparison, the numbers don't add up between available people with scans and total in the data. The only reason I can see is that they have between one and three hours if video games per day.the

This appears to be the study, though I'm not entirely sure [1] and it reads:

Screen Time Survey

This threshold was selected because it exceeds the American Academy of Pediatrics screen time guidelines, which recommends that video-gaming time be limited to 1 to 2 hours per day for older children.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...

Yeah, I saw their excuse for focusing on over three hours a day. I don't understand why you dump that data rather than use it somehow, like a third cohort.

Funds? Brain scans in MRI machines are super expensive.

Video games are like the cheapest way to keep a kid busy for low income working parents. I guess they could send the kids outside but people nowadays start asking questions if a kid is caught outside while single mom is working for 3 hours or something.

Given infinite money I think many of those parents would send the kid with nanny if needed or whatever to organized sports, piano classes, etc.

> Video games are like the cheapest way to keep a kid busy for low income working parents

Source on that? Video games (console or pc) is very expensive and not something low income folks can generally afford for their kids.

I think that you probably have in your mind what "gamers" would call "real games", those with highly detailed 3D graphics and requiring significant hardware (especially GPU) power, but what's considered a video game is far broader than that, and can be as simple as a basic puzzle game needing not more than 80s-era hardware.

The high end gets expensive, but the low end is pretty cheap. Considering that a game can keep a child entertained for a hundred hours or more, the overall cost can easily drop below $1/hour. Compared to the cost of a movie or other activities, it comes out cheap.

Not if they're old/used. Even new games are cheaper than sports lessons, music lessons, or living in a nice area for other activities.

Of course, without video games either, kids will find a way to have fun regardless. My grim apartment complex still had kids kicking around a soccer ball or riding bikes in the parking lot.

And it wouldn't surprise me if after adjusting for soccer and bike related medical costs, video games still beat those out in cost per unit time.

Different person here and I'm also not going to provide external information, only more perspective and I'm more so curious on what your first counterpoints in your mind would be, absent any source:

Video games are the cheapest form of paid entertainment for the amount of time that a single purchase occupies.

Despite their audience being extremely price sensitive (which has nothing to do with socioeconomics, just consumer expectations), all stakeholders recognize this and extract value in other ways.

> I'm more so curious on what your first counterpoints in your mind would be

Just some anec-data. I did not have any consoles growing up simply because we could not afford them. Eventually we got a single very old very slow machine that was shared among the family. I know a few other people in the same situation (usually 1st/2nd generation immigrants). Thus in my mind, video games are luxury products, which are not affordable to low income households.

A PC and free pirated games is pretty inexpensive.

The study combines all forms of game playing no matter the platform. They used self reported studies of all participants who were 9-10 at the time of the study, but used MRI for part of the cognitive testing response measurement.

Maybe not for the truely destitute, but the $350 for a Nintendo switch and another $150 for some games is way cheaper than private piano lessons or math tutoring where the sky's the limit. The cheapest is probably Roblox on a school-provided Chromebook, both of which are close to free.

It would be natural to do so since you assume in these time-reported things that people are not precise about the actual amount. If someone will report (x-1,x+1) h then it makes sense to just bucket into low and high so that, if there is an effect, it is initially apparent.

Why does everyone assume consoles? PC gaming is still a thing. And a study published now would have been done before gaming video cards became unaffordable.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t read the article but I learned a lot from video games and by extend the internet when I was a kid.

It thought me that if you work on something, you will get better at it, and you will be rewarded. This is not the case for a lot of other things in the life of a teenager. If you work hard at school you aren’t really rewarded, you just have to pass (binary outcome) and if you do an extra project it’s not like you get extra points. If you take a student job, you don’t get a raise when do a good job, you just get more work. If it wasn’t for video games the lessons I would have learned was that you should do the bare minimum not to fail/get fired. Which is a really sad attitude to have.

> This is not the case for a lot of other things in the life of a teenager. If you work hard at school you aren’t really rewarded, you just have to pass (binary outcome) and if you do an extra project it’s not like you get extra points.

Thank you for saying this. The point itself is something I knew and concluded on my own, but the way you phrased it made me realize that, as a parent, it will be my job to provide a structure on top of school, that rewards my kids somewhat proportionally to effort. As opposed to parents giving near-binary (5+ is good, 4 is meh, 3 sucks, 2 or below and the belt is out) rewards otherwise uncorrelated with effort, which was my experience as a kid, as well as others in my cohort I talked about this with.

My son (6) is allowed to only play one game. https://play0ad.com/. It has been a surreal experience. He is able to gather resources, launch campaigns, build cities, he now creates complex strategies to defeat the enemy (me). The game has great LAN game play so we can attack each other . The next step, he wants to know "how do we change this?" Code.

Compare this to watching tiktok?

I'm sure your son could find a way to play the game in a way you disapprove of if forced. Kids on TikTok are learning social skills and creating things in order to star in their own videos, learning to harmonize with all sorts of music and being movie editors. There are even foreign language and math lessons to be had. I'm not sure why you have to dismiss the platform as a whole. Time spent with a an active and participating parent is going to be better for the child, no matter what toy is used.

Why 0AD? I presume it's because it's open source but why would that matter here?

0 A.D. also has a built in JavaScript interpreter :)

I wonder if the industry incentives have shifted and if it impacts these cognitive benefits.

Games changed a lot over the past two decades and I am not quite sure they preserve the same sense of challenge, opting for quick rewards and addictive mechanics.

Maybe, but games in general have actually gotten a lot more complex and difficult over the years. Look at any long-running series (e.g. Super Mario Bros, COD, Street Fighter), the newer games have more and more mechanics, and they are competing against newer franchises with the same complexity. Also look at the popularity of Elden Ring, rougelikes and other "hard mode" games. Even some F2P games like Clash of Clans have a surprising amount of complexity, some of it being the alternate currencies and addictive mechanics they use to get people to spend more.

You may still be right about games not impacting cognition the same, as the complexity has shifted from mastering and creatively utilizing simple mechanics into learning convoluted ones. Also, older games were much less likely to have "easy mode" and there were no online guides, you had to figure out everything yourself. But even some modern games are like this (except for the "no online" part): "retro" and "indie" games like Slay the Spire and Celeste.

I think the reward systems have evolved differently than the gameplay systems. The reward systems are addictive but the gameplay has improved in a way that I think is more cognitively demanding. Puzzle games can be more creative with their puzzles, FPS games can add elements like a compass and ping systems, RPGs have these amazingly well written and told stories.

Games these days definitely have the same sense of challenge (if not more, looking at you Soulslikes), even if losing still gets you a loot box.

There was an interesting study done on children that talks about rewarding them for activities they like [1], and how it makes them start to dislike them which. It’s old (1973) but I’ve noticed some of the fatigue myself in the MMOs I play.

[1]: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281453299_Undermini...

When i was a kid, we had super mario world. You know, you jumped on things heads and got power ups. Fun, but Not exactly a strategic masterpiece.

Nothing wrong with that, but if games have changed i think its in the other direction, or at least the ecosystem has fragmented more into different types.

Video gaming is massively better than mindless "content" watching because it has the perception-thinking-action feedback loop. On the other hand, I have little hope about gaming in the today's society: the pressure to make money will select the most addictive type of gaming that's going to be even worse than mindless watching (slot machines in casino?)

Btw, what does "associated with better outcomes" really mean? It means that in a large sample of lab rats, 10% demonstrated a sudden spike of activity, 40% didn't react and 50% slided into depression. The study gave each outcome a score and found that the average score is slightly positive, so readers are encouraged to think that all the lab rats had this outcome. After the study got completed, those 10% of the rats got suicidal and died within a week, but studying that was outside the scope of the study.

Of course. Most video games force you to make decisions at a fairly rapid pace with ever changing information. It's like chess on steroids.

Most of them don't have the depth of chess, though. It's more like working in McDonalds.

Once you get to a high enough level in chess it's a ton of memorization. It's not that deep.

Some games are shallow but lots of games have far more depth than chess.

Isn't the memorization just a required to play competetively at all? At highest level of chess, memoryzation is a given and it's about brain power and creativity.

> it's about brain power and creativity

Part of the whole Hans Neimann cheating scandal is that he played too close to optimal as measures by his correlation to a computer. So no, it seems mostly to be about drilling positions with solvers and playing faithfully to that.

I played chess competitively as a kid, before chess programs were very strong or widely available. We memorized maybe 4 moves in and that's it. After that it was all strategy, creativity, etc... Nowadays they're doing far more work with solvers and it's pretty much taken the strategy out of it. Which is why Go is increasing in popularity. Competitive gaming probably as well.

I believe you are overestimating chess.

Tic-tac-toe on dopamine, more likely.

I didn't learn anything from hours of Counter-strike, half-life, flight sims (ok this taught me some aviation trivia) as a teenager. I deeply regret these hours, as I could have spent them outdoors hiking, rock climbing, running. Maybe even talking to girls and building better social skills.

I thought the same about my passion for Lego-style construction toys. Then, as a 25-year-old, I had to build something out of cardboard with people about the same age. It was really surprising to see that they had no intuitive understanding at all of trivial things like "which side do I start from" or "this thing is wobbling and needs a little reinforcement at the corner" (I am not talking about "complicated" things like gears and robots etc.). So, who knows what you learned from those games?

Video games prepared me for building a startup.

Each game was a set of unfamiliar rules that I'd have to learn quickly and optimize decently well against. Once I got good enough to reach the upper echelons of a game, I'd get bored and do the same with a new one. Repeat with dozens of different games, and it's very similar to the feeling of all the new unfamiliar things one has to learn in building a company.

Plus, the game that generates the closest feeling to building a startup as a whole has been Civilization :-)

And, it turns out ideas from games can be useful in products too: https://parsnip.substack.com/p/tech-trees

Try a bunch of shit until it works is how you beat video games. Sometimes distressingly similar to what I do at work.

They separated these children into two groups, those who reported playing no video games at all and those who reported playing video games for three hours per day or more.

So what happened to the 50% of total children that were somewhere between 0 and 3 hours per days of games? Were they discarded or rounded into one those two groups, because that leaves a huge gap in the middle?

My 5 year old makes redstone machines. His ability to navigate a minecraft world is ridiculously good. When I was 5 I was desperately trying to get over the first pit in Super Mario Bros.

Nictone has been known to cause nootropic effects, yet it results in long term damage and dependence. Considering the gaming industry is big money (just like big tobacco, big weed, big sugar, and big infinite scroll), I would take any study like this with a boulder of salt.

Video games might improve cognitive abilities, but they also cheat the reward centers of your brain and offer the feeling of success while achieving none.

A Stanford professor was teaching a seminar on engagement (engagement is a euphemism for addiction). He has a pretty choice quote: "You will play my game thinking you're getting better and better, but you will just be playing longer and longer."

Games can be a force for good, but the average game company is not optimizing for cognitive performance, they are optimizing for engagement (or loot boxes), the lack of alignment coupled with capitalist investment into games seems hazardous to the positive qualities they can have.

Agree although if you can sift through the noise there are some gems about.

For me, the golden era of games was SNES to PS2 as feels like the best mix of budget creativity and computing power. The industry was still figuring itself out back then.

Games like Hollow Knight aspire to that older era too.

That said, I recently picked up Overwatch 2 and I'm impressed at how high the skill ceiling is, the spatial and strategic reasoning to play that game semi-pro is definitely nontrivial and Blizzard are definitely a part of Big Gaming.

>Games can be a force for good, but the average game company is not optimizing for cognitive performance

Unsure if you have games like Factorio in mind or Nintendo brain games but games that are mechanically rich (eg Souls or Elder Scrolls) can give plenty for someone to reason about if they are already so inclined.

I spent a lot of time thinking how to min/max from a very young age and it's a similar mindset to at least QA but also coding.

Overwatch 2, for all the criticism it gets has a really good core that has been worked on for a while now. It's a shame that good game and level design will be marred by Blizzard's monetisation and content policies.

If you're in the market for more gems of games to play, Deep Rock Galactic is quite fantastic.

> Video games might improve cognitive abilities, but they also cheat the reward centers of your brain and offer the feeling of success while achieving none.

Isn't that all games & sports? If you were achieving something they would call it a "job" not a "game".

What makes it a "job" is less about achieving something, and more about you becoming dependent on it. Like, I definitely achieved something playing Kerbal Space Program (at the very least, a much deeper understanding of kinematics and orbital mechanics), but it's still just a game, because I can stop playing it if I want to, and nothing bad happens. I can't do that with my job.

I was assuming that the person i was responding to's definition of "achieve something" was puting food on the table.

I generally agree that we can achieve and get value out of all sorts of things, including video games. Even spending an hour sitting quietly meditating is an achievement for many people. Life is what we make of it; value and beauty can be anywhere

Avoid games with IAPs in them. Free or not. The second an IAP shows up it twists the design towards "engagement".

MMOs are also a problem even if they have no IAPs.

There's a nasty feedback loop here. Non gamer parent won't pay upfront for a non predatory game for the kids. Kids will install free to play crap. Parent will think all the games are like that.

> Nictone has been known to cause nootropic effects, yet it results in long term damage and dependence.

You mean raw nicotine (as in e.g. anti-smoking gums and patches), or tobacco?

I remember reading a paper that there's a strong association between spatial reasoning and performance in math.

This made intuitive sense to me given that there is some overlap between manipulating objects in a 2D or 3D space and visualizing a math problem whether numeric or geometric.

I find it hard to believe that typical video game puzzles can help increase cognitive performance, but plausible that training spatial recognition might help train the same regions of the brain we use for math.

Even the basic mechanics: teaching math to my kids when they were young was purely a visual exercise of moving groups of things (coins, Cheerios, M&M's) around.

Ask yourself: are you a shape rotator or a wordcel?

Since I see we're using this as an excuse for general video-gaming-and-parenting discussion... I'm currently very conflicted about video games for my son (7). He loves them but mom hates them and insists on a limit of 10 minutes per day.

I am not sure she is wrong. I played a lot of games as a kid and I probably could have done better things with my time. Not that I got any guidance as to what those better things would have been, but still.

At the same time, it seems like a lot of dads are bonding with their boys by playing games, and I wonder if I am missing out.

I just don't know what to think.

> a limit of 10 minutes per day.

I honestly laughed at this. This is like limiting movie time to 5 minutes per day.

The way we do it in our house... the kids have an hour of tablet time doing whatever they want. Games, tv shows, movies, whatever. When the hour is up, its up.

Beyond that, we do have a nintendo switch, but that's for family video game time. I don't mind the singular switch/tv we have as much as the tablets, because since we have only 1 it requires 3 kids 7 & under to negotiate with eachother. But if you only have 1 kid that can change the game.

Someday I do plan to get them all desktop PCs. I have friends with similarly aged kids and they have family Minecraft and Valheim servers. Sounds like a lot of fun to me. My nephew recently went to college and he keeps in touch with his high school friends in part via a minecraft server he runs.

> He loves them but mom hates them and insists on a limit of 10 minutes per day.

Come on this is ridiculous! 10 minutes is nothing!.

Maybe 2 or 3 hours, but 10 minutes? It will take him a full year to finish the first part of a game!, and will never allow him to discover games with depth and stories(my favorites), so he is going to play quick mobile games, which IMO are the worst.

> I am not sure she is wrong. I played a lot of games as a kid and I probably could have done better things with my time. Not that I got any guidance as to what those better things would have been, but still.

Games in my experience are a gateway to most of tech, for example my first interaction with networks and servers was when trying to create a Minecraft server to play with my friends.

Like everything, doing it moderation is the best, I think 2 or 3 hours would be fitting(not that I had them personally),

But please make sure there is actually something else for him to do, because otherwise he is going to spend the whole day waiting for these three hours.

> At the same time, it seems like a lot of dads are bonding with their boys by playing games, and I wonder if I am missing out.

Probably, your kid is also missing out on playing with his friends online.

To this day gaming is one of the biggest ways to keep in touch with remote people for me.

But that's just my own opinion.

I grew up as a heavy gamer, and it became my identity.

I absolutely got addicted to games and I still struggle with functioning in daily life without trying to go back and play 1-2 hours of games each night for the dopamine hit.

More importantly, I missed out on actual real life experiences throughout my childhood all the way till I was 28.

I let me kids play games now, but as long as it doesn't overtake more useful activities (reading, going out, playground, socializing with friends, swimming, biking)

In your situation I would give him an hour per day (10 minutes is a very short amount of time to do anything fun or see progress in most games) then monitor the outcome based on your previous baseline , does he ask for extra time when its time to call it quit, do you see a negative outcome on his grades, focus and desire to play outside or with other toys, etc. Then simply cut back if you see any downsides with 1 hour per day. You should definitely play with him during that time if you can, it is a great way to bond with your son and try to change the activity during the week, like play lego with him instead of gaming and see what will be his reaction when a video game is no longer involved.

Video games are always good in moderation and there are definitely some great games for kids, exploring with him when searching for a new game will teach you a lot about about why he’s drawn to such and such game and this way you may be able to find other hobbies outside of gaming which are related to his interests.

my only beef ( as a dad to a 10yr old ) is that at all the game he loves playing are incredibly bloody violent.

- Far Cry - Assassin's Creed

*exceptions ( Fortnite )

What kind of games do you recommend that can extend his critical thinking while increasing his focus?

Lastly, is there a WYSIWYG game creation platform that is high-quality/fidelity? not Minecraft/Roblox. I see him making stuff in the game industry one day.

p.s. HUGE props to Elon's edu platform: https://synthesis.is/ it's been worth every damn penny.

Mario Maker 2 and Game Builder Garage are great for getting into game creation (or at the very least level creation). Super intuitive as well.

As for extending critical thinking, I feel puzzle based games are great at this like Captain Toad Tracker. But also strategy games like Mario Rabbids are great because there's basic math mixed in with probability and action.

Also games like Brother: A tale of two sons (which you can play with him) can go a long way to developing more complex feelings of empathy which might help him in the long run in regards to games that are just mindlessly super bloody violent. Psychonaut 2 is another great one, lots to talk about there and there's some action but it's never bloody.

When it comes to WYSIWYG game creation the name that immediately springs to mind is RPGMaker, though while the platforms are high quality, they are very much not high fidelity. WYSIWYG doesn't work that well together with high fidelity anyway, placing a thousand little griblets by hand can get tedious after a while.

>critical thinking and focus

if he can get into them, i think tekken and soulcalibur are potentially great for both while also having enough action and cool factor to hold his interest. sc might be more approachable for a kid (i was his age when i started playing sc2).

update: i found these WYSIWIG platforms:

1- https://struckd.com/ mobile only

2 - Google's Game Builder https://www.blog.google/technology/area-120/create-3d-games-... sadly discontinued.

3 - https://www.sandbox.game/en/create/game-maker/ *but it has a complex crypto component I dont like.

All have the high-fidelity UX I've been looking for.

any others? any others?

Most games on Nintendo aren't that gory. Also lots of "card games" essentially boil down to math/statistics.

All the old games still work today. We still play the original Mario on a 1985 Nintendo.

Portal?

Problem is avoiding them being used as a coping mechanism for stress

Yea, video games can definitely end up being an unhealthy coping mechanism used to avoid addressing your real life issues. That said they are probably on balance a better coping mechanism than some of the other popular ones out there (Alcohol, drugs, porn, gambling) but definitely worth keeping an eye on. Especially because video games aren't restricted for children like all those others things are (at least in theory).

Why unhealthy? I've been using games as a coping mechanism for stress and personal issues for about twenty years and as far as I can tell I'm reasonably healthy. Most people my age that are clearly unhealthy it's because of drugs, alcohol or weight issues, not videogames. I'm somewhat prone to stress, and I find taking a few days off to play games helps in recovering from burnout, while something like travelling which helps some people, stresses me out.

You sound healthy! but you probably know someone who's unhealthily using them to cope and resorting to video games instead of life. some people take a few days off and forget to get back on

Gambling is roughly described as gaming with higher stakes, IMO. My totally unqualified, unsubstantiated guess would be the average gambler has higher cognitive performance than the average video game player. A dumb gambler goes broke sooner or later, which doesn't make them all quit but it does make some of them quit, which I would wager causes a selective effect towards the smarter ones.

Have you been to a casino? 95% of Blackjack players aren't even playing basic strategy, something that takes a single day to learn. Instead, mid-rank players in popular online games like Valorant and Overwatch 2 are quite formidable multi-level thinkers.

I think you're envisioning gambling as a poker shark, when it could be someone betting on horses, playing slot machines, or buying scratch cards.

Why? Assuming it doesn't become overwhelming I don't see the issue with that, same as any other stress relief.

I grew up in South Korea where kids are placed under immense academic stress and gaming is an established mainstream culture. In the last two decades or so, the instances of kids and adults suffering from severe gaming addiction have become increasingly common.

The issue is exacerbated by the fact that more gaming companies are embracing loot boxes, pay-to-win schemes, and other parlor tricks to not only keep the players addicted but to also extract as much cash as possible from its captive audience. When hearing the stories of people whose lives were ruined by video games, it's hard not to draw the similarities with gambling addicts who poured their entire life savings into casinos. Except the casinos now exist in the pockets of 14 year olds, accessible at all times.

I'm a long time gamer and a hobby game dev myself. I very much dislike the tendency for media to overstate the harms of gaming, but the reality is that gaming in its current form can be a very dangerous thing to become addicted to.

Its too addicting.

I don't know, I think a great number of previous video game players have grown up and become functional humans given the majority of children in the last few generations will have played videos games for entertainment in one fashion or another. There's always outliers who will have problems of course, but that doesn't mean it's bad for the rest.

Companies will exploit this psychology to get you to play and spend more.

Videogames as a coping mechanism for stress stopped me from committing suicide. It's not so simple, nothing ever is.

From personal experience I do agree that video games can be used as a form of distraction and escapism. but I think teaching mental awareness and moderation could change it from distraction to relaxation.

Hey, you can your relaxation with a side helping of micro transactions and loot boxes.

... and instead using binge watching abysmal Netflix series as a coping mechanism for stress because it's more 'mainstream'? :)

I played a lot of video games as a kid because that's what other kids did. Probably taught me some logic skills, but I would've traded it for a real childhood and social skills. Self-exploring coding was far more educational anyway. Card/board games are a good in-between with a social component and without the mindless or consumerist aspect of some video games.

My wife and I decided our kids won't have video games at home. We'll see how it goes.

> my wife and I decided our kids won't have video games. We'll see how it goes.

I think you kid would feel excluded in school, when everyone is playing together online and talking about the latest games.

It can feel that way sometimes when something is popular, but it's never really everyone, usually not even the majority.

Is this such a strong component of the American teenager identity? I know exactly one person here (Southern Europe) who plays videogames and nobody talked about it. Sports, music, fashion, movies, politics: that were the things that could make you or break you in high school.

I didn't have any until I was 14 or so but mostly because we were too poor for the ones available and the only screens I saw were the minicomputer terminals at the community college but I got to make a few as an adult. YMMV.

Haven't read the study (and tbh I'm skeptical of such scientism, e.g. reading too much into FMRI tea leaves). But perhaps one thing in the mix here, if there is indeed an effect, is that kids who get more time to themselves to pursue what's interesting to them and play, away from meddling adults who know what's better for them, develop faster.

Or indeed kids whose parents share their interests and play with them.

Incidentally I was struck recently by how rarely in this talk[1] Jon Blow says 'children' or 'kids' when he's clearly talking about young humans. Instead it's just 'people'. :)

[1] Video Games and the Future of Education: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWFScmtiC44

Just curious if it accounted for other factors, like socio-economic status?

also of note:

  Further, the researchers stress that this cross-sectional study does not allow for cause-and-effect analyses, and that it could be that children who are good at these types of cognitive tasks may choose to play video games.

Also surely the type of video game plays a huge role. I can't imagine hours spent killing bots in Unreal Tournament did me much good. But I did learn words like "critical" and "paralysis" from playing Pokemon Yellow.

One thing I do credit to video games - and I'm sure is similar with a large number of HN'ers - is my current career in software engineering. Installing cracks, mods, skins, etc. You learn about the file system, how to edit files, anti-virus software (to check the cracks you downloaded), and how to reinstall Windows XP when the crack turned out to be a virus.

Given the long list of caveats attributed to the results, it does seem like not much credence was given at this stage to filtering out other external factors leaving that to further research.

It's secretly pleasing to think gaming might have made me smart as a kid, but I suspect as with so many things in education its socio-economic status.

They looked at kids able to spend "3 or more hours a day" gaming. That requires a pretty stable homelife on top of the budget for the games etc etc - something I was lucky enough to have growing up, but not true of everyone.

The question you have to ask is what is the trade off in the long term. Are these skills where development is frontloaded while gaming but happens naturally over time for other kids?

I played games competitively as a kid. I did well cognitively. If I could go back and get the time back I would.

I "grew" my young mind with Civilization, Railroad Tycoon, X-Com, Master of Magic, Master of Orion II, Alpha Centauri, a bit of Dune and other RTS games.

I also read a ton of books.

I am not sure if this was all great or not. But I guess it gave me some sort of benefit overall.

Complete anecdote, but my dad and I would play games like Zelda growing up (fond memories). Not sure if that's why I like puzzles now, but it definitely fits with the problem solving involved in software engineering. Or the two are completely unrelated.

It’s also associated with dropping out of college because of your hopeless WoW addiction.

And you KNOW those are the people reading this study to feel good about their hobby

"This makes me smart"

When I was 14 I thought playing an RPG with lots of text was as good as, if not better, than reading a book.

It wouldn’t be surprising at all that a child’s relationship with video games is no different than their relationship to any other form of media - it can be constructive and educational and productive, or it can be a waste of precious time. Big AAA games can still be fun and formative, too. Discuss the meta aspects with the kids - what ads do they see inside the game? What team aspects or problems solving is needed? How are video games like the real world and how are they not? How much is the CIA involved in the plot lines of the latest CoD game?

> Executing problem solving tasks in virtually limitless different domains in a rewarding and fun way may be associated with better cognitive performance in children

Wow, you don't say ...

But it's fun! Nothing fun can be good for you!

I always find it hard to say anything of value about a subject like this. I used to not believe in these things at all. But now that I think about it, gaming did get me into programming with Roblox. I'm also quite adept at puzzle solving and in general spotting things that are out of the ordinary. I guess I could attribute that to my great love for the legend of Zelda series but I'm no expert in this field. So, who knows...

That is no surprise considering the complexity of some games. We're not playing space invaders anymore. The learning curve of some games are off the chart whilst still making learning addictive.

Game makers have access to extreme resources, psychology, graphics, music and coding frameworks that enables them to push entertainment as any illegal drug - except **mostly** without the bad side effects.

Gamers also have access to these resources when consuming this content.

I credit Dota 2 for the habbit of reading frequent changelogs and adaptation of new features (hero and item patches) and strategy.

Generally, multiplayer (competitive) games are exciting as we get the adrenaline rush from out smarting our opponent. But there's always a point where you feel the repetitiveness and lack of purpose as you get to the average level but not enough dedication to compete with professional atheletes.

Having 3 hours PER DAY to do anything for leisure, even if it's a form of escape from terrible circumstances, is quite the luxury. I would guess at the population level circumstances that allow 3 hours a day of non-essential activities like this to be associated with circumstances that allow better cognitive performance than those without 3 hours a day of time to do something for personal interest.

In 10 year olds? I would think most 10 year olds have more time than they know what to do with.

I'm guessing narrative games or walking simulators aren't included.

I have definitely seen video games that have difficult puzzles or complex game loops focus my kids on problem solving and how to use tools like notepad or something at their disposal. However as they are on the internet more and more, I think they are getting lazy and just getting the answers from youtube.

I credit Battlefield 1942 for helping me waste my time in highschool leaving me with bad grades and hollow experiences.

We really need to ban studies that are just designed to find "associations" or correlations etc. They're useless. They just waste resources that could be used to find actual causation and fuel people talking about things no one actually knows which just reenforces people's prejudices.

Was it the urge to hold your inventory full until the game ends? Haha

But seriously, the thing that's interesting is if you could challenge a child's spatial intelligence more in a VR or game universe than in our limited gravity enabled world. Curious indeed.

Can't say it overwhelms my fear of screen time but it's a thing.

Related, 2012 study : "Learning, attentional control and action video games" C.S. Green and D. Bavelier

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3461277/

This isn't strictly about cognitive performance, but Diablo II taught me more about negotiation than anything I ever learned in school. You could also probably make the argument that it's one of the most stark examples of how diverse teams are more resilient to adversity.

I credit pokemon for teaching me the value of diversified skill sets in team building also that 6 level 10 charmanders is not the same as 1 level 60 charizard

Okay, I don’t have to feel as guilty when my son spends too much time on Minecraft and Roblox.

As an Italian teenager in the 90s, Ultima Online was the reason why my English vocabulary was so rich compared to my peers. I strongly believed it has contributed to me traveling and experiencing living abroad, which has since defined my life.

Same for me. I still credit video games to my higher-than-average English. I remember playing RPGs (savage empire) with a dictionary by my side

Link to the study:

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...

My kid is 3.5. Would love to game with him but had assumed it was years off.... Any tips on games or consoles? I think I have an ancient ps4 in the attic somewhere but very open to buying new kit

Mario Kart. The great thing is you can turn off the handicaps for yourself to make it a little more challenging to play with them. I regularly play with my 7 year and twin 4 year olds - we bought the switch about a year ago.

if you can dig up a hacked wii somewhere, that's probably a pretty perfect device for that age range. stuff like wii sports & just dance + the nintendo back catalogue is not a bad place to start.

Nintendo Switch. Animal Crossing? Breath of the Wild in a year or so.

Teach him arithmetic or how to read first. Or chess!

I love chess and play it every day but it's not an addiction I think would help a toddler. Would pick animal crossing first!

Yeah, chess and go are pretty great. Chess for the quick payoff, go for the long-term focus.

My mother always assumed this was the case, and as such she supported me playing video games. Her feeling was that it was fundamentally puzzle solving and hand eye coordination.

My son does always try to improve the game creating, I think they are called modules or something, for Minecraft and full on games for Roblox so that’s some educational value.

I would like to see a comparison to other mentally demanding hobbies, such as sports, cooking, crafting, art, dance, etc. My money is on video games not looking so good.

I wouldn't compare the focus needed to play amateur sports with the focus needed to finish Megaman 3 on the NES at an amateur level. It teaches you resource managing, planning, timing, memorization, and delayed gratification.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33356876

But what about exposing the brain to hours of fun and entertainment? That certainly may take a toll on kids adjusting to society when everything goes offline.

Crash Bandicoot taught me to stay away from the voodoo.™

Now they need to segregate the people who play video games into primarily FPS (valorant/overwatch/COD/Battlefield etc..) vs other genres

Or only play sports games

only competitive gaming develops brain and teamwork (for team play games).

leisure/casual gaming is no better than browsing TikTok.

A fear of mine is that competitive gaming will usher in a new fascism based on "rank" -- sort of as you're displaying here.

I was in master league when I played Starcraft competitively, so I don't discount the real lessons you can learn from intense focus towards a clear goal, and the acceleration provided by competitive arena.

But there are plenty of people who cheat or buy their way toward "success" in games, because they are chasing the "status" they get from a silly little virtual badge. I know a handful of these folks in real life. They have many other problems, but are very "successful." I know a World of Warcraft Gladiator (rank 1 arena champion for a season) who botted honor at the expense of other players (in-game currency to attain higher quality gear) and in real life juiced his company's image by purchasing online accounts and controlling conversation in forums. I've shared a meal with a current professional gamer who nonchalantly engages in crypto fraud.

Winning is absolutely not everything. Some of the greatest things we can attain in this life will require mass cooperation of humans, and those experiences require dedicated folks with faith in humanity--people who aren't always looking for every crack in the law to screw over their fellow man to get rank 1.

I've seen lots of heartwarming content on TikTok, and left most Counter-Strike and Call of Duty lobbies feeling very dispirited.

I don't know about that. I used to play a lot of point-and-click adventure games as a kid. I think those developed my problem-solving skills. It was certainly a better use of my time than watching cartoons.

At least you would enjoy it mor than tiktok

How much time do your 4-5 year-olds spend playing video games on a daily / weekly / monthly basis?

Yes, smarter kids with higher attention spans will play video games for more hours in a day.

Yes, just do not forgett to have the kid do some sport and be active, that helps as well.

I'd be interested in measures of social and emotional intelligence.

Not all games are the same.

Maxis and older Blizzard games were probably the best.

Which games are mentionned please?

I owe it all to Lemmings

sure, this is why depression cases are rising

If you're playing video games competitively, you're probably not drinking to excess.

These were children - 9 and 10 years old. It is doubtful that any of them were playing competitively or drinking to excess.

Even in older folks, 3 hours a day isn't really playing competitively nor does it mean you aren't drinking. We used to spend many hours getting drunk and high and playing games. It was great fun, and still is from time to time.

I don't think many 9-10 year olds are alcoholics.

Kids are playing more and more video games than ever before, and test scores across the board are way down to some of the lowest levels recorded. We conclude video games are helping kids.

Something tells me they'll not be able to replicate this.

Correlation does not equal causation?

Of course not, I was just pointing out that the poorly designed study that goes against all of the actual observable data makes the results a bit suspect. Like many things, I suspect that in moderation video game playing doesn't have any impact on standardized testing.

I suppose if this study can be replicated then we can all be thankful that excessive video game playing has made kids dumber at a lesser rate than they already would be.

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