Hacker News Reader

Comment by rednerrus | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

> 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.

> Video games are a non-social controlled environment

Lots of video games are social. Some are not. The amount the environment is controlled can also varry.

> Gambling encourages a person to keep pushing themselves for a positive outcome but that alone does indicate any form of personal advancement.

So like literally everything. Seriously, can you name an external stimuli that this doesn't fit? Is work gambling? School? Yoga class?

> 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.

I can be shit at soccer, and still have fun with friends. I can be shit at video games and still have fun. I can spend years practising and still be nowhere close to olympic level. Similarly, i can spend years on video games and be nowhere near the top of competitive e-sports.

What's the difference exactly?

> What's the difference exactly?

The difference is third party contribution. If you are playing games purely for personal enjoyment that’s great. If you consider it a sport you are probably someone else’s product with little or nothing but lost time to show for it. This has long since been explained in Nicomachean Ethics and Utilitarianism. What matters is not the carrot someone can dangle in your face but your ability to tell the difference.

Do you think high level (real) sports are different? That NHL players do it purely for the love of the game, with no corporate interests meddling?

Like i said, what is the difference?

> If a given video game took years of investment to complete the current level almost nobody would play that game.

How do you explain League of Legends or even E-sports in general? Games are as competitive as they are endeavors of creativity.

The same way I would explain drugs and gambling. Gambling can be very competitive. That appeals to somebody and glamorizing it can generate a lot of money, but that doesn’t mean it’s beneficial in absolutely any way.

Unless you're thinking of gacha games, I don't see the similarity. In general, video games have defined victory conditions and rewards. Gambling, outside of certain card games, doesn't.

The goals are pretty obvious in many sports. Heard of goal posts before?

An athlete doesn’t go from couch potato to immediately scoring touchdowns just after a few attempts at trial and error. You can do that in video games because everything is synthetic and linear.

In the real world you actually have to overcome real pain (both mental and physical) to achieve success. Video games are incapable of teaching that on absolutely any level.

You should sign up for a fighting game tournament some time and see how far a few attempts gets you

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.

It's funny how different circumstances shape people so differently. I had access to a lot of video games and I decided I wanted to make them as a kid and that started my programming experience around 11-12.

If I didn't have video games I probably wouldn't have become a programmer!

Interesting, isn't it? When I was around 10 I had after school access to a lab full of Mac Classics, which had The Manhole installed, and it was about that age that my two best friends and I started working on our first "games" in HyperCard and screensavers in Perl. They were also both banned from having consoles at home, which was a reason we became friends... other kids would go home but we wanted to stay at school late because it was where we had access to Macs. All three of us ended up adjacent to the game industry at one point or another. I remember going to other kids' houses and being blown away by (and terrible at) NES games. Something like Mario 2 seemed impossible to imagine programming for me at the time. Something like The Manhole, though, or even "Glider" could reveal its hypertalk mechanics. So maybe that had more to do with where I went than trying to do text adventures in BASIC on an IBM PC at home.

Same for me and most of my high school friends. We were all dorks that loved video games and most of us ended up going into technical jobs largely because of video games.

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

How is the alternative not?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com