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People talking about the benefits of games reminds me of people talking about the benefits of, say, a glass of wine with every meal: it's worth looking into but

by lhorie 5y ago

People talking about the benefits of games reminds me of people talking about the benefits of, say, a glass of wine with every meal: it's worth looking into but at the same time it's the sort of thing that obviously doesn't scale linearly with the amount/intensity of consumption. I similarly have mixed feelings as well, but for slightly different reasons. I've read about studies that say that musical training (which is often believed to translate to improvements in other cognitive aspects of life) doesn't actually correlate to said improvements, and I suspect that the same might be true for games (e.g. solving game puzzles doesn't necessarily mean you get better at school math or whatever) This line of reasoning is also supported by research on correlation between games and violence (i.e. the consensus is that no such causation relationship exists). All of these suggest (to me) that gaming is just its own activity without much impact on life other than opportunity cost itself. However, there are some aspects of gaming that can affect overall well-being, specifically aspects related to repetitiveness (e.g. grinding). Repetitiveness is something that does come up in a lot of disciplines (e.g. its soothing effect in autist kids, or repetitiveness as tool in the context of meditation, etc). The "addictive" aspect isn't necessarily a bad thing either, IMHO. Games are, almost by definition, supposed to be engaging. But that addictiveness may come in a form of trade-offs, for example, back in the day of grindy RPGs, delayed gratification was basically the entire point of grinding. The one aspect that I think is justly vilified is monetization strategies that tie to addictive elements of gameplay (especially the gacha variety) and this is something that I'd actually commend China for trying to address via regulation.

andrepew 5y ago
I agree that playing a game might not improve a class of skills in general like coordination or problem solving, but I don’t think it requires much study to determine improvement of skills directly used. For example, to improve your reading skills you need to practice reading. If a game is providing reading material and motivation to read, it will improve reading skills. Games can also drive motivation in other areas. In the early 90’s when I started computer gaming, you actually needed to know how to use a computer and understand them to some extent. Half the time I spent gaming was spent figuring out how to get the computer to do what I wanted which lead to a life long interest in technology. Sadly, like the parent poster mentioned, that is probably no longer a thing.
- kiba 5y ago
  Lot of things improve reading skills, like reading novels. Arguably, writing video games and novels would seem to be more useful way to improve skills. That's how I got started in programming at all. However, video games just doesn't seem life changing at all compared to all the things you could do.
  - meristohm 5y ago
    I agree. Games feel like chose-your-own-adventure books, which were novelties and not nearly as engaging as a well-written book to read and visualize and anticipate. A great way to help a child read throughout their life is to read to them every day, enjoy stories together and apart, and not to push too hard in any direction (they may enjoy different things, no problem). Asking open-ended questions helps, too, with time to consider and respond.
    - Jensson 5y ago
      When playing various games you have to manage a budget, reason about logistics, get an intuition for basic physics, understand numbers and basic math formulas etc. There are so many skills you learn there that are seen as very important. How can passively reading a story book even compare to actively being forced to practice and learn these things?
      - cloverich 5y ago
        Also there is quite enough room in life for both.
      - tekknik 5y ago
        EVE is real.
  - andrepew 5y ago
    If your goal is to learn a skill, there are better ways to go about it than gaming. The problem in learning that gaming helps with isn’t learning efficacy —- it is motivation. As a child, I simply wasn’t interested in novels and enjoying playing games would be a prerequisite to having the motivation to write one.
blackbear_ 5y ago
> ... it's the sort of thing that obviously doesn't scale linearly with the amount/intensity of consumption. Is there anything that actually scales linearly? I thought the law of diminishing rewards applied to pretty much anything you do.
- NationalPark 5y ago
  Sure, nobody is worried that if you eat healthy food every day or sleep 8 hours every night, it may eventually turn into life-impairing addiction.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  I'd argue that benefits from games - at least from games in the 90s - scale in a weird but, to a degree, superlinear way. That is, if you do it only a little, you may as well not do it at all. Come to think of it, quite a lot of things in life scale like this. Software development being among the well-known ones for this audience - e.g. if you'd be given only a 30 minute window for writing code during a day (or even a couple such windows spread out), you'd likely not even open the editor, as there's no point in even engaging with the task in such short window. I'd go as far as saying that, in order to realize the most non-enjoyment value of a game, you not only need long enough sessions to fully engage with a game - you need long enough sessions to get bored with the game. But, that may be impossible with modern gambling-for-chindren-but-legal style of games. You can imagine this as an "S-curve" model of value, where with games, the point most people consider "too much" for a kid is barely on the ramp-up part of the curve.
  - SuoDuanDao 5y ago
    This seems very plausible. I suspect one of the most consistent benefits of games is that it trains the mind to pay attention to one thing for a long time. The longer those sessions, the more effective it probably is.
- mattgreenrocks 5y ago
  > I thought the law of diminishing rewards applied to pretty much anything you do. IMO, the interesting part of many things in life comes after a significant time/difficulty spike. Think of music, art, programming, athletic performance, etc.
namelessoracle 5y ago
I would agree with "the problem solving skills" section of your argument. But not the reading one. Getting good at reading is almost purely exercise. You do it more, you get better/faster at it, which has gains that show up in all kinds of fields be it tech, medicine, whatever. Old school games had basically an entire novel embedded inside of them worth of text. 10 year old me wanting to read all of Final Fantasy 6 and Chrono Trigger got an easy novels worth of reading in. Getting 10 years old to WANT to read is HARD. Anything that encourages that is good. Modern games dont have that text, and even when they do they have voice acting to get around it. Games like Chrono Trigger and old school Final Fantasy are rare and dont get made as much anymore unfortunately. Its all gambling boxes.
- prox 5y ago
  One game that improves problem solving skills is Space Engineers.
  - Filligree 5y ago
    Soooorta? Stationeers does much better.
    - prox 5y ago
      That’s way too taxing on my brain! :)
      - Filligree 5y ago
        Give it a try! Start by looking at the Stationeers Venus series in YouTube, perhaps; that doubles as a tutorial.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
  Obligatory Disco Elysium mention, but it still proves your point, because it is considered so unusual by today's standards.
mc32 5y ago
>"research on correlation between games and violence (i.e. the consensus is that no such causation relationship exists)." If there were no correlation, then is the perception of in-game abuse such as sexual (and other) violence, or milder sexism and "bro" culture exaggerated (including misogynism)? Is the view that there need to be more inclusivity (of many sorts) in games then unsupported? I see people wanting it both ways (from both political spectrums). It either affects us, so we need to be conscientious about what we put in there. Or it doesn't affect us and it does not matter what we do in-game (violence, sexism, etc.)
maerF0x0 5y ago
> a glass of wine with every meal There's an apt outcome of the analogy too. It's likely the grapejuice is better for you before fermenting it, oh and the grapes themselves are better for you than removing all the fiber and the physical bulk that can help satiety. I feel the same way about games. They may have positive effects over a null control (like sitting and staring at the paint on the wall), but reading a physical book is probably better for reading skills than an RPG.
- keerthiko 5y ago
  This assumes the participant is equally motivated and emotionally positive about both paths, and has similar flow state through both paths. Flow state increases retention and positive benefit, and flow state is often a function of motivation (fun), and more importantly, level of challenge. The benefit games have over nearly every other medium of experiencing a concept, is that the level of challenge is highly personalized. If you spend a lot of time in one area of an RPG trying to comprehend the plot and thus solve the puzzle, it's still fun because you are moving around and performing more interactions and gathering small bits of context. Compare that to if you are stuck trying to comprehend one page of a difficult book as a 7-year-old. Playing games allows our brains to catch up to complex concepts through (simulated) movement much the same way as going on walks allows us to process a difficult problem or complex system that is on our mind.
  - maerF0x0 5y ago
    > This assumes the participant is equally motivated and emotionally positive about both paths, and has similar flow state through both paths. Also worth adding to this thread that motivation is a feedback loop mechanism. If you're super stimulated by these slot machine like games, you're not going to find the long rewards of completing a book a week/month a very "motivating" option. So it's also worth looking at the motivational damage these things do to a person and how it's eliminating the motivational possibility of doing something of higher value. Cue the "dopamine detox" part of the internet. > is that the level of challenge is highly personalized. I agree and this is a good observation, which maybe can be had IRL, but i agree that it can be easier implemented and more granular in the digital realm.
everdrive 5y ago
Video games work best as a lesser of many evils, and come with a few caveats: If you watch a lot of TV, it's hard to argue that video games are a worse use of your time. Video games do have some legitimate benefits, but it's probably hard to say that they are more beneficial than other things you could be doing with your time. (ie, reading difficult literature or articles vs. reading RPG text.) However, people aren't robots, and can't spend 100% of their time doing things which are strictly beneficial. Sometimes you just have to relax and do what you like. Further, not all worthwhile activities truly benefit you in some measurable way. All those "play Mozart for your child to increase his intelligence" CDs were completely fraudulent. And by extension you could claim that listening to beautiful classical music does not actually really benefit you. But of course beautiful music is one of the best aspects of life. The only difference I would say is that it seems impossible to become addicted to classical music in the same way that someone might become addicted to video games. In this sense, I agree with the parent that video game addiction is the greatest concern here, and is a direction video games have been moving in for a long time. It's interesting that he mentions very easy gameplay mixed with behavioral feedback loops. I can get QUITE wrapped up in Dark Souls, but I am never just playing it on autopilot. It's too hard, and requires too much of my focus. It's not to say that it's necessarily all that difficult, but I can't just zone out. If my mood is wrong, if I am impatient, if my focus is poor, I will play badly. This is explicitly not the case with addictive gameplay-loop games which approach television-levels of sloth in the sense that you can play them indefinitely with any amount of focus.
- true_religion 5y ago
  Sure but I’m not really comfortable with this level of government interference with peoples lives. No one ever stopped me from playing soccer for 5 hours a day when I was younger, and in high school sports practice was a 3 hour minimum. This restricts game play to 3 hours per week. That means essentially you can’t play video games for leisure … while at the same time you are forced to do a minimum of 40 hours a week in education (normal school + cram school + homework). If you can only play a video game for 25 minutes a day, you might as well never play.
  - 5y ago
wedn3sday 5y ago
personal anecdote: I've played hundreds of hours of driving games, my girlfriend has never touched a controller. When we got our Tesla, the backup camera view was perfectly intuitive to me and I was immediately comfortable driving the car backwards using just the display, but she was not. As we go into the future of computer driven everything, people comfortable with controlling things via computer interface will have a significant advantage over people who've only used analog control.
- _carbyau_ 5y ago
  I still refer to the nav screen in the car as a minimap. Using it feels completely native. Unlike some games however I can't drive using only the minimap...
cercatrova 5y ago
> a glass of wine with every meal: it's worth looking into but at the same time it's the sort of thing that obviously doesn't scale linearly with the amount/intensity of consumption. Fun fact, there has been recent research to show that the "glass of wine during a meal is healthy" is entirely a myth; _no amount_ of alcohol is beneficial to overall health [0]. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4803651/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4803651/
- yitianjian 5y ago
  (forgive me since I did not read your reference) but I recall there were some studies showing that the "health benefits" touted by the "glass of wine a day" studies were strongly correlated with: - being middle to upper class (can afford a glass of wine daily) - having good self control (drinking one glass of wine a day instead of many) which are both good health outcomes
  - cercatrova 5y ago
    Even controlling for those factors, there is no health benefit to alcohol, ie a middle to upper class person with self control does not fare better drinking alcohol versus not drinking alcohol.
- wing-_-nuts 5y ago
  >_no amount_ of alcohol is beneficial to overall health [0]. I don't buy it. At worst, the negative health effects of alcohol are on an exponential J curve. Negative health outcomes like the risk of cancer is very small up until a rather high amount of consumption (4 drinks per day?) and only then outweighs the cardiovascular benefits. Regardless, like meat consumption, I have no desire to give up drinking in moderation. I think that with this, like with everything, one has to weigh their enjoyment vs the potential for harm.
  - cercatrova 5y ago
    You may not buy it but that's what the data shows. Now, you buying it versus you wanting to not believe it is another story. I too drink in moderation but that doesn't mean I'll act like it doesn't have negative consequences, however slight they may be. The study is not prescriptive, it's not saying people should give up alcohol, it's merely descriptive, in that it's telling the reader what's happening as a result of any level of consumption.
ajuc 5y ago
In developing countries games in 90s were a big avenue for kids to learn English. Mostly we had pirated games (a game costed 50-100 PLN, people earned 400-500 PLN a month, nobody used original software) without translations and with ripped cutscenes. So you had VERY big motivation to learn English to understand what is even going on. I remember playing Betrayal At Krondor and Albion - story-heavy RPGs - understanding maybe 10% of words in any particular dialog or description :) Additionally games train trial-and-error approach to technology which is why I think almost every software developer older than 30 that I know started as a gamer. Nowadays it's a different world and I'm not sure games have such effects anymore, because it's much less demanding entertainment. They work out of the box, are translated into your language, affordable so no need to mess with virtual drives, keygens or copying cracks over game files.
tdsamardzhiev 5y ago
Ditto. Games certainly helped develop my problem-solving skills, but I reckon I'd have gotten 90% of the benefit in 10% of the time, and the remaining 35 hours a week would have been better spent elsewhere.
dukeofdoom 5y ago
> This line of reasoning is also supported by research on > correlation between games and violence (i.e. the consensus > is that no such causation relationship exists). On the face of it, this can't be true in all cases. Even Radio can be used to incite violence. A much less imersive medium. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_T%C3%A9l%C3%A9vision_Libre_des_Mille_Collines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_T%C3%A9l%C3%A9vision_Lib... "Rwandan radio station which broadcast from July 8, 1993 to July 31, 1994. It played a significant role in inciting the Rwandan genocide that took place from April to July 1994, a and has been described by some scholars of having been a de facto arm of the Hutu government." Games influence culture. The modern permissiveness to "punch a Nazi" has been very well conditioned and permitted. Often in games. "Nazi" can be easily redefined to include modern political opponents, at anytime in the future.
- blacksmith_tb 5y ago
  That seems like a false equivalency, clearly your radio telling you to kill your neighbors is a much stronger incitement than a game where you run around shooting at imaginary people.
jstrH 5y ago
Surely a lot of these “behaviors observed after X hours of Y” studies are subjective to the researchers and broader social opinions on what “normal” is. I don’t disagree on the monetization part, but daily life is an implicit game of risk avoidance. We are cognitively tuned to play a cognitive simulation. My hesitancy is social belief we all must be on board with playing “the real world” simulation as dictated by traditional political beliefs, which heavily influence which studies get funded. Maybe utilitarian day jobs aren’t the only busy work we should expect of each other. Frankly as a social scene, I’d rather people argue over DND rules than how much profit they can make if more people went hungry or died rather than get their insurance benefits they paid for. Perhaps the behavioral economics math we use to advertise and market tribal belief in our teams superior product or service should be set aside to let folks navigate the sim as they wish and real economic activity must adjust to satisfy that? Social norms have always followed technology. Maybe the perspectives we apply are no longer correct in this contemporary time.
daveidol 5y ago
I don't think anyone in this thread has discussed one of the other important aspects of gaming: the social aspect. Especially in an era of "quarantine at home" - online gaming can be a very social activity and a way to make/grow friendships and play with others. (Obviously I think getting outdoors and being active instead of staring at a screen all day is probably even better, but that is one benefit of games over just "grinding")
- lhorie 5y ago
  The social aspect is a bit iffy. Talk to any female gamer and you're going to hear harassment stories.
  - daveidol 5y ago
    Oh I have harassment stories as a male gamer too. Doesn’t mean male and female gamers can’t have fun with their friends online.
- Barrin92 5y ago
  Might be relevant to point out here that China has largely avoided adopting the remote work culture as most people were back in office in summer last year.
martinmakesgame 5y ago
> ... correlation between games and violence (i.e. the consensus is that no such causation relationship exists). I feel that the connection between violence and violence in games is far more subtle than a direct connection. Video games are not real life but the thoughts and feelings we have when we play games are real. When we experience anger, sadness or joy in a game, all of these emotions are real for us. When we have experiences pathways are laid down in the brain through the process of myelination and these pathways get reinforced over time by having the same experiences. When we hit, shoot or kill something in a video game and get feedback, sound, visual or music, our brain starts to become conditioned to those experiences. Our brains are plastic and flexible in that they can learn that hitting, shooting and killing, being violent can feel "good". It is possible that this can happen even being completely unaware of it happening. If you make games, and there is violence in your game, I would seriously take a moment and consider. Is this violence in the game really necessary? There are many other options for different types of gameplay.
punkst 5y ago
>I've read about studies that say that musical training (which is often believed to translate to improvements in other cognitive aspects of life) doesn't actually correlate to said improvements, and I suspect that the same might be true for games (e.g. solving game puzzles doesn't necessarily mean you get better at school math or whatever) Lots of unchecked assumptions. I'm only taking issue with the music assumption. Do you have a counter to the studies you have read? https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/03/180326140244.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/03/180326140244.h...
- lhorie 5y ago
  I do know of many studies that suggest the existence of a correlation between music education and academic achievement, but the gist of the argument against those studies is that they aren't well designed: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1747938X16300641 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1747938X1...
raman162 5y ago
I think regulation on past time activities isn't the appropriate approach. It's a slippery slope, are they soon going to regulate the amount of time someone can watch television, or the number of times one may go to a movie theater? Knowing china's history, it doesn't seem too far fetched and sounds like we're slowly evolving into an episode of black mirror.
wanderer2323 5y ago
> solving game puzzles doesn't necessarily mean you get better at school math That's not how improving through games works at all. The things you understand through games are much more general than the surface of the gameplay. Total War (or Starcraft) won't teach you anything about commanding armies. But if you're observant enough it will teach you a difference between level-1 versus level-2 strategies. It will definitely teach you about the impact of timing on execution. It will show you complexity, risk, loss aversion, and how battles are usually won or lost before the first shot is fired. All these are useful things to experience so that you are better equipped to deal with them in real life. What's even more important, the games will show you how YOU relate to these intangible concepts. How loss averse are you? Do you naturally tend to maximize win or minimize loss? How easy it is for you to abandon a pre-established plan? These and more are insights into your own nature that are not easy to get. Finally, the multiplayer games will show you the human nature. You'll understand, for example, that different people play for different reasons, and just this understanding alone was worth all hundreds of hours I put into M:TG. I guess that most of the multiplayer insights are also available through participation (and/or managing) a regular sports team but I would have never been able to join as many of those as I had gaming teams. TLDR: Games guide the player to instinctive understanding of categorical truths that underpin the simulations, and that is only possible through countless repetitions of similar scenarios* in different contexts. This is the true value of gaming. [*] I'm not talking about grinding here[**], but playing same or similar games many times. [**] although grinding can teach one about how seemingly small process improvements somethimes add up to a qualitative break ... and sometimes not. Figure out the best way to do a cow level run to learn more!
2muchcoffeeman 5y ago
Board games are far better brain exercise. You’re forced to compete with other people and the games usually enforce time limits. Or if they don’t, your opponent will force an end if you want to win.
- uptown 5y ago
  Is this speculative or do you have anything to back this up?
  - 2muchcoffeeman 5y ago
    Empirical evidence? If you’re going to play games for some supposed benefit, games where you are forced to compete or have brutal requirements are going to force you to think more. I’m not talking Catan or Ticket to Ride. I’m talking medium to heavy euros or war games.
dang 5y ago
This subthread was originally a reply to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28356453 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28356453.
stjohnswarts 5y ago
How about that old timeless classic pricipal of "my time is my time and not my government's" . We're not talking about parents limiting VG time, this is a government controlling the most minute details of everyone's social life.

by lhorie 5y ago

andrepew 5y ago

I agree that playing a game might not improve a class of skills in general like coordination or problem solving, but I don’t think it requires much study to determine improvement of skills directly used. For example, to improve your reading skills you need to practice reading. If a game is providing reading material and motivation to read, it will improve reading skills. Games can also drive motivation in other areas. In the early 90’s when I started computer gaming, you actually needed to know how to use a computer and understand them to some extent. Half the time I spent gaming was spent figuring out how to get the computer to do what I wanted which lead to a life long interest in technology. Sadly, like the parent poster mentioned, that is probably no longer a thing.

kiba 5y ago
Lot of things improve reading skills, like reading novels. Arguably, writing video games and novels would seem to be more useful way to improve skills. That's how I got started in programming at all. However, video games just doesn't seem life changing at all compared to all the things you could do.
- meristohm 5y ago
  I agree. Games feel like chose-your-own-adventure books, which were novelties and not nearly as engaging as a well-written book to read and visualize and anticipate. A great way to help a child read throughout their life is to read to them every day, enjoy stories together and apart, and not to push too hard in any direction (they may enjoy different things, no problem). Asking open-ended questions helps, too, with time to consider and respond.
  - Jensson 5y ago
    When playing various games you have to manage a budget, reason about logistics, get an intuition for basic physics, understand numbers and basic math formulas etc. There are so many skills you learn there that are seen as very important. How can passively reading a story book even compare to actively being forced to practice and learn these things?
    - cloverich 5y ago
      Also there is quite enough room in life for both.
    - tekknik 5y ago
      EVE is real.
- andrepew 5y ago
  If your goal is to learn a skill, there are better ways to go about it than gaming. The problem in learning that gaming helps with isn’t learning efficacy —- it is motivation. As a child, I simply wasn’t interested in novels and enjoying playing games would be a prerequisite to having the motivation to write one.

blackbear_ 5y ago

> ... it's the sort of thing that obviously doesn't scale linearly with the amount/intensity of consumption. Is there anything that actually scales linearly? I thought the law of diminishing rewards applied to pretty much anything you do.

NationalPark 5y ago
Sure, nobody is worried that if you eat healthy food every day or sleep 8 hours every night, it may eventually turn into life-impairing addiction.
TeMPOraL 5y ago
I'd argue that benefits from games - at least from games in the 90s - scale in a weird but, to a degree, superlinear way. That is, if you do it only a little, you may as well not do it at all. Come to think of it, quite a lot of things in life scale like this. Software development being among the well-known ones for this audience - e.g. if you'd be given only a 30 minute window for writing code during a day (or even a couple such windows spread out), you'd likely not even open the editor, as there's no point in even engaging with the task in such short window. I'd go as far as saying that, in order to realize the most non-enjoyment value of a game, you not only need long enough sessions to fully engage with a game - you need long enough sessions to get bored with the game. But, that may be impossible with modern gambling-for-chindren-but-legal style of games. You can imagine this as an "S-curve" model of value, where with games, the point most people consider "too much" for a kid is barely on the ramp-up part of the curve.
- SuoDuanDao 5y ago
  This seems very plausible. I suspect one of the most consistent benefits of games is that it trains the mind to pay attention to one thing for a long time. The longer those sessions, the more effective it probably is.
mattgreenrocks 5y ago
> I thought the law of diminishing rewards applied to pretty much anything you do. IMO, the interesting part of many things in life comes after a significant time/difficulty spike. Think of music, art, programming, athletic performance, etc.

namelessoracle 5y ago

I would agree with "the problem solving skills" section of your argument. But not the reading one. Getting good at reading is almost purely exercise. You do it more, you get better/faster at it, which has gains that show up in all kinds of fields be it tech, medicine, whatever. Old school games had basically an entire novel embedded inside of them worth of text. 10 year old me wanting to read all of Final Fantasy 6 and Chrono Trigger got an easy novels worth of reading in. Getting 10 years old to WANT to read is HARD. Anything that encourages that is good. Modern games dont have that text, and even when they do they have voice acting to get around it. Games like Chrono Trigger and old school Final Fantasy are rare and dont get made as much anymore unfortunately. Its all gambling boxes.

prox 5y ago
One game that improves problem solving skills is Space Engineers.
- Filligree 5y ago
  Soooorta? Stationeers does much better.
  - prox 5y ago
    That’s way too taxing on my brain! :)
    - Filligree 5y ago
      Give it a try! Start by looking at the Stationeers Venus series in YouTube, perhaps; that doubles as a tutorial.
A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
Obligatory Disco Elysium mention, but it still proves your point, because it is considered so unusual by today's standards.

mc32 5y ago

>"research on correlation between games and violence (i.e. the consensus is that no such causation relationship exists)." If there were no correlation, then is the perception of in-game abuse such as sexual (and other) violence, or milder sexism and "bro" culture exaggerated (including misogynism)? Is the view that there need to be more inclusivity (of many sorts) in games then unsupported? I see people wanting it both ways (from both political spectrums). It either affects us, so we need to be conscientious about what we put in there. Or it doesn't affect us and it does not matter what we do in-game (violence, sexism, etc.)

maerF0x0 5y ago

> a glass of wine with every meal There's an apt outcome of the analogy too. It's likely the grapejuice is better for you before fermenting it, oh and the grapes themselves are better for you than removing all the fiber and the physical bulk that can help satiety. I feel the same way about games. They may have positive effects over a null control (like sitting and staring at the paint on the wall), but reading a physical book is probably better for reading skills than an RPG.

keerthiko 5y ago
This assumes the participant is equally motivated and emotionally positive about both paths, and has similar flow state through both paths. Flow state increases retention and positive benefit, and flow state is often a function of motivation (fun), and more importantly, level of challenge. The benefit games have over nearly every other medium of experiencing a concept, is that the level of challenge is highly personalized. If you spend a lot of time in one area of an RPG trying to comprehend the plot and thus solve the puzzle, it's still fun because you are moving around and performing more interactions and gathering small bits of context. Compare that to if you are stuck trying to comprehend one page of a difficult book as a 7-year-old. Playing games allows our brains to catch up to complex concepts through (simulated) movement much the same way as going on walks allows us to process a difficult problem or complex system that is on our mind.
- maerF0x0 5y ago
  > This assumes the participant is equally motivated and emotionally positive about both paths, and has similar flow state through both paths. Also worth adding to this thread that motivation is a feedback loop mechanism. If you're super stimulated by these slot machine like games, you're not going to find the long rewards of completing a book a week/month a very "motivating" option. So it's also worth looking at the motivational damage these things do to a person and how it's eliminating the motivational possibility of doing something of higher value. Cue the "dopamine detox" part of the internet. > is that the level of challenge is highly personalized. I agree and this is a good observation, which maybe can be had IRL, but i agree that it can be easier implemented and more granular in the digital realm.

everdrive 5y ago

Video games work best as a lesser of many evils, and come with a few caveats: If you watch a lot of TV, it's hard to argue that video games are a worse use of your time. Video games do have some legitimate benefits, but it's probably hard to say that they are more beneficial than other things you could be doing with your time. (ie, reading difficult literature or articles vs. reading RPG text.) However, people aren't robots, and can't spend 100% of their time doing things which are strictly beneficial. Sometimes you just have to relax and do what you like. Further, not all worthwhile activities truly benefit you in some measurable way. All those "play Mozart for your child to increase his intelligence" CDs were completely fraudulent. And by extension you could claim that listening to beautiful classical music does not actually really benefit you. But of course beautiful music is one of the best aspects of life. The only difference I would say is that it seems impossible to become addicted to classical music in the same way that someone might become addicted to video games. In this sense, I agree with the parent that video game addiction is the greatest concern here, and is a direction video games have been moving in for a long time. It's interesting that he mentions very easy gameplay mixed with behavioral feedback loops. I can get QUITE wrapped up in Dark Souls, but I am never just playing it on autopilot. It's too hard, and requires too much of my focus. It's not to say that it's necessarily all that difficult, but I can't just zone out. If my mood is wrong, if I am impatient, if my focus is poor, I will play badly. This is explicitly not the case with addictive gameplay-loop games which approach television-levels of sloth in the sense that you can play them indefinitely with any amount of focus.

true_religion 5y ago
Sure but I’m not really comfortable with this level of government interference with peoples lives. No one ever stopped me from playing soccer for 5 hours a day when I was younger, and in high school sports practice was a 3 hour minimum. This restricts game play to 3 hours per week. That means essentially you can’t play video games for leisure … while at the same time you are forced to do a minimum of 40 hours a week in education (normal school + cram school + homework). If you can only play a video game for 25 minutes a day, you might as well never play.
- 5y ago

wedn3sday 5y ago

personal anecdote: I've played hundreds of hours of driving games, my girlfriend has never touched a controller. When we got our Tesla, the backup camera view was perfectly intuitive to me and I was immediately comfortable driving the car backwards using just the display, but she was not. As we go into the future of computer driven everything, people comfortable with controlling things via computer interface will have a significant advantage over people who've only used analog control.

_carbyau_ 5y ago
I still refer to the nav screen in the car as a minimap. Using it feels completely native. Unlike some games however I can't drive using only the minimap...

cercatrova 5y ago

> a glass of wine with every meal: it's worth looking into but at the same time it's the sort of thing that obviously doesn't scale linearly with the amount/intensity of consumption. Fun fact, there has been recent research to show that the "glass of wine during a meal is healthy" is entirely a myth; _no amount_ of alcohol is beneficial to overall health [0]. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4803651/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4803651/

yitianjian 5y ago
(forgive me since I did not read your reference) but I recall there were some studies showing that the "health benefits" touted by the "glass of wine a day" studies were strongly correlated with: - being middle to upper class (can afford a glass of wine daily) - having good self control (drinking one glass of wine a day instead of many) which are both good health outcomes
- cercatrova 5y ago
  Even controlling for those factors, there is no health benefit to alcohol, ie a middle to upper class person with self control does not fare better drinking alcohol versus not drinking alcohol.
wing-_-nuts 5y ago
>_no amount_ of alcohol is beneficial to overall health [0]. I don't buy it. At worst, the negative health effects of alcohol are on an exponential J curve. Negative health outcomes like the risk of cancer is very small up until a rather high amount of consumption (4 drinks per day?) and only then outweighs the cardiovascular benefits. Regardless, like meat consumption, I have no desire to give up drinking in moderation. I think that with this, like with everything, one has to weigh their enjoyment vs the potential for harm.
- cercatrova 5y ago
  You may not buy it but that's what the data shows. Now, you buying it versus you wanting to not believe it is another story. I too drink in moderation but that doesn't mean I'll act like it doesn't have negative consequences, however slight they may be. The study is not prescriptive, it's not saying people should give up alcohol, it's merely descriptive, in that it's telling the reader what's happening as a result of any level of consumption.

ajuc 5y ago

In developing countries games in 90s were a big avenue for kids to learn English. Mostly we had pirated games (a game costed 50-100 PLN, people earned 400-500 PLN a month, nobody used original software) without translations and with ripped cutscenes. So you had VERY big motivation to learn English to understand what is even going on. I remember playing Betrayal At Krondor and Albion - story-heavy RPGs - understanding maybe 10% of words in any particular dialog or description :) Additionally games train trial-and-error approach to technology which is why I think almost every software developer older than 30 that I know started as a gamer. Nowadays it's a different world and I'm not sure games have such effects anymore, because it's much less demanding entertainment. They work out of the box, are translated into your language, affordable so no need to mess with virtual drives, keygens or copying cracks over game files.

tdsamardzhiev 5y ago

Ditto. Games certainly helped develop my problem-solving skills, but I reckon I'd have gotten 90% of the benefit in 10% of the time, and the remaining 35 hours a week would have been better spent elsewhere.

dukeofdoom 5y ago

> This line of reasoning is also supported by research on > correlation between games and violence (i.e. the consensus > is that no such causation relationship exists). On the face of it, this can't be true in all cases. Even Radio can be used to incite violence. A much less imersive medium. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_T%C3%A9l%C3%A9vision_Libre_des_Mille_Collines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_T%C3%A9l%C3%A9vision_Lib... "Rwandan radio station which broadcast from July 8, 1993 to July 31, 1994. It played a significant role in inciting the Rwandan genocide that took place from April to July 1994, a and has been described by some scholars of having been a de facto arm of the Hutu government." Games influence culture. The modern permissiveness to "punch a Nazi" has been very well conditioned and permitted. Often in games. "Nazi" can be easily redefined to include modern political opponents, at anytime in the future.

blacksmith_tb 5y ago
That seems like a false equivalency, clearly your radio telling you to kill your neighbors is a much stronger incitement than a game where you run around shooting at imaginary people.

jstrH 5y ago

Surely a lot of these “behaviors observed after X hours of Y” studies are subjective to the researchers and broader social opinions on what “normal” is. I don’t disagree on the monetization part, but daily life is an implicit game of risk avoidance. We are cognitively tuned to play a cognitive simulation. My hesitancy is social belief we all must be on board with playing “the real world” simulation as dictated by traditional political beliefs, which heavily influence which studies get funded. Maybe utilitarian day jobs aren’t the only busy work we should expect of each other. Frankly as a social scene, I’d rather people argue over DND rules than how much profit they can make if more people went hungry or died rather than get their insurance benefits they paid for. Perhaps the behavioral economics math we use to advertise and market tribal belief in our teams superior product or service should be set aside to let folks navigate the sim as they wish and real economic activity must adjust to satisfy that? Social norms have always followed technology. Maybe the perspectives we apply are no longer correct in this contemporary time.

daveidol 5y ago

I don't think anyone in this thread has discussed one of the other important aspects of gaming: the social aspect. Especially in an era of "quarantine at home" - online gaming can be a very social activity and a way to make/grow friendships and play with others. (Obviously I think getting outdoors and being active instead of staring at a screen all day is probably even better, but that is one benefit of games over just "grinding")

lhorie 5y ago
The social aspect is a bit iffy. Talk to any female gamer and you're going to hear harassment stories.
- daveidol 5y ago
  Oh I have harassment stories as a male gamer too. Doesn’t mean male and female gamers can’t have fun with their friends online.
Barrin92 5y ago
Might be relevant to point out here that China has largely avoided adopting the remote work culture as most people were back in office in summer last year.

martinmakesgame 5y ago

> ... correlation between games and violence (i.e. the consensus is that no such causation relationship exists). I feel that the connection between violence and violence in games is far more subtle than a direct connection. Video games are not real life but the thoughts and feelings we have when we play games are real. When we experience anger, sadness or joy in a game, all of these emotions are real for us. When we have experiences pathways are laid down in the brain through the process of myelination and these pathways get reinforced over time by having the same experiences. When we hit, shoot or kill something in a video game and get feedback, sound, visual or music, our brain starts to become conditioned to those experiences. Our brains are plastic and flexible in that they can learn that hitting, shooting and killing, being violent can feel "good". It is possible that this can happen even being completely unaware of it happening. If you make games, and there is violence in your game, I would seriously take a moment and consider. Is this violence in the game really necessary? There are many other options for different types of gameplay.

punkst 5y ago

>I've read about studies that say that musical training (which is often believed to translate to improvements in other cognitive aspects of life) doesn't actually correlate to said improvements, and I suspect that the same might be true for games (e.g. solving game puzzles doesn't necessarily mean you get better at school math or whatever) Lots of unchecked assumptions. I'm only taking issue with the music assumption. Do you have a counter to the studies you have read? https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/03/180326140244.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/03/180326140244.h...

lhorie 5y ago
I do know of many studies that suggest the existence of a correlation between music education and academic achievement, but the gist of the argument against those studies is that they aren't well designed: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1747938X16300641 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1747938X1...

raman162 5y ago

I think regulation on past time activities isn't the appropriate approach. It's a slippery slope, are they soon going to regulate the amount of time someone can watch television, or the number of times one may go to a movie theater? Knowing china's history, it doesn't seem too far fetched and sounds like we're slowly evolving into an episode of black mirror.

wanderer2323 5y ago

> solving game puzzles doesn't necessarily mean you get better at school math That's not how improving through games works at all. The things you understand through games are much more general than the surface of the gameplay. Total War (or Starcraft) won't teach you anything about commanding armies. But if you're observant enough it will teach you a difference between level-1 versus level-2 strategies. It will definitely teach you about the impact of timing on execution. It will show you complexity, risk, loss aversion, and how battles are usually won or lost before the first shot is fired. All these are useful things to experience so that you are better equipped to deal with them in real life. What's even more important, the games will show you how YOU relate to these intangible concepts. How loss averse are you? Do you naturally tend to maximize win or minimize loss? How easy it is for you to abandon a pre-established plan? These and more are insights into your own nature that are not easy to get. Finally, the multiplayer games will show you the human nature. You'll understand, for example, that different people play for different reasons, and just this understanding alone was worth all hundreds of hours I put into M:TG. I guess that most of the multiplayer insights are also available through participation (and/or managing) a regular sports team but I would have never been able to join as many of those as I had gaming teams. TLDR: Games guide the player to instinctive understanding of categorical truths that underpin the simulations, and that is only possible through countless repetitions of similar scenarios* in different contexts. This is the true value of gaming. [*] I'm not talking about grinding here[**], but playing same or similar games many times. [**] although grinding can teach one about how seemingly small process improvements somethimes add up to a qualitative break ... and sometimes not. Figure out the best way to do a cow level run to learn more!

2muchcoffeeman 5y ago

Board games are far better brain exercise. You’re forced to compete with other people and the games usually enforce time limits. Or if they don’t, your opponent will force an end if you want to win.

uptown 5y ago
Is this speculative or do you have anything to back this up?
- 2muchcoffeeman 5y ago
  Empirical evidence? If you’re going to play games for some supposed benefit, games where you are forced to compete or have brutal requirements are going to force you to think more. I’m not talking Catan or Ticket to Ride. I’m talking medium to heavy euros or war games.

dang 5y ago

This subthread was originally a reply to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28356453 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28356453.

stjohnswarts 5y ago

How about that old timeless classic pricipal of "my time is my time and not my government's" . We're not talking about parents limiting VG time, this is a government controlling the most minute details of everyone's social life.