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.
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.
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.
Strictly limiting screen time fuels addiction. I'm utterly convinced about this and speak from experience. They can't learn to properly manage the ups and downs that way, all that remains are the ups, making it the best thing ever. That's why they are rabid about this.
It's also not something only I think, but I don't have a good resource at hand. Questions like this are always disputed anyway. When books came out they complained about the youth wasting their time reading books! (so much to the "reading a book is so much better" comment above.)
Half an hour is also completely unreasonable for playing most games. It rules out playing the good games, leading them to play the pay2win gambling bullshit. If the kids are very small, ignore what I write, but if they aren't think twice about this.
Exactly. It is the same mechanism by which trying to stop smoking by reducing the number of cigarretes usually don't work. The "every other hour cigarrete" becomes almost an orgasmic experience.
There is really not much more. It's simply the observation that strict time limits lead to the time always being used, and augmented the value of the limited resource - video gaming here. The cigarette analogy in the other reply is great. I saw that with children age 10 to 15, for what it's worth.
You see that observation echoed in the context of alternative strategies, as described on https://www.additudemag.com/adhd-teens-video-game-rules-limi... for ADHD (whether that exists does not matter here, in any case the strategies listed there are not limited to it) for example. I read better sources, but I don't find them now, probably just some random articles with some experts attacking a majority position (that screen time limits are good) that I thought convincing, like they pop up sometimes.
Interesting. Is it a huge deal if they miss their 30 minutes a day?
I probably allow my kids too much time with screens, but the flip side is that, if they don't have screen access for a few days, they don't really care. They'll read some books or play outside, no big deal. I get wary of setting hard limits on their screen time, because (knowing their personalities) they would then never accept if they didn't get that time for whatever reason, and constantly be trying to make sure they get their screen time, rather than the current state of affairs where missing their screens for a day or two doesn't phase them one bit.
The concept of "Screen Time" is so insane. You can do everything on a "screen" from writing the next great American novel to watching porn. So, is X hours of screen time too much? Depends on what you're doing with it.
I'm reluctant to invoke the 'kids nowadays' trope. However - While there's a lot someone can do with a computer, the days of picking up marketable skills due to having to fight through technology to get a game to work are long gone. Portable touch-screen devices are tuned for content consumption and not content creation. Large industries exists today with refined abilities to grab and hold the attention of young minds.
All of that taken together means the odds of 'screen time' being a productive endeavour are IMO much smaller than they once were. If the overwhelming odds are your kid is going to be sucked into a skinner box for the duration of their screen time it seems prudent to put limits on that which might limit the damage being done.
Of course none of this is a substitute for knowing your kid as an individual and tailoring conditions to what's best for them, versus any kind of blanket rule stuff.
My 5 year old niece learned to read playing video games on those touch screens everyone hates. She’s doing exactly the same kind of role play most young kids do with dolls or action figures, but learning the interface and getting text to speech and speech to text is dramatically more educational than playing with dolls.
My nephew was the same way, it’s not better or worse than how we grew up just different. What people forget is escapism is normal behavior. Games, TV, Radio, Music, even Books have all been blamed for the younger generation not being productive except fun is also useful. Watching hours of TV doesn’t seem like a great use of time, but the 3,001th hour leaning a musical instrument, woodworking, or whatever has serious diminishing returns. Kids don’t actually benefit that much from doubling down on what adults think is important, just look at all those Asian countries that don’t turn hours of cram school into massive economic advantages.
Who gives a crap about marketable skills? My 5 year old understands what derivatives are because he scrolls through math content on YouTube. There’s a lot to learn out there and more accessible than ever. Obviously the parent has to be involved as they do with everything. The screen is not a babysitter.
Yes, but I'm saying that it's parents job to make sure the "screen time" is healthy just like it's the parents job to make sure the mealtime is healthy. There are these debates about "how much screen time is OK for kids" but nobody ever talks about "how many ounces of food is OK for a kid?" because there's a big difference between an ounce of broccoli and an ounce of doughnuts.
We restrict both time and what they have access to, and the kids don't generally crave screen time (they're in elementary school).
Aside from watching movies every once in a blue moon, they only have access to specific games (all of which fall in the educational category), so no endless content feeds and no micro-transaction BS.
At one point, they got into one game enough that they'd demand daily screen time, but then the novelty wore off and they stopped asking.
Most days, they just spend their play time doing other things and screen time doesn't even come up.
I have mixed feelings about it all. I respected my friends growing up who couldn't play video games at will as I did, yet I also felt they were missing out. I know many adults who don't game, and often if they aren't out with friends they get bored really quickly. Since it is hard to get out with friends regularly as an adult (esp. as a working parent), it feels like many of them are just bored all the time. I wonder if they had more familiarity with the wide variety of games, they'd have found some that suit their tastes and competence and have something stimulating to do beyond doom scrolling social media. It is quite possible to game, read, have friends, and maintain a great balance between those activities and other forms of life. It is easy to displace those with social media and vice versa. All in all, I'll probably teach my kids to game even if they don't express a natural interest in it, because I ultimately believe it is a better hobby for most people than the lower hanging fruit like social media.
There's screens and screens, they can't be really lumped them into a single content.
I place TV at the absolute worst of the spectrum, so I don't have one. In addition to the tendentially trashy content, it is also typically used as babysitter, which contributes to the factor.
But there are also lots of interesting stuff to do with a screen; most importantly, they can be done together.
>There's screens and screens, they can't be really lumped them into a single content.
Same can be said about TV programs.
I watch Bluey (and only Bluey) with my one year-old daughter, and have genuinely learned wholesome, positive parenting techniques from watching this family of cartoon dogs interact.
My kids are just 6 and 3, but they don't do screen time at all. Compared to my friends that have tried limiting screen time, none seems a lot easier. They just don't miss or crave it.
If one were to have an addiction, I'd pick video game addiction for them - the side effects are not like drugs, and it's possible to recover from it without major side effects, and in addition you can get a penchant for solving problems and learning quickly if you break out of the addiction cycle.
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.
> 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.
I remember the old days of "extended memory" which meant you needed slightly different configuration files for each game. That meant if you wanted to play a bunch of games, it made sense to learn how to write a bat script to config according to what you wanted to play.
You also had a terminal which gave a "computery" vibe, like you were doing something serious, because why else would the interface be so austere? Command lines are like magic incantations, and some people are just drawn to learning how they work.
Nowadays that entry route is gone, there's not much peeking below the OS desktop anymore on something like a phone or tablet. On desktop it seems like Steam just abstracts away everything else that you'd care about, though I'm not a heavy gamer anymore.
My first computer was a 486 33mhz w/ about 250MB HD . I could only keep a couple games installed at a time, meaning i was always installing and uninstalling. Then I had to play with the autoexec.bat and cmd.com files . Then I broke it. Then i had to fix it cause my mom was still making payments on the computer (like it was a refrigerator with a 10yr lifespan) ... This is how I got into computing. Come to think if of it I owe her some "interest" on how much she invested in my career. :)
+1 for breaking autoexec.bat (on a 386). And getting yelled at by my dad, who needed it for work.
Thankfully, this led to a great decision when he upgraded -- his old machine became mine. If I broke it, well, that was my problem, and I should learn how to fix it. Cue ~10 year old me learning about the Windows / DOS boot process.
In summary, we should encourage kids to play games, but make them harder to install and more prone to break your operating system, because it makes kids smarter.
That's an interesting idea. If I have kids maybe I should tell them "you can play any game you can run on Linux. Here's an Ubuntu CD, helpdesk is at google.com. If you get really stuck tell me what you've tried so far and I'll give you some suggestions on what to ask Google. Oh, by the way, if you'd like to write your own games, I'll be happy to help you."
For the last 15 years or so I have insisted most people I mentor, even young teens, build a new primary computer from parts and build Gentoo on it including the kernel.
When it boots successfully and can connect to the internet we then move on to helping them do any daily task they once did on Windows or MacOS, including gaming, art, schoolwork, etc on the new system.
Most choose another distro eventually once they know how to patch any software when needed, but some stick around and go on to develop operating systems themselves.
By the time you have kids that are old enough to play games, if you do, then you’ll probably know that this is an impossible conversation. The process will instead be to create a mystique out of your own habits, which the child will find intriguing.
That was me. I was given a Linux laptop, shown how to connect to the Internet (from a terminal), and basically told "good luck". 15 years later, I am happily working on embedded Linux systems.
I would encourage you to also spend time teaching and mentoring them even if they havent tried. Kids thrive on this kind of attention, and feelings of support.
I have definitely lamented how easy it is for my kids' generation to play games, compared to the memory optimization techniques I had to employ to even get them running ;)
> Ooh, if I LH the mouse driver and allocate a little more EMS it should work, but don't forget to load DOS=high,umb!
1/6 of my friends (we all own 286, 386 and play computer games) got into programming and became a software engineer. The policy is against online games. I am actually looking to setup a computer without internet for my 8 year old. I want him to learn about computers, but internet is definitely not something I want him to explore now.
Hah! You've just described my childhood, hacking autoexec.bat and config.sys to get games to work. Each game needed a different hack. Had no idea what I was doing back then, it was more a case of discovering the correct incantation until stuff worked without the graphics juddering too badly.
There is also the value of the skills being learned. Learning about extended memory may have been of value to some people in the day, but it had negligible value a decade later. It may have launched a few careers, but it did not have lasting value. Learning how to create batch files had more value since those skills were transferable to similar domains (e.g. Unix administration and software development).
That being said, people rarely discuss technical skills as a benefit of gaming. Things like resource management are more often brought up. Maybe there's some benefit to games in that respect, but I suspect most people learn about resource management within the context of games and very little of that is transferable to the real world.
This isn't to say I'm opposed to using games for education. I have certainly taught concepts in mathematics using Minecraft. Yet it does take a higher level of awareness of what you are trying to learn (or teach) than going through the mechanics of playing.
Understanding low level architecture of that time (and early memory management) and first steps of the boot process is definitely something that has been useful to me since then. DOS batch files scripting no so much...
I beg to differ about XMS. That particular technology may have only been relevant for a decade, but the idea of using a harder-to-access storage to supplement cheap-but-limited storage is everywhere. L1 and L2 cache, data warehouses, cloud storage, and so on. I value learning about that abstraction early on. I’d agree it’s not singularly career changing, but I don’t think knowing any one technology in the software industry is.
XMS wasnt a supplement, and its behaviour wasnt analogous to a cache. It was a 32 bit wrapper that would allow 16 or 32 bit* dos applications to access all "extra" memory that 32 bit systems usually got installed. The access was commonly provided via emulating the EMS mechanism - a 64k or 128k block to be paged within the fist 2^19 bytes, or by providing a 32 bit address for a usable block.
*32 bit and protected mode (ring3) support was provided usually via DPMI, an interrupt service managed by a TSR (daemon), or VCPI, a more complex privileged system. Some DOS extenders could also provide this functionality for their own binaries, notably the very popular DOS4GW.EXE, the Watcom dos extender. Yes, the name of the file reflects the physical address limit of i386 systems, 4GB. (note that when working with linear addressing, the max addressable range is quite superior due to the paging mechanism).
I do truly hope that this is a case where multiple starting points ultimately end going to the same place, largely. There are multiple entry points and what was a good entry point when we were young is not the best way anymore.
For one thing, now there are fairly easily reprogrammable boards that can do things like power motors for which you need to learn real programming just to start, even if you're using an example.
I am worried that a level of comfort with computers that we may have due to being there during the evolution will be gone, I certainly learned to type over 120 words per minute by playing a MUD, far more important than my actual honest-to-god typing class. I think-type, which is a result of endless text conversations and emails.
Are those fundamentally important skills? Why? At some level if they are skills which are needed there will be a reason to learn them.
My childhood story too. We ended pretty knowledgable, effective and borderline dangerous when the watered down systems arrived later.
I'd put in the same category the edition of saved games to change your amount of money to FFFFFF or the epic shenanigans required to setup a LAN party.
For some games sure, but those games now make up a subset.
Look at the 'casual' games which are optimized via AI to hold attention and trigger repeat use. It may not be much of a stretch to consider these drugs for the human visual/rewards system rather than videogames. And these attention-grabbing tools are only getting better as we collect more data and develop better algos.
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.
Depends on the person. I learned quite a few good habits from video games, particularly how to become more focused, driven, and patient. After getting fairly serious with a competitive game in my mid thirties, I found it translated rather unexpectedly to other pursuits. I am unsure if I would have found these parts of myself otherwise; I certainly hadn't before, and I had no shortage of variety in my hobbies or rigor in my career(s) prior.
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.
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?
I learnt English thru video games. I would not be here without them. But arguable, modern games with lootboxes and metrics are way worse than 90s offline games.
Exactly. I want to let my kid experience something similar. So I gave him (6 years old) my desktop pc. He is now playing around with windows settings. Of course looking for games on Steam. But he at least doesnt touch his Nintendo switch anymore.
Video games gave me the motivation to learn English, about machining, CAD, PCB design, economics and programming. Anyone who is against leisure is falling into the existential trap of capitalism. What is the meaning of doing productive work inside a video game? Since productive work is now leisure you actually run into the existential problem all the time. The video game runs into deflation all the time. People are highly productive, reducing the need of other players to be productive.
In fact, the very thing we beg for is an increase in the money supply. We are hoping for inflation. Meanwhile in the real world everyone is scared of that inflation thing. My latest project is literally pumping NPC vendors with basic resources to create money out of thin air to generate inflation. The paradox of creating money is that it makes people work and end up doing more "productive" work.
> If a game is providing reading material and motivation to read, it will improve reading skills.
Eh. No, that's not quite how that works. If you look at north american elementary school level reading, you may notice that books are often categorized by levels. Some of this has to do with complexity of sentence construction, some has to do with vocabulary, and some has to do with subject matter. The gist of the educational philosophy around reading is that one doesn't get better at reading by plowing through reading material at high volumes, but instead one needs to gradually level up by going through materials of appropriate complexity. One specific problem that teachers look for - especially in kids that advance quickly - is "skimming without understanding", for example (i.e. reading words/sentences phonetically, but without understanding their meaning/context).
Game text is usually not structured with any didactic value in mind (other than maybe appropriate usage of furigana in Japanese in consideration of target audiences). A lot of game categories don't even require any reading beyond recognizing words (which is somewhere between kinder and 1st grade level reading skill)
Also, even in games where text actually matters, you're typically spending a large amount of time doing other things (killing monster or whatever). In addition, the notion of games-as-reading-material ignores a fairly common phenomenon: a lot of people simply spam `A` to skip over dialogues - and even get stuck on one-off gimmicks that rely on reading the text carefully for instructions or clues.
To be clear though, practicing pre-acquired reading skills can help in the sense that repetition legitimizes, but IMHO that's a bit different than improving beyond a current level, and not necessarily all that different from what you get from reading cereal box/shampoo labels or reading comic books.
So what I think is a really strong counterpoint to your argument is the simple fact that watching movies in a language is generally considered a great way to learn said language. That's passive learning in a similar manner to what you would get out of reading in a video game.
It fails to train you in actually synthesizing speech though. So you need a structured approach as well, similar to what you describe, to fill out the many other facets of learning.
But it's still insanely valuable to do so.
reading things likely makes you better at reading things
Well, I think doing things way above your level "works" sometimes in the sense that there's a subset of things that a learner happens to be most receptive to at any given time, and immersing yourself at the deep end is a bit like brute forcing through the entire subject matter until something happens to stick. But this is inefficient and not guaranteed to yield any results at all.
I have some insight into language learning myself, having had both positive and non-positive experiences. On the one hand, yes, games and movies did help me pick up english vocabulary, but this is because I also studied english from an early age in school, the fact that English borrows vocabulary heavily from romance languages (with which I am fluent), and perhaps most importantly, the fact that I've immersed myself in it quite deeply during my teens, often preferring to read and write in english. Ironically, though, learning through entertainment media left me with some curiously weird learning gaps. For example, I only learned in my 30s that "down" (as in Final Fantasy's "Phoenix down") refers to a type of plumage and not some weird in-universe usage of up/down/left/right.
Now contrast this experience with this: As a kid, I also learned Japanese (though not to the same extent as english, let alone the extent required to master it coming from a romance language). At one point, my dad brought over some Japanese RPG games from a business trip to Japan, and while I did have basic schooling on hiragana/katakana, the teen-level kanji from the games was way over my head at the time, and I ended up learning virtually no Japanese from those games (I had to quite literally sit down to actively study kanjis to make any sense of what the game text said). I also consumed quite a bit of anime and not a whole lot stuck with me either, due to a lack of what I can "active practice" (i.e. my exposure to the language was mostly on a as-needed consumption basis, with little to no active effort to write or speak).
In short, I do think games can help nail down stuff you've learned elsewhere, but upleveling language skills from games alone is very difficult.
> For example, I only learned in my 30s that "down" (as in Final Fantasy's "Phoenix down") refers to a type of plumage
For what it's worth, that's not at all what I'd consider a weird gap. As an educated 40-year-old native English speaker, I think it's possible I've gone my entire life without speaking aloud the word "down" in the sense of plumage. I'd only expect a non-native speaker to know it if they spent some time focusing on animal terminology.
Yeah, after writing that comment I thought about it a bit more and realized that I have used the word "down" in the context of pillows before. But that may have been one or two conversations in my life.
> Game text is usually not structured with any didactic value in mind (other than maybe appropriate usage of furigana in Japanese in consideration of target audiences). A lot of game categories don't even require any reading beyond recognizing words (which is somewhere between kinder and 1st grade level reading skill)
> Also, even in games where text actually matters, you're typically spending a large amount of time doing other things (killing monster or whatever). In addition, the notion of games-as-reading-material ignores a fairly common phenomenon: a lot of people simply spam `A` to skip over dialogues - and even get stuck on one-off gimmicks that rely on reading the text carefully for instructions or clues.
This is a consequence of modern gaming trends and by no means an issue with video games themselves.
There are a lot of game categories that provide or even require extensive reading. We don't have to accept _all_ games a beneficial; it's not like we use magazines and tabloids to teach reading comprehension either.
There are games where killing monsters isn't the primary goal, or even if it is a significant aspect of game play can be averted by finding alternative solutions, usually through the in-game lore.
Deus Ex was a great example where several bosses could be entirely side stepped by reading emails throughout the game (though to be fair, only a few of them actually required _reading_ the email as opposed to simply discovering it). Arcanum is another that if you pieced together enough of the backstory and paid attention to the dialog you could talk the final boss down. There are even more out there, as you mention, that offer hints to puzzles and gimmicks, some of which even present it as a riddle ensuring you read and understand the text rather than just found it.
Sure, a lot of people will skip these things and save-scum or post on message boards to get the answer, but that's not much different than CliffNotes everyone used.
If you want to use video games in school do the same thing we do for books: Select the games the offer quality reading and evaluate based on comprehension rather than completion. You can even require students submit save files to verify they took the reading path.
There's no need for mental gymnastics, it's a lot easier to simply argue that educational games are educational. But this doesn't contradict what I said: that most games are not structured in terms of didactic value.
I do, however, want to specifically call out the learning value of an R-rated game: if you are learning to read from it, that says absolutely nothing about age-appropriate didactic value of the game. At that level, the game ought to be making you solve quadratic equations or something along those lines for us to even begin entertaining the idea that they may provide any actual didactic value.
Grammar/spelling/usage is almost all about memorizing and copying others, so engaging in tasks that use those skills will definitely get you further faster than a step-by-step progression. I was reading and writing at a level far beyond my peers in elementary school, not because I was smarter, but because I actively read books for fun.
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.
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.
> 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.
What sort of games have you been playing?
Modern games come in every possible variety, and as soon as you look outside the likes of Fortnite you're swamped in story-heavy games, if that is what you want. The Atelier games, for example. Certainly those have voice acting, but not everywhere—and if that's a problem, pick the Japanese VAs.
I like text-heavy games and agree with the GP that they are not nearly as common as they used to be. Voice acting is almost universal and most games require subtitles to be enabled to have much of any reading.
Sure, are some games like Disco Elysium, Pathfinder Kingmaker or other D&D-style games, which are big walls of text with minimal voice over, but let's be honest, those games are targeting middle-aged people, not 10 year olds.
The games kids are playing today involve very little reading.
If I go on itch.io right now and pick something at random, the likelihood of it being both made by a teenager and involving written storytelling is quite high. Likewise a huge hit of the last decade was Undertale and it had the kind of success where I recall seeing kids draw the characters in chalk on the sidewalk. The evidence indicates that writing never went away, it's just not upheld by large productions(and even then, Nintendo regularly eschews voice acting).
To me, there's nothing sacred about text, it's just a medium.
For what it's worth, I ended up reading and skipping the dialog more often than not. There's just so much text that having to wait for the narration felt interminable. It's great voice acting, though.
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.
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.
> 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.
It's only quite recently that we can get fresh grapes off season, that's why people used to drink wine with food - it stays consumable for much longer thanks to the alcohol it contains.
Also make sure it has robust location compensation - the cheaper ones skimp on that, so you might end up quite high up or even get telefragged into the ground!
> 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].
(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)
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.
>_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.
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.
Frankly, nutrition science seems like a bunk field. Common advice is overthrown every few years and you can find a study that backs up any viewpoint you want. "you buying it versus you wanting to not believe it" is a weird statement to make in the context of such a sketchy science.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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")
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.
>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?
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/S1747938X1...
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.
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.
> ... 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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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!
"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.
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.
>"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.)
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.