itisonlygame-blog

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Will they make you violent?

    A popular belief among people is that video games make people violent. As popular as it is, a lot of people who like video games refuse to acknowledge it. A study by Engelhardt, Bartholow, Kerr, and Bushman, evaluates the P3 amplitude which shows how sensitive a subject is to a stimulus. The study had a group play a non action game and a group play an action game to see how different games affected their P3 levels. The study found that the effect on men and women on their P3 were similar despite male subjects having higher noted aggression, this bit is important because it shows that action games to create aggression in players no matter their biological makeup. To further refine their results, the lab team set up a punishment system so that they could measure how the subjects frustration and in game happenings affect their mentality by giving them a buzzer with several level settings and recording each change. The team did a post test measure of the participants sensitivity to violent images, and found that although violent games did make the subjects with low violent game exposure less sensitive to violence, the difference was not as large as the team expected. Violent video games will make people violent. This is not surprising, kids and adults alike are slaughtering hordes of enemies in Skyrim(Bethesda), gunning down cops in GTA(Rockstar), and beating each other senseless in Super Smash Brothers(Nintendo). I have had a lot of exposure to violent games in my life, and so have thousands of thousands of people. Although people have become desensitized to violence through violent video games, that does not mean they are going to be getting into constant fights or criminal activity. People are going to keep playing their violent games when they get mad, that sick satisfaction when they fight a new player in a online match, or that feeling of shutting down someone who had been dominating. As a gamer myself I find that most gamers either seek to sate their anger online in a game, or step back and play something more calming or watch TV or Youtube.

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Are there benefits?

    Another popular belief among people is that video games will rot your brain. This might be due to a lack of exposure or just mimicking the TV rots your brain stigma, but studies show otherwise. A study done by Bavelier, Green, Pouget, and Schrater, was done to examine how exactly videogames affect people’s brains and their learning abilities. This study shows that action games increase a subjects vision with target tracking and object discerning, these skills help with reading small print and driving in any conditions. The study found that these benefits could be gained through only a few hours a week of action game play, which is a lot more plausible for normal use than an average game addict’s twenty plus hours a week. The most useful benefit found by the study is the ability to differentiate between color shades, and contrasts which will make driving in adverse conditions a lot safer. Aside from benefits to vision, the study found that video games improve short term memory and task performance. Video games do not rot people’s brains, as this study shows, they actually improve people’s vision, memory, and task performance, which makes sense. In video games, such as TF2, OverWatch, League Of Legends, and many more, the games contains dozens of objects, objectives, enemies, items, and threats that each player needs to keep a tab on in order to play well and win. The distances, colors, movement and the sheer number of points of focus, any simple task becomes much harder to perform in the game. When a player improves at making a ranged shot, or reading into enemy movements to predict action they improve all of these skills. In a video game there are so many variables that need to be tracked to effectively take a shot from across a map. It requires scouting for enemies where you want to set up, knowing what is going on at the main objective, knowing your team's goal and position in order to be considered good at taking that shot.

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Daphne Bavelier- Your Brain On Video Games

    In this Ted Talk, the speaker brings to light a few things that contrast with common misconceptions about video games, such as how the age of the average gamer is 33 and that video games can be good for you. The speaker goes a few steps further to challenge the idea that video gamers have attention issues with examples and little tests for the audience, one is a list of words popping up in various colors and she asks the audience to say the color of the word, a lot of people struggled with it, and the other is a jumble of smiley faces on a screen with a few blue and most yellow, that would swap throughout. She presents that action gamers had a far better performance with the puzzles and even harder versions. However, her goal is not to sway people to believe that videogames are good for people in reasonable doses. The speaker brings to attention a medicine bottle with small print and a magnifying glass to state that a gamer would not need the glass, and could read the small print bare eyes. In doing this she links video games to medical application, and she goes to show with a set of twisted 3d shapes how even a normal person after being made to play 10 hours of video games in a week performed much better in identifying the pair of twisted shapes than beforehand and that the results remained after a month from the testing. This video is something that I believe more people need to see, it is explained clearly and in a way that was easy to understand. The speaker made the topic easy to understand by covering all her bases and making a plethora of little examples and graphic activities available that show the disparity between people with action game exposure and those without’s capabilities to read, track objects, and quickly identify traits of an object. One day if game industry and brain researchers get together, they could make a great game that could help reduce car accidents, help older people keep their licenses a few more years, and help kids with disabilities.

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How to not get hurt.

    In the Ted talk above, the speaker said that videogames should be played in moderation. Safety manuals for games have been saying for years that too much exposure can cause seizures, that games should be played in well lit rooms, as far from the screen as possible and ect. Not only that, but for the reason the speaker says, binging is not healthy. When I’ve binged 25 episode series in a single day, my eyes start to burn, my bones ache and I can barely remember anything. Now with video games, I play these for large amounts of time in a single stretch. Something I do to reduce the impact of this, is that I take breaks from the screen for 10-20 mins at a time every hour or so to go talk to people, use the bathroom, or fill up my water jug. If you intend to play games for a long period of time, find something to do every hour or so that will peel you from a screen for 10 or so minutes, whether it is the bathroom, some exercises, or getting a snack. Although video games themselves, as established in the previous posts, are not bad for your eyes, but staring into a light, as anyone will tell you can damage your vision. Video games should be played in decently lit rooms help keep your eyes from getting strained. More problems emerge from playing video games for long times without taking proper measures, such as posture, room light, and basic things that people do, like getting water, and eating. This sounds ridiculous but a lot of gamers will skip a meal or two to keep playing. Just moderate your game play, break it up so its not 10 straight hours of play.

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How to eat vegetables.

    Everyday people are supposed to eat some vegetables, but they can get away with not eating any for a day or two. The benefits of anything are the same, the intake needs to be mostly regular, and needs to be a reasonable dose. The issue becomes, finding your vegetable. Not everyone likes action video games, If that is the case then maybe a puzzle game will work for them. Nowadays there is a game for everyone, with so many titles, even avid gamers don't know them all. When my dad was younger his grandma got addicted to their Atari Frogger game, a game with a ton of objects going at different speeds sometimes appearing and disappearing randomly. If my great grandma who was born before they sold sliced bread in stores could find a game that had the elements of an action game that she loved so much that she ended up getting her own Atari to play frogger whenever she wanted to, then someone would have a hard time convincing me that there is not some game for them that tests their mental speed. Even if you do find a game, 20-40 minutes a day at most should be enough to reap the benefits of owning it. If you don’t own a game or console, and think it is too expensive, then a decent laptop should work for older games with plenty that are free to play, or very cheap. There is a game for everyone I am sure of this, if a shooter isn’t your game, then try something like frogger where you have to quickly avoid and process obstacles.

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To the parents

Dear Parents,

    Video games are not bad for your kid. There are things that they should probably be kept from at younger ages, such as how you probably shouldn’t let your four year old playing GTA. My dad played through games he wasn’t sure about that relatives or friends would send us, and decided if they were appropriate or not for me. To properly protect your kids from less appropriate content, you need to be aware of that content to make sure your kid learns it the way you want. Don’t try and restrict them from the games, this will make it like a forbidden fruit that they want to try and could end up addicted to if they haven't learned how to play them and get their work done. After my parents changed their video game rules from after homework was done to weekends, we stopped wanting to play outside, or read, we just wanted to play video games. Try and figure out a good system for video games because they can be really addicting, but you don't want to make your kids resent you so finding the right way to approach it is difficult. When I was small I played Super Mario on the SNES with my dad, and my siblings and I only really played that with our dad other relatives or guests. It was a really fun game but we wanted to finish it together with our dad so when he wasn't playing it we were not playing it. Our parents also didn't force us to go outside but managed to figure out how to get us outside. If you already have rules in place, changing them may cause problems, but whatever your best judgement is take the chance, you can't find what works without a bit of difficulty.

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Sources

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103111000928

Engelhardt, Christopher. Bartholow, Bruce. Kerr, Geoffrey. Bushman, Brad. This is your brain on violent video games: Neural desensitization to violence predicts increased aggression following violent video game exposure. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 2011: 1033-1036. Sciencedirect. Web. 29 Nov, 2017.

https://postlab.psych.wisc.edu/files/1513/8202/5221/annurev-neuro-ShawnGreen.pdf

Bavelier, Daphne. Green, Shawn. Pouget, Alexandre. Schrater, Paul. Brain Plasticity Through the Life Span: Learning to Learn and Action Video Games. Annualreviews.org. 2012. 391-416. Postlab.psych.wisc.edu. Web. 29 Nov, 2017.

https://www.ted.com/talks/daphne_bavelier_your_brain_on_video_games/up-next

Bavelier, Daphne. “Your Brain on Video Games” TED. June. 2012. Lecture. Accessed 29 Nov. 2017