The Good of Gaming
Cognitive Benefits:
Gaming produced enhanced problem solving skills in MMOG players. All types of games, including action games, produced enhanced creativity. Action games in particular, including driving games and first and third person shooting games, helped gamers improve spatial intelligence, neural processing and efficiency, and higher attention spans.
In Shawn Green's video on the MOOC "Video Games and Learning," he explains how action video games can actually improve vision. Study participants of varying visual capabilities played first person shooter, third person shooter, or car driving games for 1-1.5 hours at a time for a total of 50 hours over two to three months. Following the study, participants improved markedly in contrast sensitivity, cataracts, low acuity, and general poor vision. The useful field of task also improved. (Steinkuehler, C. & Squire, K.)
In addition to visual improvement, action games improve the basic rate of speed processing - up to 12% faster. One game improved dyslexia. The player was told to watch one of three lines as flashes occurred in all. The neural activity devoted to stream just at one showed how much neural activity was devoted to the target line versus the outliers. Action video game players suppressed distractions more easily than did people who did not play action video games.
Action games are so helpful with concentration that in a study of practicing surgeons, the main factor in whether or not the surgeon would be most successful was not how much experience he had but whether or not he played online action games. In a study by Lazzalay, the action game Neurotrace enabled a 65-year-old woman to surpass the scores of untrained 20-year-olds in efficiency of daily tasks such as cooking and reading a paper. Along with behavioral improvement in attention, perception, and memory, her brain activity showed changes in her prefrontal cortex. The same training is now being used for drone pilots. (Steinkuehler, C. & Squire, K.)
Emotional and Motivational Benefits:
Because games are viewed as sandbox play, or safe play without consequences or judgment, students keep trying even after failing. They study text beyond the game as high interest. "There also seemed to be a trend that identified games as most beneficial for low-performing students, students with emotional/behavioral issues, students with cognitive or developmental issues. In other words, students who have been labeled and/or diagnosed because they struggle within the traditional school environment, benefit from game-based approaches." (Games and Learning)
Candace Steinkuehler makes the argument that video games are important because adolescents have a “third room” they can control. Kids generally do not have full control over their school or home environment. Video games allow children to customize and control an environment. The video game space, Steinkuehler explains, is "some identity that is not entailed or encumbered." She fits Oldenburg's "third room" to the video game space because the game spaces are neutral and levelers, conversation is the main activity (predominantly in MMO games), the spaces are accessible and accommodating, there are regulars (78% of MMO players join a clan), the mood is playful, and there is a sense of a home away from home because of the rootedness, feeling of ease, possession and warmth. Players have the ability to build social capital and meet people of varying socio-economic, political and cultural backgrounds, with whom they may never otherwise have interacted.
Within social games such as MMOG, there is also a spirit of community, as new players are mentored by more experienced players. Steinkuehler follows two elves. One is very new and inexperienced. The more experienced elf takes the new player to perform a task necessary to the elf's identity (gather mithril) and scaffolds learning through the process of teaching how to avoid danger, then protecting herself and her comrades from danger, and finally gathering needed mithril. The sequence of activity of increasingly complex tasks is not performed by a teacher but by a fellow player acting as a teacher who is helping the newbie to grow competent within the game world. (Steinkuehler)
The most fun games not traditionally used in the classroom may be beneficial to education. The popular game Minecraft has a version designed specifically for education. However, its baseline game teaches computational thinking as players modify or "cheat" the game through various levels of programming. Players learn how to program in Javascript and data mine, or look through large amounts of data, to find what they are looking for and disseminate its use. Players evaluate the space by asking questions of others, so different players provide different parts of the information cycle. (Steinkuehler, C. & Squire, K.)
Games as Therapy:
In the simulation game Re-Mission, young players control a nanobot who is injected into the body to fight cancer with various weapons including the Chemblaster, Radiation Gun, and antibiotic rocket. The players keep tabs on patients and report to the doctor. The game was researched as a healing tool in a study of 375 participants, half who played other video games and half who played Re-Mission. Researchers concluded through blood tests that the Re-Mission players were more compliant in taking their prescribed chemotherapy. (Pediatrics) One can also imagine the psychological satisfaction of winning the war against cancer.
People who have ADHD or want to lessen distracted behavior may play Nintendo's Brain Age to aid in brain training for concentration. The action game AdapTac is used to heal ADHD by helping students ignore outside distractions and focus on the main goal. The S.M.A.R.T (Self Mastery and Regulation Training) BrainGames system offers neurofeedback by using brain signals sent through players' headsets; whenever the player pays attention, the game's car speeds up, giving the player positive reinforcement. (Hodges)
Gaming produced enhanced problem solving skills in MMOG players. All types of games, including action games, produced enhanced creativity. Action games in particular, including driving games and first and third person shooting games, helped gamers improve spatial intelligence, neural processing and efficiency, and higher attention spans.
In Shawn Green's video on the MOOC "Video Games and Learning," he explains how action video games can actually improve vision. Study participants of varying visual capabilities played first person shooter, third person shooter, or car driving games for 1-1.5 hours at a time for a total of 50 hours over two to three months. Following the study, participants improved markedly in contrast sensitivity, cataracts, low acuity, and general poor vision. The useful field of task also improved. (Steinkuehler, C. & Squire, K.)
In addition to visual improvement, action games improve the basic rate of speed processing - up to 12% faster. One game improved dyslexia. The player was told to watch one of three lines as flashes occurred in all. The neural activity devoted to stream just at one showed how much neural activity was devoted to the target line versus the outliers. Action video game players suppressed distractions more easily than did people who did not play action video games.
Action games are so helpful with concentration that in a study of practicing surgeons, the main factor in whether or not the surgeon would be most successful was not how much experience he had but whether or not he played online action games. In a study by Lazzalay, the action game Neurotrace enabled a 65-year-old woman to surpass the scores of untrained 20-year-olds in efficiency of daily tasks such as cooking and reading a paper. Along with behavioral improvement in attention, perception, and memory, her brain activity showed changes in her prefrontal cortex. The same training is now being used for drone pilots. (Steinkuehler, C. & Squire, K.)
Emotional and Motivational Benefits:
Because games are viewed as sandbox play, or safe play without consequences or judgment, students keep trying even after failing. They study text beyond the game as high interest. "There also seemed to be a trend that identified games as most beneficial for low-performing students, students with emotional/behavioral issues, students with cognitive or developmental issues. In other words, students who have been labeled and/or diagnosed because they struggle within the traditional school environment, benefit from game-based approaches." (Games and Learning)
Candace Steinkuehler makes the argument that video games are important because adolescents have a “third room” they can control. Kids generally do not have full control over their school or home environment. Video games allow children to customize and control an environment. The video game space, Steinkuehler explains, is "some identity that is not entailed or encumbered." She fits Oldenburg's "third room" to the video game space because the game spaces are neutral and levelers, conversation is the main activity (predominantly in MMO games), the spaces are accessible and accommodating, there are regulars (78% of MMO players join a clan), the mood is playful, and there is a sense of a home away from home because of the rootedness, feeling of ease, possession and warmth. Players have the ability to build social capital and meet people of varying socio-economic, political and cultural backgrounds, with whom they may never otherwise have interacted.
Within social games such as MMOG, there is also a spirit of community, as new players are mentored by more experienced players. Steinkuehler follows two elves. One is very new and inexperienced. The more experienced elf takes the new player to perform a task necessary to the elf's identity (gather mithril) and scaffolds learning through the process of teaching how to avoid danger, then protecting herself and her comrades from danger, and finally gathering needed mithril. The sequence of activity of increasingly complex tasks is not performed by a teacher but by a fellow player acting as a teacher who is helping the newbie to grow competent within the game world. (Steinkuehler)
The most fun games not traditionally used in the classroom may be beneficial to education. The popular game Minecraft has a version designed specifically for education. However, its baseline game teaches computational thinking as players modify or "cheat" the game through various levels of programming. Players learn how to program in Javascript and data mine, or look through large amounts of data, to find what they are looking for and disseminate its use. Players evaluate the space by asking questions of others, so different players provide different parts of the information cycle. (Steinkuehler, C. & Squire, K.)
Games as Therapy:
In the simulation game Re-Mission, young players control a nanobot who is injected into the body to fight cancer with various weapons including the Chemblaster, Radiation Gun, and antibiotic rocket. The players keep tabs on patients and report to the doctor. The game was researched as a healing tool in a study of 375 participants, half who played other video games and half who played Re-Mission. Researchers concluded through blood tests that the Re-Mission players were more compliant in taking their prescribed chemotherapy. (Pediatrics) One can also imagine the psychological satisfaction of winning the war against cancer.
People who have ADHD or want to lessen distracted behavior may play Nintendo's Brain Age to aid in brain training for concentration. The action game AdapTac is used to heal ADHD by helping students ignore outside distractions and focus on the main goal. The S.M.A.R.T (Self Mastery and Regulation Training) BrainGames system offers neurofeedback by using brain signals sent through players' headsets; whenever the player pays attention, the game's car speeds up, giving the player positive reinforcement. (Hodges)