Gaming Can Do Good

The Internet and consumer media in general loves a negative story. Preferably the subject will be a target with a history of vilification by the intended audience.  Hence the tabloid press writes about the evils of Hoodies and video games while gaming sites write about the evils of Bobby Kotick and the tabloid press.

With each new story the two sides’ positions become ever more entrenched and the masses sharpen the tines of their pitchforks and dip their torches in fresh tar.  Each attack triggers an aggressive response from the defenders until the love/hate relationship reaches Marmite-like proportions.

There’s so much negativity in this room it’s unreal!
I think it’s time to redress the balance a little and be positive for a change.  Don’t worry, I’m not going to start a Hug-A-Bobby campaign or encourage you to rush out and buy copies of your least favourite tabloid newspaper so you can try to understand their viewpoint.  I will just gather together some of the more positive stories about video gaming I have read recently.

Who knows, maybe someone from the tabloid press will read this post and with the hard work already done for them and the stories found they might make it into the mainstream press.  Stranger things have happened.

Gamers make decisions faster
In the September issue of the journal Current Biology (I’m not that well read, I found out about it via Ars Technica) a report was published entitled Improved Probabilistic Inference as a General Learning Mechanism with Action Video Games.  The report was the outcome of a study that looked at why playing action video games (think FPS titles) seems to enhance a range of skills including decision making and multiple object tracking.

The report’s authors suggest that when you break down those skills to the core competencies required to perform well at them they all involve making a probabilistic inference.  That is, that given an incomplete set of data you must make an educated guess about what is happening.

Groups of gamers and non-gamers had their performance assessed in both visual and auditory tasks.  The educated guesses of both groups were just as accurate but the gamers made their guesses quicker.  The authors suggest it is the lack of repetition in the situations encountered in the action games that enhances probabilistic reasoning.

Games may offer drug-free pain reduction
A couple of weeks ago I managed to trap a nerve in my back simply getting out the car (go figure?) so much of my leisure time has recently been spent trying to find a comfortable angle to lay on the sofa.  Once a not-too-painful orientation has been achieved I have been tearing up the virtual tarmac engaged in a police chase or a spot of real simulation and promptly forgetting I’m in pain until I reach for my coffee.

Then only yesterday I read that the apparent pain-relieving affects of video gaming may well have a scientific basis.  A press release from the American Pain Society (there are so many easy jokes there) in May of this year, reported on by CNET on Monday, says that video games could help reduce physical pain.

In my racing I am likely just benefiting from being distracted by the race or by focusing my rage towards the briefly giggling, now muted, teen who swerved in front of me to drop a spike strip and momentarily forgetting my physical pain.  The studies suggest that the more immersive the game the greater the mitigation of perceived pain so the studies are particularly interested in virtual reality.

Being a part of the studies sounds like fun, at least to begin with.  “I am using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure the effects of VR on experimental pain.  The objective is to measure the cortical regions of interest involved in VR, while exposing the participant to video racing games,” explains Dr Jeffrey Gold of his work, before continuing, “with and without experimental pain stimuli.”

Dr Gold notes “that the exact mechanistic/neurobiological basis responsible for the VR analgesic effect of video games is unknown, but a likely explanation is the immersive, attention-grabbing, multi-sensory and gaming nature of VR. These aspects of VR may produce an endogenous modulatory effect, which involves a network of higher cortical (e.g., anterior cingulate cortex) and subcortical (e.g., the amygdale, hypothalamus) regions known to be associated with attention, distraction and emotion”.  Obvious really.

One study which had the participants wearing VR helmets found that for kids under ten it made little difference.  However for those over ten “there was a much longer tolerance of the pain of the cold water exposure”.  Whether that study took account of teenagers’ innate ability to become completely oblivious to the world around themselves isn’t known.

What the studies tell me though is that for pain management I should be worrying less about apexes and where the gap in the road block is.  Instead I should be reaching painfully for my PS Move and downloading Tumble.  Also that for the good of my health I should have a 3D TV.  I wonder if I can get one on prescription…

Kinect really does make gaming accessible to more people
Finally a feel-good tale that you are more likely to have come across and one not from a scientist, simply a ‘human interest’ story.  This Kinect adventure attracted a lot of attention amongst gaming sites (like Kotaku where I found it) and on Twitter but I hope you’ll forgive me for repeating it if you have seen it before.

John Yan over at Gaming Nexus has a son who is autistic.  Although his son is keen to try and play games he struggles as “controllers for the PlayStation 3, Wii, and Xbox 360 do frustrate him and he has a lot of trouble controlling the characters on the screen using the peripherals”.

With Kinect though it was a completely different experience as his son was not trying to relate actions on a controller to the screen.  Instead because, as Microsoft keep telling us, he was the controller he was able to directly relate his actions to what was happening on screen.  For John and his family Kinect really is a game changer:

For the first time, I was able to play something with my son and not spend any time with him being frustrated on not being to do anything or have a character get stuck on the screen. He had fun with all the games and actually did well with them. The joy in his eyes as he was able to complete the tasks and move around in the menus is something I’ll never forget.

I’m not in the habit of directing you to go and read something on a different site, but seriously, spend a few minutes reading John’s post over on Gaming Nexus if you haven’t already.  It’s a wonderful heart-warming tale and should give Kinect-haters pause for thought.

So there you have it.  Three stories highlighting potential benefits of video games rather than focusing on the negatives.  Now if only we could all just get along, at least for a little while.