I don't know about action games in general but I definitely feel like highly competitive games (esports) have an extreme mental side to them. I'm thinking about some of the top games like Counter-Strike, League of Legends, Dota, Starcraft. Most of the difficulty in those games is decision making, being able to keep track of multiple things at once and, at least in the team games, be able to gather information about your opponent and communicate that to your teammates effectively.
edit: and you get good at those by playing and practicing that one game for thousands of hours
thanks for this. I played quake live for a couple months solid last year and just couldn't make a dent against anyone in duels except other new players even though i was working hard to improve
It should be mentioned that the article is a review article and doesn't provide any actual head-to-head comparisons between "action video games" and "brain games." In addition, one of the authors (Aaron Seitz) developed a cognitive training program (Ultimeyes) that is much more like a "brain game" than an "action video game"
A summary from the article than its title is "A new article argues that it is the specific content, dynamics, and mechanics of individual games that determine their effects on the brain and that action video games might have particularly positive benefits."
That is to say: I suspect the "penalty" of getting "killed" in a humiliating fashion thus thwarting a goal is more of a motivation than the reward of hearing a voice say, "good job for memorizing that numerical pattern."
This is the RSA Animate of Dan Pink's lecture on motivation. He suggests there is a division between physical and mental tasks. This was tested with several experiments involving different reward schemes.
As long as the task involved only mechanical skill, bonuses worked as they
would be expected. The higher the pay, the better the performance.
[...]
Once the task called for even rudimentary cognitive skill, a larger reward
led to poorer performance.
edit:
The idea that penalties trump rewards probably explains why I've always liked roguelike games (and Touhou-style shooters). I've been playing way too much Nuclear Throne recently (and Risk Of Rain). As a roguelite, it strongly embraces the idea of "permadeath". Robotron/SmashTV style extra-fast action, that where you can never make a mistake (a single hit can end the game).
Also, Nuclear Throne demonstrates an important implementation detail in something that uses such a strong punishment-based motivator: never put anything in the way of the player restarting after their mistakes. In NT, once the death animation has played (only a few frames, at most 200-300ms), you can hit "R" to restart the game at the first level. No delay whatsoever. Sure, the penalty is harsh, but you can try to overcome that failure immediately.
If that turns out to be true, then that's a huge finding. That's especially considering the fact that modern psychology/therapy is generally recommending positive reinforcement (treats) as opposed to negative reinforcement (penalties) for teaching/conditioning behavior. This could lead us to revise commonplace methods for teaching children, training pets, and for managing individuals and groups in general.
It's possible that the source of the negative reinforcement matters. In games it comes from either the environment, or from another person who's part of a (temporary) outgroup. If you simulate aggression towards that person you will be rewarded. In schools it comes from another person in a position of authority over you, and if you act aggressively towards them the punishment will escalate to you point where you are almost guaranteed to lose.
No, it could also be the immediate, continuous feedback. Or that they're actually more mentally demanding. Or that they require lots of different parts to work well together, rather than trying to focus on just one thing.
"Action video games" is the fascinating academic-grant-ready rebranding of violent video games, in case anyone is confused what this is talking about.
Is there a stigma associated with violent video games? Of course. No academic institutions are funding developmental psychology research into violent video games the way they fund the study of educational games. This is despite violent video games being way more appealing to children.
Beyond psych? More people have inhabited the Office level in Counter-Strike for more combined time than any office building ever built in Manhattan. But you'll never read about video game architecture in an architecture journal, design blog, etc. It's a universal aversion to serious conversations about games just because they involve shooting aliens.
Can development psychologists get out of the ghetto of investigating games' impact on violence or attention deficit? Maybe. Studies like the one done in this article are a good step forward. But this study still indicts video games for something, just different video games. The improvement-in-vision studies are on the right track, but they are at this point half a decade old. Surely someone has some fresh ideas.
Those game developers haven't read a single page of psychology literature. Yet they have succeeded in massive, non-chemical cognitive behavioral modifications. You'd think someone could make an academic career out of this.
While the article did mention first (Wolfenstein: The New Order) and third (Grand Theft Auto V) person shooters as "action video games", the term could easily apply to games like Rocket League which – while similarly fast-reflex online multiplayer games – are violence free.
The specific description of action video games in the article is:
> complex 3D settings, that feature quickly moving targets that pop in and out of view, that necessitate substantial visual processing of the periphery, that include large amounts of clutter and task-irrelevant objects, that require the player to consistently switch between highly focused and highly distributed attention, and that require the player to make rapid, but accurate decisions
> Those game developers haven't read a single page of psychology literature
How do you know that? I've been on gamedev conference where developers talked about monetization strategies for mobile free to play games, and it was basicaly dark psychology course (was revolting and fascinating at the same time).
Those who are interested in some discussion about games may find extra credits youtube channel interesting.
This particular episode mentions the previous study on violent video games, and talks about how maybe video games actually help make people more empathetic:
Is this much of a surprise? 'Action video games' these days take place in basically real life 3d simulations - any problems you solve in them can basically map directly into the real world (travelling from A to B, resource/time management, awareness of what your enemies/competition are thinking/doing etc)
When my wife asks me why I enjoy FPSs (Titanfall, Call of Duty, Halo, etc), I try to explain to her that its like the fastest game of chess imaginable. The difference being that you can only see a couple of the pieces on the board and you have to try to keep track of where you think the remaining pieces are in your mind.
With this type of evidence, it can be easy to justify spending even more hours playing video games. However, everything in moderation. It's very easy to take it too far when it comes to action video games. Now we should ask, which one is better for your well being in the long run? Action video games tend to be significantly more addicting than its counterpart. Is it worth that repercussion for slightly improved brain function?
> Is it worth that repercussion for slightly improved brain function?
It's like reading - it's worth it for the eintertainment, and the benefits are nice bonus. And it's easy to lose too much time on it. But I wouldn't switch from reading fiction to reading encyclopedia to be "safer from book addiction".
Yes - for the most part improvements in those memory games improve... performance on those memory games. There is a paper showing that Luminosity specifically doesn't help.[0]
Our brains are really good at learning to optimize for a very specific task.
As an example of that task specificity, for master level chess players, they are better than amateurs and novices at memorising real chess board layouts, but not significantly better at scrambled board layouts.
It's unfortunate that video games need research to make them seem worthwhile, but sports are widely accepted as being good things for kids to do. Even though I'd bet there's a negative correlation between time spent playing sport and academic performance, at least at the more extreme ends of the spectrum. At high school, it's not even good for preventing obesity since the most lasting obesity starts in childhood before teenage years. Anecdotally, I know several people who played competitive sport at high school then quickly became overweight afterwards apparently because they maintained the high-energy eating habits they needed as a teenager.
> It's unfortunate that video games need research to make them seem worthwhile, [...]
Just wait a generation.
I am willing to bet however, that your opinion on sports is too pessimistic. At low to medium levels sports probably helps academic performance, because it helps everything. (But for a proper bet, we'd have to agree on more precise terms, and odds we are offering, and an amount, and then go ahead and do some research.)
Yea, you're probably right about moderate levels of sport. On a very direct level, faster blood circulation from exercise improves brain function. There's probably also some motivation/self-esteem feelings it helps with as well.
I wonder if in a generation we'll see posters encouraging kids to play video games instead of blobbing out in front of the Facebook or whatever the new bogeyman is. I get the feeling that using a computer (or phone or whatever it is) is becoming accepted as default OK and now it's the specific types of app that can be "good" or "bad".
There are still plenty of people who have grown up with games as a normal part of life that look down on those who play them as wasting time and hold it as a badge of honour when they no longer play them, as though this means they have now matured.
Modern sports grew out of gentleman's games in universities, the whole culture was something that people looked up to as civilized before it came to be something everyone 'participated' in.
> At low to medium levels sports probably helps academic performance
I don't believe the parent was talking about actually playing sports, which would help, but was more talking about the Sunday Afternoon Football game where it is socially acceptable to sit and watch the game and associated commentary for hours
> [...] but sports are [...] for kids to _do_. [...] correlation between time spent _playing_ sport and academic performance, [...] preventing obesity [...]
edit: and you get good at those by playing and practicing that one game for thousands of hours