Category: Stuff

Video games threaten… board games

Ludo the game of dice.
According to Politiken Danish neuroscientist Kjeld Fredens is worried that video games are replacing board games in many children’s lives. Fredens, apparently, is convinced that board games stimulate different cognitive functions than do video games:

A board game such as chess challenges the intellect of children. It challenges their ability to combine and it challenges their ability to think ahead. The slow pace of traditional board games mean that children train the ability to think thoroughly whereas video games depend more on routine and reflexes. But both things have advantages so it is good if children play both video games and board games.

Of course, this statement disregards the vast difference between video game titles. But apart from that it’s quite interesting, perhaps even plausible. One only wonders if there is any documentation at all behind those claims.

More on method

I think one will do well to be aware that one is unlikely to ever come up with a methodological claim so outlandish or grotesque that one cannot find support for it in the research literature should one search long enough.
Being able to cite somebody does not relieve anyone from thinking critically. I’ll see what I can do to remember this myself.

Gamer brain scan study

A recent brain scan study of gamers playing a violent games is reported to conclude that the brain treats on-screen violence as real and that these games train the brain to react in a certain pattern.
The study was described in New Scientist and commented on in This Is London.

From those brief descriptions it all seems remarkably vague. Also, New Scientist is hardly a scientific journal in itself making it odd that the study was “published” there.

More coverage from BBC – it now seems that the study is not about game violence, but about aggression in itself. The game part, according to BBC, is incidental. Interesting news angle, in that case.

Of DIGRA things to come

This year’s DIGRA conference is almost upon us. All in all, I much enjoyed the previous instantiation, and will be looking forward to Vancouver surrounded by game research greatness.

In particular, I’ll be looking forward to (although I have not yet read the papers):

Styles of Playing Violent Video Games: An Individual Differences Research Methodology
Amanda Bolton, Gregory Fouts

Addressing Social Dilemmas and Fostering Cooperation through Computer Games (full paper)
Mark Chen

Gaining Advantage: How Videogame Players Define and Negotiate Cheating (full paper)
Mia Consalvo

The “White-Eyed” Player Culture: Grief Play and Construction of Deviance in MMORPGs (full paper)
Holin Lin, Chuen-Tsai Sun

/hide: The Aesthetics of Group and Solo Play (full paper)
David Myers

Law, Order and Conflicts of Interest in Massively Multiplayer Online Games (full paper)
Daniel Pargman, Andreas Eriksson

A Brief Social History of Game Play (full paper)
Dmitri Williams

Oh, and then of course there’s TL Taylor’s keynote and Jesper Juul’s dissertation talk – not to be missed by anyone who don’t have the pleasure of their everyday pleasantness.

But all in all it seems those Vancouver days will be quite packed.

BTW, here’s my own paper abstract and the full version.