Stuff

Stats on gaming

GMI Poll: Video Gaming Gaining Ground in Populous India and Mexico and Continuing to Grow.
Worldwide Global survey results show that one third of Indians and more than 20 percent of Mexicans dedicate up to 50 percent of their leisure time playing video games

Counter-Strike, chess, the brain

Computerworld.dk has published an article in which Lars Konzack and I comment on the claims of Kjeld Fredens.

I agree entirely with Lars that speaking of video games as one shapeless mass is quite unfruitful (Fredens’ claim mostly makes sense in connection with action games).

But my main point was that, cutting Fredens a little slack, the proposed hypothesis is not unreasonable – it is just undocumented. Like so many other claims about games & brains.

Also, I’m qouted for saying that video games are different from board games in the sense that the former sometimes allow single-player play but that people making”games are anti-social” claims should consider the fact that books are far more anti-social. My point here was not that “books are bad” but that the “X is anti-social” charge is uninteresting.

Gaming Culture web page now up

We now have a web page up about the research volume that Patrick Williams and I are editing, entitled Gaming Culture and Social Life.
You can even sign up to be notified when the book is published.

Trackback problem

I’m geeky enough to not accept that features don’t work. Such things are personal failures.
But I’ll be damned if I can figure out how to show trackbacks here on this blog (running the Kubrick WordPress default theme). Any ideas?

Seems I can send but not receive (ingoing trackbacks don’t show up in the database either).

Thanks.