Does gaming make you smarter?

Interesting topic. I do like to entertain the idea that gaming can make you smarter. Of course it cannot be true for every possible situation out there. Perhaps if applied correctly, gaming can be used to such an extent as to enhance specific skills that you use everyday as a source of income. But that on its own is a completely different discussion.
 
TheAvenged87 said:
Interesting topic. I do like to entertain the idea that gaming can make you smarter. Of course it cannot be true for every possible situation out there. Perhaps if applied correctly, gaming can be used to such an extent as to enhance specific skills that you use everyday as a source of income. But that on its own is a completely different discussion.
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There are studies that have proven gamers have better situational awareness, response times & cognitive problem solving abilities. I have noticed myself noticing things my wife, parents, co-workers miss simply coz my game time has conditioned me to observe the world differently. Gamers are also very goal orientated.
 
i think that a blanket "games make you smarter/dumber/lazier/wiser/aggressive" sentiment is not justified. I honestly do not believe that an FPS would make you smarter. but on the other hand, i firmly believe in the benefits of strategy games like Civilization or Sim city or some other game which makes your plan and strategize and balance resources for risk vs reward.

i'm not saying there is no strategy in an FPS, but lets be honest. hair trigger reflexes and low lag count for a lot. Yes it may enhance your abilit to make split second decisions, but there is more reliance of a quick eye and quick fingers, than a carefully constructed grand plan.

likewise, taking it a step back, i would say there is far more intellectual skill required in a game of Chess, than a game of Darts.
 
Hiro said:
i think that a blanket "games make you smarter/dumber/lazier/wiser/aggressive" sentiment is not justified. I honestly do not believe that an FPS would make you smarter. but on the other hand, i firmly believe in the benefits of strategy games like Civilization or Sim city or some other game which makes your plan and strategize and balance resources for risk vs reward.

i'm not saying there is no strategy in an FPS, but lets be honest. hair trigger reflexes and low lag count for a lot. Yes it may enhance your abilit to make split second decisions, but there is more reliance of a quick eye and quick fingers, than a carefully constructed grand plan.

likewise, taking it a step back, i would say there is far more intellectual skill required in a game of Chess, than a game of Darts.
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Well put. Different Genre teaches different skills.
You uses FPS so I'll come back to that. While it wont teach you grand strategy it does improve reflexes (action from seeing to pulling the trigger) also situational awareness and FOF (friend or foe) differentiation. Puzzle games teaches you to think outside the box or less linearly.

What does minecraft teach us?

I also posted a vid yesterday that nobody commented on that may be applicable here.


The article on The Escapist:

Watch as this toddler comes to terms with crime and punishment in the world of Skyrim.
The minds of 3 year-old humans are complex and fast-paced places. To wit: this video of one such child, seen here wrestling with the moral quandries and lessons presented to her by M-ratedThe Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.Watch as the young child's path is blocked by an unimpressed NPC. The child opts for the ol' ear-piercing shout tactic so popular among her age group as a means to deal with this problem. When it fails, she resorts to "swording" the interlocutor until he no longer presents an obstacle."Aha!" she beams. Her path is clear. But what's this? Town Guards? I probably shouldn't have straight-up murdered that NPC in a world that exists without institutionalized judicial checks and balances, her frown seems to say. Maybe I shouldn't have murdered him at all. "People don't want to be sword," she says out loud, putting her complex ruminations on the nature of crime and punishment into impressively straightforward terms.Of course, she could just be horrified at the quick and violent end her character sees as a result of her action. Much of the reaction to this video - cute as the girl and her play are - has centered around what a 3 year-old child was doing wielding an axe in Skyrim in the first place.After Kotaku ran a story on the video, the girl's apparent father, Carl Douglas, wrote in to explain why his daughter was axe-murdering NPCs. "While I do understand that games and violence out of context can be harmful to a child, we are a family of gamers, and the exposure to some imagery is inevitable (though unfortunate)," he wrote. "We do our best to explain things to her and talk about what happens...when the adorably traumatic realization set in that the guards were responding to her "swording" by giving her "boo boos," we did ask her what happened. She just sweetly responded "peoples don't like swords, and we don't want swords on the peoples" and she didn't want to play anymore.""She [knows] the Skyrim controls because she likes to run around in the wilderness looking for streams to jump into," he added.As far as whether or not the child should be playing Skyrim goes, her father seems to have a decent grasp on detailing the differences between reality and fantasy. The jury's still out on whether she's absorbing the basics of the situation in the video, or is just upset by the gore on the screen. Regardless, though, a lesson of some stripe has been learned: Don't "sword" someone out of your way and expect a "boo-boo"-free response from the local authorities.​
Source: Kotaku
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Source: The Escapist
 
i watched that vid and thought it was quite interesting the way she realized that the person did not want to be stabbed. the look on her face said it all. you could SEE that she realized the impact of her actions.

as for minecraft, i can sort of see that it gives people a "lego-like" sandbox in which to play. but honestly, the forced-retro graphics just don't do it for me. I don't find it charming at all :-/ i think i would much rather buy actual real physical lego blocks and play with those instead :-)
 
Hiro said:
i watched that vid and thought it was quite interesting the way she realized that the person did not want to be stabbed. the look on her face said it all. you could SEE that she realized the impact of her actions.

as for minecraft, i can sort of see that it gives people a "lego-like" sandbox in which to play. but honestly, the forced-retro graphics just don't do it for me. I don't find it charming at all :-/ i think i would much rather buy actual real physical lego blocks and play with those instead :-)
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Minecraft's "Retro" look comes with the territory. The hole mining/building thing just wouldn't work if it wasn't block based. I was of the same opinion until I actually played the survival mode (not the creation mode) and lost myself for hours building and underwater tunnel to my massive castle complete with lava flowing from it. But I know its an acquired taste.

As for the little girl I was the same, in that moment you can see she has learned something many parents struggle to teach their kids.
 
If we had to apply the same principle as school i think we would have our answers.

I mean what has biology ever helped me now, what about geography (The answer is absolutely nothing, half the subjects i took i will never use again).. I dont think half the stuff they teach in school makes you any smarter. It teaches you to think out the box, which games do to. I would not say every game will make you smarter but there are a ton of games out there that requires you to be smart and logical about certain things and would certainly teach alot of things. I think it all depends on the game and the user of the game.
 
Very interesting. I agree with previous statements that it depends on the type of game and genre that one plays. But then again, I remember reading a study that showed that the decision-making part of a 'hardcore' gamer's brain was generally smaller than a 'softcore' gamer's brain. But I can't see how a game that benefits creativity, such as minecraft, could be bad for one!
 
I think that playing fast paced games such as FPS will make you see things other people dont notice so easily small things, makes you observant and makes you do calculated guesses much faster than a normal non gamer because split seconds count in FPS knowing the map whats where all goes through my head when im playing, then like dota or some rts you have to think and plan how things go down and you make the plan fast and react fast if you get ambushed if you dont you bound to get pwnt so i wouldnt say smarter in the sense of knowledge but smarter in the sense of skills decision making and planning quick ones i mean
 
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