Background

Games incur negative press and media coverage over the years. They are blamed for the ever popular topic of gun-culture, and low level crime activities. The addictive side of gaming apparently contributes to why so many teenagers are in debt, because of the sheer expense of keeping up a gaming addiction.

Also, in July 2008, a direct correlation was drawn between the strength of a relationships and how much a gamer "games" (in this context, the term is used to denote how long a gamer plays on a video gaming). Soon after this study, a story hit the press of a woman sueing her ex-husband for spending too long on the World of Warcraft title on her laptop.

All in all, gaming isn't very popular amongst newspapers, the media in general or parents. Many young people have "get off the games" rattling around in their head every day. But maybe, just maybe, this research by Shawn Green and Daphne Bavelier will alter (or at least balance) some people's perspective on gaming.

Overview

The American scientists have found that regular plays of puzzle, FPS, along with so called 'God' game titles develop better visual interpretation, visual recognition and logic-orientated problem solving. Snake (popular on many mobile phones), Half-Life, and surprisingly Grand Theft Auto - a game which in the past has received a lot of criticism for encouraging bad attributes in teenagers - were announced as particularly effective.

Evidence Gathered and Results

To ensure fair and reliable results, a training day was set up, where the scientists trained subjects on several different games and retested them again, to compare results. One group concentrated on playing the WWII FPS Medal of Honor and the other played the addicting game of Tetris. The subjects played each game for an hour every day for ten days, the subjects were re-assessed. Medal of Honor players showed a significant improvement in visual and attentional skills, whereas Tetris play showed almost no change, but Tetris addicts instead had only a slight increase in "shape arrangement". Later tests between Tetris and Snake showed again that Tetris and Snake did almost nothing for visual skill, but Snake players doubled their "attentional skills". The researchers concluded that:

"By forcing players to simultaneously juggle a number of varied tasks, action video game playing pushes the limits of three rather different aspects of visual attention"

Try it out for yourself

Are you skeptical of this? Well, Darren Beige - Wonders of the Brain is offering you a not-really-unique opportunity of trialling the test for yourself. We have installed a game of "Snake" and an "attention tester" on to our site for you to see if you notice a difference.

NOTE: You will need an account with Darren Beige to play these flash titles. This is to help reduce load on our servers, as games are naturally resource-intensive.

Game to Test: Sheep Tranquilizer

Game to Supposedly Help You Improve: Snake

Instructions

• First, play the "Sheep Tranquilizer" game, and note your best time and or rank
• Then, play a few games of "Snake", and see how you do. Your score is not necessarily important here, but regardless, if you use your forum name and if you are lucky enoughy to reach the scoreboard, the top three places every month will receive some reputation score to their account.
• Return to the "Sheep Tranquilizer" game and see how you fare now. If the theory is correct, you should see an increase in your result.

If there is no significant difference, either play the "Tetris" game some more, and retake this test, or come to the conclusion that the whole thing is a load of blarney, and that a game (or a multidude of games) cannot be good for you. Of course, Darren Beige wants to hear your opinion on this research in the forum. Do you think a game can significantly improve visual skills?