There are many studies cited in the media about possible links between video games and violence, probably because the results of these studies can be used to push certain agendas - It can be beneficial to a particular group to find a co-relation (Statistics cannot prove anything, that’s the first law of statistics in case you didn’t know) between violent tendencies and video-game habbits - or vise versa, c’mon lets be fair 
But what I want to know is what has been done using video games as an attempt to understand how humans learn? We are amazing parrallel processing machines, capable of pattern recognition far beyond that of any computers created thus far.
Lets take an example from my latest game Attack of the Meeplings - A large component of the game (and of many other games in the shooter genre) comes from learning the patterns that the game presents to you. The game is entirely deterministic, i.e the same every time you play, and it’s this determinisim that allows someone to learn the game and improve their abilities.
Taking Earok as an example - Sorry to pick on you Earok I find it pretty amazing that someone can go from 3000 to 12,000 to 38,000 pts in only three goes. There must be somekind of fancy processing going on in the brain to be able to improve that much in such a short time span.
2 responses so far ↓
1 Kristie // Mar 26, 2008 at 2:57 am
What I find odd, is that I’m a pretty good learner in general I pick things up quite easily. But, a game like Attack of the Meeplings, I know the patterns, I know what comes next, I practically know the first level off by heart - but I still can’t seem to get out of the way of the bullets in time.
Stupid lack of hand eye coordination. It’s a wonder I can drive or catch a ball you know.
2 admin // Mar 26, 2008 at 3:33 am
Oh, but you always were an outlier Kristie
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