Comments on: Playing shoot-em-up video games can improve some aspects of vision

By: Anthony

Anthony — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 03:58:27 +0000

I think that how rapid you need to spot your targets in fps games may help. It might help with your awareness if you have targets low on the ground high on rooftops and flanking in the games to help that. It gets your focus on your peripheral vision and you become more aware to check everywhere for an enemy. Team games would help you think of more then just sniping and run and gun. I think tactics and weaponry can counter eachother alternatively and some tactics counter other tactics. Might even help playing pros, you play them and get better then they get more challenge and get better. It would be like a laser pointer bouncing between two mirrors til it finally levels out and you end up with the best or it ends up a trade in and you deteriorated part of your vision and enhanced another part. Just a thought.

By: GTA 4 Cheats Boom

GTA 4 Cheats Boom — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 18:25:15 +0000

Warcraft light. Already I just read they demand certain builds to complete even beginner instances cause this game is situated round the trinity classes tank, healer and dps. They can keep their little updates in their own business, I’m not really tempted in the least. Lot’s of singleplayer games on the market anyway and my backlog is getting kinda huge already.

By: `Call of Duty’ Video Game Could Help Train Surgeons, Soldiers, Study Says – Bloomberg « Asia Pacific Financial News

Mon, 13 Sep 2010 18:33:24 +0000

[...] experiment builds on previous research by Bavelier showing that video-game players surveying a scene gather more- detailed visual [...]

By: Corina Becker

Corina Becker — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 09:59:17 +0000

This is encouraging to my new interest in video games. I always liked the shooting games best as a kid.

By: a

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 02:10:41 +0000

I wonder how much more concentration is needed for a game that has a full 360 degrees of motion, be it FPS like Descent or space shooter compared to a traditional FPS that’s got gravity? Having a floor and ceiling/sky means you rarely need to focus your attention there, I wonder how much better your focus becomes if you play a game that doesn’t have an ‘up’ and a ‘down’?

By: Jason Thibeault

Jason Thibeault — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 15:57:42 +0000

Oh how I wish I could have been part of this study! Alas, I am too avid a gamer to have added “gaming for SCIENCE!!!” to my resume.
Slightly off topic, but appropriate to the other study in your related links, is the fact that the games I tend to play, while they might desensitize me to violence, they also reinforce the “do-gooder” side of me, rewarding going out of your way to help a kid find her lost cat while on the epic quest to save the world. In fact, it’s reinforced in me to the point where I couldn’t bring myself to play a full Fallout 3 game on the Evil karmic track.
So I suspect the type of video game affects what parts of your brain you exercise, and what morals and values you reinforce. I’d hypothesize that RPG gamers would rush to the aid of the person cited in that other study more quickly than FPS gamers, and that RPG gamers would be much in the same boat as the Sims players in this study.

By: Eric

Eric — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 03:20:33 +0000

I think the DOI just takes some time to activate…
Here’s a link to the abstract http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nn.2296.html
Li, R., Polat, U., Makous, W., & Bavelier, D. (2009). Enhancing the contrast sensitivity function through action video game training. Nature Neuroscience, advanced online publication

By: Nigel

Nigel — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 22:54:41 +0000

I can't get that doi to resolve (tried at http://dx.doi.org/ ). Are you sure it is right, or am I doing something wrong? How about a regular citation? Also, it strikes me that there may be a tradeoff here. If the computational resources for vision are limited, gaming might be improving contrast sensitivity at the expense of some aspect of visual function.

By: Lilian Nattel

Lilian Nattel — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 21:56:19 +0000

I’m not interested in gaming at all, but could be if it was good for eyesight!

By: Mystyk

Mystyk — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 20:24:28 +0000

These are the kinds of studies that really pique my interest. I am a casual gamer (Hrs/wk: 3-10) who plays across a wide variety of genres. It’s good to know that there is a potential benefit beyond entertainment value for these games.