Video games are good for you!

14 posts / 0 new

Wed, 2009-01-07 18:48

Agent 204

... or at least Tetris is, if you're suffering from PTSD:

Quote:
Playing the computer puzzle game Tetris can help reduce the effects of traumatic stress, UK researchers say.

Volunteers were exposed to distressing images, with some given the game to play 30 minutes later, the PLoS One journal reported.

Players had fewer "flashbacks", perhaps because it helped disrupt the laying down of memories, said the scientists.

It is hoped the study could aid the development of new strategies for minimising the impact of trauma.

However, the researchers accept translating their findings into practical applications could prove difficult.

From the Beeb. I imagine playing Call of Duty wouldn't be quite so therapeutic...

Wed, 2009-01-07 19:15

Tommy_Paine

I used to have tetris dreams.

Wed, 2009-01-07 19:30

Refuge

oh my God! So did I! I thought I was the only one. I used to play Tetris for hours and then when I went to sleep.........more Tetris.

Thu, 2009-01-08 01:07

Fidel

Agent 204 wrote:

From the Beeb. I imagine playing Call of Duty wouldn't be quite so therapeutic...

I must admit to enjoying playing COD with my nephews actually. They're obviously too young to realize all of the things I have concluded about war. The blood and gore of it aside, I noticed with COD4 there will be a message popup after a kill in single player mode with random quotes by famous people commenting on the horrors of war. I havent played the latest version with the boys. And they do appreciate playing other games that are more socially oriented. But with COD there does exist a sense of cooperation at some point, and that youre all working toward a greater good, even if it is killing someone in effigy. I know, that doesnt sound too good. You could imagine that the enemy is real, and that your partner has your back while you both look for the sniper who's been killing your comrades. The older nephew is quite a prolific sniper and likes to hide in the darndest places. It's a real adventure. Playing two against one to increase our odds of winning, I will sometimes give away my position, kinda like the character Commisar Danilov did in the movie, so that the youngest nephew can figure out where "Major Konig" is hiding. Makes the game shorter, too.

Thu, 2009-01-08 01:15

Papal Bull

World at War is pretty brutal. It is amusing to be the Soviet soldier that plants the flag above the Reichstag, before the Soviet anthem plays. But yeah, the game is, as a friend of mine said after watching it "is the stuff of nightmares". I guess that is the effect Tryarch was going for? The online play simply isn't as good as CoD4, however. World at War's strength is in a compelling narrative piecing together different aspects of the latter days of WW2 from Pelalu to Stalingrad, ending in Reichstag and Okinawa. Mind you, the game has moronic AI that makes completing some levels quite difficult until you get the hang of the AI's behaviour. Your allies in the game are actually your most deadly enemy, as you are the only soldier who seems to represent a threat to either Japan or Germany, a lot of bullets tend to find your way to you when you wouldn't imagine yourself to be the soldier being deemed the most appropriate threat to tackle. Your allies, as previously mentioned, are monstrous killing machines. They have no hesitation to push you out into the line of fire if you are in their preferred hidey hole in combat. Often they will just cower or ignore the grenades which can kill you, but are easily braved by your super strong allies.

Now, Ikaruga, that's a great game! The bullet hell genre of shooters is just awesome. I have to say that I love games like 1943, Raiden, Space Invaders, etc. Space Giraffe, Geometry Wars, and everything by Treasure to be rereleased brings me endless joy.

Anyhow, yeah, I like this study. I think video games are going to have a very interesting impact in research over the coming years.

Fri, 2009-01-09 18:33

Tommy_Paine

Tetris was the only "thumb buster" type game I was ever addicted to. I never did get into the various Mario brothers type platform jump games. Though, I've been known to go a few rounds on the wii mario cart that one of my daughters has. She's the addict.

I've tried "first person shooter" games but never enjoyed them much. Perhaps the now primative "Duke Nukem" was an exception-- but then I only liked to play after learning the cheats and going to "God mode", with the chain gun. I think, in fact, I mostly enjoyed the street scapes.

The game I remember truly being addicted to was Koei's "Romance of the Three Kingdoms". Purely strategy. However, once you deduce the winning strategy it's an excersize for obsessive compulsives.

Fri, 2009-01-09 20:52

Agent 204

I wanna try this game.

Fri, 2009-01-09 21:20

Tommy_Paine

I will make a small clay effigy of anyone who makes fun of strategy games, and put them in my rock tumbler with my Star Trek action figures.

See if I don't.

Sat, 2009-01-10 02:19

Fidel

Tommy_Paine wrote:

I've tried "first person shooter" games but never enjoyed them much. Perhaps the now primative "Duke Nukem" was an exception-- but then I only liked to play after learning the cheats and going to "God mode", with the chain gun. I think, in fact, I mostly enjoyed the street scapes.

It was the first 3-D game I ever played. That one and the non-politically correct Wolfenstein3D came as freeware complementary games with Andre Lamothe's, Tricks of the Game Programming Gurus. I think it was limited to the first three or four levels and graphics looked a little choppy on the 486dx I had then. Fun as hell though at the time.

Sat, 2009-01-10 05:45

#10

Le T

That's great, now the military can give out standard issue Tetris games to soldiers deployed in combat. Cut back on that pesky PTSD.

Sat, 2009-01-10 07:36

#11

Michelle

My PTSD cure:

Javanoid!

Sat, 2009-01-10 10:13

#12

Tommy_Paine

Um.

I just used my arrow keys to move the "T" in Le T's name to between the "L" and "e", and now I can only see the "e". The rest dissapeared.

Sat, 2012-02-11 14:51

#13

Catchfire

Is this where we put remakes of retro video games? Roger that, Wilco.

Space Quest II: Vohaul's Revenge

Thu, 2012-02-16 12:13

#14

Catchfire

The Arcades Project: Martin Amis’ Guide to Classic Video Games

Quote:
The British journalist Sam Leith recently opened a review of Richard Bradford’s Martin Amis: The Biography with the following question: “Where’s Invasion of the Space Invaders? That’s what I want to know.” The 418-page biography, which has been undergoing a sustained critical beatdown since its publication last year, contains no mention of a book Amis published in 1982, and which he has been avoiding talking about ever since. “Anything a writer disowns is of interest,” wrote Leith, “particularly if it’s a frivolous thing and particularly if, like Amis, you take seriousness seriously.” He’s got a point; any book so callously orphaned by its own creator has to be worth looking into. This is especially true if the book in question happens to be a guide to early 1980s arcade games.

Like most Amis fanciers, I had heard of the existence of this video game book –- the full title of which is Invasion of the Space Invaders: An Addict’s Guide to Battle Tactics, Big Scores and the Best Machines –- but knew very little about it. What I did know was that he dashed it off at some point during the time he was writing Money, one of the great British novels of the 1980s, and that it has long been out of print (a copy in good nick will cost you about $150 from Amazon). And I knew, most of all, that Amis was reluctant to talk about it or even acknowledge it. Nicholas Lezard of The Guardian once suggested to him (facetiously, surely) that it was among the best things he’d ever written, and that it was a mistake to have allowed it to go out of print. “The expression on his face,” wrote Lezard, “with perhaps more pity in it than contempt, remains with me uncomfortably.”