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Video gaming may be associated with better cognitive performance in children

nida.nih.gov

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Re: Video gaming may be associated with better cognitive performance in children

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned one of the most valuable lessons of my life from RuneScape. My brother and I, playing for years, had amassed something like 100k gold between the two of us. We wanted more gold and were reading a guide online about to get it. The guide recommended a simple process of buying and selling coal in a kind of arbitrage trade. My brother and I were torn if we should try it, reasoning that if it were so easy to mak…

What was the scheme? Buy coal certs at 800 per and sell at 1k?

I've forgotten the exact prices at this point (I want to say buying mid-20's per and selling mid-30's but that may be complete misremembering). The basic idea was hanging out in the dwarf mines where people are mining coal and giving low offers on coal, with a promise to increase price if they can sell in quantity (and in certs). Then, just turn around and sell the certs, once you had a lot of them, at a higher price in Varrock town square (or similar).

One other reason we thought this wouldn't work is that it seemed to us buying in large quantity should get a discount - bulk discount, right? But that wasn't the case. It was cheaper, per unit, to buy hundreds of coal than tens of thousands.

Re: Video gaming may be associated with better cognitive performance in children

#162

Just curious if it accounted for other factors, like socio-economic status? also of note: Further, the researchers stress that this cross-sectional study does not allow for cause-and-effect analyses, and that it could be that children who are good at these types of cognitive tasks may choose to play video games. Also surely the type of video game plays a huge role. I can't imagine hours spent killing bots in Unreal T…

Given the long list of caveats attributed to the results, it does seem like not much credence was given at this stage to filtering out other external factors leaving that to further research.

It's secretly pleasing to think gaming might have made me smart as a kid, but I suspect as with so many things in education its socio-economic status.

They looked at kids able to spend "3 or more hours a day" gaming. That requires a pretty stable homelife on top of the budget for the games etc etc - something I was lucky enough to have growing up, but not true of everyone.

Re: Video gaming may be associated with better cognitive performance in children

#163
post #49

I credit RuneScape with teaching me the value of delayed gratification and basic economics. I credit competitive Halo 3 with teaching me team building and strategy skills. I credit StarCraft with training my mind to travel at warp speed. Honestly. My video game experience was instrumental to my success so far in life. This is not surprising to me.

I learned one of the most valuable lessons of my life from RuneScape. My brother and I, playing for years, had amassed something like 100k gold between the two of us. We wanted more gold and were reading a guide online about to get it. The guide recommended a simple process of buying and selling coal in a kind of arbitrage trade. My brother and I were torn if we should try it, reasoning that if it were so easy to mak…

It's an old joke: An economist is walking down the street when he steps on a $100 bill lying on the ground. He spots it, but decides to keep walking and doesn't pick it up.

“After all,” he thinks to himself, “if that had really been a $100 bill, someone else would have picked it up already!”

Re: Video gaming may be associated with better cognitive performance in children

#164
post #49

I credit RuneScape with teaching me the value of delayed gratification and basic economics. I credit competitive Halo 3 with teaching me team building and strategy skills. I credit StarCraft with training my mind to travel at warp speed. Honestly. My video game experience was instrumental to my success so far in life. This is not surprising to me.

Same here. I credit competitive gaming scene for teaching me all kind of skills. I was never a sports guy. But when I start to watch how ppl train, compete, strategize and work in a team, I realized that so many meta attributes are crucial for one's success

Re: Video gaming may be associated with better cognitive performance in children

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What games do you recommend for kids of that age?

Fun question! I would suggest the following (in no particular order), subject to the proviso that you do need to be sat next to them to help manage frustration, especially in the beginning (although my personal take is that they shouldn’t be left to play by themselves at all at that age) - particularly as they learn the controller, general video game conventions, and the specifics of each game: - Breath of the Wild -…

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Re: Video gaming may be associated with better cognitive performance in children

#166
post #49

I credit RuneScape with teaching me the value of delayed gratification and basic economics. I credit competitive Halo 3 with teaching me team building and strategy skills. I credit StarCraft with training my mind to travel at warp speed. Honestly. My video game experience was instrumental to my success so far in life. This is not surprising to me.

SC2 is probably the most likely to produce entrepreneurs.

H3 taught real social skills and teamwork.

Re: Video gaming may be associated with better cognitive performance in children

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun question! I would suggest the following (in no particular order), subject to the proviso that you do need to be sat next to them to help manage frustration, especially in the beginning (although my personal take is that they shouldn’t be left to play by themselves at all at that age) - particularly as they learn the controller, general video game conventions, and the specifics of each game: - Breath of the Wild -…

Commenting as a bookmark. Thanks!

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Re: Video gaming may be associated with better cognitive performance in children

#168
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What games do you recommend for kids of that age?

At young ages, I say give them an old-school Nintendo, or N64 etc. Little/no advertising, monetization of your kid's attention, whatever. If they're not on the web or at school yet, they won't even know they're missing out on more modern systems. Or some similar setup where there's no online, no monthly charge, no pay-to-win, and instead the child gets to play a carefully crafted game, hopefully an awesome one. I als…

My kids have been enjoying this online remake of LodeRunner. [0]

It's fun because I have fond memories of playing it on the Macintosh Classic II as a kid.

They like making custom levels for each other, just like me and my siblings used to do.

I was also happy to find an ad-free Minesweeper remake on Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Page. [1] They like the maps game from that page as well.

[0] https://loderunnerwebgame.com/game/

[1] https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/

Re: Video gaming may be associated with better cognitive performance in children

#169
They separated these children into two groups, those who reported playing no video games at all and those who reported playing video games for three hours per day or more.

So what happened to the 50% of total children that were somewhere between 0 and 3 hours per days of games? Were they discarded or rounded into one those two groups, because that leaves a huge gap in the middle?

Re: Video gaming may be associated with better cognitive performance in children

#170

Nictone has been known to cause nootropic effects, yet it results in long term damage and dependence. Considering the gaming industry is big money (just like big tobacco, big weed, big sugar, and big infinite scroll), I would take any study like this with a boulder of salt. Video games might improve cognitive abilities, but they also cheat the reward centers of your brain and offer the feeling of success while achiev…

Agree although if you can sift through the noise there are some gems about. For me, the golden era of games was SNES to PS2 as feels like the best mix of budget creativity and computing power. The industry was still figuring itself out back then. Games like Hollow Knight aspire to that older era too. That said, I recently picked up Overwatch 2 and I'm impressed at how high the skill ceiling is, the spatial and strate…

Overwatch 2, for all the criticism it gets has a really good core that has been worked on for a while now. It's a shame that good game and level design will be marred by Blizzard's monetisation and content policies.

If you're in the market for more gems of games to play, Deep Rock Galactic is quite fantastic.

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