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Playing Starcraft 2 Might Make You Smarter

techcrunch.com

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Re: Playing Starcraft 2 Might Make You Smarter

#3

Post by ninjin »

I will be the first one to admit it, I do occasionally play games as a means to relaxation and I bought StarCraft 2 yesterday. Long story short, playing against other human players on ladder is among the most stressful things I have experienced in a long time. There are thousands of things that can go wrong, am I about to run out of supply? Are all my production facilities currently being utilised? Are there enough workers getting minerals? How about gas? When will the gas and minerals run out? You may have noticed that I was just talking about the economic aspects above. Now add the complexity of an intelligent opponent that is out to kill you and your stress levels are about to go through the roof. StarCraft is multi-tasking decision-making and micro-management heaven (or hell for some of us) and I am not the least bit surprised if coping with the pressure can actually somehow benefit you. It is a fun, but goodness me, Blizzard did make one heck of a complex game.

Re: Playing Starcraft 2 Might Make You Smarter

#4

Post by zamalek »

I think this article is a bad summary of a VERY VERY BAD summary (http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57600089-76/study-40-hours... ).

Firstly the candidates were only selected from people who usually played less than 2 hours a week (interestingly no male candidates were selected due to the lack of ones that fit that criteria). The research was for 40 hours and that's it. There is no talk about the possibility of diminishing returns if you play it for several years, or whether you get brain rot because other parts of your brain go unused.

I'm not saying that Starcraft doesn't make you smart, I'm saying next time link the research and not a Tech Crunch article. If you do play Starcraft the only rationalization you need for playing it is that you enjoy it.

Re: Playing Starcraft 2 Might Make You Smarter

#5

Post by gabemart »

ninjin wrote: post #3

I will be the first one to admit it, I do occasionally play games as a means to relaxation and I bought StarCraft 2 yesterday. Long story short, playing against other human players on ladder is among the most stressful things I have experienced in a long time. There are thousands of things that can go wrong, am I about to run out of supply? Are all my production facilities currently being utilised? Are there enough w…

That's exactly my experience. I occasionally watch big tournaments and a couple of years ago decided to have a go myself. When I was growing up I played a lot of Westwood RTS games so I thought I'd be able to get to a level of basic competency fairly quickly.

I was completely wrong. That game is killer, stressful and mentally exhausting (for me). It became clear to me that either I could make SC2 my full-time pursuit and become passably decent in perhaps a couple of months, or I could stop playing. I chose the latter.

People who make an earnest effort to improve often talk about "ladder anxiety" - the fear of playing ranked games. I didn't understand it at all before trying to play, but I do now - it's a complex fear that combines fear of letting yourself down with fear of being embarrassed in front of a peer and fear of losing some of the rank you've been diligently working up.

I can completely understand how it's a rewarding, challenging pursuit for some people, but for me it draws from the same pool of focus, willpower and determination I use to get actual work down. I'd rather play a twitchy FPS in my downtime that, for me, draws from a different source.

Re: Playing Starcraft 2 Might Make You Smarter

#7

Post by cclogg »

ninjin wrote: post #3

I will be the first one to admit it, I do occasionally play games as a means to relaxation and I bought StarCraft 2 yesterday. Long story short, playing against other human players on ladder is among the most stressful things I have experienced in a long time. There are thousands of things that can go wrong, am I about to run out of supply? Are all my production facilities currently being utilised? Are there enough w…

Get a Warcraft 3 custom-map LAN group going. Funnest times ever :)

Re: Playing Starcraft 2 Might Make You Smarter

#8

Post by aspensmonster »

gabemart wrote: post #5
ninjin wrote: post #3

I will be the first one to admit it, I do occasionally play games as a means to relaxation and I bought StarCraft 2 yesterday. Long story short, playing against other human players on ladder is among the most stressful things I have experienced in a long time. There are thousands of things that can go wrong, am I about to run out of supply? Are all my production facilities currently being utilised? Are there enough w…

That's exactly my experience. I occasionally watch big tournaments and a couple of years ago decided to have a go myself. When I was growing up I played a lot of Westwood RTS games so I thought I'd be able to get to a level of basic competency fairly quickly. I was completely wrong. That game is killer, stressful and mentally exhausting (for me). It became clear to me that either I could make SC2 my full-time pursuit…

That's the type of experience that is a big turn off for me in games as well. People spend so much time studying the mechanics and economics of the game that eventually, pretty much every match plays out in exactly the same form. For RTS games, the build trees often get set in stone. Deviate from the one feasible tree and you might as well just be giving up because after a few minutes your opponent has just enough units to wipe you (and, since you didn't follow the build tree, you won't be able to counter it in time). For team FPS games, if your team gets good enough, the first few kills almost always determine the winner of the match, because whoever wins the first wave controls map flow. They control weapon drops, ammo drops, and they probably have the spawn points and probabilities memorized too.

I suppose there is a certain mathematical attraction in pushing a game to its limits like that. But I've never been able to actually enjoy playing that way.

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