Forum - View topicINTEREST: Study: 1st-Person Shooters Reduce Brain Matter; Platformers, VR Increase Brain Matter
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#861208
Posts: 423 |
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This is probably not unlike other forms of activities. Anything where you simply follow a habit will decrease your brain matter, anything where you have to actually think and come up with new strategies will increase your brain matter.
So, Twitter probably also decreases brain matter, actually writing probably increases it. |
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Chrono1000
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Did anyone in the study give a reason for why they only looked at the hippocampus area of the brain? It just seems to be a very specific study and I have the feeling it was made that way to reach a certain conclusion.
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Kougeru
 Posts: 5604 |
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Gonna take this with a grain of salt. Almost every other study I've seen over the last 20 or so years have said pretty much the opposite of about FPS games. I also don't see how VR and FPS games can have opposite effects when they go hand-in-hand more often than not.
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Mr. Oshawott
 Posts: 6773 |
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While I'm not a huge fan of first-person shooter titles, I personally find this study to be dubious at best. Several factors (sleep, work hours, food, etc.) have been ignored and the sample size was too small (only 100 people).
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chronos02
Posts: 272 |
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From what I know, FPS games will not require the player to think in a 3D environment nor use 3D vision in order to find their way through levels and/or find enemies, instead, due to the way FPS games are represented (and how they usually play), the player only looks at a dynamic painting while finding spots on the painting where they need to shoot, and while moving, they only require to look at "exits". The 2D construction of levels doesn't help in this aspect either, they are simple flat levels, so, in essence, FPS games are actually top down games look at from a first person view. This happens most heavily in COD than other FPS games, it's just how the level design is done, it's fun and addicting, but not very challenging in terms of orientation and 3D spacial movement. To put it simply, FPS shooters are played like life plays, but without the 3D vision, it's something we're so used to, the brain doesn't actually need to do anything, since this is pretty much an automated process. On the other hand, 3D platformers will make the player think in a way they are not used to, in 3D space. As FPS, life in the real world behaves like a 2D top-down game, we move in a bidimentional space, back, forward, left, and right. As I said before, the brain is used to this kind of navigation, and thus makes no effort, it's not like living will make our brain matter grow, otherwise we'd be incredibly smart (or simply have big fat brains). 3D platformers, instead, force our brain to think in an almost 3D environment, something akin to what dolfins do; our brain is not used to this, and thus makes a great effort to play, not only to navigate, but to also solve the different puzzles that sorround those 3D environments, considering jump power, speed, and other factors that FPS simply don't take into account (their forte lies somewhere else, after all). Simply put, FPS games are like an extention of our daily life, while 3D platformers force the brain to work in a way it is not used to. That's how I see it, and it makes sense. As for VR games... I'm not sure how to tackle that, the environments are in real 3D, and the brain needs to process the two images independently, like in real life, but with the added difficulty of it being a game, with challenges that real life doesn't have? I'd need to read these new studies... And as for the reliability of these studies, the fact they didn't take food into account might just mean they didn't have the necessary means to build an isolated test area for several subjects, and that's understandable, that requires a lot of money, and statistically speaking, even if the tests aren't carried in the purest conditions, by sheer numbers it is possible to reach almost the same results, there will be more noise, but the data will still be reliable. |
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SilverTalon01
Posts: 2419 |
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You're playing the wrong ones then. I was seriously shocked to see them say that fps games don't require spatial awareness. There are plenty of corridor and cover based shooters (especially on consoles), but there are also quite a few high movement fps games where you do need to maintain a high level of awareness of everything in your surroundings. It is not just so you can know the places to look to shoot someone but so you can know where you need to move which is often not in the direction you are facing thus requiring spatial awareness. There are in fact platform jumps you need to make while playing some of these fps games, and some even involve a bit of basic physics like rocket jumping (angling for distance or for elevation or even doing it off a wall for horizontal movement around a curve). You also potentially need to process those choices at a much higher pace than a platformer because in a lot of the high movement fps games, it is never a good idea to stop. I pretty much guarantee you that the tests were done on some gound based / cover based fps on ps4/xbone. I know they said borderlands which is definitely like that, and I agree doesn't require spatial awareness. They also mentioned CoD, and last 2 CoD games on PC if they were doing pvp do require a lot of spatial awareness to perform well, but I'm guessing they tested people playing on a console doing the campaign. (On console players tend to mostly stick to the ground due to the controls negating a lot of the need, and the campaign is slow moving with high reliance on cover mechanics). |
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SpaceTheGamer
Posts: 271 |
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Well I'm more of a Platformer guy myself so good for me, I guess xP
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relyat08
 Posts: 4125 Location: Northern Virginia |
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Yeah, I agree with Silver Talon, in most regards. This seems to be far too simplistic of a study, ultimately. It is certainly possible to zone out and just stumble through some FPS games, but, for many, that is not the case at all. There is a lot of thought that can be put into them. At least they mentioned that it often depends on play-style. When I'm playing an FPS game, especially in multiplayer, there is a significant amount of focus, and very intense mental processes that I'm constantly going through. Maybe that's one reason that I'm actually pretty good at them, because I'm not just mindlessly running around the map. I feel like saying that even those who do that are "decreasing grey matter" is probably a little bit wrong-headed though. It's probably more likely that playing games in the same way that you zone through life is likely to have the exact same impact on your grey matter. It's not like these people are actively hurting themselves by not putting a lot of thought into their gaming. But it's also certainly true that they are not increasing their mental capabilities either.
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Top Gun
 Posts: 4833 |
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Yeah, I find that statement to be highly suspect as well. It's true that your stereotypical COD-style map design can get pretty banal, but classic arena shooters like Quake, or playing as Soldier/Demo in TF2, involve supreme levels of spatial awareness. Hell, I cut my online gaming teeth playing Descent, which was so intense in that regard that many players experienced legit motion sickness trying to keep things straight. |
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Lord Oink
Posts: 876 |
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I also read a study once how minimaps and quest markers lower brain matter since people tunnel vision on those instead of exploring and searching themselves. I assume the same logic applies here with a linear shooter and open world platformer.
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Lelouch Vi
Posts: 126 |
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This is BS
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Arale Kurashiki
Posts: 781 |
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Studies like this always take the most popular game in a genre and use that as their studying point. The results are valid, but the conclusions (headlines?) aren't.
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Peebs
Posts: 424 |
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Nooooooo! Somebody will have to pry my decrepit hands from my copy of BOTW. I will have forgotten how to breathe, but never take my Zelda away.
But seriously, more studying needs to be done to prove that what they found is correct. One study does not make it all true. *says a non-scientist* |
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AnimeLordLuis
 Posts: 1626 Location: The Borderlands of Pandora |
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This seems more like a marketing campaign from the VR game company's than an actual study. Especially since most gamers have zero interest in VR.
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robertbaldie
 Posts: 154 |
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Found the FPS gamer ^ |
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