Jamie`s Gaming Blog: 2015-09-06

ETHICS : Impact of computer games on society

Games in society

Concerns such as excess playing time:

There are a lot of health problems with playing games for long periods of time without breaks, some games even offer suggestions to take a break after a hours game play and repeat the warnings. There have been many issues linked to excess playing time such as depression, anxiety and ignoring responsibilities. This is why it is important to monitor the amount of time spent on games and take regular breaks. There has been a lot of news coverage of problems caused by excess playing time and addiction.

http://mcgee93.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/excess-playing-time.html

Social isolation:

Although social isolation is most common in the elderly, younger adults (eg, housebound and disabled due to multiple sclerosis or a single mother of young children) may also be affected by both social isolation and loneliness. Reduced social contact, being alone, isolation and feelings of loneliness are associated with reduced quality of life. Loneliness refers to how individuals evaluate their level and quality of social contact. Social isolation can be more accurately measured (eg, by the number of social contacts the person has). Well-being may not be positively correlated with social contact and a great deal depends on the nature of the contacts made.

For some people, solitude is a way of life which temperamentally suits them and they may not feel lonely even if they have no visitors.

General practitioners and community nurses are in a unique position to identify loneliness, as they are in contact with the three groups most at risk - ie very old people, bereaved people, and people with disabilities.

http://patient.info/doctor/social-isolation-how-to-help-patients-be-less-lonely

Cost:

Inflation- is a fact of economic life. Quite simply, costs of products and services fluctuate -- and typically increase -- over time, increasing the money needed to purchase those products and services. That means that a dollar today is worth a lot less than a dollar, say, two decades ago. (Indeed, one US dollar in 1912 has the purchasing power of over $23 today.)

Mercifully, there’s a flipside to this equation. Though inflation is inherently destructive to the value of money, decreased purchasing power can be counteracted by how much similar products cost over a period of time. This is especially true when it comes to video game consoles and handhelds (or electronics generally), which have become more affordable over time, even when something seems to be more expensive.

Hardware in particular is where differences in cost – when accounting for inflation – is extremely pronounced. The PlayStation 3 may have seemed expensive when it launched at $599.99 in 2006 – and it was – but it’s not the most expensive mainstream gaming console. That honor goes to the Atari 2600. Launched in September of 1977, the Atari 2600 cost $199.99. When taking into account the 258.9 percent inflation rate between 1977 and 2013, the Atari 2600 cost the equivalent of $771 today. ("Mainstream" gaming hardware typically had to sell over 10 million units in totality, or currently be on the market.)I’ve made the argument over the last few years that games are essentially cheaper than they’ve ever been. An NES game in 1990 cost, on average, about $50. That’s $89 in 2013 money. Your $70 N64 cartridges in 1998 would require the equivalent of $100 today. Heck, the $50 PlayStation 2 game you bought in 2005 is worth $60, the exact price of a typical retail game in 2013. This isn't to say that salaries (or hourly pay) have kept up with inflation and the cost-of-living -- it decidedly hasn't -- but it is to say that, dollar-to-dollar over the past 35 years, gaming hardware and software is generally cheaper than ever.

http://uk.ign.com/articles/2013/10/15/the-real-cost-of-gaming-inflation-time-and-purchasing-power

Separation from Reality:

There has been a growing concern as people have tried to mimic some of their favourite games and has result in tragic endings. Some examples of this are games that include things such as, stealing cars, racing, violence and even murder. An example of this is the game "Manhunt" in which you play a character in a strange and dangerous situations, this was also related to a murder in the UK after someone playing the game was claimed to be obsessed with the game. People attempting to mimic games usually never has a good outcome and that it is important to display warnings in games. An example is racing games having a generic warning to not race cars unless your on a race track.

http://mcgee93.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/separation-from-reality.html

Benefits (hand-eye coordination, brain training):

A growing body of research indicates that playing first-person action games, particularly shooters, improves brain function such as cognitive abilities and learning skills — changes that have real-life applications, reports Scientific American Mind.

Brain skills improved by playing first-person shooters include more than hand-eye coordination, a long-held assumption: Studies cited by Scientific American Mind found that gamers who played shooters often fared better in tests of abilities such as spatial reasoning, spatial focus, visual acuity and decision-making.

According to neuroscientist Daphne Bavelier of the University of Rochester and the University of Geneva, video games "retune connectivity across and within different brain areas," which means that playing them confers skills that can be applied outside of the medium. Scientific American Mind called that the "holy grail of education."

The improvements don't require playing shooters for years, either — while gamers initially scored better on tests of spatial reasoning and visual attention, non-gamers who were told to play a first-person shooter regularly for a limited time evinced marked increases in their scores on those tests. Subjects in the studies cited by Scientific American Mind played games like Unreal Tournament 2004 and Halo: Combat Evolved.

In a 2006 study conducted by Bavelier and researcher C. Shawn Green, nine nongamers played Medal of Honor: Allied Assault for one hour per day for 10 days, while eight nongamers played Tetris for the same span. By training with the military shooter for less than two weeks, the nongamers were able to improve their scores on three tests of visual attention — a skill that's vital for activities such as reading and driving.

http://www.polygon.com/2013/1/30/3932876/research-playing-first-person-shooters-improves-learning-abilities-cognitive-function

Thinking and strategy skills gaming:

A person's strategic thinking can be improved through playing certain types of video games, new research has indicated. Published in the journal PLOS ONE and carried out by scientists from Queen Mary University of London and University College London, the study found that playing these titles can also help to train the brain to become more agile.

The investigation included 72 volunteers and aimed to assess their cognitive flexibility. They played a real-time strategy game called StarCraft and a life simulation video game entitled The Sims, with the former requiring much more memory and tactics than the latter.

It was found that those who played StarCraft were more accurate and quicker when performing cognitive flexibility tasks than those who had a go at The Sims.

Dr Brian Glass from Queen Mary's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, said: "Our paper shows that cognitive flexibility, a cornerstone of human intelligence, is not a static trait but can be trained and improved using fun learning tools like gaming."

Chartered Psychologist Professor Patrick Tissington, Assistant Dean Organizational Psychology Department Birbeck University of London, said:

"Video games are usually negatively reported in the media as being of detrimental influence to users - especially to young people. The press often report the downsides of gaming in sensationalist terms but in fact, there is little evidence of any downsides at normal levels of use. This may be because those writing the stories - and many of those reading them - are not involved in video games and find it hard to understand the fascination. When I began researching in this field I too had little or no concept of the sheer size of the video gaming business globally - easily larger than music and film for example.

"In fact, this study is in line with previous findings which have shown that the immersive nature and interactivity required in successful gaming have a wide range of benefits. With a number of studies presenting surprisingly positive outcomes from gaming, I (with colleagues) proposed a framework whereby the benefits of computer gaming might be understood (see web link below). It was clear from our analysis that there was potential for gamers to develop enhanced skills in a number of areas - primarily we saw that the learning required to succeed in most games had the potential to benefit young people in particular.

"This study shows one particular element of enhancement and opens up a new line of research into video games. This is a significant finding and researchers will I am sure find it extremely valuable basis for further research into this fascinating field. Whether the press report it or not is, of course, another matter."

Reference: Tannahill N., Tissington P., & Senior C. (2012) Video games and higher education : What can “Call of Duty” teach our students? Frontiers in Psychology, 3.

http://www.bps.org.uk/news/video-games-aid-thinking-skills

Future impact on gaming:

Future impact: Games have had a massive effect on how society has looked at such things as training and education over the past 20 years. Gaming technology constantly evolves and continuous to set a bench mark for helping people develop skills by allowing them to practice both theoretical and practical skills in a virtual environment. This will only continue to evolve as the benefit of games is developed to the extent were training simulators can allow individuals to become completely proficient in using high-tech tools in a practice environment before using them in a live environment. Using games as educational tools is boundless and this could develop immensely to the extent that learning games could be used to deliver a non computer related topic in it’s entirety. Game hardware and ergonomic design of consoles and controller devices will be further developed and will continue to influence the design of hardware devices used outside of the gaming industry. Such advancements have been made already and hardware devices such as mice and keywords have been specifically design with gaming in mind only to be adapted for use by general computer operators. This area can also thrive in the future and help create employment for design engineers.

http://www.contentedwriter.com/impact-of-computer-games-on-society/

Impact on ‘mainstream’ application development:

Impact on mainstream application development: Look back to the very early computer operating systems. They were text based and hard to operate. They required users to have technical knowledge and were normally operated by type instructions to control how the OS worked. Early games such as pong helped developed a more graphical based interface and hardware devices such as joy sticks and controllers have been developed over time to ensure users could interact with games more easily. This switch towards a more graphical based operating system was also inspired by gaming. You can see today’s 3D games user interface design being modelled by operating systems. Gaming has also helped how users interact with PCs as controller and wireless communications devices have been specifically designed with gaming in mind. This has provided many benefits for the mainstream computing industry and allowed users to more easily interact with computers. This area will continue to grow and develop over time and create jobs and better technology that can be used in mainstream applications as result of advances in gaming technologies.

http://www.contentedwriter.com/impact-of-computer-games-on-society/

Psychological factors Of Playing Video Games:

Sound in games:

The last few years I've done a lot of skinning animals. Usually combined with picking flowers, strangely, since this kind of wildlife survivalism has featured in a glut of games since the start of the decade. But the only visceral memory I have of it is from Red Dead Redemption. And this is because of the sound effect. Far Cry 3, Tomb Raider and Don't Starve may each have used every part of the animal, but there was something about the RDR slice that permeated the air, ripped with vicious depth, and somehow acknowledged an animal was passing.

Sound can be an under-appreciated but vital part of game design. Visuals are often remarked on as spectacular and gameplay is what quickens the pulse. But it's audio that has distilled a game's essence for me over the years. It's an intriguing mix of artful composition, voice actors who never meet and designers bashing stuff with tools to build a consistent world. Because of the reward/incentive aspect at the centre of games, sound and music can live on for ages in the player, tied to emotion in a unique way. I can still hear achievement vocalisations like "power up" from Sega's Altered Beast clearly, even though I've not played the game in 25 years.

Trevor White is an actor who has done voices for many games, recently winning an award for his joyous portrayal of Frank Honey in Lego City Undercover. He describes the sounds he's most often asked to produce as "death and effort", which is a pretty good summation of things generally. Alone in a voice booth, he will be required to provide a one-second scream, a five-second scream and all the screams and grunts in between. White is adept at dying in many accents, though Russian and German come up a lot.

He comments that voice work in games is a job beloved by many actors as lines don't need to be memorised, appearance isn't defining and, since animation is often not yet drawn, they can be the creative bedrock of an imaginative performance that inspires the makers down the line. But effects are as evocative as the human voice. The Last of Us wouldn't have been half as creepy without the sound of the "clickers" searching audibly for their invisible prey. Papers, Please managed to combine cold war bureaucracy with the same era's game design with one croaking 80s belch. And Telltale's new game, The Wolf Among Us, transports the world of fairy tales to a grim dystopian future with a superbly synthy soundtrack.

This intelligent meeting of melody and theme is characteristic of all composition and, like film, a game has to make choices about the diegetic or non-diegetic presence of music in its world. The availability and range of popular music in open-world games now is staggering. Usually pumping from your own choice of car radio station, these tracks are bought using a licensing system similar to film and television. But an anthemic track can cost game-makers tens of thousands, so the audio budgets for the car you just stole are worth way more than its flash set of wheels. What's curious is that this licensing income is one of the main ways artists now receive revenue, since illegal downloading and streaming crippled the industry's profits. It's possible that, while music is becoming devalued in our world, it is being kept viable in the virtual worlds we build.Christopher Tin, the only person to have won a Grammy for a piece composed for a game, told me: "The average gamer plays a game for many, many more hours than they'll listen to a piece of non-game music. You need to write something that people aren't going to get tired of listening to over and over again." His piece,Baba Yetu, for Civilization IV, combined orchestral elements with strong African vocals, joyfully suggesting the cradle of life itself, instead of the more militaristic sounds one might associate with a strategy game about conquering. Explaining its musical form, he said that the piece is perpetually rising: "Elements are constantly growing and building, changing keys, voices are added, new material is explored." The sound is of a burgeoning, evolving civilisation itself, peaking in imperial crescendo before, appropriately enough, dying out.

But if you want to contribute to devaluing music yourself, why not use game to teach yourself to play guitar? Rocksmith 2014 is a sophisticated version of Guitar Hero, for enthusiasts, and requires a real electric guitar to learn. It's a smart, fun and varied game, particularly good for beginners. Although it may be tempting to get the console version to use the telly as an amp and big screen, I would suggest the PC version if possible, as the lag between a note played and the note on the screen is far shorter.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/08/computer-gaming-audio-lucy-prebble

High score listings:

High score listings were used in earlier games to make players feel superior and the best at a particular game. In fact there is a documentary type movie devoted to the obsession with getting the world record in the early version of the Donkey Kong Game. The movie called “King of Kong: A fistful of quarters” shows the emotional struggle of players competing against each other to beat the record. Some of the behaviour is indeed very strange and it is apparent that the high score listing makes the player think and act differently! Edge Magazine mentions how games have moved on since then and state that they “have evolved a lot since then, but the concept of comparing our performance against others has remained. These days, however, leaderboards often replace high score tables, and we can make even more granular comparisons via achievements and trophies”. This shows that the high score listing table has stood the test of time albeit in a different format. The Edge article also states:

Many researchers think that the reason we seek out comparisons with people we’re familiar with is that we use them as proxies for guessing if we’re capable of some feat or accomplishment. If another person achieves something tricky, our confidence in our ability to do it as well is linked to our opinion of how we’re similar to the achiever in relevant attributes. This is obviously easier to do with people we know (even if it’s just from online interactions) than total strangers. You broke into the diamond league for ranked StarCraft II matches? We seemed to be cut from the same cloth when I played you last, so I think I could do that too. You figured out all the puzzles in Fez? I know from our time at school together that I’m at least as smart as you, so I could do that too if I tried.

http://www.contentedwriter.com/psychological-effects-of-computer-gaming-on-individuals-and-society/

Competive:

On a rooftop in Downtown LA, eight young men are preparing to fight each other for $400,000. There are hundreds of people gathered around watching, and many thousands more will tune in via an online video feed. Right now, the competitors are selecting from a range of assault rifles and submachine guns – they will need to match these carefully with smoke and frag grenades if they are to stay alive. But whatever happens, there will be a lot of death.

Fortunately, this is not a horrifying real-life take on the Hunger Games, it is the final match in the Call of Duty World Championships, a pro-gaming event pitching 32 teams against each other for a total prize pool of $1m. The venue is a gigantic tent on the top of a multistorey car park at the LA Live centre. Outside, the sun beats down on the city's boundless concrete sprawl, but in here there is an all-enveloping artificial darkness, punctuated only by dozens of huge screens, each showing the biggest first-person shooter in the world.

Now in its third year, the Call of Duty Championship provides one of the highlights on the professional gaming – or "esports" – calendar in the US. The players taking part are the best in the world; they have qualified through a series of regional heats in their home countries, and for the last month, many of them have been practicing for eight hours a day, often in houses rented with their team mates. The one thing you learn very quickly about CoD at this level is that it is a team sport – every match involves two sides, each of four players, battling through a series of punishing encounters. Victory doesn't just go to the competitors with the quickest trigger fingers, it goes to the one's who communicate with their comrades most effectively. Information is as vital a currency as ammunition.

All of which contrasts heavily with the cliche about this game series: that it involves little more than running around the map with a gun, blasting wildly at anything in combat fatigues. Maybe that's true of casual players who buy the latest Call of Duty every year then flock online in their millions to compete on public servers. But it is not true here. Here, it is all about structure and strategy. It is about dedication. “Ever since we qualified it’s been non-stop playing,” says Seth "Scumpii" Abner of OpTic Gaming, one of the most popular teams in the modern scene – the Barcelona of CoD. “We actually had a LAN set up at our team house in Chicago and we flew out the team that won the US qualifiers, Strictly Business. We played for three days straight against them. It was a ton of fun, but it was work.

Full article at http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/08/call-of-duty-competitive-gaming

Peer pressure:

When I was in high school way back when...I wouldn't say I was an outcast (maybe I was) but I definitely wasn't part of the homecoming court. I kind of just did my own thing and mingled with people from the various cliques. I knew some of the jocks and the smart kids in the chess club but also talked with some of the stoners who would skip class and sneak off to hang out behind the "metal building" so they could smoke without being seen by the staff. I hung out with a bunch of skaters...but I always kind of felt like a poser because I couldn't ollie high enough or do a kick flip. The motor heads turning wrenches and working on their cars...yeah, I got along with them too. Didn't hurt I had an old muscle car...definitely one of the fastest cars in the high school parking lot. Even if it wasn't really, I felt like it was (and it was)

Back then, being a "gamer" wasn't really a thing. You were either a geek, or a nerd or a loser...but not a gamer. I didn't really feel like a geek, nerd or loser...but looking back, hah hah...I probably was. I always just thought I was a loner. Being a loner had its advantages though. That thing called peer pressure, well...I pretty much never paid it much mind. It didn't have control over me like it did so many others. I often wondered if peer pressure was even a thing since I seemed immune to it. But having seen it do a number on several of my classmates, I suppose it is real...and can mess up your world...if you let it.

http://www.gameinformer.com/blogs/members/b/subsaint_blog/archive/2014/11/19/video-game-peer-pressure.aspx

Fun with gaming:

Have you ever sat back and thought about why you love to play games?

Perhaps it’s the challenge, the excitement, and the adventure. Maybe it’s the friendships you make through social gaming. It could even be to give you a reason to play with your kids.

Whatever your reason, for me, gaming has always been defined by fun.

But it isn’t that simple.

There are as many definitions for “fun” as there are games available to play on our site. We all define “fun” differently and, subsequently, play games for very different reasons. Whether for relaxation, a challenge, or to escape, we all have our own personal criteria for something to be “fun”.

At the Casual Connect conference in Seattle last week, I was lucky enough to sit in for a panel discussion called “The Hidden Psychology of Gaming” that discussed this very topic. Many psychologists have done extensive studies on the emotional effects of gaming, and how these emotions make up the “fun” in a game.

Most psychologists agree there are three keys that contribute to the “fun factor” of a game. The panel at Causal Connect was able to break them down into simple but appropriate terms: Easy Fun, Hard Fun, and People Fun

Easy Fun

Easy Fun is the first thing a gamer experiences during game play. This is the part of the game that draws the player in, engages her, and keeps her playing.

What helps create this feeling of engagement is delivering “the joy of controlling.” Having control is motivating and it’s important for developers to design games that offer immediate feedback through well designed controls. This control/feedback look has a very powerful effect on the player, creating a feeling of accomplishment and gratification. This, in turn, makes the gamer want to continue playing.

Many players seeking “easy fun” also point to the sheer enjoyment of activities a game offers. For them, it isn’t about winning or losing. The fun factor is about exploration, adventure, and story.

Hard Fun

While games are meant to be fun, they’re also meant to be challenging. Without some level of challenge, a game will become boring very quickly. After all, gamers typically fail more than 80% of the time (and it isn’t because they aren’t trying!).

According to psychologists, it’s critical that game developers offer creative challenges in games that intentionally frustrate gamers. This is what is referred to as “Hard Fun”. The feeling of frustration a gamer feels while playing a particularly challenging level in a game dictates the amount of accomplishment felt once the goal or obstacle has been achieved.

It’s the subsequent feeling of accomplishment that adds to the feeling of “fun” gamers experience while playing a game. It also inspires creativity and motivates the player to focus harder.

It should be noted, however, that game developers need to be careful to balance game difficulty with player skill level and introducing more difficult challenges as gameplay progresses. If the game is too challenging and frustrating too soon, players will disengage and give up before they have mastered the necessary game mechanics. This process in developing a game can be a complex balancing act.

People Fun

A large part of playing modern games is encapsulated in the social interaction between players. Studies have shown games offering social interaction rate higher with gamers than those offering a solitary gaming experience.

Teamwork and camaraderie often flourish in multi-player gaming situations as do inside jokes, rivalries, and shared accomplishments. Remarkably, it has been shown that some people play games they don’t even like just to spend time with friends.

Even for those players who choose to play games alone, games are still social in many ways. For example, games or gaming sites frequently have public forums, blogs, Facebook pages, and Twitter accounts offering destinations to discuss the games, share tips and tricks, or foster relationships.

Psychologists have found the social interaction you experience outside of game play can still directly impact the way you feel about a game. Even if players are not discussing the game itself, it is what brought them together to engage in discussion in the first place. Whether they realize it or not, the brain often associates such positive interaction with the game itself.

It’s apparent games offer many different layers of fun. Each has its own affect on our psyches, and is placed into the game rather strategically to give gamers an emotional and engaging experience while they play. Who would have thought there were so many psychological elements that contribute to making a game fun?

http://www.bigfishgames.com/blog/the-psychology-of-gaming/

Educational Value:

Computer games could become part of the school curriculum after researchers found they had significant educational value.

The UK study concluded that simulation and adventure games - such as Sim City and RollerCoaster Tycoon, where players create societies or build theme parks, developed children's strategic thinking and planning skills.

The investigation into the habits of 700 children aged seven to 16 also found that, far from being a solitary activity, children preferred to play games in pairs or small groups.Parents and teachers also thought their children's mathematics, reading and spelling improved.

The research from the group Teachers Evaluating Educational Multimedia (Teem) is being studied by the Department for Education.

The director of Teem, Professor Angela McFarlane, said there was much to learn from the games industry in terms of developing scenarios that really challenged and engaged children, rather than reproducing text books on the screen.

"Adventure, quest and simulation type games have a lot of benefit - they're quite complex and create a context in which children can develop important skills," said Professor McFarlane.

"We're not advocating arcade, shot-the-baddie type games," she stressed.

School curriculum

Teachers often found it difficult to justify the use of simulation or adventure computer games during school time because their content did not map the national curriculum, said Professor McFarlane.

But if educational material could be built in, such games could be used in the classroom legitimately, she said.

"At the moment though, there's no way of knowing whether the software used in some of the games that involve building and running cities are based on valid economic models," said Professor McFarlane."For example, you could use an historical event like the Battle of Hastings and - knowing the facts are accurate - get pupils to put themselves in the place of one of the soldiers or generals.

The children questioned as part of the research said working in a team was the most important aspect of playing video games.

"Now that's interesting when the stereotype is that children play on the computer exclusively on their own," said Professor McFarlane.

"Teachers and parents then broke that down into skills of negotiation, planning, strategic thinking and decision-making."

The Teem study comes as other researchers argue the multimedia age has put children off reading and has produced a generation which spends too much time playing indoors.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/1879019.stm

Leveling in games:

Leveling up is a concept in games in which a character experiences some sort of progression that usually entails unlocking new abilities, skills, access to new items, access to a new area of the game, or as a benchmark of how far into the game a character is. As a gameplay element, it was first widely introduced to audiences through the original pen and paper Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. In its simplest form, leveling up occurs through the process of gaining enough experience points until a target experience point total is reached. Once the target is met, the player's character "levels up," and a new target experience threshold is set.

As an example, most characters start at level 1. To get to level 2, a character must acquire 100 experience points. To do so, the character must kill other creatures or complete various tasks or quests in order to gain the experience necessary. Once the character meets these requirements and acquires 100 experience points, he or she will then level up to level 2. Each subsequent level usually comes with benefits such as increased power, new abilities or items, and access to new locations. The amount of experience points required to reach the following level is also typically increased. Most leveling systems also allow excess experience points from reaching one level's maximum to spill over into the new level. So a level 1 character that performs an act that gives him more than the required amount of experience to reach level 2 will see that excess experience count toward their progress to reach level 3.

Many games also feature a level cap as well; a maximum level beyond which no further character progression is possible. This is often due to balance and a lack of content to make effective use of levels greater than the cap. However, some games raise the level cap through expansions that add content and challenges designed for characters of higher levels.

Jamie`s Gaming Blog

Thursday 10 September 2015

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ETHICS and Psychological factors Of Gaming