video game lecture in class

[Nash]

i'm taking psychology of play right now, and the other night, we had a lecture on video games. my professor went through the history, who plays video games, and the good and bad sides of video games. it was a pretty good lecture. people even brought in a ps2 and an xbox to demonstrate some of the games. there was a ddr battle right in the middle of class. however, people went off (especially the girls) when grand theft auto 3 was put on. here are my notes, which include some studies, if you guys are interested.

Play in Childhood Date: 5-7-2K2

Video Games

I. Video Games as cultural artifacts

A. Symbol systems embodied by cultural artifacts.
B. 3 modes of representation…
1) Enactive - Pointing
2) Iconic – Image directly corresponds to the thing it is
representing
3) Symbolic – Arbitrary signs being connected to symbols (e.g.,
words)
C. Video games --> iconic mode?
D. Yes, but symbolic, too!

II. History of video games

A. 1st video game – 1958 (W. Higinbotham)
B. Spacewar – 1962
C. Pong – 1972
D. Variety of game types since then
E. Variety of platforms

III. Who plays video games?

A. Gender Differences
1) Boys = violent games, sports
2) Girls = educational games, spatial relations
B. Age & gender differences in 1997 (Wright et al., 2001)
1) Data from time-use diaries
2) 5 types of games
- Educational
- Sports
- Sensory motor (fighting, action, racing)
- Strategy (rpgs, strategy)
- Unknown
3) Boys played more than girls except at 0-2 years
4) Number of children playing video games increased with age
a. Educational --> 0-5 year olds
b. Sports --> 9-12 year olds

IV. The good side to video games

A. Does playing video games facilitate spatial cognition skills?
(Subrahmanyam & Greenfield, 1994)
1) 5th graders in one of 2 conditions…
a. Video game --> Marble Madness
b. Word game --> Conjecture
2) Spatial skills test before and after game playing
3) Boys > girls on pre-test
4) Kids in both conditions did about the same in general on the
pre-test
5) Video game group did better on post-test
6) Poor pre-testers benefited most from video game condition
B. Does playing video games facilitate dividing visual attention?
(Greenfield et al., 1994)
1) Male undergrads played “robot battle”
2) Novice and expert groups
3) Attention task
4) Experts better at dividing visual attention

V. The bad side to video games

A. Psychodynamic approach to video game addiction (Klein, 1984)
B. Are violent video games related to real aggression? (Anderson &
Dill, 2000)
1) 1st study – Correlational
a. Undergrads asked about delinquency, aggression,
irritability, world-view
b. Asked about video game use
c. Time spent on video games related to poor academic
achievement
d. Violent video games linked to aggression and delinquency
e. Limitation - Correlation does not equal causation.
2) 2nd study – experimental
a. Played violent (Wolfenstein 3d) or non-violent game (Myst)
b. Reaction time game with unseen opponent and loud noises
c. Violent game participation --> more aggressive
d. Limitation - Short term effects.

[seen]

I like this discussion because by knowing and studying the past we can better form the future of games. However, I think that the games and how they are percieved changes too rapidly to be catalogued in any useful manner. Eight years ago no one has ever played Doom and 3D games were not possible on the hardware of that time, today they are common place. Many studies were done in the 80's when games were anything but realistic and left more to the imagination of the player than today's games. Many professors are still living in the past, too lazy to study the present or conduct current experiments themselves.

Just my 2 cents.


seen

[johnk_]

i dunno if i'd call it laziness.. more like a bit of ignorance mixed in with the unwillingness to do more research on videogames -- mainly because most professors these days are occupied with researching something they feel is more important or interesting or something that would get them a reputation in their field..

the field of study of videogames and the videogame industry is (i feel) vastly unexplored by major institutions because it doesn't really belong to any established field..
it's not quite computer science.. it's not quite economics.. and few professors are willing to waste their time on this kind of stuff.. most are worried about tenure, so they look for more significant contributions, and the ones that are post-tenure have usually lost or changed interests..

and what was that about 8 years ago? I thought doom came out long before then.. am i wrong?

[amerlop]

Originally posted by johnk_
i dunno if i'd call it laziness.. more like a bit of ignorance mixed in with the unwillingness to do more research on videogames -- mainly because most professors these days are occupied with researching something they feel is more important or interesting or something that would get them a reputation in their field..

the field of study of videogames and the videogame industry is (i feel) vastly unexplored by major institutions because it doesn't really belong to any established field..
it's not quite computer science.. it's not quite economics.. and few professors are willing to waste their time on this kind of stuff.. most are worried about tenure, so they look for more significant contributions, and the ones that are post-tenure have usually lost or changed interests..

Now your speaking my language...you can call me nihilistic and pessamistic but I have this inherint hatred and distain for most teachers because of the very issues you raised. It's funny, because I go to college and listen to professors profess and I study the materials given and I can't shake this feeling that 80 percent of the time, I'm being taught idealistic/unrealistic drivel by pompous assholes who couldn't hack it in the real world. I see them analyze material (especially the fictional stuff) and I see them make these wild conjectures that can never be proven wrong because the material is so wide open that it is open to any half-assed interpretation. I seriously think there are writing and educators who have carved themselves nice little careers out of creating something that is so unfocused that can make anyone's thoughts look coherant.

phewwww...

sorry, it's funny that i go to school despite loathing it most of the time. But since our society believes that "true" educations have to cost 60,000 to 100,000, I have to bite my lip and go through with it. And now it looks like i have to go to grad school, too.

[johnk_]

yea man.. most of the time i'm sitting in class, i'm thinking to myself, or rather asking myself what the fuck i'm doing there..
i have a class based on the study of mesopotamian religion and mythology - nope, never gonna use it, but it satisfies some university requirements, so i took it..
does this make sense?
It might, considering I might get a more well-rounded education, that is, if i actually got anything out of the class, which i didn't.. not really..

and my computer science class... my professor goes on and on about bullshit like finite automaton and touring machines, etc. etc.. none of which i actually understand.. he tries hard to make it seem interesting... heck, maybe he actually is interested in all that theoretical crap..
that's nice.. i'm sure it's great for him - all i can envision him doing for the rest of his life is trying to solve things in front of a blackboard.. don't get me wrong.. if that seems fulfilling for him, it's fine with me..
but i can't be that way..
I feel like all i've been doing in school for the past few years is studying for things i have no interest in, save perhaps art..

you may have guessed by now.. i'm a computer science major.. i want to end up developing games.. but i suck at computer science..
i just feel no motivation for learning all this optimizing, theoretical trash they keep pushing on us..

anyway that's long enough of a rant..

[amerlop]

Theories and abstractism is why professors have jobs...it is in their best interest for them to "understand" things that you don't. Same reason why critics exist and why these critics give handjobs to people like Proust and James Joyce.

[seen]

First let me say that most of the reasons listed in this thread is why I left college after my freshman year and started learning myself. I learned everything from Assembler to 3D graphics, Windows and Macintosh. I then got hired to work at Viewpoint. Where I worked for over 10 months. I didn't have excellent grades in school, but I made up for that in my enthusiasm to learn and my previous(special high school) education of being an artist. I considered and still consider that you can go further on your own in computer science rather than study in school. This works if you're a self directed person. You must have great initiative and learn even though there might be little to no motivation for doing so.

Originally posted by johnk_

and my computer science class... my professor goes on and on about bullshit like finite automaton and touring machines, etc. etc.. none of which i actually understand.. he tries hard to make it seem interesting... heck, maybe he actually is interested in all that theoretical crap..

Don't be dissin my turing machines and finite automation. Video games are built on finite state machines. Read Tricks of the Video Windows Game Programming Gurus by Andre LaMothe to find out why. The reason is that everything in a video game is time, position and action based, and you need a well managed software construct(engine) which manages all the objects with the use of a finite state machine.

I feel like all i've been doing in school for the past few years is studying for things i have no interest in, save perhaps art..

Art appeals to us all, be it dance, music or visual art. As an artist of sorts I understand the fascination with it, but computer science is art too. Creating an algorithms, UI, and well written code in general is art. I consider Photoshop to be art by which art is produced. I don't think of it as a simple tool like a brush. It is rare that an artist is truly appreciated, though.

you may have guessed by now.. i'm a computer science major.. i want to end up developing games.. but i suck at computer science..
i just feel no motivation for learning all this optimizing, theoretical trash they keep pushing on us..

You should have a more optimistic approach to your education. The theoretical crap as you call is hasn't changed for the last 20 years and is used in all of the programs you use today. It is also expected that you know all of these theories and algorithms if you intend to apply for a serious software job. I understand that school can be tough and not even meant for some, but society places a lot of emphasis on a degree. Try to read more game programming books, and for god sake study the serious stuff, it is much harder to learn down the line.


seen

[Ranji]

Wow. Here I was thinking that this forum was a rare sanctuary for intelligent gamers.

What a great idea, let's just kill academia, and destroy what's left of an intellectual climate in our culture. The later Romans and Byzantines did the same thing, shutting down classical schools of learning and gradually restricting philosophy to theological scholasticism. Look where it got them! Course you wouldn't know that without a goddamn education.

[amerlop]

I don't mind education, but a good portion of the people in it are not doing it for the right reasons. There are great teachers out there but, even in the dark ages, knowledge can be passed on to the literate without any sort of teacher. And any basic education can get you through such. I think the problem with education today is that it is far too long...I mean is 16-18 years of school really a neccessity? For some people it may be but other, like seen, can learn better in other ways. What I oppose is people associated intelligence and worth through an expensive education package which bears little resemblence to the real world.

[piku]

What a great idea, let's just kill academia, and destroy what's left of an intellectual climate in our culture. The later Romans and Byzantines did the same thing, shutting down classical schools of learning and gradually restricting philosophy to theological scholasticism. Look where it got them! Course you wouldn't know that without a goddamn education.

LMAO, but so true. While I have my exceptions, I can find just about anything interesting to learn, and find it hard to understand how others don't (expecially the actually interesting stuff). I guess I just have a thirst for knowledge or something (despite getting C's in school ).