I recently started playing HelloRun.
I am not sure what the genre is called - Puzzle Game / Action Maze ? (Let me know if you have a better definition)
After playing a while, I started getting stuck at around 32 points. 10 Minutes later, it was 64. Then I realized I could speed up and gain more points. And now I am at 148 and hit 100+ points in most of my runs.
I have heard that you create new neuro connections when you stimulate your brain. But I do not have a good understanding of how the brain uses and shares neurons.
Or if it even does share them, actually.
So I am wondering if playing this game, which challenges me quite a bit, is going to improve my reactions in General, or just for this particular game.
If it is the latter, does it “Use up space” ?
I do know the brain is not working like a harddisk. But perhaps I could get a little more knowledge on this thought?
And Hello SD! I found the forum last night and was awake until 4am soaking up knowledge here
A lot of games do improve hand-eye coordination. Some RPGs are somewhat historically accurate, so you get some history while running around ancient Rome or wherever. Word games can improve vocabulary. While much maligned at times, running a guild in WoW is not much different from being a middle manager or a team lead in the real world.
That being said, while you may get a lot of pattern recognition and and hand-eye coordination from Super Mario Bros., how well that translates to the real world is debatable.
Welcome to the Dope. And thanks for not making your first post douchey in nature, as most of the September2013 class have done.
WAG incoming - here’s your grain of salt ( . )
I’m confident that it will help, though I can’t explain neurologically WHY. You’d need to be able to “link” the problem solving skills you picked up in the game to your everyday life - maybe that’s achieved by new physical neural links, I don’t know. But if you can’t relate the thought processes you use while gaming to the thought processes you use while in every day life, then you’re not gonna benefit.
Taking the time to stop and think about what you’re going to do ahead of time, giving your brain some time to correlate your physical actions in the real world to the game you played, may help. Once you’ve made the connection, it’ll be automatic. Problem is, as always, in the real world things happen which fall outside the realm of what can be reproduced in the game. So you’re not going to have an automatic reaction to that, and it may bog you down.
At the least, it may speed up your thought processes. But that doesn’t always translate to faster physical reactions.
There are multiple ways that this is accomplished:
Hand-eye coordination improvements.
By solving game problems, you’re exercising your brain.
Often the history and/or setting of a game is educational. I understand hockey and hockey rules much better after playing hockey games, and I have a better handle on a lot of historical things after playing games set in those eras.
The games can stimulate the player to do more research on their own. I know that playing the Total War games has made me research a lot of historical tactics and battles to see what did and didn’t work in the real world at the same time.
Not much more so than staring blankly at a television, reading a romance novel, or staring at a wall.
The idea video games are even capable of filling the brain with junk is basically the next in a long list of supposedly harmful pursuits the next generation pursues. In the past, this list has included novels, what we now call classical music, television, rock music, and just about every popular form of media ever conceived or created.
I’ve heard that what’s most important is playing a wide variety of games, and picking up new ones often. If you just play a lot of Tetris, you’ll mostly get really good at playing Tetris. If you’re constantly learning new games, though, you’ll get really good at learning.
Sherlock Holmes famously argued that brain-space is finite and quite limited. He compared the acquisition of knowledge to a home-owner stocking his attic with furniture; one must therefore carefully choose your furniture in order to fill the attic to best advantage. A time will come, he claimed, that for every new item of “furniture” (knowledge) that you admit to your brain-attic, another existing item of “furniture” must be lost.
Accordingly, Watson was astonished to learn that Holmes didn’t know whether the Moon went around the Earth, or the Earth went around the Moon, as he (Holmes) considered the fact totally irrelevant to himself and his work. Having been advised of that astronomical fact by Watson, Holmes then stated that he would make his best effort immediately to forget it.
(Incongruously, though, Holmes was also a skilled violin player.)
Oh, as for (more-or-less) modern computer games, I always thought Adventure was a good one, if the object is to get the player to pay attention and think. That’s the game I would recommend if you want to exercise the old brain-attic. (Hint: You have to know, or learn, how to read and comprehend lots of plain-text.)
There are two text adventures named “Adventure”, one (“Colossal Cave Adventure”) in the US from 1976, one “Adventure” published in the UK in 1982.
I know you said “more-or-less” but… man. “Modern”?
Seriously though, what always bothered me about text adventures is that the solution usually forced you to think like the author of the adventure. Even if your solution would work in real life, it won’t work in the game because the author didn’t think of it and code it in.
Modern (ACTUALLY modern) games do a much better job of allowing problems to be solved creatively. Think of Skyrim, where almost every quest has multiple solutions, and even the combat system has numerous ways of winning.
In general, I would be less concerned about “filling up” the brain, and more concerned about missing out on better quality experiences. Having said that, I think most (good) games have significant enriching possibilities, especially if played with good people. Especially if that’s NOT the only thing you do.
Some games don’t lend themselves to personal growth. Same with some social settings.
