While I’ve spent much of this blog’s short life raving on about the nobility of games, their artistic contributions, and my take on relevant game history, there is another worthy topic which I have not yet addressed – the contribution of gaming to medicine, human longevity, and society as a whole.

                Not very long ago, video games were largely regarded as children’s toys, and playing them was considered by most of the adult population to be irresponsible, frivolous, degenerative, and an all-around waste of one’s time.

                But with the rise of the gamer generation into adulthood came the science to validate and vindicate their behavior.  When gamers didn’t simply ‘grow up’ and stop gaming, as so many thought they would, it quickly became apparent that herein lay an important question which any dutiful scientific and/or academic community could not afford to ignore.  That question, of course, went something like “What’s so great about these games, anyway?”

                And as soon as this question began to be asked in earnest, we quickly learned why so many human animals – equipped with perfectly functional self-preservation instincts – would continue in a hobby which on the outside appeared to serve no evolutionary goal whatsoever.

                But this assumption of uselessness couldn’t have been further from the real truth, as Eric Klopfer – director of the Education Arcade at MIT – points out in an interview with The Boston Globe:

“Video games are hard. People don’t like to play easy games, and games have figured out a way to encourage players to persist at solving challenging problems.” [1]

And, according to the research of Globe Correspondent Emily Anthes,

“Most games involve a huge number of mental tasks, and playing can boost any one of them. Fast-paced, action-packed video games have been shown, in separate studies, to boost visual acuity, spatial perception, and the ability to pick out objects in a scene. Complex, strategy-based games can improve other cognitive skills, including working memory and reasoning.”[2]

                But not only do games improve the function and habits of younger minds (games are now all the rage in research on educational practices), but they also help to keep those minds young and flexible into late adulthood. It’s been accepted fact for a good little while now that mental exercise can help greatly in staving off dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.[3] [4]  But only recently are game experts like Nolan Bushnell incorporating this idea into successful, science-based projects like anti-aginggames.com.

                And aside from all this, games are also known to create socially constructive behavior patterns such as delegation, organization, cooperation, and team leadership.  In fact, gamers as a community have produced such astounding real-world impacts as – according to the below info-graphic by Psychologydegree.net, “solv[ing] an AIDS protein problem that puzzled scientists for fifteen years in just fifteen days.” [5] I believe the appropriate phrase here is ‘epic win.’

                Finally, anthropologically speaking, it seems quite safe to conjecture that in many ways, games simply had to happen.  In order for human society to progress beyond commonplace violence over resources, territory, and mating privileges – as was the case until a relatively very recent period in our history, we needed to create for ourselves a safe outlet to release our inner animalistic rage and impulses.  The global rate of intentional homicide dropped a whopping .7 percent from 2004 to 2010, with the strongest trends belonging to highly developed areas like North America and Europe.[6]  And it’s my humble opinion, though an empirical causality would prove quite difficult to establish, that this dramatic drop can largely be credited to the existence, prominence, and emergent social validity of the gaming hobby.

Via: PsychologyDegree.net

*wipes drool* … If you can’t see why Vita is pricey now, you are silly.

Want a Power Ring?

Hal Jordan fans will have fun.

Everyone else? Maybe not.

…Need more? Check it on Metacritic.

Take a great RPG, then add a healthy splash of fanservice — I HEART YOU, JAPAN!

Or, How Sony Has Already Won, and You Just Don’t Know It

First off, if you are currently scratching your head and wondering which countries fought in this conflict, the odds are good that you’ve been hibernating for the last two or three decades.  It’s hard to walk a block down any city street anymore without bumping the tiny shoulders of at least twelve teenagers – each pimpled face glued to a copy of the latest i-device.  But what these young Justin Bieber fanatics are unlikely to know is that all of the immersion, entertainment, and convenience of these oh-so-handy devices began forty years ago, with a humble jumble of circuit boards called the Magnavox Odyssey.  And since that fateful breakthrough in time-wasting technology, garage entrepreneurs, former electronics and computer-science majors, and CEOs alike have been locked in a no-holds-barred fight for market supremacy.   This post takes a quick stab at chronicling those wars.

The Odyssey’s story alone makes for some great fare.  For one, many of us credit the hallowed title of ‘First Video Game’ to Atari’s PONG; but according to David Winter[1], that’s a mistake.  As much love as I’ve bestowed on Atari’s creations over the years, I’m sad to report that their initial success was due to outright IP (Intellectual Property) theft and patent infringement.   In fact, when Atari swiped Odyssey’s TABLE TENNIS, rebranded it PONG, and filled pinball arcades with coin-sucking machines, it spawned gaming’s very first law suit!  Yes, gaming has been a cutthroat business right from year one. But as much fun as it might be to dwell on the relatively minor clashes between Atari, Commodore, Magnavox, and their ilk during the industry’s infancy, the real drama begins a generation or so later.

Let’s fast-forward to 1985.  After the video game market crash of 1977[2], and Atari’s now-infamous 1983 ‘E.T. Incident,’[3] the game industry was in critical condition.  The needed transfusion came in the form of an incredibly powerful, likably designed, and well-developed-for behemoth called the Nintendo Entertainment System[4].  While other consoles – most notably the Sega Master – participated in this ‘Third Generation,’ nothing could topple blockbuster offerings like Super Mario Brothers, Metal Gear, Final Fantasy, Duck Hunt, and Zelda.  For the better part of six years, NES ruled with an iron fist, until a lone blue hedgehog dared to challenge it.

                Said hog, of course, was Sonic – the flagship character franchise of Sega.  Tired of playing second fiddle to Nintendo’s empire, Sega released the Genesis (Mega Drive) in 1989 to a well-deserved warm welcome[5].  Genesis featured 16-bit architecture, and outstripped the NES in every way.  Note, however, that it would be this eager rush into a next-gen market that would prove to be Sega’s undoing in the console market.

                Naturally, Nintendo had no intention of taking its new competition lightly, and released the Super NES, or SNES, in 1991.  SNES brought the 16-bit hammer down with Nintendo’s largely-intact network of third-party support, and its tech specs slightly surpassed Genesis. Those factors, plus fan loyalty were enough for Nintendo to dominate Fourth-Gen by a 10 million unit margin[6].

                Next came the Fifth Generation of home consoles, and predictably, even more intense competition for the hearts and minds of gamers everywhere.  The war of titans raged on, but with a crucial new weapon – gamers now had the ability to follow the longer development periods of new consoles and prejudge their specs.  3D was the name of the game in Fifth-Gen, and gamers expected their hardware to deliver.  Enter the propaganda battle.

                Earlier, I asked that my reader note the preemptive strategy of Sega, and its ultimate failure to secure the market. The Saturn, and later the Dreamcast, formed the culmination of that tragedy.  Both consoles featured much greater technological innovations than their competition, but were pushed out the door with little support from developers, retailers, or distributors[7].  And there ends this article’s coverage of Sega, since we all know they no longer make game platforms.

                Fifth-Gen was ultimately won by a dark horse called the Sony Playstation[8].  Released in 1994, it took Playstation no time at all to mass hordes of happy developers.  It was a piece of cake to program for, and featured the plethora of storage space that came with a CDROM format[9].  Nintendo’s N64 simply arrived far too late and with too little – after the mass-exodus of developers to Sony’s camp, much of Nintendo’s IP was now first-party[10].

                Playstation and its successor the PS2 were the undisputed kings, until another unexpected foray came; and this time it was from a sleeping ten ton bear who already owned the American market – Microsoft[11].  Having been second into the Sixth-Gen, PS2 still caught a small taste of the one-upmanship that Sega had suffered so many times, but at the hands of the flashy new ‘PC-in-a-box’ Xbox.  Xbox could do a lot of things PS2 could not, and stole a significant chunk of North American sales[12] (though PS2 would still ship more units than any other console ever).  But in 2005, Microsoft demonstrated that they had not quite learned the lessons of their Japanese counterparts.

                Xbox 360 shipped, along with most of the same hardware failure problems as its predecessor[13].  As mentioned before, MS fairly well owned the US market at this point[14].  But with this critical mistake, Sony was able to regain a significant foothold.  PS3 took full advantage of its extra year in development.*

                It featured a far superior storage format, faster polygon-crunching architecture, and other advantages too numerous to list here. While at a price point nearly double that of the 360, PS3 managed to grab a group of disillusioned American RROD victims roughly half the size of Microsoft’s Seventh-Gen following[15].  And if that wasn’t enough, PS3 has dominated its half-price competitor in nearly every other market.  Of course, it is worth noting that the sales figures of Nintendo’s current offering eclipse both PS3 and Xbox 360.  But one should remember that the Wii is both incomparably cheap, and targeted at a much different demographic (casuals).

                To conclude, with the launch of Vita – an unrivaled portable capable of taking PS3’s experience on the go (though it does have its kinks) – and the evening of base prices among PS3 and 360, it seems logical to expect that Sony will edge ahead in the final years of Seventh-Gen.  And by holding to the strategic positions they’ve built I believe that Sony is likely to ‘win’ in the coming Eighth Generation.  Not only are they poised to enter second again, but they have not ideated such self-destructive measures as Microsoft for their next console, i.e. blocking used media.

*NOTE: If you still aren’t convinced that PS3 has Xbox 360 beaten, watch this video.