02 August 2007

Video Games Are Good For You

By: 

Jeffery Goldstein

University of Utrect

Speaking at the 2nd ISFE Expert Conference

That video games are good for us is an understatement according to one of the world’s most eminent psychologists, Professor Jeffrey Goldstein.  He believes they are a tonic, which is why doctors and surgeons depend on them as much as hard-nosed Harvard business scholars along with the public at large.

Heading up the Netherlands’ leading Social and Organisational Psychology department at the University of Utrecht, Goldstein is also part of an ongoing research project making games for astronauts in manned space missions to Mars. These games, he believes, will help retrain any astronaut ‘deficits’ that might be brought on by the missions lasting 18-months or more in deep space.

A specialist in applied research on children and the media, Goldstein says it is impossible to confuse games with reality and debunks papers on aggression since no-one knows “how to measure aggression in the laboratory”. Goldstein challenged other criticisms about video games at the ISFE Experts conference staged in Brussels recently. Here’s what he had to say…

I have spent my career trying to get people to take play [ital] seriously. Why do people play?  There may be a biological imperative - a biological necessity to play.  The young of all primate species play, and young males of all primate species play in ways that look like aggression. So it is not surprising that video games and other forms of play - especially those enjoyed by young males - mimic aggression. 

Why play online games?  Gamers themselves say that one of the attractions of games is the feeling of competence, and games can provide players with a sense of confidence.  Socialising turns out to be one of the prime reasons for playing both online games and other forms of multi-platform multiplayer games - even online first person shooter games! We often focus on the conflict that is inherent in theme or storyline and overlook the fact that cooperation, teamwork and communication are equally important. In fact, they are among their most appealing features. 

From the very beginning it was clear that videogames were exciting, absorbing, challenging and involving.  Both the games themselves and the platforms on which they are played have evolved.  And with every new medium come a series of questions about their potential uses and effects, both good and bad. Among the first questions asked by academic researchers is whether the new medium displaces other more desirable and more traditional forms of [entertainment], like sports or reading: Does school performance decline? Do friendships and family suffer? Does violent content have an effect on real-life violence? 

Once the dust has settled, additional questions are asked: Can the new medium heal, teach, be used in Science, Education or Medicine?  We are now at the point with traditional video games where we know the answers to almost all of these questions and my own research touches on many of these issues.

The positive aspects of games are something that the late Behavioural Psychologist B F Skinner recognised as a teaching machine - a device giving instant feedback, instantaneous rewards for desirable reactions, multiple levels of complexity and the ability to progress at one’s own pace. These are ideal conditions for learning virtually any skill. 

All of us need to be mindful about how we talk about games.  Is someone ‘addicted’ to a video game, or are they simply passionately involved in play?  Are they suffering a reduced attention span, or are they multitasking?  Are video and online computer games socially isolating, or are they simply another form of sociability satisfying similar needs for affiliation, communication and status?

We have been so distracted by the superficial content of games that we risk overlooking what games actually do to our children - and ourselves. More precisely, what we do with games. Even controversial violent first-person shooter games can so nurture cognitive and perceptual skills at a high level that Medical Doctors and Surgeons play video games as part of their training.  In the business world, students applying to a Masters in Business Administration programme at Harvard are given preference if they are experienced gamers - because they bring with them a sense of confidence, cooperation, communication and striving toward goals. 

In Education, games have and are being used to teach traditional curriculum. An impressive study in Chile in South America, presented the curriculum for the five and six year-olds (basic reading, writing and mathematic skills) in the form of video games while control groups had traditional teachers and lessons. Not only did the gamers learn the material more quickly, they enjoyed school more and talked about their educational experiences even outside school.

We have also done a study with elderly people in a Dutch nursing home, measuring reaction time, sense of well-being and so on. Many were women about 80 years-old who had never touched a computer before. We found skills and satisfaction increased significantly after five weeks of playing compared to the control groups.

Gaming has a great deal to offer those who are members of groups, families, social groups, peer groups, class related groups in school - and we shouldn’t overlook their value as a social medium for bringing people together. 

We also did a study in a business setting with an insurance company that had a policy against playing games, they even blocked those coming with Microsoft Software like Battleship and Patience. They agreed to let workers play for up to one hour a day for a month. We thought that while the smokers went outside for a cigarette, the non-smokers might play, thinking ‘why should they get ten minutes off, I’ll play a game for a few minutes instead’. But what happened was smokers and non-smokers played equally long, averaging their hour a day. They used their game playing experience not to slack off or fail at their jobs, but as medium to help them do their jobs, a kind of time out from work allowing you to recover some kind of cognitive capabilities. We also found people used their gaming possibilities when they finished a task, as a kind of reward for themselves,

I’m part of a Dutch and German group consisting of about 30 scientists developing games for a possible manned flight to Mars! Sponsored by the European Space Agency (ESA), the ongoing project is developing games to measure, particularly, the performance of Astronauts – ones that will bring them up to speed if they suffer deficits. And the games need to be self-contained, too, as a manned flight to Mars will take about 500 days. In the beginning the astronauts can play real-time interactive games between their space craft and Earth, but after a month the communication time-lag will be so great that it no longer seems like real-time interaction at all.

Also, because these astronauts will be isolated in a confined environment for 18 months or more, games can provide a rich emotional experience. Virtually every emotional experience is possible in a game, just as it is in a movie.  Films can make you cry, laugh, miss your dog. They can do anything. Games can virtually do the same thing.

I want to say something about violent games. There have been recent critiques of the laboratory experiments of violent video games but it is not possible, as an Experimental Psychologist, to study the effects of violent video games. People freely engage in play. One of the fundamental aspects of play is that it is something you choose to do as and when you like. 

Asking a research subject to ‘play’ a video game, violent or otherwise, is not ‘play’.  It violates the very characteristic that makes something ‘play’. So no-one is ‘playing’ a game in a laboratory experiment, because play cannot be created on demand.  Nor do we know how to measure aggression in the laboratory. 

People are aware that they are playing a game at every moment. You have a joystick in front of you or a computer keypad - there is always something to tell you that you are playing a game. The confusion of games with reality may occur at some very young age, say young children watching cartoons who don’t know they are not real. But virtually anyone who can control a controller is aware they are playing a game - and is aware that what they are experiencing is something other than reality.

There is a kind of publication bias in the research that is published on video games, especially violent video games. Journals’ editors are more likely to accept and publish a paper in which some significant results are obtained, so if someone does a study and finds that aggressive video games have some effect on aggressive behaviour that is more likely to published than a study that finds no effects. Because of this publication bias, we don’t know how many experiments on violent videogames there are with no or insignificant results, since these things are simply never published. 

[ital ]The above is an edited version of Jeffrey Goldstein’s speech at the ISFE Experts Conference ( June 26, 2007).  Further reading/References:

Bogers, S., Sijbrandij, K.; Wiegers, M.; & Goldstein, J. (2003).  Computer games in the workplace.  Digital Games Research Conference, Utrecht. www.gamesconference.org

Gee, J.P.  (2003). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy.  Macmillan.

Goldstein, J.  (2005). Violent video games.  In J. Raessens & J. Goldstein (Eds.), Handbook of computer game studies.  Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Goldstein, J., et al. (1997). Video games and the elderly.  Social Behavior & Personality, 25, 345-352.

Green, C.S. and Bavelier, D.  (2003). Action video game modifies visual attention.  Nature, 423, 534-537.

Jansz, J., & Tanis, M. (2007). Appeal of playing online first person shooter games. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 10, 133-136.

Rosas, R., Nussbaum, M., et al.  (2003).  Beyond Nintendo: Design and assessment of educational video games for first and second grade students. Computers & Education, 40, 71-94.

Rossiter, J.C., Lynch, P.J., et al.  (2007).  The impact of video games on training surgeons in the 21st Century.  Royal Archives of Surgery, 142, 181-186.      

Sternheimer, Karen.  (2007). Do video games kill?  Contexts [American Sociological Association], 6 (1).

Williams, D., & Skoric, M.  (2005). Internet fantasy violence: A test of aggression in an online game.  Communication Monographs, 72, 217-233.

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