• Ran a total of six studies exploring whether the needs-based satisfaction model and violence (we implicitly seek out autonomy, relatedness and competence) were motivators in why we play video games
• Found that competence and autonomy consistently predicted game enjoyment and future preference, while violence was not a significant motivator (unless you were high in trait violence, in which case it did predict future preference for violent games)
• While it does support the theory, it seems to have a few flaws and needs a few more studies to back it up such as no self-report measures
  

Abstract

Six studies, two survey based and four experimental, explored the relations between violent content and people’s motivation and enjoyment of video game play. Based on self-determination theory, the authors hypothesized that violence adds little to enjoyment or motivation for typical players once autonomy and competence needs satisfactions are considered. As predicted, results from all studies showed that enjoyment, value and desire for future play were robustly associated with the experience of autonomy and competence in gameplay. Violent content added little unique variance in accounting for these outcomes and was also largely unrelated to need satisfactions. The studies also showed that players high in trait aggression were more likely to prefer or value games with violent contents, even though violent contents did not reliably enhance their game enjoyment or immersion. Discussion focuses on the significance of the current findings for individuals and the understanding of motivation in virtual environments.

Method

Participants/Design

• Study 1
• 1028 participants, 99 female and 929 male mostly recruited from online forums
  
• Ranged from 18 to 39 years – asked questions about their favourite game
• Mean age of 24.14, and 38.40% were in a relationship or committed
• Note that later on, 105 participants were dropped from analyses
  
• Study 2
• 68 undergraduate students, 21 male, 47 female with a mean age of 19.5 years
• Study 3
• 99 students, 41 males, 58 females with a mean age of 20.1 years
• Study 4
• 101 students – 36 males, 65 females with a mean age of 19.6 years
• Study 5
• 39 students – mean age of 19.54 years
• Limited to males who regularly spent more than 5 hours per week playing video games (average of 7.47 hours a week)
• Study 6
• 1642 participants – 195 female, 1447 male, ranging from 18 to 43 with a mean age of 23.9 years
• Recruited from the same online community as in study 1
• Note that 94 titles did not have ratings, resulting 94 people dropping out

Thoughts on participants

• Study 1 and 6 are sort of problematic as they used one online community from a popular forum – while they are all gamers, certain gamers tend to be attracted to certain forums, so it may not be an accurate representation of actual video gamers – especially if it’s only PC gamers instead of console gamers for instance
• Study 5 used a small sample size of people who asked for course credit – may not be indicative of general male gaming population as it’s supposed to be
• Other then that, looks pretty normal and typical

Materials

Study 1

All items were given online and all were rated on a 7-point Likert scale unless mentioned otherwise.

Player experience of Needs Satisfaction (PENS)- Ryan et al. 2006

A scale designed to measure in-game competence and in-game autonomy. Competence was rated on a three-item scale with an alpha level of .70, and autonomy was rated on a four-item scale with an alpha level of .69. Self-report.

Presence.

Nine-item scale from the PENS – three items each assess emotional, physical and narrative presence – averaged together to form presence with a total alpha level of .88. Self-report.

Game enjoyment.

Four items adapted from Intrinsic motivation inventory – alpha level of .82. Self-report.

Sequel interest.

One item to test this – self-report.

Word of mouth.

One item to assess whether people were likely to spread the word bout the game via word of mouth – self-report.

Violence ratings.

Based on the following two measures:

ESRB rating.

THE ERSB is a group that rates games on a 1-5 scale: E for everyone, E10+ for everyone that is 10 years or older, T for teen, M for mature, and AO for adults only. This was coded as 1-5, although in this study no AO games were picked, leaving a scale that was 1-4. Additionally, 105 participants picked games that were not rated, and these were dropped from the analyses. This left 923 participants (85 females, 838 males – mean age of 24.17).

Violence coding.

Three raters coded games on the following scale: 1 was given for games with no violent content, 2 was given for games with abstract violence (i.e., Mario killing things by jumping on them), 3 for games with impersonal violence (killing groups of people that aren’t really related to you or don’t look human), 4 for games with fantasy violence (World of Warcraft), and 5 for games with realistic violence. An inter-rater reliability of .95 was found based on 50 game titles, so after these 50 titles only 2 raters continued rating the remaining games.

Study 2

House of the Dead 3 (Xbox 360).

Video game that offers graphically violent gameplay.

Game Enjoyment/Presence/Player experience of Needs Satisfaction (PENS) measures.

As Above.

Preference for Future Play

Five self-report items were used, with an alpha level of .92.

Trait Aggression (Buss & Perry, 1992).

A 29-item self-report scale was used. Formed four subscales: physical aggression, verbal aggression, anger and hostility, collapsed together to form trait aggression. Alpha level of .94.

Study 3

Glider Pro 4.

Arcade game that is non-violent

Marathon 2.

First-person shooter that involves challenges with violence involved

Same self-report measures as in study 2.

All alpha levels were .85 or above.

Study 4

Half-Life 2.

Created three environments in Half-life 2:

A training ground with no violent content for participants to practice in. They were then asked to play one of two versions of the actual game: in one, they are told that their enemies want to kill them and they must kill them in a bloody manner, and in the other, enemies were only programmed to target them with a nonweapon marker.

Same self-report measures as in other studies.

Alpha levels were .75 or above for all measures

Study 5

House of the Dead 3.

Asked to either play a version with highly graphical and realistic violence, or a version with no blood, gore and wounds were neon colours

Same self-report measures as in Study 2.

Alpha levels ranged from .86 to .94

Study 6

Same self-report measures as Study 1.

Alpha levels were: .68 for competence, .73 for autonomy, .80 for enjoyment, .78 for presence and .95 for trait aggression. Sequel interest and word of mouth were also assessed with one item

Same ESRB ratings and coded ratings as Study 1.

94 titles did not have ratings, leading to 8 females dropping out and 86 males

Self report measure of game value.

Participants rated whether they thought the game was worth its price on a one-item scale

Thoughts on materials

• Almost all of the materials are self-report, which introduces desirability bias into the results, and additionally, the authors do not mention whether they had any measures to catch people who were simply ticking all the boxes on the left (i.e., reverse scoring, similar questions etc. etc.)
• Some items were based on one question, which limited their validity

Procedure

Study 1

• Participants were asked to fill out a survey about their favourite game
  

Study 2

• Students were asked to play a game and filled out both preplay (trait aggression/filler questions) and postplay assessments (competence, autonomy, presence, enjoyment and preference for future play).

Study 3

• Students were randomly assigned to play a violent or non-violent game
• Questionnaires were given before and after a 20-minute gameplay session
  

Study 4

• Participants came in and played a training session for 20 minutes
• They then completed a short survey
• They were then randomly assigned to either low or high-violence conditions for 20 minutes
• Afterwards, they were asked to fill out post-questionnaires

Study 5

• Same as in Study 2 except an additional IV of high/low violence was introduced

Study 6

• Same as study 1

Thoughts on procedure

• A lot of studies that are fairly similar which is good for replication’s sake and showing different things
• Not sure how effective 20 minutes of gameplay is for actually showing effects
• Pretty high face validity when giving a trait aggression questionnaire before playing a violent game – might be bad for realistic results

Results

Study 1
Preliminary Results

• 99 games rated as E for everyone, 32 of 10+, 506 a rating of teen, 286 a rating of mature, and no games being adult only. Mean violence rating of 3.90 (SD = 0.99).
• Men selected more violent games and games that had higher ESRB ratings than females
• Females had higher presence in their games
• No other sex differences emerged among the analyses
  

Primary Results

• Correlations show that in-game autonomy, in-game competence, game enjoyment, presence, word of mouth and sequel interest are all significantly positive correlated with each other
• Regressions show that in-game autonomy and in-game competence consistently predicted higher amounts of game enjoyment, presence, word of mouth and sequel interest above chance (with in-game autonomy always being higher than in-game competence, by 2-3x)
• Violence was only significant in predicting presence
  

Study 2

Preliminary Results

• Males reported higher competence and autonomy
  
• No other sex or age differences emerges

Primary Results

• In-game autonomy and in-game competence were significantly positively correlated with game enjoyment, preference and presence
• Trait aggression was significantly correlated with future presence, but not enjoyment or presence – also unrelated to competence, but associated with autonomy
• Regressions showed similar effects – in-game autonomy and in-game competence predicted game enjoyment, preference and presence, while trait aggression only predicted preference  for future play
  

Study 3

Preliminary Results

• Males reported higher competence than females
• No other sex or age differences
• No differences of condition
  

Primary Results

• In-game competence and in-game autonomy significantly predicted enjoyment, future preference and presence while violence did not at all
• Additionally, an interaction between all 3 DV’s were found between high and low trait aggression such that people low in trait aggression were less likely to enjoy the game, prefer the game in future or feel attached to the game in the high-violence condition compared to the low-violence condition, and the opposite effect was observed for people high in trait aggression
• These interactions were no longer significant when controlling for autonomy and competence satisfactions
  

Study 4
Preliminary Results

• Males reported higher competence, autonomy, enjoyment, and preference for future play
• No sex differences emerged for other DV’s
• No differences of condition
  

Primary Results

• In-game autonomy and competence significantly predicted enjoyment in both the low and high violence conditions
• Only in-game competence predicted future preference and presence for both high and low violence conditions
  
• For the high violence condition, trait aggression predicted presence and future preference
• Preference for future play was moderated by condition – the lower in trait aggression you were, the less likely you were to play games if you were in the high-violence condition, and the opposite for people higher in trait aggression

Study 5
Preliminary Results

• No differences of condition on competence ,autonomy, enjoyment, preference for future play or presence
  

Primary Results

• In-game autonomy and competence predicted enjoyment and future preference, but only autonomy predicted presence
• Interactions for enjoyment and future preference between condition and trait aggression were significant as in previous interactions – but no longer significant when controlling for needs satisfactions

Study 6
Preliminary Results

• Female participants were older, had higher autonomy, enjoyment, presence and sequel interest.
• Male participants had higher trait aggression, and selected games higher in violence and in ESRB rating
  

Primary Results

• Correlations showed that autonomy and competence were positively related to game enjoyment, presence, sequel interest, word of mouth and game value
• Additionally, violence was rated to higher autonomy, presence and game value
• Regressions showed that competence and autonomy significantly predicted all 5 DV’s
• Violence significantly positively predicted presence
  
• Only one significant interaction – those higher in trait violence valued games more if they had a lot of violent scenes
  

Thoughts on results

• Interesting stuff – the many studies show a lot of support that in-game competence and autonomy are strong motivators for whether people will like the game
• I’m not sure if this data has much value however – I mean the more competent and independent you feel in the game world, logically the more you’re likely to buy the game because you think you’re good at it, so not sure if this reflects actual motivations for playing games, or if it reflects people just feeling better at certain games and thus being more likely to play them
• I guess a better measure of in-game competence/autonomy, or being able to manipulate it would give me stronger results here
• This is more like a mini-discussion section I released.. oops
• This entire study was self-report which is quite problematic – perhaps it’s more about who the person is rather than what the authors found (i.e., people are more likely to feel independent and competent are also more likely to want to play video games or just rate them as higher) – these alternative explanations need to be explored more I think.
• It is good to note that violence is not a significant predictor of game enjoyment/desire most of the time, though I think they may have just included that aspect to get more attention, as I don’t think violence would often be a motivator for people to just play games in general

Discussion

General Discussion

• Consistently showed strong support for self-determination theory
• Violence adds little or no motivation for players in terms of enjoyment or preferences
• However, people high in violent traits  were more likely to play them in future

Przylbylski, A. K., Ryan, R. M. & Rigby, C. S. (2009). The motivating role of violence in video games. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35, 243-259.

sssssSo what are you waiting for? Start downloading it now and get a sample of one of the most amazing experiences you’re likely to have this year!

A very polished game that’s short but sweet.

sssssTrine has finally come to the PSN,  despite its multiple delays over the last few months and it seems to have been worth the wait. With innovative gameplay, an intriguing storyline and beautiful graphics, it really sucks you into the whole adventure. However, this adventure is extremely short, and sadly, you’ll most likely finish it within an afternoon.

sssssSo what is the game about? Basically, you control a wizard that can conjure boxes, planks and floating platforms to help you solve puzzles and collect items; a thief, which can use a grapple-hook to traverse to hard-to-reach places and can also shoot arrows at enemies; and a warrior, whose main role is to fight enemies. All three of these characters have been put into the body of one person due to the power of the Trine, a mysterious object explained throughout the story, and you are able to switch between them with a single tap of a button. From here on in you’ll be solving puzzles in dark dungeons with no light, navigating underwater to get to new areas, or swinging through dungeons with fireballs flying past you and spike traps threatening to impale you.

An example of the lush gorgeous environments of Trine.

sssssThis idea plays out really well, as you’ll find yourself enjoying both the dialogue between characters, and the variety of ways you can solve a single puzzle. This can range from having the thief simply using her momentum to swing up to an area, having the wizard conjure up multiple boxes to reach this area, or in some instances, having the warrior simply break open an entrance into the area. There are plenty of puzzles in the games, and to collect all of the items will require players to think outside of the box. The only complaint here is that the warrior tends to be under-used, as the thief can be used to kill enemies just as efficiently, but has the added benefit of being agile and able to reach items and experience bottles with ease.

sssssThese experience bottles and items are used in turn as a levelling system for the characters, with items granting the characters health, reincarnation, the ability to breath underwater and many other useful abilities. The experience points on the other hand are used to boost skills which allow the wizard to make more items (3 boxes instead of 2), the thief to perform quicker and more powerful attacks, and the knight to also perform new and powerful attacks. While innovative, the system does suffer from the fact that some skills are unlocked in the last hour to half-hour of the game, limiting how many times you’ll actually use them, and that by about the 10th level (of 15) you’ll have unlocked everything you need to easily finish the game. However, it definitely adds to the experience and adds an RPG element to the standard 2-d platformer game.

A look at the status screen for your characters.

sssssGraphically, the game is gorgeous, as while the game is a 2-d platformer in essence, the game still manages to implement 3-d visuals beautifully. These visuals look polished and the small things such as bridges spiralling off into the background or stalagmites hanging down from the ceiling are nice touches. The cut-scenes between levels are also nice to look at, although as they are simply static images rather than animations, so they should be of the highest quality.

sssssOne of the (few) problems with Trine however is an issue with frame-rates. Often you’ll find the game slowing down when there are a lot of enemies on screen or if there is a lot of graphical detail going on. It’s definitely noticeable and takes you out of the game and back into the loungeroom looking at a tv screen. On top of this, the physics can also be a little funny, as sometimes things will get trapped in odd places, experience bottles will fall off into endless pits forcing you to restart the level, or monsters will fall into lava but will continue to shoot at you. While these bugs are minor, they can be quite frustrating if they happen at a crucial time or force you to restart the game if you’re trying to collect all of the experience bottles.

sssssThe biggest problem with Trine however is its length. The game features 15 levels which can be completed in 7-15 minutes on average, resulting in about 2-4 hours of playtime in total depending on whether you finish it as quickly as possible or want to explore Trine for all its worth. While you can go back through the levels to gain extra experience bottles and secret items, there really isn’t that much use as you’ll have all the items and experience needed to finish any puzzle by around the 10th level. Additionally, while an extra hard difficulty is unlocked when you first finish the game, there is little incentive to finish it a second time around unless you are a completionist.

One of the dungeon levels of Trine.

sssssThe trophies really help in this regard, prolonging the game and offering additional challenges to casual players. These include not dying on the hardest level on the hardest difficulty, collecting all items in the game or even creating a tower out of 12 items and standing on top of it without falling. These are fun trophies that are challenging but not too difficult, and really give the game an added boost of life.

sssssOverall, this game is short but innovative, offering interesting gameplay with beautiful graphics and an interesting storyline. Minor graphical problems aside, it’s definitely worth grabbing for its unique experience, though with the caveat that you’ll probably end up finishing it within the same day.

sssss

Summary

Storyline: 9.0 - An interesting medieval-themed story that’ll suck you in

Gameplay: 8.5 – Fun and different from any other game, but after a while it does start to all feel the same

Graphics: 8.5 – Very polished and beautiful, but does suffer from a few  frame-drops and physics bugs

Sound: 9.0 – Some nice music and sound effects, though a bit more variety would be nicer

Replayability: 6.5 -  It’s very short, and there’s little reason to replay the game simply for the sake of it

Trophy Value: 9.0 – Interesting and fun, these trophies will help prolong the game’s experience and are challenging to boot

Overall: 8.5

Buy it, rent it, or skip it?: Buy it!

Great with family and friends if you’re into trivia, but otherwise… give it a miss.

sssssBringing Trivial Pursuit to the PS3 is part of the latest trend for board games such as Scene it? to be translated into video games. In this case, Trivial Pursuit is a classic trivia game typically played by 2-4 players where players must answer multiple-choice questions correctly in order to earn wedges. A total of 6 wedges can be earned in six categories: geography, science and nature, art and literature, history, sports and leisure, and entertainment, and the player that earns the most wedges and answers a final question correctly wins the game. And that pretty much sums up the entire PS3 game, as you’ll essentially be playing different variations of the same basic concept.

sssssWhen you first start up the game, you’re presented with a variety of options to choose from. Before playing any of these modes, players are invited to customise their characters and choose their names and how they will look. Additionally, players can choose to use one controller to share between all players, or to have multiple controllers for each person. This customization is a nice touch and ensures that even families with just one controller can enjoy the full benefits of this game. From then on in, you can pick one of three game modes depending on what you want to play.

sssssThe first mode playable is classic mode, which is most similar to the board game but contains a few changes to the rules. Firstly, one player does not have to collect all 6 wedges to win, but instead, once a wedge is won all questions relating to that wedge are removed from the board. Once all questions from all categories are removed, players’ wedges are transformed into lives, and players engage in a trivia face-off, where the last man standing wins. This mode is a bunch of fun with family and friends, and if you love trivia-type games, you’re going to love this mode as well. However, as the rules of Trivial Pursuit have been changed, purists of the genre may not like some of the changes such as not having to win all wedges in order to win the game.

Classic mode with four players.

sssssThe next mode available is Clear the Board, which is a single player mode where players must aim to beat their own highest scores as quickly as possible. This is like a challenge mode, where a total of 60 questions can be answered and players gain multipliers based on how many questions they’ve answered correctly in a row. This mode seems to have been put in due to a lack of ideas as to what other modes can be created with Trivial Pursuit, as I cannot imagine any casual gamer or even casual Trivial Pursuit player using this mode often. That is because Trivial Pursuit can be quite boring, and you really need to love trivia or be a serious competitor in order to have a use for this mode. At the same time, I cannot see serious trivial pursuit players buying this game simply to practice their skills.

sssssThe last available mode is facts and friends, which is another multiplayer mode similar to classic mode. In this game, wedges are gained faster (half a wedge for every correct answer), and there is a mini-game involved to earn parts of wedges as well. In this side-game, each time a player is presented with a question, other players must bet whether that person will answer the question right or wrong. If they bet correctly, they can gain from one quarter to one half of a wedge. This mode is a lot quicker to go through than classical mode and is suited for casual players. Having said that, the extra betting before each question really adds to how long it takes to play a game, and does get irritating after playing for a while.

sssssThe gameplay itself is pretty much the same throughout the game modes, and there are only slight changes between the modes. Most of the time you’re simply selecting which answer is correct out of four possible options, but other times you also must indicate on a slider what the exact date or measurement of a question is (e.g., “In what year did the United States file an anti-trust lawsuit against Microsoft?”). In the translation from board game to console game, there is also the added benefit of being able to incorporate pictures and maps into the questions, adding to the overall experience of Trivial Pursuit.

sssssYet ultimately, you’ll find that Trivial Pursuit is exactly like the board game but with a few more options. Based on this, only people who really love trivia games and plan on spending nights with friends or family playing Trivial Pursuit should purchase this game. For the average gamer, this game holds no appeal (besides easy trophies) as the game is really only about answering trivia. That being said, for Trivial Pursuit lovers the appeal is almost endless, with thousands of questions that will not repeat for a while, and bonus downloadable content adding further questions that will prolong the experience.

s

Storyline: N/A – It’s a board game….

Graphics: 7.5 – Fairly average – nothing’s going to surprise you

Gameplay: 7.5 – While it is a fun game, it is essentially just answering Trivia questions with friends

Sound: 7.0 – Fairly average – you probably won’t even notice it most of the time

Replayability: 9.0 – Replayability is almost endless, with thousands of questions to choose from, and bonus downloadable content to get as well, though only for the hardcore Trivial Pursuit fan

Trophies: 7.0: Very easy to get (3-5 hours) but tedious, and basically require you to either be a genius or sit and look through Wikipedia to get most of them

Overall: 8.0

Buy it, rent it or skip it?: Buy it if you’re a trivia fan or plan on playing with friends and family. Otherwise, skip it.

• The first two studies looked at the difference between video gamers and non-video gamers in terms of two the FFOV and flanker compatibility task, and found that video gamers outperform non-video gamers
• The third study trained 16 students on action video games for 10.5 hours, and found improved performance on the FFOV task, but no correlation was found between game improvements and improvements on UFOV task
  
• Overall suggest that this effect is due to broad increases in visuospatial attention from video gamers – perhaps just a general increase of resources or a better ability to use those resources
  

Abstract

The authors investigated the effect of action gaming on the spatial distribution of attention. The authors used the flanker compatibility effect to separately assess center and peripheral attentional resources in gamers versus nongamers. Gamers exhibited an enhancement in attentional resources compared with nongamers, not only in the periphery but also in central vision. The authors then used a target localization task to unambiguously establish that gaming enhances the spatial distribution of visual attention over a wide field of view. gamers were more accurate than nongamers at all eccentricities tested, and the advantage held even when a concurrent center task was added, ruling out a trade-off between central and peripheral attention. by establishing the causal role of gaming through training studies, the authors demonstrate that action gaming enhances visuospatial attention throughout the visual field.

Method

Participants/Design

• Study 1
• 16 men participated – normal or correct vision
• Placed into either video game players (VGP’s) (minimum of 3-4 days a week for the previous 6 months), or non-video gamers (NVGP’s) (little or no video game use in the past 6 months)
• VGP’s consisted of eight right-handed men, mean age of 20.89 years, 7 of which play everyday, and the 8th which plays several times a week, and only played action video games (games that require fast motion, vigilant monitoring of visual periphery and require simultaneous tracking of multiple objects)
• NVGP’s consisted of eight men (6 right-handed, 2 left), with mean age of 21.6 years – 7 did not play at all, and one played only 5 times in the last 6 months
• Study 2
• 16 men participated – right handed – normal or corrected vision
• All  different from Study 1 – all classified based on same procedures
• VGPs mean age = 19.5, NVGPs = 20.1
• Study 3
• 32 NVGPs – none from Study 1 or 2
• Criteria same for NVGPs as before – split randomly into experimental/control groups
• 8 women/8 men in experimental group (mean age = 21.3, all right-handed)
• 9 women/7 men in control group (mean age = 21.0, 15 right handed)
  

Thoughts on participants

• Fairly small sample sizes, but for cognitive tasks that’s ok – averaging over many many trials
• Everything else seems to make sense – criterion for VGP’s and NVGP’s is fine etc.

Materials

Study 1

Flanker compatibility task.

In this measure, participants were shown targets, fillers and distractors in light gray on a black background. The target was a square and a diamond, while filler shapes were a houselike shape, an upside-down shape, a sideways trapezoid, a triangle pointing up and a triangle pointing down. Both the target and filler shapes were on average subtended 0.6° vertically, and 0.4° horizontally, and always presented inside a circle. The six circles were always in the same space as per the diagram below – 2.1° from the centre, and 2.1° from each other’s centres. One of the targets (square or diamond) always appeared in one of the circles, while any of the filler shapes could be in 0, 1, 3 or 5 of the circles randomly. A low perceptual load was considered to be 0 or 1 fillers, and a high perceptual load was considered to be 3 or 5 fillers.

Lastly, there was also a distractor set of stimuli, which could appear either in the middle (0.5° left/right from centre), or on the sides (4.2° left/right from centre) as below, and these shapes were diamonds, squares and elongated circles. All conditions (central vs peripheral distractor, 0, 1, 3, or 5 fillers, square or diamond targets, compatible, non-compatible or neutral distractors) were presented equally to all participants.

In this task, participants were basically asked to figure out as quickly and accurately as possible whether a diamond or square was in one of the six targets amongst many other distractors

Study 2

Functional Field of View Task

Initial display shows a square outline that makes the person look in the centre of the screen. After 1s, the target appears (a filled triangle) in one of 24 locations around the screen. These 24 locations were as follows: they could appear at either 10°, 20°, or 30° from the centre of fixation, and they could appear at any one of 8 locations around a spoke as shown below. To ensure that difficulty was equal for all locations, target stimuli appeared for 6.7ms at 10°, while it appeared for 13.4ms at 20° and 30°. Following this, a masking stimuli appeared for 750ms. This consisted of vertical and horizontal lines with varying brightness and thickness levels randomly spaced together, circles and squares with different sizes, and thick lines covering each possible location. Lastly, a response screen appeared and participants had to indicate where the target stimuli appeared on the numberpad 1-9 (with 1-9 corresponding to 1-9 on the spokes). Accuracy was more important than speed, and feedback was given after every trial.

Two levels of distraction were used: a no-distraction condition where the target appeared alone on the screen, a half-distractors-present condition, where empty squares occupied all 23 other locations apart from where the target was, equal in size to 4° by 4°, and lastly, a distractors-full condition, where all other 23 locations were filled, as well as the areas between each location, for a total of 47 distractor stimuli.

120 trials were performed in total (8 spokes x 3 eccentricities x  5 repetitions). 0-distractors was always followed by 23 distractors, followed by 47 distractors, and the 23 and 47 distractors were collapsed together into a distractors-present condition.

Centre Task

In a different set of blocks, each including the 0, 23 and 47 distractor stimuli conditions, participants had to not only identify where the triangle was, but also identify whether the shape in the middle of the screen was a diamond or an isosceles triangle. Participants in this block had to indicate which shape was in the middle, and then identify where the filled triangle appeared (referred to as the centre task block).

Study 3

Functional Field of View Task as above with a few changes

Only four blocks run – 2 no centre, and 2 centre task blocks, and each of these had a distractors present and a distractors not present condition. All targets were presented for 13ms at all eccentricities. The centre task became a fine orientation discrimination task instead of an identification of an isosceles or diamond task. A white noise mask was used instead of a colourful noise mask. No feedback was given after each round either. The study was also run in this order: no-center task/no distractors task, no-center task/distractors-present task, center-task/no distractors task, and center-task/distractors present task. Lastly, only 72 trials were used (8 spokes x 3 eccentricities x 3 repetitions)

Unreal Tournament 2004

An action-based FPS requiring control of the entire visual field. Difficulty of each block was adjusted based on kill-death ratio – if someone had twice as many kills as deaths, the difficulty was increased. On the final 2 days, players were tested again on lower difficulty levels to assess improvement.

Tetris

This is a relatively simple game, and was selected to control for the effect of improved visuomotor coordination – but it does not require players to track multiple objects at once.

Thoughts on materials

• Basically, used two different visuospatial tasks to show that VGPs are better on them than NVGPs, and to test whether they showed an improvement
• Seems to be great, though I’m no expert on cognitive tasks so can’t really pull it apart – it does seem odd though that in Study 3 they change so much and don’t use both tasks – not sure why.

Procedure

Study 1

• Students performed the flanker compatibility task as explained above – roughly 1.5 hours to complete
  

Study 2

• Students completed the FFOV task as above (study 2) -

Study 3

• For both control groups and testing groups played a predetermined video game for 30 total hours (2 hours max per day, minimum of 5 hours per week, maximum of 8 hours per week)
• Experimental group played Unreal Tournament 2004, Control group played Tetris
• The FFOV task was presented both before and after the 30 hours of game training
  

Thoughts on procedure

• Cool study – first you ensure that video game players do show benefits in visuospatial tasks when compared to non-video game players, and then you test to see if you can train normal people via video-games to show the same effects
• Interestingly enough though, the flanker compatibility task was not used in study 3 and the authors never explained why

Results

Study 1
Reaction Times

• As perceptual load increased, reaction time decreased (standard main effect)
• If the distractors were compatible, reactions times were faster than if the distractors were not compatible
• Additionally, the difference between compatible and incompatible distractors decreased as perceptual load increased
• Video gamers show a larger effect of the above point when compared to video gamers, indicating that VGP’s continue to process the distractors even at full perceptual load, while NVGPs do not
• The smaller difference scores of the compatibility effect with a larger perceptual load was larger for peripheral rather than central distractors
  
• Overall, while in the right direction, VGPs did not show a faster mean reaction time on this task than NVGP’s
• For VGP group – no effect of perceptual load was found
• There was an eccentricity by load interaction however – at low load, compatibility effects were higher for distractors in the periphery, and at high load, compatibility effects were higher for distractors in the central area
  

Accuracy

• Accuracy rates dropped as perceptual load increased
• No other main effects or interactions

Study 2

UFOV Task: Peripheral location accuracy – both distractors present and distractors absent conditions

• Eccentricity effects occurred – performance at 20° was higher than performance at 10° or 30° for both distractors present/absent conditions
• People made more peripheral errors when they also had to do the centre task
• VGPs also outperformed NVGPs for both distractors present and distractors absent conditions
• Also an interaction occurred – VGPs occurred extremely well in the centre task condition at 10° of eccentricity

UFOV Task: Centre identification task

• VGPs outperformed NVGPs – higher accuracy rates
• VGPs showed similar performance at each eccentricity, while as NVGPs suffered a big performance hit at 10°

Overall effect of centre task on peripheral location accuracy

• Only NVGPs showed worse performance when presented with the centre task – VGPs did not

Study 3
Game Improvements

• Both groups showed significant improvements in scores/kills etc.
  

UFOV Task: Peripheral location accuracy – both distractors present and distractors absent conditions

• Accuracy was lower as eccentricity increased
• Action group improved more than the non-action group when there were no distractors and no-centre task, but not significantly – authors note this may be due to a ceiling effect
• VGPs showed greater improvement on task for no distractors/centre task present than NVGPs
• For distractors present/no centre task: Action group more accurate than non-action group, action group improved more than non-action group, and action group suffering less performance hits as eccentricity increased than the non-action group
• For distractors present/centre task present: Action group improved more than control group

UFOV Task – Centre Identification Task performance

• No interesting effects I think at least

Correlational Work

• Performance increases on the UFOV task should be related to performance increases in games – but no effect was found

Thoughts on results

• Interesting results – it seems like for Study 2, It’s interesting to note that VGPs really outperformed NVGPs at 10° of eccentricity where the stimulus was presented for 6.7ms rather than 13.4ms – really suggests that VGPs just pick up things quicker
• Really strong and reliable results as well – VGPs almost always outperformed NVGPs across the board

Discussion

Study 1

• Results suggest that VGPs have higher attentional resources than NVGPs (less decrease in size of compatibility effect with increasing perceptual load)
• Also suggest that as perceptual load increases, VGPs can process both central and peripheral distractors better than NVGPs
• Outline some alternative explanations and discredit them
• Spatial distribution of VGPs is similar to NVGPs – similar effects basically
  

Study 2

• FFOV task was used to show that VGPs are better at filtering out information that isn’t needed (distractors), and thus have better selective attention than NVGPs
• The data support this and show VGPs outperform NVGPs in a variety of areas such as eccentricity and at locations
• Performance is better for VGPs even at eccentricities that most do not look at – suggesting that training is broad and can be applied to novel situations
• Basically argues that more resources are available to VGPs and that this attention can increase target selection
• With centre-task as well, VGPs far-outperformed NVGPs, suggesting that VGPs have a higher capacity load they can take on than NVGPs

Study 3

• To get rid of the alternative hypothesis that video gamers have better visual skills or are genetically endowed with greater attentional abilities, this study was run
• Effectively showed that action video games help visuospatial attention, and this is not due to general visuomotor co-ordination or to test-retest conditions
• This effect also extended to 30°, which is beyond normal video gaming, suggesting that this training is broad
• Authors argue that basically, action video games increase attentional resources over the whole field and this best explains the data obtained
• Future studies should aim to find a correlation between level of the player and quality of their attention
  

Green, C. S., & Bavelier, D. (2006). Effect of action video games on the spatial distribution of visuospatial attention. Journal of experimental psychology, 32, 1465-1478.

A Pleasant Surprise… for a while at least.

sssssFritz Chess is one of the most popular and widely used Chess-tutoring programs available for chess players, so bringing the game to the PS3 almost guarantees a very good experience. Yet while it does deliver a very deep and educational program, it’s ultimately not very well suited for the PS3 market.

sssssThe developers keep things interesting nevertheless, with an adventure mode introducing you to a variety of gameplay modes. This includes a small comic panel before each chess game, as well as animations after you win and lose against an opponent. You’ll be facing off against royal guards and queens in a variety of modes, including: classical chess, chess 960 (where pieces are randomly assorted around the board instead of the default position), puzzle modes (solving puzzles such as “Which move is best” or “Checkmate in 1”), and blitz giveaway (where the point is to lose all your pieces).

sssssWhile a very entertaining way to present a variety of chess modes, the problem is that it’s incredibly short. If you’re a fairly good chess player, you’ll easily be able to finish it in half an hour, and I can’t imagine even fairly new players taking more than 1-2 hours to finish this mode. This really limits adventure mode, as while it makes the game interesting and introduces you to a lot of new game modes, it’s also over fairly quickly.

sssssAfter you finish adventure mode however, you still have a huge range of options to choose from. You can play against other players (locally), play against the computer at a variety of difficulty ratings, view historical matches, replay your saved games to analyse each move, and solve different puzzles in puzzle mode. This is very useful for chess players looking to improve their game, offering in-depth detail of where the next best move is, what happens if you move the pieces, the ability to take back moves and the ability to force your opponent to make certain moves among others.

sssssThe graphics of these modes are very polished, with a variety of different avatars available for your pieces in both 3d and 2d formats. However, the chess set in 3d is problematic as while it does look good, it also makes it very difficult to distinguish the pieces from each other. The sound also fits in with the mood well, but while it’s very easy to listen to, it’s really only ever going to be background music and by itself, it doesn’t really add anything to the game.

sssssAdditionally, it’s important to note that one of the main drawback of this game in that it’s all about chess. While the replayability is theoretically endless as no two chess games are the same, casual gamers aren’t going to be coming back to this week after week just to play chess. Even professional players who would benefit from this sort of program have access to more powerful and in-depth programs on the PC format. While this game is fun and very in-depth, it just doesn’t make much sense to release it on the PS3 format as the hardcore crowd has better options, and the casual crowd is probably not that interested unless they’re in it just for the trophies.

sssssOn that note, the trophies are ridiculously easy, which further means this game will not last long in casual gamers hands, as this game is probably the easiest retail title ever released. In just three hours I managed to collect all the trophies in this game without much challenge. I think the developers missed out on a great opportunity to put in some fun and challenging trophies, and opted to make the trophies very easy, perhaps to attract players who are only looking for easy trophies.

sssssUltimately, you’ll enjoy the game no matter who you are, but you’ll get bored of it very quickly as well. It’s a very well-polished game with a lot of in-depth analytical tools, but it’s also not as powerful as other programs available for professional chess players on other formats. Thus the only real reason an everyday person would buy this game is probably solely for the trophies or on a thoughtful (but probably pointless) attempt to give their kids an educational option on the PS3.

sd

Storyline: 6.0 – While it is there and it is entertaining, it’s also very short.

Graphics: 8.5 – A variety of different chess sets to use in both 2d and 3d, but the 3d sides are hard to distinguish and ultimately.

Gameplay: 9.0 – Many different modes to choose from to hone your skills, though ultimately all you’re doing is playing different versions of chess.

Sound: 8.0 – While it’s there and does fit the mood, it’s not exactly innovative or more than background music.

Replayability: 7.0 – While the replayability is endless, it quickly becomes repetitive for the casual gamer.

Trophies: 7.5: Very easy to get, but also not challenging at all. It would be nicer to have more challenging trophies for a larger sense of achievement at the end.

Overall: 8.0

Rent it or Buy it?: Rent it!

• Basically a replication and extension of Green and Bavelier’s studies
• Looks at cross-sectional of video game experts vs non-video game experts, and trains non-gamers on a variety of games in a longitudinal study to show whether 21. hours of training can show effects
• Results show that expert video gamers do outperform non-video game experts on some tasks, but other tasks (which have previously shown effects) do not show effects. Additionally, no effects of training are shown for the longitudinal study. Results may be due to task/stimuli differences between studies
• Overall raises the question of what does video gaming really do, in what areas, is it a general increase in strategy use in the brain, or is a specific increase of skills such as visuospatial abilities? Is it worth it using video games to increase these skill?

Abstract

Expert video game players often outperform non-players on measures of basic attention and performance. Such differences might result from exposure to video games or they might reflect other group differences between those people who do or do not play video games. Recent research has suggested a causal relationship between playing action video games and improvements in a variety of visual and attentional skills. The current research sought to replicate and extend these results by examining both expert/non-gamers differences and the effects of video game playing on tasks tapping a wider range of cognitive abilities, including attention, memory and executive control. Non-gamers played 20+ hours of an action video \game, a puzzle game, or a real-time strategy game. Expert gamers and non-gamers differed on a number of basic cognitive skills: experts could track objects moving at greater speeds, better detected changes to objects stored in visual short-term memory, switched more quickly from one task to another, and mentally rotated objects more efficiently. Strikingly, extensive video game practice did not substantially enhance performance for non-gamers on most cognitive tasks, although they did improve somewhat in mental rotation performance. Our results suggest that at least some differences between video game experts and non-gamers in basic cognitive performance result either from far more extensive video game experience or from pre-existing group differences in abilities that result in a self-selection effect.

Method

Participants/Design

• Part 1 Study: Cross-sectional Group
• Eleven expert video game players: played 7 or more hours of video-games per week for the past 2 years – wide variety of games (strategy, RPG etc.), but had high levels of expertise with action video games
• Ten non-video game players: played video games for 1 hour or less a week
• Restricted to only male participants
• Part 2 Study: Longitudinal group
• 82 participants recruited via flyers posted in campus buildings or through advertisements on online forums
• Were non-gamers – had to play less than 1 hour per week, with 0 hours per week preferred
• Mostly female
• Randomly assigned to one of three video game groups: a) playing medal of honour, an action game (n = 20), b) playing rise of nations, a strategy game (n = 23), or c) Tetris, a puzzle game (n = 20).
• 19 participants were also assigned to a no-practice control group

Thoughts on participants

• Cross-sectional participants are pretty normal – although you have a low sample size, cognitive stimuli average over many many trials, so you get much less error variation
• Interesting that the sample was only males – may limit generalisability I guess
• Although they’ve been playing their entire life, 7 hours a week for the last 2 years doesn’t sound like that much. I myself would easily play over 7 hours in a day when I had more time, so maybe it’s not indicative of hardcore gamers
• Longitudinal Study participants - fairly normal, though using all females may also limit generalisability
• Using both a longitudinal and cross-sectional study is really awesome – really lets you look at the differences and whether video game training can show short-term benefits

Materials

Games – not much to be said here…

Medal of Honour.

FPS that is perceptually demanding. DV’s recorded were number of enemies killed, number of hits taken, firing accuracy and other statistics

Tetris.

Puzzle game with low attention requirements. Total score and number of lines were recorded, or the amount of points at the time when the game was still incomplete at the end of the session.

Rise of Nations.

A strategy game – low perceptual demands, but high strategy/cognitive demands. Military and civic achievement scores were used as DV’s.

Visual and Attentional Tasks

Functional Field of View Task (Green and Bavelier, 2003 – shown previous positive results).

Basically, participants had to look for a white triangle within a circle among square distractors in a brief display of only 12ms. The white triangle could appear at any of 8 locations, and at either 10, 20 or 30 degrees away from the centre of fixation.  This was followed by a 100ms bright colourful mask. One block of 24 trials was done for practice, and then 120 test trials were performed.

Attentional Blink Task (Raymond, Shapiro & Arnell, 1992/Green and Bavelier, 2003. Green and Bavelier, 2003 showed previous positive results).

Participants view letters that appear rapidly at the centre of the screen and identify the white letter in the sequence of black letters and whether an X was present after the white letter (which occurred in 50% of trials). Each letter appears for 12ms, followed by an 84 ms blank space before the next letter. The sequence is 16 to 22 letters in length and the white letter appears after the 7th, 10th or 13th letter. The X appears either 3, 4, 5 or 6 letters after the first target. 15 trials were performed for practice, followed by 144 test trials.

Enumeration Task (Green and Bavelier previously showed positive results).

In this task, participants view an array of 1-8 dots (0.25 degrees in diameter) and must indicate how many appeared. Dots are located randomly in a 7 degree by 7 degree matrix and no dot can appear in the centre. Fixation is in the centre for 900ms, followed by a blank screen for 600ms, and then the test array for 50ms. 32 practice trials were performed, followed by 160 test trials.

Multiple Object Tracking Task (Pylyshyn & Storm, 1988).

Participants first see seven green circles (distractors) and three red circles (targets). After pressing a button, the red circles turn green (same colour as the seven distractors). Participants must then use the right arrow key to speed up the circles and make them move, and the left arrow key to make them go slower. The aim is to find a speed at which the circles move as fast as possible but participants can still track the circles for at least 5 seconds. Three trials are performed to find an average.

Participants are then shown 7 distractors and 3 targets as before, and the red targets turn green as before. The circles will move at the average speed identified previously, and after 8s, one circle in the display turns red and participants must indicate whether it is a distractor or target circle.

Visual Short-Term Memory Task (Luck & Vogel, 1997).

Participants view coloured (red, green, blue, pink or black) lines at different orientations (vertical, horizontal, tilted to left or right). Lines are .2 degrees by 1.6 degrees and had a centre-to-centre distance of at least 3.5 degrees. Firstly, a display is shown containing 2, 4 or 6 lines for 100ms, followed by a blank screen for 900ms, and lastly a test display. On 50% of the trials, either the colour or orientation of the test display changed compared to the first display. Participants must indicate whether something has changed, and accuracy is stressed over speed. Participants completed 24 practice trials, and 144 test trials.

Spatial Processing and Spatial Memory Tasks

Spatial 2-back (Braver et al., 1997).

Displays were shown to participants showing letters one at a time at different spatial locations. Participants press one key if the letter was in the same location as the letter presented two items previously, and a different key if it was presented in a different location two items previously. letters were 1.7 degrees total and appeared at one of ten locations around a circle of diameter 15.5 degrees. Each letter appeared for 500ms with an interval of 2000ms. On 75% of trials, the letter location was different from the item presented 2-items back, and on 25% of trials, the location was the same. Speed and accuracy were stressed over 100 trials.

Corsi block-tapping task (Corsi, 1972).

Nine gray squares (2.3 degrees by 2.3 degrees) are shown to participants in an irregular pattern. Each square changes from gray to white and back, with one square changing at a time. At the end of the trial, participants were asked to click the boxes in the same order. Participants completed four sequences where only 3 squares changed, followed by four sequences where 4 squares changed, and this pattern kept on until four trials with 9 changes occurred. Accuracy was emphasized over speed.

Mental rotation (Cooper & Shepard, 1973).

In this task, participants are presented with two stimuli which can either be the same shape, or the mirror-image of the shape. These stimuli can be rotated at 0, 45, 90, 135, 180, 225, 270 or 315 degrees. Participants must determine if the two stimuli are the same or are different. Each shape is 2.4 by 2.4 degrees and presented 3 degrees from the centre of the screen. there were 30 practice trials, and 128 test trials.

Executive Control and Reasoning Tasks

Task Switching task (Pashler, 2000).

Participants must switch between a task where they state whether numbers 1-9 (excluding 5) are odd and even, and a task where they state whether the numbers 1-9 (excluding 5) are high or low (below/above 5). Numbers are presented for 1500ms on a pink/blue background in the centre, and the same number does not appear twice. If the background is pink, participants must state whether the item is odd (N key) or even (M key). If the background is blue, participants must state whether the item is high (X key) or low (Z key). Participants completed 30 trials per block, with 2 blocks of odd/even games, and 2 blocks of high/low tasks as practice. They then did a practice dual task where the task changed every 5 trials for 30 trials. Lastly, a group of 160 trials were presented where the task was chosen randomly each round.

Tower of London task (Tunstall, 1999).

Participants view an instrument with three pegs and four discs, and must rearrange the discs to form a certain pattern set out in a picture. Only one disc can be moved at any time, from one peg to any other. Participants must solve the problem in a certain number of moves, and have 3 chances to do so. 9 problems were given that increased in difficulty, and participants were told that accuracy was more important than speed. If the problem was solved in the first go, 3 points were awarded, 2 points for the 2nd go, 1 point for the third. This test was given once at the start and once at the end of the study.

Working memory operation span task (Turner and Engle, 1989).

Participants must solve math problems while also remembering sets of 3-6 words. This test was performed three times using unique tests each time. Participants were required to recall the words in the set after each set of 3-6 words.

Ravens matrices tasks (Raven, Court & Raven, 1990).

This test requires people to locate a missing piece of a puzzle that completes a complex visual stimulus. There were an umber of these tasks, which were split up into three tests containing 12 items. These three tests were given at the start, middle and end of the study, and participants were given 20 minutes to finish each 12-item task. Before the first test, participants were also given a 5-minute practice test.

Thoughts on materials

• Wow – a huge range of tests – not sure about the validity and consistency of each, but such a huge amount will surely get to show something
• Also interesting that they look at both the visual and attentional tasks as shown before, but also look at spatial processing and executive functioning and whether it’s improved by other games such as strategy/Tetris when one would expect they would
• The DV’s recorded for MOH, RON and Tetris are kind of weak and not very comparable to each other. Perhaps a better way to measure this would be in order.

Procedure

Cross-sectional Study

Both experts and non-experts only did the tasks mentioned above with no other training, and they did not perform the Tower of London or Ravens tests. All tasks were performed once in the same order as the longitudinal study.

Longitudinal Study

Participants in this group played 15 game sessions over 4-5 weeks. Each game session was 1.5 hours long, except for the first and last sessions which were both 1 hour each (with 0.5 hours given over to completing cognitive tests) (Total playing time of 21.5 hours). Players playing Medal of Honour or Rise of Nations played a tutorial, while those playing Tetris were simply given a short explanation. Data was collected over 6 months, with 15-20 participants per 4-5 week game session period. At the end of each session, game progress was saved and players continued playing at the next session. Note that Tetris was simply the same game over and over, while MOH and RON increased in difficulty over the entire period.

During these game sessions, participants also had to complete cognitive tests 3 times which could mostly be done in two 1.5-2 hour assessment sessions.

Thoughts on procedure

• Good to look at both the longitudinal and cross-sectional studies
• Interesting to note that Tetris did not improve in difficulty over time – this could easily lead to a boredom effect in a very short amount of time.
• Also interesting to note how participants were played out over the months – one could assume that this introduced extra error, as some participants would be closer to stress near the end of the term than those playing near the start of the term.

Results (Note that for all non-significant differences, all were leaning towards the predicted results of gamers outperforming non-gamers in the cross-sectional data).

Game Improvements.

Players showed a substantial increase in skill after the 21.5 hours of gaming, with MOH, RON and Tetris players all showing substantial gains in scores, accuracy and kills.

Visual and Attentional Tasks.

Functional Field-of View Task

• No significant difference between gamers and non-gamers in cross-sectional study
• No significant difference between gamers playing an FPS or any other group mentioned in longitudinal study
• Performance of all longitudinal groups improved on task
• No interactions

Attentional Blink

• No significant differences between gamers and non-gamers in cross-sectional study
• No significant difference in the longitudinal group between FPS and other groups
• No interactions

Enumeration

• No significant differences between gamers and non-gamers in cross-sectional study
• No significant difference in the longitudinal group between FPS and other groups
• No interactions

Multiple Object Tracking

• Experts strongly out-perform non-gamers in terms of speed, though accuracy does not change for the cross-sectional study
• No effect of group however in the longitudinal study

Visual Short-Term Memory

• Experts strongly out-perform non-gamers in terms of accuracy for the cross-sectional study
• No effect of group however in the longitudinal study

Spatial processing and spatial memory tasks.

Spatial 2-back task

• Experts show a trend to be faster (p = .06) than non-experts, but no differences in accuracy for the cross-sectional study
• No significant differences between groups for the longitudinal studies for both accuracy or speed

Corsi block-tapping task

• No significant differences between gamers and non-gamers in cross-sectional study
• No significant difference in the longitudinal group between FPS and other groups
• No interactions

Mental rotation

• No significant differences between gamers and non-gamers individually on accuracy or speed, BUT when these two groups are composed together, experts show better performance than non-experts
• Tetris players showed performance increases on this task

Executive Functioning and reasoning

Working Memory Operation-Span

• No significant differences between gamers and non-gamers in cross-sectional study
• No significant difference in the longitudinal group between FPS and other groups
• No interactions

Tower of London

• No significant difference in the longitudinal group between FPS and other groups
• No interactions

Task-Switching

• Experts showed a smaller switch cost compared to non-gamers
• No significant difference in the longitudinal group between FPS and other groups
• No interactions

Ravens Matrices

• No significant difference in the longitudinal group between FPS and other groups
• No interactions

Thoughts on results

• Given the results found by Green and Bavelier, these results are really interesting and suggest there is no differences between gamers and non-gamers
• Perhaps it’s an effect of gamers not being hardcore gamers, and non-gamers playing games occasionally?
• Still, one would expect stronger results than the ones obtained here
• It’s also interesting to note that none of the games in the longitudinal study found results except for Tetris in mental rotation – this strongly suggests that there is no benefit to playing games
• If a study could replicate this data, it would basically put an end to arguments that video games improve abilities, but until then, I’m going to think there’s something else going on here
• All groups showed practice effects, which may have obscured the actual results?
• It is still odd that Green and Bavelier showed effects after only 10 hours, while in this study, 21.5 hours did not show effects

Discussion

• Some tasks showed improvement for gamers compared to non-gamers
• No task showed improvement for 21 hours worth of video game training compared to no video game training
• Authors argue that the difference between results on their tasks and previous tasks are the result of the tasks in this study being different potentially – making it hard to figure out what makes video game players better overall
• Perhaps gender is the explanation? Mostly females in the longitudinal study – maybe they don’t have an improvement as much?
• Possibility that such a huge cognitive battery gave huge practice effects to a variety of areas and masked improvements
• Does transfer occur because video games result in flexible strategies and general improvements in attentional control which can be applied to other studies?
• Does transfer occur because of video games skills being similar to task skills?
• Possibility of making games that therefore increase perception/intelligence/response accuracy and speed etc.

Boot, W. R., Kramer, A. F., Simons, D. J., Fabiani, M. & Gratton, G. (2008). The effects of video game playing on attention, memory and executive control, Acta Psychologica, 129, 387-398.

EA’s Need for Speed Franchise hits an all-time low.

sssssIf all you take from this review is that you shouldn’t buy Need For Speed Undercover, then this review has served its purpose. This game is bad, and if you’ve played the previous Need for Speed games, or other games such as Midnight Club Los Angeles, you’re going to be disappointed.

sssssAs per usual, there’s some sort of cover story for the game, and you’ll find yourself as an undercover cop attempting to infiltrate a crime syndicate. But the story just doesn’t flow well, with repetitive story-based missions revolving around you stealing cars or getting from point A to point B with no sort of real point as to why you’re doing it. There are also live cut-scenes intermittently throughotu the story, featuring real-life acting, but it tends to take away from the experience. While innovative at first, you’ll soon find that you’re either listening to your undercover supervisor Chase repeating the same statements that you need to go deeper and everything’s messed up, or listening to your gang repeatedly getting angry at you when you beat them at races, or complimenting you when you steal cars for them. That’s all there is to the story in essence and the ending is fairly predictable. Overall the storyline is just bad and doesn’t flow well at all.

sssssUnfortunately, the gameplay itself does not make up for the terrible storyline. While at first you’ll find the game modes Sprint (racing from one point to another), Escape (evading the police), Circuit (racing around in a circuit), Cop Takeout (taking out a certain number of cops),  Cost to State (Performing $X amount of damage), Outruns (staying ahead of your opponent for 90 seconds) and Highway Battles (getting ahead of your opponent by 300m in a heavy density traffic area) exciting, you’ll soon find they’re all pretty much the same and get very bored. With other games like Midnight Club: Los Angeles, you’ll find yourself wanting to keep playing, and the game feels challenging so that when you finish it, you really feel rewarded. I think that a part of this is that you can press the down button at any time after a race to enter the nearest event, which feels like you’re just doing race after race without just driving for the heck of it. While destroying the feeling of an open space to explore, it at least makes the game that much quicker to finish. Additionally, you’ll find that you don’t really need money in Need for Speed:Undercover, as a fairly decent car can often compete with the fastest cars, and so there’s no real incentive to constantly be upgrading your car or buying a faster version.

sssssAdditionally, there a whole range of problems with how the game handles graphics. For instance, the background isn’t always completely loaded as you’re driving, which means that as you’re driving, you sometimes enter an area in a race that hasn’t been loaded yet and have to wait for it to load. Once the background is loaded, you’ll occassionally find walls appearing in front of you, cars  being generated in your way, and funnily enough, cars even appearing randomly in mid-air. I’ve even had the misfortune of driving so far into an unloaded background that the game simply resets me before the area and inevitably loses me the race. Additionally, the way that walls are handled seems to be very strange, as while sometimes you will hit a wall and slow down, sometimes you’ll also be randomly flung into the air or flipped upside down. It takes away from the fun of the game as you’ll end up having to approach corners slower then normal simply to ensure you don’t hit one of these random bumps in the walls. The loading times are also ridiculous, as you’ll find yourself waiting 15-40 seconds for a race to load, and wait 10-25 seconds after a race for the game to auto-save. This means that effectively, you’ll probably end up spending 10-15% of the game simply waiting for games to load.

sssssOn top of all of these problems, the frame-rate can also be extremely terrible in some situations, such as at the start of races or during random intervals in the game. These frame-rate issues and the multitude of graphical problems turn what could have been a fun game into a very frustrating experience. As to the graphics themselves, they’re less than amazing. Cars and scenery look average, and to be honest, NFS:U looks a lot more like a PS2 game than something that belongs on the PS3. There really is absolutely nothing special about the graphics, and a whole lot more could have been done with them. On the other hand, the sound is quite good in terms of replicating what a car sounds like, but the background music is fairly repetitive and will always play the same tracks each time. If you’re going to play in short intervals, it almost feels like you’re listening to the same song on loop, especially as you’re unable to change the music.

sssssReplayability is there in the game, although why anyone would want to replay the races is beyond me. A total of 187 races exist in single-player, with a large amount of them focussed on sprint and circuit events. Additionally, multiplayer games are plentiful and you’ll have no trouble finding a game, and there is also a bonus event to be played online. While you have the typical circuit and dash (sprint) modes, you also have Cops and Robbers, where players must steal money from one point and deliver it to another point without other players taking them out (Think capture the flag). However, many players also simply leave the game on to get a trophy for participating in 119 games, and I’ve played games with other players where no other person is moving at all. This limits how fun this mode is as you’ll quite often find yourself being the only one who’s actually participating at all.

sssssLastly, even the trophies are not redeeming. A large majority of them are bronze, and centre on story-related items or relate to races you’ll have to do if you want to get the platinum trophy anyway. You’ll also have to finish all 187 races to get the coveted Platinum trophy, and well, this game really just doesn’t motivate you enough to do that. The trophies also come very slowly, and it almost seems like a waste of time to collect them.

sssssIn conclusion, EA has really let the franchise down with Need for Speed: Undercover, delivering a game with backwards ideas that really takes away from the game. You’ll find yourself frustrated throughout due to the random bugs and flaws, and really feeling like you’re playing a buggy PS2 game. By the end of it, you’ll be glad to just throw it out and move on.

Summary

Storyline: 4.0 – A very basic story that really doesn’t add anything to the experience.

Graphics: 4.0 – Problems with the frame-rate, random bugs and poor graphics really set this game backwards.

Sound: 6.0 – While the sound is alright, there are no options to change the background music and it quickly becomes repetitive and annoying.

Gameplay: 3.5 – Basic and unvarying gameplay that just doesn’t seem fun at all.

Replayability: 7.0 – While there is a lot of replayability in the game, there is very little incentive to go back for it.

Trophies: 4.5 – The trophies aren’t easy, don’t feel challenging, take a long time to get and you won’t be having fun getting them.

Overall: 4.5.

Rent it or Buy it?: Neither! Avoid this game if you can.