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We spend 3 billion hours a week as a planet playing videogames. Is it worth it? How could it be MORE worth it?
Currently there are more than half a billion people worldwide playing computer and videogames at least an hour a day -- and 183 million in the U.S. alone. The younger you are, the more likely you are to be a gamer -- 99% of boys under 18 and 94% of girls under 18 report playing videogames regularly. The average young person racks up 10,000 hours of gaming by the age of 21 -- or 24 hours less than they spend in a classroom for all of middle and high school if they have perfect attendance. It's a remarkable amount of time we're investing in games. 5 million gamers in the U.S., in fact, are spending more than 40 hours a week playing games -- the equivalent of a full time job!
What accounts for the lure of games – and are we getting as much from our games as we’re giving them?
I explore these questions in my new book Reality is Broken – and I believe that, for most gamers, playing games is, surprisingly not a waste of time -- but rather quite productive. Gameplay may not contribute to the Gross Domestic Product… but scientific research shows that gameplay does contribute to our quality of life, by producing positive emotions (such as optimism, curiosity and determination) and stronger social relationships (when we play with real-life friends and family – especially if the game is co-operative). And for gamers who prefer tough, challenging games, they can build up our problem-solving resilience -- so we learn faster from our mistakes, and become resilient in the face of failure.
However... not all games power-up our real lives. Some games, at the end of the day, make us feel stupid for having wasted so much time on them.
So: How do we know when we're playing a good game -- and when would we be better off doing something "real"?
GAMERS: What's one thing you wish non-gamers would understand about your favorite games, and what you get out of playing them?
NON-GAMERS: What's one thing you wish a gamer would explain about games today, and why they play?
Bob Fleck
We need to work at improving the gender balance of game creators.
Comment deleted
Sargis B.
You yourself stated in your talks, big fan btw, that games are a form of escape. Problem is I've noticed that many gamers seem to think world changing games ... aren't games. Some even went as far as to say that such games seemed liked Trojan horses trying to enter and spoil their humble haven of fun and excitement lol. So at the end of the day, it pretty much just comes down to perception. You need to first get gamers to play before pondering on how the game(s) can make a difference. So game designers in this "genre" need to consider how these games come across first and foremost before anything else.
Another thing I noticed is that many people seemed to shun off the idea of playing such games. They didn't want to admit it but eventually they said that they didn't like even the idea of such games because they thought they weren't smart or capable enough to play them. So this "realization" of theirs totally destroyed any excitement towards such games right from the start. This is something else that designers need to take into consideration.
Again. It's all about PERCEPTION in my opinion. When people play MMO's, they know that ANYONE can play them. There are no drawbacks except whether or not your PC has specs capable of running the game.
2 Cents
Nicholas Lukowiak 50+
However if you are honestly curious in the addiction of video games, that really depends on the game.
games like world of warcraft have an "other world" effect on people where they can escape to and be someone else who can do impossible things
video games to me are for the mind to break free from reality and mix it with unreality.
Ambrose Reade
Christopher Beck 20+
Harshit Sonthalia
It entertains me and at times influences me to use my brain....
Gaming for me is not just a source of entertainment but also a medium of knowledge..
I like playing Tycoon games...
Thanks to those games that build up interest in me to start a business...
I am opting for commerce in my +2.....and I owe my this decision to those tycoon games...
So Gaming is one of the finest way to build up interest in a Child (especially)..
Adam Brown
I still play games (I’m late 30’s…..) and have just finished one which kept me thoroughly entertained for several weeks. To me it was my interactive book, the escapism that many get from reading novels and to me that’s what games are. Books, games, films are all the same sort of entertainment. I know that it’s not real and I knew that when I was playing games aged 10.
I think far too much is being read into gaming, if done with a little common sense it can be entertaining, educational and inspirational.
My daughter who is two and a half is learning how to use a mouse and understand usability standards by playing games on line. They also teach her about the world, alphabet etc. Many revolve around stories.
So for me gaming is another form of entertainment like books and films but when done right can also be educational.
Bill Barhydt 100+
I struggle with this question you pose every single day. In my house it's called screen time. Wii, iPod Touch, Macs, TV, etc all fall into the screen time category but the most coveted screen time by the under 11 crowd is games.
The problem we mortals face in competing for kids' attention is that video game makers are better at grabbing and holding attention than parents, teachers and most other people in the average child's life. The lure of gaming comes down to two things: one, what is the alternative in the mind of the child, and two, the addiction to the stimulus being created via these games. There are positives and negatives to both of these factors.
Can we take the positive aspects of these two factors and leverage them and gaming to the benefit of society or do we end up becoming overraught with all the negative aspects of these factors no matter what we do?
We simply don't know the answer to this question and therein lies the danger. Who wants their child to be the guinea pig to figure this out knowing that when we receive our answer it could be too late to reverse any damage which may have been done.
On the other hand, if we as a society could figure out a way to jack ourselves into the Matrix without losing ourselves to the addiction while creating a real-time simulation with an ultimate sense of community, there are probably no problems we couldn't solve together. I hope I live long enough to know the answer to these questions.
Alexander Voiskounsky
Thus, gaming can be seen not entirely as a personal dimension, it is a gift from the whole civilization.
Laurens Rademakers 50+
Bataille writes heavily against capitalism and the protestant ethic, which wants (according to him) to turn everything we do into a utilitarian, purposeful learning lesson. His writings about the excessive gift-logic in the games of ancient, decadent Byzantium are some of the finest in modern philosophy. In the end, Bataille thinks everything that makes life worth-wile, is excessive uselessness: above all, love, which is, for humans, not geared to reproduction, but to something beyond that. Love, laughter, giving, playing, sacrifice, even death are all signs of the excessive - and we're only human because we know these things. Without these, we'd be ordinary animals.
Laurens Rademakers 50+
Perhaps the last thing we should do is to make games "useful".
In our modern lives, too many of our activities are forced to be "useful" and utilitarian. Children (and indeed adults) have lost almost all room to play. Even play itself has been "pedagogized". Everything we do has to "teach us a lesson".
Let's not make games "good", or "useful" or "purposeful". The entire goal of games is for them to be games - pure play, fantasy, uselessness.
The social, psychological, economic and cultural value of the useless and of "wasting time" cannot be underestimated.
I think we play too few useless games and don't spend enough time on them.
Sabin Muntean 30+
A game does not have to be purpose driven only, to this I agree, but I still feel that a good game should do more than offer you a pastime activity, it should challenge and inspire and even teach, just like a good book or a good movie should.
I'm not saying noone should create "useless" games, but in my opinion they just aren't worth playing as other games are.
Matthew Baron
Damali Morgan
What's one thing you wish non-gamers would understand about your favorite games, and what you get out of playing them?
1) Social interaction with domestic and international friends. I have friends I have known for a lifetime that I would have otherwise lost contact with over the years, and new friends made through the healthy competition of game play in foreign countries. International and local friends that I have met using the foundation of "a game".
2) Business contacts obtained based solely on the efficiency and execution of game play, an example of your strategic skills, teamwork, and leadership can be a great first sign of your real life capabilities.
3) Those that play together stay together. My Husband and I have played video games for years together, fell in love, and still play together now. We have a great time both in and out of the game and gives a break from the daily routine of work and parenting.
4) Let’s not forget gaming isn't just about rocking people’s faces off. You have video games that educate and promote the ability to multitask. My children learn anything they can get their hands on through a computer. Your baby can read? My baby can read and program!
Yes there is this thing called Sun that we need and fresh air, but that is what Laptops are for =)
*My Nephew made a bot for his video game. While I was proud he took the time to learn how to program, I had to teach him that Real Gamers don't use bots and rely on skill. His Reply "That's old school and inefficient"*
James Cullumber
How video game apply to us, is that someone made up of 1s and 0s you used showed you what to do. I have come from a family that believes that video games are a waste of time, I say otherwise.
To answer the question from the main post on the gamers side, is that they are who they are. You can tell them your favorite game that you played the whole time and gain from it and they won't even care one bit, which I think is pretty harsh, but it's just them. To hit the core of the question is the story, it's like watching a movie and playing at the same time but while at it, expecting something big to happen. That is another thing, the expect something to happen, either you make it happen or you don't, that is what the games have taught me. when non-gamers ask me "So what did you get out of the game?" The first couple of tries I was stunned, I just told them a story, what happened, and what I got in the game. Now latter on, I brush them off by ignoring them, and I share what I have learned freely, for example, Bioshock, it shows what happens when people grow too strong which leads to their utter destruction.
Sulan Dun
How do you feel about that statement? Does it invoke a "what a waste of time and opportunity" feeling?
Does the feeling change if I tell you that the games are educational and have helped millions of students learn topics like balancing chemical equations or graphing on the coordinate plane that can be extremely challenging to grasp? That they are mostly used in the classroom or assigned for homework? And that they have let some students finally understand a hard Math or Science concept after days of frustration trying to learn them the conventional way?
Why do people hear "video game" and immediately have negative thoughts? Why is that different from "movie"? Both are often purely for entertainment, but some are very educational and uplifting. Yet to some a video game is always a waste of time, but not so for a movie. It's a strange prejudice - the only reason I can think of is that pretty much everyone has tried good modern movies, but not everyone has tried good modern video games.
If you are curious to try out my video games, please feel free to try them out at FunBasedLearning.com. All the games are completely free. The site's goal is to provide the best educational games for free to any child who can access the internet.
Sincerely, Sulan Dun sulan@dun.org
(P.S. If anyone at TED is interesting in meeting up, I'm just in Irvine 45 minutes drive south - drop me a line at sulan@dun.org)
Lukas Müller
Are gamers more flexible thinkers? If so, in what aspects of thinking?
Secondy - because games are fun - might gamers have a tendency to demand the world to be just as good?
Certainly some heavy-gamers do. This might be either bad - promoting an addiciton, because the real world is just not up to the task (besides graphics) or it might actually be good, because it inspires gamers to believe that another world is possible (certainly I do) and thus give a good reason for improving the real world.
Thirdly I would like to draw your attention to "Minecraft". Just Google it, watch some Videos on Youtube and try it. It's an interesting phenomenon, because it is one of those rare really new video game concepts.
One last thought: There is no reason for why video games shouldn't interact with reality. A network between virtual realities and the real world which in some way could make the gamer actually do something useful in RL (or for a start anything at all) could prove a very interesting concept.
Debra Smith 200+
Secondly, real world unsolved problems could be incorporated into upper level game play to make the games endlessly challenging and to harness the greatness of the minds that are gaming.
Carole Richards
Debra Smith 200+
Horbaniuc Vlad
Dan Sheehan
Kat Moore
People who are prone to extreme additive behavior will exhibit that tendency in many ways. The overall population of gamers has about the same level of addicts as any other socially acceptable activity such drinking, gambling, etc.
Chris Watson
It's a card game, not a video game so I don't know how that fits into your study, but one thing I know for sure is that what I learn playing poker has had direct application to life situations in general. For instance, guaging ones position in a negotiation and comparing it to certain classes of situation at the table has yeilded a number of fitting anaogies that prove very useful. You have to "know" when to hold and "know" when to fold.
Games of all kinds provide us with metaphore and analogy to our real life problems, sometimes with solutions that would not otherwise be obvious without the game experience. How many times have we battled with someone on some issue and declared "Checkmate!" when we have them cornered? Or flipped a coin or gone "All in" on a venture? Games have served us well as tools of learning and mental exercize for centuries and centuries. Not all games are stimulating or challenging, Tic-tac-toe comes to mind, but most that we find engaging ARE engaging some aspect of our intellegence and testing it. We play to learn and learn to play.
Jeff Rodman 200+
One metric of interest is what would the player be doing otherwise? If the choice is between a person spending a weekend sitting in front of a screen playing Worlds of Warcraft, and that same person sitting in a pickup towing a speedboat to the lake to spend that weekend roaring around in front of a 250hp Evinrude, my inner treehugger says "stay in Azeroth, dude! Slay those monsters!"
Jeremy Ogram
While I do still play videos now, I don't play them as often as when I was younger, I generally have one game I play for a long period of time instead of constantly getting new games.
I am 32, I don't think my video game habits when I was a kid are the same as what kids are doing now, which seems to be a lot of them completely avoid going outside to do anything and only want to play video games. I didn't understand it for a long time, I wondered if they are just lazy, or if games are just that much better now from when I was a little.
I think kids are spending so much time playing video games now because they are very restricted in what they can do outside and at school. When I was going to elementary school during the winter everyone worked on snow forts, every group of friends had a fort, the entire school yard was filled with them, kids from kindergarten to grade 5 built snow forts everywhere. The school had areas for having snowball fights, if you were in that area, got hit by a tossed snowball and complained to a teacher they just told you not to go back in there. No schools around allow kids to build a snow fort, or throw a snowball, it is considered too dangerous. I realized that this is the reason why I don't see snow forts around houses anywhere, kids aren't allowed to build them at school with their friends so why would they build them at home?
The point of explaining that is that it gives one example of kids being told not to be kids when playing outside, they are over protected, the only place that kids might be a allowed to throw a snowball now is in a video game. The only place a young child is allowed to be a child is in video games.
Sabin Muntean 30+
I was very happy to read a few days ago that a new law has been passed here in Germany stating that it is ok for children to make noise whilst they are playing and that neighbours and other residents just have to put up with it, it's part of human nature. Then again I also find it awkward that such a law is necessary in the first place.
mark kausche 10+
Sabin Muntean 30+
You don't get fat because you spend an hour or two playing games, you get fat because you don't exercise besides that, because you eat unhealthy food etc.
Plus, the new trend in fitness games is actually fighting this problem. I know of at least two friends who don't exercise much otherwise, but who regularly play Wii Fit. It appears to be more fun to lose weight and gain points and achievements at the same time than to just lose weight. :D
mark kausche 10+
Jeremy Ogram
Video games contribute in a small way, but I still see parents in the grocery store buying cases of pop, potato chips, several bags of cookies, cereals that are more of a desert than a breakfast and then stopping at McDonald's on the way home.
Kat Moore
Not only that, there has been a parenting trend towards hyper-vigilance in the last few decades. Kids are kept indoors instead of being sent outside to play. They learn to be sedentary. I'm not advocating for careless parenting, but I feel sorry that kids don't have the same freedom to roam that I had.
Gary Rieschel 100+
James Ross
Most importantly, smile when you do anything. Games a just that after all, games. They're fun. If you say "Why don't gamers see life as the ultimate game?"
Well, you could say that about anything, and in our community we sure do. I hope others will follow, not just the gaming world. We'll smile as we play this 'life' game us 'GAMERS' have heard so much about too. ;)
Sorry for the MULTIPLE Massive POSTS
It's kind of my trade mark on other forums to do multiple posts, why change? ;) hahahha
Take care. Nice topic too Jane.
Hopefully I don't get 'banned' for this 'spam' as I'm liking this TED stuff. It's a fun game. :)
James Ross
Never stop changing, it’s the only thing that we shouldn’t change. Games will change, the way we play them will change, everything will and is. It just keeps getting better, and it gets better faster too.
Expect ‘Video Games’ to only get better with everything else, specifically the ones made by people who have an interest in things beyond material profits or mass production and more spread by word of mouth and the input of the person picking it up. If we ever get that far by the time things ‘change too fast for us’
:P
In the meantime, I'll be playing this game I love, this game that has helped thousands upon thousands of young people around the globe and continues to do so and always will. Our community will continue to travel the world meeting new people and facing new challengers, we'll continue our community garden projects and random acts of planned kindness or 'scatter joy' events in doing our part to make the world a more amazing place.
I'm a 'gamer' and I won the game of life a LOOOOOOOOOONG time ago. Gotta help everyone else along the way now.
James Ross
When you look at the internet for the first time, you’ll see garbage everywhere. No matter where you search you’ll find something completely useless, and lots of it. It’s what happened when the internet first started blooming, but slowly the little gatherings start to grow and people searching for goodness start to collect there in little clusters. Then these clusters start finding each other and everybody finally realizes they’re not alone and there’s something and somebody AMAZING in the direction they’re looking after all. Like anything. Kind of like TED even... this world is just a giant ball of scattered communities trying to collect all the goodness so we can make everything even better.
There are bad television shows (I haven’t watched TV in almost 4 years aside from a free movie at a theatre occasionally) there’s bad food (I haven’t had fast food since I was 4 years old and never will again) there’s bad everything. It’s always at the front because it gets all the advertising, airtime, mockery, commercials, publicity and the works.
Like the internet and anything else, when you look at the surface of gaming, you’ll find zombie killers and mindless remade crap all over the place. If anything, that means if you dig a little deeper, you’ll find an amazing collection of amazing people trying to find all the other amazing people, maybe they'll introduce me to another TEDlike thing.
Video games (like anything involving technology) are VERY new to us human being creatures, they have a lot to offer both as they are and what they have yet to become (like anything involving technology). Judging ‘Gamers’ as being ‘Stereotypical Gamers’ and ‘Games’ as being ‘Stereotypical Games’ is outdated and naive and has been for a while.
A lot of 'being difficult to explain' is a lot of the reason why there's even a 'DEBATE' for things like this. :/
James Ross
Everything has its purpose, and unfortunately, everything has its purpose. If it weren’t for active use of drugs for most addicts, they could potentially turn to something worse. It’s a temporary way of keeping themselves alive and in a certain state (which is hopefully completely reversible under proper conditions) rather than causing themselves or others more immediate or unrepairable harm.
A friend in the community in Vancouver used the game to escape an addiction. He got caught in a circle and eventually turned to phoning people at all hours of the night saying he would need to play someone or he might do something bad. This kept him together long enough to get to another area and now he’s clean after years of torment. He’s been a member of this gaming community since the year arrived, he turned to the game and community for help.
Often, people associate drugs as an escape and being a bad thing. Often drugs are the escape from something even more harmful and irreversible. Even 'common' things like television and alcohol. There is a use for it, it’s just a shame there is a use for it. If anyone says ‘escape’ is a bad thing, well they probably need to wake up to reality rather than escape it. If anything, life is an escape, a vacation. If you’re seasick, have a break. A video game is a (cheap/friendly/social/innocent/active/entertaining/relaxing/ANYTHING) way of doing that. Get with the times. hahah :P