News - Playing StarCraft improves your cognitive flexibility

[HEXUS]

Playing The Sims, much less so, if at all.

Read more.

[kalniel]

What about StarCraft 2, or is that too dumbed down?

(they tested StarCraft 1 vs The Sims 2)

[hesham1516]

What about StarCraft 2, or is that too dumbed down?

(they tested StarCraft 1 vs The Sims 2)

Probably budget costs, considering they also used the Sims 2 rather than the Sims 3. They would have had to give each participant a copy of the game to play at home.

[crossy]

Hmm, wonder how long it will be before we get the alternate spin on this story. Cue usual Daily Maul headline ... "Popular video game proven to make players stupider!"

Although given the "fun" I'm currently having with Saints Row IV, maybe the DM would have a point in that case. On the other hand that did have me spending a few minutes Googling for info on small, short duration black holes. (obsessive or what?)

Earlier this year a University of Iowa study, of hundreds of people aged 50 and older, found that video gaming could reverse up to seven years of age-related brain function decline with improvements to memory, reasoning and visual processing observed in these older gamers.

Hmm, definitely worth remembering this - especially if it was a genuine study, not one of those that an interested commercial party has paid for. Although I'm not in that pre-geriatric group they list, maybe I need a new gaming device "for health reasons"

[sirtrouserpress]

What about StarCraft 2, or is that too dumbed down?

(they tested StarCraft 1 vs The Sims 2)

Whenever I enter my local second hand game shop there are at-least 20 copies of Sims 2 with all the expansions, so i'd imagine it to be quite cheap

[w1ntergr33n]

What about StarCraft 2, or is that too dumbed down?

(they tested StarCraft 1 vs The Sims 2)

If you RTFA they used both SC1 and SC2.

[kalniel]

If you RTFA they used both SC1 and SC2.

If you RTFA you see they don't. They only use starcraft 1 (blizzard, 1998)

[Domestic_Ginger]

The pro starcraft players are completely OP; I'm not suprised if the participents didn't at least improve some skills.

He probably still needs his mum to make a cup of tea though.

[p4ul]

I have always been stupid, but I played SC2 loads over the past 2 years and recently I took an online IQ test and I scored 114, which is above average apparently! So it must work!!!

[Noli]

Mark - the "aged 50 and over" hyperlink just takes you to another article about this same SC & Sims study... not to an article about the study in over 50 year olds, which I'd be interested to read. Just sayin'

[loyal986]

What about ... not interested in this type of gameplay. What does RPG to my brain ? Come on sony and bring the PS4 already, my aging XBOX360 doesent have the candy view from PC.