What's your Solitaire win rate?

[Jamal]

 

[Azbubu]

either 0% or 100%. I've never played solitaire before.

 

[Shake&Bake]

Very much kuk!

I've got a solitaire game on my phone and I'm like at 8-10% with Alaska on it.

 

[copacetic]

I have never finished a game, on account of always getting bored half-way through.

 

[Shake&Bake]

I have never finished a game, on account of always getting bored half-way through.

Ja, its certainly no Skyrim of BF3

 

[Fader4]

why play solitaire when you can play bf3? skyrim? angry birds?

 

[Fader4]

Because these games are too addictive.

I also believe some games cause functional brain damage. Back in high school when I played Warcraft II during holidays, I noticed I would develop cognitive difficulty after a few days of heavy playing which took several weeks to go away.

seriously? i reckon years of gaming have improved my reaction times irl.

 

[Lycanthrope]

Because these games are too addictive.

I also believe some games cause functional brain damage. Back in high school when I played Warcraft II during holidays, I noticed I would develop cognitive difficulty after a few days of heavy playing which took several weeks to go away.

I game pretty much daily.

I doubt that gaming is the cause of your cognitive difficulty.

seriously? i reckon years of gaming have improved my reaction times irl.

Reaction time, attention span, hand-eye coordination, logic skills and a general improvement to the quality of one's life (as can be sad about any hobby a person enjoys).

My money's on having been dropped on the head one time too many as a kid.

 

[Azbubu]

Where in the quote does it say that it causes brain damage?

 

[Lycanthrope]

Jamal, did you actually [-]read[/-] understand the article?

Using the most sophisticated technology available, the level of brain activity was measured in hundreds of teenagers playing a Nintendo game and compared to the brain scans of other students doing a simple, repetitive arithmetical exercise. To the surprise of brain-mapping expert Professor Ryuta Kawashima and his team at Tohoku University in Japan, it was found that the computer game only stimulated activity in the parts of the brain associated with vision and movement.

In contrast, arithmetic stimulated brain activity in both the left and right hemispheres of the frontal lobe - the area of the brain most associated with learning, memory and emotion.

Most worrying of all was that the frontal lobe, which continues to develop in humans until the age of about 20, also has an important role to play in keeping an individual's behaviour in check.

n subsequent studies, Kawashima established that arithmetic exercises also stimulate more brain activity than listening to music or listening to reading. Reading out loud was also found to be a very effective activity for activating the frontal lobe.

Apart from the sensationalist heading, there is no evidence that gaming "damages" the brain or that it "stunts" the brain. All it does is reveal that gaming affects the part of the brain that deals with movement and vision. Why? Because depending on the specific game, there is nothing else in use. Unless, say, you're playing Sudoku.

The article is positing two contrasting extremes: that either gaming 24/7 or doing arithmetic 24/7 will have differing outcomes.

See, that's the thing about being human: there's an infinite amount of stimulus all around us and any one individual is likely to do far more with their lives than JUST do arithmetic or JUST game.

Also:

The students who played computer games were halting the process of brain development and affecting their ability to control potentially anti-social elements of their behaviour.

How does this factor into multiplayer games; especially MMOs where the social aspect is a HUGE part of the experience? How about logic-building games where choice and consequence factor into decision-making? How about games that make extensive use of puzzles and complex mechanics to reach the conclusion? What about games that factor in arithmetic, algorithms and equations to pull off designs in a sandbox environment (such as with Garry's Mod?).

Or is this just another pathetic narrow field of study done on a bunch of kids playing a mindless platformer on a handheld Nintendo which is then used by sensationalist newspapers to sell papers? Oh wait, it is.