Inspiring creativity with games – not just any kind of creativity – the desire to create something that matters, to create change, to invent new solutions to our most urgent challenges, to change the world,. Inspiring WORLD-CHANGING creativity
Particularly pronounced among young people.
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To change the world, you have to be able to make the future, this is a very special kind of creativity – the creativity to imagine a best-case scenario outcome.
It’s important to understand the impact of games in kids because they play so much: MacArthur Foundation funded study of school-age youth under 17 who play videogames: 99 percent of boys and 94 percent of girls play videogames, half play daily, 80% 5x a week, with little difference in the percentages among various racial and ethnic groups and incomes. A 2009 meta study incorporated research from 9 universities in US. Japan, Singapore and Malaysia
“ What’s an example of a pro-social game? Take Super Mario Sunshine . The objective is to clean up the island you are on. Someone has polluted the island by leaving dirt marks and sludge everywhere. The people of the island can’t enjoy themselves with all this pollution. Mario has been asked to clean the island using his cleaning device, Fludd. The player has to completely clean the area within each stage to progress to the next level. Playing this kind of a game, in which the gameplay involves helping, appears to increase the odds significantly of a young player helping someone else in real life.”
“ When it comes to videogames, content matters. After playing pro-social videogames, kids are more likely to help others – friends, family, neighbors – in real-life.” The theory: activated the accessibility of prosocial thoughts. Violence is correlational. Pro-social is causal.
2009 Study of more than 7000 music genre gamers – people who already played…
Of the Guitar Hero and Rock Band players who do not currently play a musical instrument, two-thirds (67%) indicated that they are likely to begin playing a real instrument in the next two years. Nearly three out of four (72%) musicians who play games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band have spent more time playing their real instrument(s) since they began playing these games.
Stanford/PARC study of how attractive avatars shape our real-world confidence. 90 second exposure to playing as an attractive avatar.
Biggest impacts measured in workplace negotiations and on interaction with attractive members of the opposite sex!
Year-long Mental Health Advisory Team study; more than 1000 soldiers; US Army study of soldier stationed in Afghanistan, and coping activities, including videogames. http://www.armymedicine. army .mil/reports/mhat/mhat_vi/MHAT_VI-OEF_Redacted.pdf
3-4 hours of videogaming DAILY proved across a very large sample survey of the Army stationed in Afghanistan to provide the best protection against PTSD, depression, family violence and suicidal ideation. The only activity that provided more mental resilience was 6-7 hours of physical training daily; 3-4 hours of videogaming beat reading, music, general Internet/social networking, and physical training up to 5 hours/day. However, more than 4 hours of gaming showed dangerous declines in mental resilience 7-8 hours a day or more, as bad as no gaming-- and no gaming was very bad.)
http://www.livescience.com/culture/video-games-control-dreams-100525.html Jayne Gackenbach, a psychologist at Grant MacEwan University in Canada The first study suggested that people who frequently played video games were more likely to report lucid dreams, observer dreams where they viewed themselves from outside their bodies, and dream control that allowed people to actively influence or change their dream worlds – qualities suggestive of watching or controlling the action of a video-game character. A second study tried to narrow down the uncertainties by examining dreams that participants experienced from the night before, and focused more on gamers. It found that lucid dreams were common, but that the gamers never had dream control over anything beyond their dream selves.
To test that theory, Gackenbach conducted a 2008 study with 35 males and 63 females, and used independent assessments that coded threat levels in after-dream reports. She found that gamers experienced less or even reversed threat simulation (in which the dreamer became the threatening presence), with fewer aggression dreams overall.
It’s not an illusion that we’re better at games than life…. We’ve accumulated 10,000 hours of practice at it.
It’s not an illusion that we’re better at games than life…. We’ve accumulated 10,000 hours of practice at it.
Of these 10,000 hours, nearly two-thirds are playing video games to socialize face-to-face with friends and family.
More urgent optimism. More curiosity about our own capabilities. More awe and wonder. Better at coordinating efforts. Better at stickign with difficult challenges.
When we’re depressed, according to the clinical definition, we suffer from two things: a pessimistic sense of inadequacy and a despondent lack of activity. If we were to reverse these two traits, we’d get something like this: an optimistic sense of our own capabilities and an invigorating rush of activity. There’s no clinical psychological term that describes this positive condition. But it’s an absolutely perfect description of the emotional state of gameplay. A game is the opportunity to focus our energy, with relentless optimism, at something we’re good at and enjoy. This is a crucial point, so I’ll repeat it: Gameplay is the direct emotional opposite of depression.
When we’re depressed, according to the clinical definition, we suffer from two things: a pessimistic sense of inadequacy and a despondent lack of activity. If we were to reverse these two traits, we’d get something like this: an optimistic sense of our own capabilities and an invigorating rush of activity. There’s no clinical psychological term that describes this positive condition. But it’s an absolutely perfect description of the emotional state of gameplay. A game is the opportunity to focus our energy, with relentless optimism, at something we’re good at and enjoy. This is a crucial point, so I’ll repeat it: Gameplay is the direct emotional opposite of depression.
EPIC WIN- Games are the next great technology for organizing human society, improving global quality of life, and augmenting our collective capacity to survive the next century.
Every game is a power fantasy… but not the power of blowing things up, etc…
Particularly pronounced among young people.
JANE: Gap between what we can do individually and what what we can do with the support of larger groups and technologies… Parallel to the psychology of gap between pre-technology and computer assisted