[rapind]

> If you wanna believe that your hours on COD have made you a genius, go ahead, I won't stop you. Just don't imagine that this research proves it.

Video games, like all things, should not all be treated equal. I could certainly see problem solving skills developing from world building or highly complex games (Civ, PoE, etc.). In fact, most (but not all) highly successful games have depth, which requires time investment and problem solving. The difference in games can be as varied as comparing a marketing pamphlet to Asimov's novels.

I don't dispute your take on the quality of the research though. I would even go further and speculate it would be really really hard to come up with meaningful tests due to game variance. So most anything on the subject is likely fluff.

[BeetleB]

Reminds me of when I played SimCity 2000 as a teenager. In my first attempt I ran out of money and got kicked out.

So I decided to start again. I noted down the cost of all the necessary items: Residential, city, industrial zones, cost of building roads, power plant, and utility lines, and of course water. I put the game on pause, took out a notebook, and started calculating a somewhat optimal city with the initial budget I was provided.

I built the city very quickly, and this time round I didn't run out of money, and took the game all the way to archologies. I did skimp on fire stations and a disaster destroyed most of the city, but it still survived overall.

I don't think I could have succeeded without that level of planning.

[DANK_YACHT]

Any real-time PvP game has the ultimate puzzle: another human being. Once you're mechanically familiar with a PvP game, the game disappears, in a sense, and you're left trying to figure out the (very human) weaknesses of your opponent. It's quite a beautiful experience, and not one unique to video games. You see similar phenomena in sports and many other forms of competition as well.

[bnralt]

In my experience, the vast majority of game play time, even with most complex games, is spent on relatively mindless repetitive behavior. This gets worse the more time is spent with a specific game. As a player improves, they start to know what they're supposed to do in more and more situations (compare the way a novice agonizes over an opening pawn move in chess with the way advanced players often speed through the opening moves). Games might be complex, but you might only be dealing with that complexity ~10% of the time (or less as you improve).

[hypertele-Xii]

> As a player improves, they start to know what they're supposed to do in more and more situations (compare the way a novice agonizes over an opening pawn move in chess with the way advanced players often speed through the opening moves).

Chess is a particularly bad example because you can memorize openings.

In Fischer random chess, the starting positions of the pieces are randomized, so even advanced players will agonize over the opening move.

[bmacho]

In chess advanced players start to agonize at move 7. Chess has all the benefits of Fisher random chess, but has an additional layer, and requires three additional skills: learn, analyze, and memorize.

(I myself I am a bughouse chess person, it's a very different beast on the same board. It's full of adrenaline, hope, fear, anger, grief, in 2 minute long runs.)

[rapind]

Some competitive (PvP) games are basically imperfect chess. Just like you'd learn chess, and eventually move on to studying matches, you would do the same with some (PvP) video games, like DotA etc.

On the other hand you could literally have a game to see how long you can keep pushing a big read button (dopamine inducing effects and sounds included of course!).

The variance is huge. We couldn't make a blanket general statement about brain development from tabletop games that include say Snap / War, Checkers, and Chess. And that's not even a sliver of the variance video games gave.

P.S. I'm by no means a gaming advocate. IMO video games are becoming (have become) Vegas 2.0 and I could list a huge number of potential negatives.

[Jach]

How can you recognize the huge variance of games in one breath but then suggest in another they're in any real sense becoming (parenthetically already became) the equivalent of casino games? In what sense, exactly, because it can't be variety? Sure there are negative points to both video games and casino games, but there are negative points to everything. The ones that are arguably 'shared' aren't unique to that pair either. Have you actually analyzed the things they call electronic 'games' in casinos? They're not varied at all; whether you're in Vegas or some random Indian casino, about the most variety you'll get is one row of slots has wolf clipart and another row has zoo animal clipart. Sure I guess you might find some non-slots that wrap one of the physical games like the card games, and to be fair I once saw some giant flappy bird thing on my way to a casino buffet years ago. Still, overall game design? What game design? Any random gacha has better game design. As a genre of game in the way slots are a genre of game, there's already been a lot of evolution and variety in 'gameplay' while retaining the core PNG collection premise. You'll find more slots innovation in mini-games inside larger video games than in slots themselves. The random gacha probably has better art too.

> could literally have a game to see how long you can keep pushing a big read button

Could? Did. Even Progress Quest counts for this sort of thing, and it was a parody in 2002. There's also the classic game of Simon Says which is basically keep pushing shiny buttons but less entertaining long term, since "number goes up" only goes as high as your human memory instead of a computer's. The biggest modern twist that some will find a negative is something like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14UerIOvZKM (literal red button) or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kkGu7yIi98 where the time "wasting" is magnified beyond just the gamer but also to an audience.

[bnralt]

> Just like you'd learn chess, and eventually move on to studying matches, you would do the same with some (PvP) video games, like DotA etc.

Sure, but as far as I know there isn't much value (beyond personal interest) in studying high level chess (and from what I've seen, it's detrimental when people start obsessing over it). You're putting effort into getting better at playing a game.

[the_only_law]

> I could certainly see problem solving skills developing from world building or highly complex games (Civ, PoE, etc.). In fact, most (but not all) highly successful games have depth, which requires time investment and problem solving.

I’m a big grand strategy fan, mostly Paradox games rn, and I almost feel like these are worse for me because the depth keeps me engaged longer (and honesty waste a lot of time) compared even to something like a shitty copy/paste mobile game employing dark patterns because those get so boring so quick. Whereas if I start and eu4 or ck3 campaign and actually play it, it’s almost certain my brain will be shot to hell to for a few days.

[boringg]

Ahh I agree with this. I think there is a benefit at the beginning in the learning process of the game but then it has seriously diminishing returns. I would put factorio in this category where once you get the model and have learned most of the curve you are then at diminishing returns or negative returns because of the painful way in that devs construct these games to keep you on for longer periods of times. I'm not sure the highest levels of complexity and long dedication to the game really do provide greater learning for people.

[boringg]

I'll add to this I wish there was a game that didn't follow the traditionally.. now you've leveled up spend X time at this level/technology/etc before you go to the next one. Why not create a game that you can grow as fast as you can learn instead of putting in time barriers. Probably incentives for developers/game companies ruin that model but would be nice for a change.

[nluken]

I love Paradox games, but I can't play them because as soon as I start up a campaign I know it will become a huge time sink for a few days. I think their games definitely require/develop problem solving skills, especially in areas where you need to make changes to create indirect effects. With that said, they may not be the best way of going about it.

[paulluuk]

I think that even if we found that children who play difficult games tend to be more intelligent, that still makes it hard to separate correlation from causation. Do children become smarter because they play difficult games? Or do smart children enjoy playing difficult games? Or both?

[bee_rider]

Hades, played competently, is a nice little optimization problem with lots of arbitrary constraints thrown at you to keep it fresh. Well, it is mostly reflexes, but the optimization problem is also a significant part of it.

Grand strategy and 4x games always feel like too much depth, to me. I know I could do better if I pause and manually place every worker/micro everything. But that's overwhelming. I could try to be clever and only optimize where necessary, but the game is paused, there's no tradeoff for analyzing everything other than my time. Just give me the meaningful choices, game!

[jklinger410]

I've played thousands of hours in EU4 and am still very bad at it. Same with Cities Skylines.

But I could go on and on about the very real ways I apply those losses to my work life. I do think they have a huge benefit.

[Wowfunhappy]

I wouldn't underestimate how much time people can sink into dumb gotcha games. Maybe not you, but others.

IMO, the biggest problem with modern video games is how many of them are designed to keep you playing virtually forever. I think a game like Zelda (maybe not BoTW, but definitely OoT) is great for children, because it teaches problem solving and rational thinking, and it has a natural time limit! You might play it incessantly for a few days, but eventually you'll reach the end and need to seek out a new experience.

[mc32]

Some years ago it was farmville that wasted people's time.

[albrewer]

> gotcha games

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gacha_game

[Jach]

You're not wrong in terms of how much time people can spend on something that doesn't take much thought (it can be a comfort, even), but your diagnosis of the problem is way off. There's nothing about modern video games that can receive the blame for this, even if I hate what gacha and friends have done to the place on the design perspective. (Fortunately there's still plenty of market that's not design I dislike. Another commenter mentioned games as Vegas 2.0, but I don't think that commenter is a gamer either. Casinos are absolutely dominated by the shittiest of games, from a pure game design perspective, with seemingly no room for anything else. The overall gaming market though? It's quite healthy and varied. And even the cancer in mobile gaming is but a harmless mole compared to the tumor of casino electronic 'games'. And to be clear, people can spend/waste their time and money as they choose, that's never been my complaint against any of it, I'd sooner complain about people complaining about others wasting time on X.)

I'm surprised, you seem to have spent enough time around kids (and were a kid once yourself), yet you think "replay value" (which is inflated for some games by not having a definitive end) is at all a modern thing, or even necessarily a bad thing. This extends beyond games. Do you realize how many hours of Frozen have been watched, over, and over, and over? Or how many hours listening to Baby Shark? Or whatever's going around now? Or whatever was going around when you were a kid? (Insert favorite classic Disney movie? Tetris? Cribbage? Chutes and Ladders? Minecraft?) Kids love repetition -- humans in general like repetition a lot. Heard of the Hero's Journey?

Don't underestimate OoT either! If a kid liked OoT enough to reach the end, it's unlikely that they'll just move on immediately unless they're literally forced onto the next shrink-wrapped "brand new" experience by someone. (To be sure, if I'm ever a parent myself, I will consciously do a bit of that pushing to try avoiding letting them repeat the same thing like some popular movie too much, but I'd be a hypocrite and a fool to think I can or should prevent all of it. Besides, it's remarkable how many times you can watch/be all but forced to watch something even as a young teen (cough Napoleon Dynamite) and yet retain almost no memory of the thing's details as an adult.)

OoT is a real-time interactive simulation, such things are naturally just fun to immerse in, even after you've beaten Ganon / "reached the end". But besides just continuing to 'hang out' aimlessly in the game, there's all the stuff they could aim at in order to "100%" the game, or just go back through optional/missed stuff in general/at leisure. (But everyone who plays OoT needs to get the Biggoron's Sword!) So the kid could do that, even talk to friends playing the same game (socializing skills even with a 1p game!) and trade notes or experiences, or compete on times for various races, or they could develop their own random aims, like a quest to smash every pot. Or start a new playthrough but with some difference. Or they might discover the speed running scene and get into that, or just generally see the crazy nonsense people have done to that poor game's code. Again, don't underestimate games like OoT, Super Mario 64, Dark Souls, Megaman X, or Chess, either; having an "end" doesn't protect them from being the object of people's time spending/wasting.

[Wowfunhappy]

I'm actually training to teach elementary school, so yes you could say I've spent some time around children!

I would absolutely expect a child to play OoT well past beating Ganon for the first time, but there is still a limit to how much you can do. Compare that to something like Destiny, which is basically designed to be a bottomless pit you could grind forever!

> So the kid could do that, even talk to friends playing the same game (socializing skills even with a 1p game!) and trade notes or experiences, or compete on times for various races, or they could develop their own random aims, like a quest to smash every pot. Or start a new playthrough but with some difference. Or they might discover the speed running scene and get into that, or just generally see the crazy nonsense people have done to that poor game's code.

But all of that stuff is great, because now they're creating their own experiences for themselves, getting creative, perhaps even socializing. It's basically the virtual equivalent of traditional unstructured play, which we know has all sorts of educational benefits.

I don't know why children like to e.g. watch Frozen a million times, but I imagine it's because they actually discover something new with each watch. As long as they're driven by intrinsic motivation, I think that's relatively healthy, at least compared to an XP bar that gets higher with each Frozen rewatch!

[Jach]

I think it's more about comfort in familiarity than discovering something new (Frozen isn't that deep), but whatever the case, as external media there's always some intrinsic "I want this for reasons I think are my own" motivation combined with extrinsic "I want this because for good or ill, by various carrots and sticks, others made it intending that I should want it" motivation. Would it be so bad if Frozen had a built-in times-watched counter or an XP bar? Nonsensical for the latter and tasteless, but grant that it could bring people in for rewatches more than it pushed them away, it still surely wouldn't rob people of all their will, ultimately they'd still rewatch for some other intrinsic reasons along with the extrinsic XP bar and other extrinsic things like the intentionally designed attractive (for many) art aesthetic. How much of each motivation will vary; I think people are probably biased to imagine the extrinsics are usually 'nice bonuses on top'.

Destiny doesn't really help your case, I think. The most objectionable thing they do (as I hear it, I skipped it), at least relative to things like it (Warframe), is exploit fear-of-missing-out psychology; they remove previously released content. (Like adding an ad to a site to exploit/monetize viewers, this is not a neutral design choice, and has driven people away from the game entirely rather than what seems to be the default assumed effect of any psychology exploit (except 'make things beautiful'?) of sucking out their will and owning them.) But over time they've not just cut stuff, but added new content. So there are eventually fresh(er) experiences even if you hit max level/acquired everything/etc. like an MMO. Until they dry out anyway, and the problem solves itself, because ultimately an infinitely increasing XP bar just isn't enough to keep most people interested.

They did make an actual title cut to the sequel for Destiny 2 and that's where further new content went -- has it since had enough content added that another timeline could have legitimately packaged it as Destiny 3?

Besides all that, it's legitimately a game, quite more than a glorified slot, it's a full simulation, and has a satisfying core gameplay loop -- the same one refined through the earlier Halo games.

Similarly, though not as core, it's also just satisfying to have Link roll around everywhere. Adding lootboxes to OoT would be beyond tasteless and obscene, but the product would still be quite a bit better than an actual glorified slot, because there's enough game design there alongside, there's something beyond just plain 'give money maybe win prize'. Japanese crane games / ufo catchers are more in line with glorified slots than a game with typical distasteful 'games-as-service' monetization strategies.

That ties in with your earlier deleted edit I still thought worth addressing. I see the concern on glorified slots, but I don't think it's really worth worrying about. In video games, even some hypothetical one with master manipulator levels of thought to make it indefinitely addicting, it's ultimately not chemical injection in basis to form a true dependency on the average human, and so the next thing comes out sooner or later and voila, newness, change. Is the 'Destiny is a dead game' meme close to the truth? It certainly seems a lot less popular than several battle royales, and those too will decline.

Casinos are in comparison much more niche, have little competition and innovation (look at their dull slots with no redeeming game design to them at all), have physical chemical associations (booze and smokes minimum) driving a bunch of it (their psychological playbook is laughably weak in comparison to something like Genshin Impact), and of course must be enabled by real money. The last factor is the simplest barrier to keep kids from getting addicted to casino-style crap, free-to-play dominates. Now maybe it's sad if trends like lootboxes or gachas or battle passes continue (or perhaps in your mind also trends of games designed with elements to never end), but it's far from concerning, especially when games lacking such crap continue to be successful...

[the_only_law]

> but I don't think that commenter is a gamer either. Casinos are absolutely dominated by the shittiest of games, from a pure game design perspective, with seemingly no room for anything else.

Definitely not the wider market, but I wouldn’t think it unfair to describe the mobile gaming market like this. There have recently been a number of AAA PC games ported to mobile which makes me actually realize the power of the hardware in my hand, and also wonder why every other mobile game I see is a rip off puzzle game concept that’s been done a million times over.

[spookybones]

I feel fortunate enough to have grown up playing point and click games, like Myst, 7th Guest, and Fate of Atlantis, and keeping a notebook on my desk for clues to puzzles. I think it had a positive effect on my development, comparable to playing chess, which I also did.