Begitulah kesimpulan sebuah studi yang dilakukan Andrew Przybylski dari University of Rochester. Selama gameplay dasarnya sendiri cukup bagus dan menantang, menambahkan unsur kekerasan yang tidak perlu dalam game yang sama rupanya tidak membuat game tersebut dianggap semakin menyenangkan.

clipped from www.google.com Spilling the blood and guts of an opponent and other macabre acts of violence do not make video games more enjoyable for players, according to a new study. The researchers wanted to find out if the same game became more fun for players when they made it more violent. “And the answer to that question was no … as you made the game more violent, it didn’t add extra variance in how enjoyable the game was.” In fact, he said the games are popular because they offer players meaningful opportunities to interact and work together, or to feel effective and exercise choice. “What they’re really chasing is having their psychological needs met. Cranking up the violence knob doesn’t automatically make a game automatically more fun.” Przybylski noted there was one sub-group of participants identified as being more aggressive – about five per cent – who showed a preference for violent games, even though they didn’t rate them as more enjoyable.

Sebuah studi pasar skala besar yang dilakukan oleh Report Linker, sebuah konsultan pemasaran, telah berhasil menemukan beberapa fakta menarik mengenai gamer dewasa di AS. Berikut beberapa di antaranya:

• Dari 114 juta gamer dewasa, 28 juta di antaranya adalah kakek-nenek
• Game online lebih menarik bagi wanita yang berusia tua
• Gamer mengekspresikan kepribadiannya melalui mobil pribadinya

• Banyak game yang dibeli belum pernah dimainkan sama sekali
• Gamer cukup up-to-date dengan fashion dan mode terbaru
• Gamer adalah konsumen yang baik bagi industri asuransi
• Gamer masih suka membaca buku dan mendengarkan radio

clipped from www.reportlinker.com This groundbreaking Packaged Facts report provides a detailed analysis of the consumer attitudes and behavior of the 114 million American adults who play video games. Videogamers represent more than half of the adult population and have an aggregate income of $4 trillion. Through the innovative use of data from the Simmons Market Research Bureau National Consumer Survey, this Packaged Facts report challenges numerous stereotypes of videogamers. For example, videogamers are far from being slackers who do nothing but sit for hours on end in front of a gaming console or computer screen. In fact, videogamers are exceptionally active consumers. They work out more, go out more and shop more than adult Americans who don’t play video games. Although video games are a primary form of entertainment for many gamers, traditional forms of media and entertainment such as watching television, going to the movies and dining out remain a central part of the leisure-time habits of most video-game players

Ketika Sony dan Microsoft sibuk bersaing, Nintendo dengan konsol Wii-nya menerapkan strategi tersendiri dengan merambah ke tempat yang selama ini jarang terjangkau video game: sekolah. Bekerja sama dengan The National Association for Music Education, para guru musik di 51 kota di Amerika dapat menggunakan game Wii Music untuk mengajarkan konsep ritme, tempo, dan struktur musik pada murid-murid sekolah dasar.

Dari berita yang saya kutip dari Kotaku berikut, tampaknya para guru cukup antusias menyambut program ini, terlebih lagi para murid mereka. Tidak hanya mengajarkan musik, game ini, menurut salah satu guru, juga melatih kemampuan bahasa, keruangan, dan koordinasi mata-tangan anak.

clipped from kotaku.com Nintendo is teaming with The National Association for Music Education to get the Wii and Wii Music into schools, the two announced today. The collaboration will have music teachers in 51 cities using Wii Music to help children with rhythm, temp and song structure. “Wii Music has brought a renewed excitement to music class for students from first grade to fifth, myself and even some of the classroom teachers,” said Helen A. Krofchick, a music teacher at Doby’s Mill Elementary School in Lugoff, S.C. “I love how many music standards can be covered in such a short time. Students also have to use language skills, spatial awareness and hand-eye coordination. We have a school very supportive of the arts and Wii Music has empowered our program even more. Any system that is educational and can add a love of music to children’s lives should be in every classroom.” They did also work with The National Association for Music Education to create a master lesson plan.

…dan naluri itu lebih tinggi pada gamer pria dibanding gamer wanita; Itulah salah satu kesimpulan Prof. Allan Reiss dari Stanford University ketika ia memindai dengan MRI otak sekumpulan pria dan wanita yang sedang bermain game.

Menurut Prof. Reiss, itu menjelaskan kenapa pria lebih gampang tertarik dan ‘nyandu’ dengan videogame dibanding wanita, dan juga mengapa game-game yang sifatnya agresif (seperti FPS) dan teritorial (seperti game strategi) lebih populer di kalangan pria.

clipped from www.telegraph.co.uk Playing on computer consoles activates parts of the male brain which are linked to rewarding feelings and addiction, scans have shown. The more opponents they vanquish and points they score, the more stimulated this region becomes. In contrast, these parts of women’s brains are much less likely to be triggered by sessions on the Sony PlayStation, Nintendo Wii or Xbox. Professor Allan Reiss of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Brain Sciences Research at Stanford University, California, who led the research, said that women understood computer games just as well as men but did not have the same neurological drive to win. “These gender differences may help explain why males are more attracted to, and more likely to become ‘hooked’ on video games than females,” he said. “I think it’s fair to say that males tend to be more intrinsically territorial. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out who historically are the conquerors and tyrants of our species – they’re the males.

Setelah kemarin kita melihat bagaimana Korea menangani para pecandu internet dan game-nya, kini giliran Cina untuk diekspos. Sebagai negara dengan jumlah penduduk terbanyak, tak heran kalau diperkirakan negara itu punya sekitar 17 juta pecandu internet, kebanyakan dari kalangan remaja.

Tao Ran, seorang psikolog yang peduli dengan masalah ini, tak tanggung-tanggung kemudian menggandeng pihak tentara Cina untuk membuat kamp rehabilitasi bergaya militer untuk mereka.

Menurut Tao, sebagian besar peserta kamp itu berasal dari keluarga broken home atau tidak diasuh dengan baik sewaktu masih kanak-kanak. Tambahnya lagi, hampir 20 persen dari mereka juga punya gangguan psikologis dan kepribadian lain yang perlu ditangani dengan serius.

clipped from www.printthis.clickability.com Here, on a military base outside Beijing, a progressive Chinese psychologist, Tao Ran, has established a treatment center for a distinctly 21st-century malady. Tao estimates that 4 to 6 percent of Chinese netizens, which includes more than 13 percent of Chinese college students, are addicts – a term he defines as anyone who spends more than six hours per day for three months or more on nonwork- or study-related Internet use. That amounts to as many as 17 million net junkies in China. Tao emphasizes that “Internet addiction” is a symptom of deeper family and psychological problems. The majority of patients come from broken homes or were emotionally neglected in childhood, he says, which is why he insists on treating young patients together with their parents. He says more than 20 percent of patients also have psychological problems such as attention deficit hyperactivity or personality disorders, which require more attention.

Korea termasuk negara yang koneksi internet broadband-nya lancar jaya; tak heran kalau negara itu juga mendapat wabah kecanduan internet yang cukup tinggi, terutama dari kalangan remaja. Lalu solusinya? Masukkan saja mereka ke dalam kamp khusus yang terisolasi dari internet (tanpa ponsel, apalagi komputer). Di sana mereka diajari beragam skill dunia nyata, mulai dari olahraga, kelas musik, kerajinan tangan, hingga berkuda. Intinya, kata seorang konselor, membuka mata mereka terhadap akivitas dan gaya hidup yang tidak melibatkan internet.

clipped from www.nytimes.com The compound — part boot camp, part rehab center — resembles programs around the world for troubled youths. Drill instructors drive young men through military-style obstacle courses, counselors lead group sessions, and there are even therapeutic workshops on pottery and drumming. But these young people are not battling alcohol or drugs. Rather, they have severe cases of what many in this country believe is a new and potentially deadly addiction: cyberspace. participants live at the camp, where they are denied computer use and allowed only one hour of cellphone calls a day, to prevent them from playing online games via the phone. They also follow a rigorous regimen of physical exercise and group activities, like horseback riding, aimed at building emotional connections to the real world and weakening those with the virtual one. “It is most important to provide them experience of a lifestyle without the Internet,” said Lee Yun-hee, a counselor. “Young Koreans don’t know what this is like.”

Yang bilang ini bukanlah seorang pakar abal-abal, tapi David Laux, seorang petinggi di IBM, perusahaan komputer ternama tingkat dunia. Menurutnya, tergantung dari game jenis apa yang dimainkan, banyak skill-skill penting yang bisa dipelajari, seperti peningkatan kemampuan mengingat, lebih teliti, pengambilan keputusan yang cepat, hingga kemampuan memimpin. Dan semua skill itu, katanya, bisa langsung dimanfaatkan di dunia nyata.

clipped from www.bbc.co.uk Depending on the type of game someone is playing, and the amount of time dedicated to that task, Mr Laux says the gamer will develop certain desirable skills. “We have found across the board, if you look at different categories of games, they all have the ability to develop unique skills. “That’s from the casual games which improve memorisation and the ability to discern details, to console games and shooter games that develop rapid decision making and to role playing games like the World of Warcraft that are very unique in producing leadership skills.” “The game produces tremendous leadership skills among players. It teaches you how to evaluate risk, build teams for specific tasks and it also teaches individuals not to over react if they are not selected for a specific task.” All these skills are “directly transferable to a real life environment,” Mr Laux told me.

Ini terjadi di Amerika. Seorang remaja berusia 17 tahun tidak diperbolehkan orangtuanya membeli sebuah game yang populer di XBox 360: Halo 3. Si remaja nekat membelinya diam-diam, dan game itu akhirnya disita ketika ketahuan oleh orangtuanya. Reaksi si anak?

“Would you guys close your eyes,” Daniel Petric asked. “I have a surprise for you.”

Ia lalu menembak kedua orangtuanya di kepala; si ibu tewas di tempat, tapi ayahnya selamat.

Di pengadilan, pengacara menggunakan pembelaan bahwa si anak ini punya masalah kecanduan game yang parah akibat harus tinggal terus di rumah setelah sebuah kecelakaan ski yang cukup parah.

Entahlah, saya merasa kalau kecanduan game saja tidak mungkin menjadi sebuah alasan yang cukup untuk menembak kedua orangtua anda di kepala; pasti ada masalah psikologis yang tersembunyi dalam dan sudah terjadi lama sebelumnya. Menurut anda?

Berita terkait: Teen Shot Parents Because They Took Away Halo 3 [Kotaku.com]

UPDATE: Menurut berita terakhir dari Reuters, hakim menolak pembelaan pengacara si remaja bahwa ia membunuh karena kecanduan videogame, karena terdapat bukti bahwa pembunuhan itu sudah direncanakan berminggu-minggu sebelumnya. Remaja itu akhirnya dinyatakan bersalah telah atas dakwaan pembunuhan dan percobaan pembunuhan. Ia dapat dijatuhi hukuman maksimum seumur hidup tanpa pembebasan bersyarat.

clipped from kotaku.com attorneys for 17-year-old Daniel Petric, who stands accused of killing his mother and shooting his father in the head, argued yesterday that the teen’s video game addiction directly led to the incident. his lawyers spent Tuesday building up his video game addiction, with his sister testifying that he became addicting following being housebound due to a staph infection following a serious skiing accident. Another character witness, Daniel’s 17-year-old friend Jonathan Johnson, explained that Petric was so obsessed with the Halo games that he would spend large amounts of time at Johnson’s house playing them. One marathon session took place a week before the shooting, during a time when Petric’s father had kicked him out of the house over an argument following the fight. It was also revealed that Daniel Petric told adolescent forensic psychologist Steven Neuhas during a pre-trial mental health evaluation that he had thought about killing his parents during the weeks leading up to the crime.

Setelah melatih beberapa orang manula dengan video game strategi “Rise of Nations“, Arthur Kramer dari University of Illinois menemukan beberapa peningkatan kognitif pada mereka. Dibandingkan dengan manula yang tidak dilatih bermain game itu, mereka yg bermain mampu berpindah-pindah antartugas (task-switching) lebih cepat. Memori jangka pendek (working memory) dan kemampuan bernalar (reasoning) mereka juga lebih baik.

clipped from www.timesoftheinternet.com University of Illinois psychology professor Arthur Kramer, an author of the research, said the findings from the first such study of older adults are the first to show pronounced effects on cognitive skills not directly related to skills learned in the video game. The researchers found, overall, video game training improved participants’ performance on several tests. As a group, the gamers became significantly better and faster at switching between tasks compared with a comparison group. Their working memory, as reflected in the tests, also was significantly improved and their reasoning ability was enhanced. To a lesser extent, their short-term memory of visual cues was better than that of their peers, as was their ability to identify rotated objects. But the scientists said the video-game training had no effect on ability to recall a list of words in order, numeration ability or ability to inhibit certain responses.

Game FPS (First Person Shooter) kini bisa dibilang menjadi genre primadona, baik di PC maupun konsol. Sebut saja beberapa contoh yang menjadi salah satu game terlaris, terpopuler, dan ber-rating tinggi di kelasnya: Half Life 2, Halo, Call of Duty, atau Gears of War. Apa yang membuat game-game FPS itu begitu menarik bagi para pemain?

Sebuah perusahaan teknologi bernama Emsense menggunakan EEG (yang mendeteksi gelombang otak) dan sensor biometris lainnya (detak jantung, keringat, lama berkedip, pernafasan, suhu tubuh, dan gerakan tubuh) untuk mengukur seberapa jauh para pemain menghayati (betul-betul merasa terlibat di dalam) game-game FPS serta faktor-faktor apa saja yang mendukung atau menghambat penghayatan mereka.

Faktor-faktor selengkapnya bisa dilihat di tautan yang ada di bagian atas klip (clipped from: www.gamasutra.com), tapi saya hanya akan mengangkat dua aspek temuan yang cukup menarik. Yang pertama adalah faktor yang mendukung penghayatan: Sesuai singkatannya, dalam game FPS tentu mestinya yang paling mengasyikkan adalah menembak musuh, bukan?

Tapi menurut temuan EmSense, para pemain justru mendapatkan ketegangan yang lebih tinggi dari menggunakan senjata jarak dekat (seperti crowbar-nya Half-Life atau Plasma Sword-nya Halo). Tidak hanya terbatas pada senjata sebetulnya, tapi pada aspek-aspek lain yang membutuhkan kontak jarak dekat dengan musuh, misalnya menanamkan bom C4 di kendaraan atau markas musuh.

Sementara itu, salah satu faktor yang mengurangi penghayatan para pemain adalah suasana yang intens dan menegangkan terus-menerus. Menurut temuan mereka, perlu ada saat-saat tenang atau ‘tidak ada bahaya’ bagi para pemain. Intinya, ketegangan harus dibikin naik-turun seperti roller coaster agar menarik, dan ketegangan yang naik terus-menerus tanpa ada istirahat lama-lama malah dianggap membosankan oleh pemain.

clipped from www.gamasutra.com [How can you measure player reaction to games? Using games from Half-Life 2 through Gears Of War, this Gamasutra article, originally published in Game Developer magazine, shows how tech company Emsense uses brainwaves, heart activity, and even blinking to estimate engagement.] What Went Right 1. Cutscenes with overarching emotional themes. 2. Tutorials integrated into combat. 3. Bring players down to bring them back up. 4. Close combat, close combat, close combat. 5. Little things make a big difference. What Went Wrong 1. Cutscenes that inform, rather than entertain. 2. Boot camps and training areas. 3. Broken roller coasters. There’s only so much intensity players can handle. Games that try to keep intensity continuously high created (counter-intuitively) an experience that was actually less intense, less cinematic, and less “epic.” 4. Repetition and assured outcomes. 5. Gameplay innovation through novel weapons.

Bagi banyak orang awam, gamer yang terlalu banyak menghabiskan waktunya bermain sampai mengganggu sekolah, kuliah, kerja, dan kehidupannya sudah pantas dapat cap pecandu dan diserupakan dengan pecandu alkohol atau narkoba.

Tapi bagi Keith Bakker, pemilik klini pertama di Eropa yang khusus menangani kecanduan game, masalahnya tidak sesederhana itu. Menurutnya, 90 persen gamer yang datang ke tempatnya karena masalah ‘kompulsi’ (dorongan) bermain game terus-menerus tidak dapat dikategorikan sebagai pecandu.

Para gamer ‘kompulsif’ itu, katanya, memiliki masalah yang sifatnya lebih sosial ketimbang psikologis, sehingga penanganannya pun lebih berupa pengembangan skill unuk bersosialisasi dan berkomunikasi.

Masalah sebenarnya juga seringkali terletak pada perasaan isolasi dan frustrasi akibat ketidakmampuan orangtua dan figur otoritas lainnya dalam memahami mereka, sehingga banyak anak-anak beralih ke dunia yang bisa memahami mereka dan membuat mereka mampu mengekspresikan diri dengan otentik: dunia maya.

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk Ninety per cent of the young people who seek treatment for compulsive computer gaming are not addicted. So says Keith Bakker the founder and head of Europe’s first and only clinic to treat gaming addicts. Using traditional abstinence-based treatment models the clinic has had very high success rates treating people who also show other addictive behaviours such as drug taking and excessive drinking. But the clinic is changing its treatment as it realises that compulsive gaming is a social rather than a psychological problem. In response the clinic has changed its treatment programme for gamers to focus more on developing activity-based social and communications skills to help them rejoin society. Mr Bakker believes that if there was more commitment from parents and other care givers to listen to what their children are saying then these issues of isolation and frustration could be dealt with at source and bring many young people out of the virtual world and back into real life.

Permainan elektronik yang selama ini dituduh para orangtua sebagai yang membuat anak-anak semakin bodoh dan malas belajar mungkin telah menanamkan suatu ilmu yang berguna secara luas bagi kehidupan mereka kelak: Pola pikir ilmiah.

Apa maksudnya? Simak studi yang dilakukan Constance Steinkuehler dari University of Wisconsin ini. Ia meneliti forum diskusi para pemain game online World of Warcraft, dan mendapati kalau 86% diskusi di sana berkaitan dengan analisis terhadap statistik dan algoritma game, seperti apa kelemahan musuh tertentu, skill/magic apa yang paling berguna dalam sebuah situasi, atau bagaimana cara tercepat menaikkan level.

Diskusi-diskusi yang dianalisis Steinkuehler ini rupanya mengikuti prinsip-prinsip ilmiah dasar, sehingga tidak salah kalau dikatakan para pemain itu sedang melakukan sebuah eksperimen atau penelitian ilmiah: Hipotesis atau pertanyaan diajukan, dan jawaban yang jadi solusi potensial kemudian diujicoba, disanggah, direvisi, hingga akhirnya disetujui.

Seperti yang diakui salah satu gamer yang ditanya oleh peneliti itu, saya sendiri selama ini tidak pernah begitu menyadari kalau apa yang saya ‘kerjakan’ adalah sebuah ikhtiar ilmiah; tahunya ya saya ada rintangan (entah berupa puzzle atau musuh yang susah) dan saya harus mengeksploitasi segala hal yang diberikan game itu untuk melewatinya/membuatnya lebih mudah.

Bagaimana dengan anda?

clipped from www.wired.com Constance Steinkuehler — a game academic at the University of Wisconsin — was spending 12 hours a day playing Lineage, the online world game. She was, as she puts it, a “siege princess,” running 150-person raids on hellishly difficult bosses. Most of her guild members were teenage boys. But they were pretty good at figuring out how to defeat the bosses. One day she found out why. A group of them were building Excel spreadsheets into which they’d dump all the information they’d gathered about how each boss behaved Then they’d develop a mathematical model to explain how the boss worked — and to predict how to beat it. Often, the first model wouldn’t work very well, so the group would argue about how to strengthen it. That’s when it hit her: The kids were practicing science. They’d think of a hypothesis — This boss is really susceptible to fire spells — and then collect evidence to see if the hypothesis was correct. If it wasn’t, they’d improve it until it accounted for the observed data