Playing action video games may be bad for your brain

Re:Playing action video games may be bad for your brain – lo... by problems on Wednesday August 09, 2017 @12:24PM (#14970865)

Interesting, I played a lot of PlayerUnknowns Battlegrounds last weekend and this does bring a few things to mind: some FPSes are highly reliant upon twitch reactions and that sort of deep reptile brain panic response. It improves your reflexes and precision, but likely punishes higher order thinking.

Other games encourage you to plan long term and work within systems.

I think these exercise very different parts of your brain - is it possible there's simply a trade off here?

On the other hand, single player in call of duty is about the most mind numbing thing it's possible to play, there's no competition, it's just kill guys and advance in a straight line. Would be interesting to compare with more competitive or open world games.

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Re:Playing action video games may be bad for your brain – lo... by icanhackit on Thursday August 10, 2017 @01:12AM (#14976630)

I played a lot of PlayerUnknowns Battlegrounds last weekend [...] It improves your reflexes and precision, but likely punishes higher order thinking.

I'd argue that spatial and temporal considerations are critical in PUBG. Sure, it's not real-time strategy kind of planning, but understanding your exposure to others based on elevation & movement speed, resource management, blue/white perimeter placement and strategy to get to the objective while avoiding enemy LOS does encourage higher order thinking.

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