How Videogames Blind Us With Science


	How Videogames Blind Us With Science

Catshade

11-5-2008 12:16 PM

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tags:

video games, game, science, cognition, thinking

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11-5-2008 2:41 PM

polymath22

The possibilities that technology offers are exciting.

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<div style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="see clips that are hot right now"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_embed/06423c82-f0c4-4691-b9c5-9fb3fcf206b5/80E6257C-FA35-4C47-A55B-805F02933BDC/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/commentary/games/2008/09/gamesfrontiers_0908" href="http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/commentary/games/2008/09/gamesfrontiers_0908" style="font-size: 11px;">www.wired.com</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/commentary/games/2008/09/gamesfrontiers_0908"> Constance Steinkuehler -- a game academic at the University of Wisconsin -- was spending 12 hours a day playing <CITE>Lineage</CITE>, 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.
</blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/commentary/games/2008/09/gamesfrontiers_0908">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</blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/commentary/games/2008/09/gamesfrontiers_0908">Then they'd develop a mathematical model to explain how the boss worked -- and to predict how to beat it.
</blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/commentary/games/2008/09/gamesfrontiers_0908">Often, the first model wouldn't work very well, so the group would argue about how to strengthen it. </blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/commentary/games/2008/09/gamesfrontiers_0908"><P>
That's when it hit her: The kids were practicing science.
</P></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/commentary/games/2008/09/gamesfrontiers_0908">They'd think of a hypothesis -- <EM>This boss is really susceptible to fire spells</EM> -- 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</blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="font-size: 11px;border-spacing: 0px;padding: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;">&nbsp;</td><td align="right" style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;width:107px" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/80E6257C-FA35-4C47-A55B-805F02933BDC/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content6.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" border="0" alt="blog it" width="107" height="17" style="border-width:0px;padding:0px;margin:0px;" /></a></td></tr></table></div></div>

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