Lecture (Week 10)

This week, instead of getting to play video games, we got to do something much funner...study them (Y).

So there are different types of games, video games is a little outdated:
PC Game.
Console Game.
Online Game.
Arcade Game.
Mobile Gaming

(There are all community based games).

The demographics for 'video games' are 80% for people between 18 - 25 year old Males in a study conducted in 2005.
Also between the ages of 25 - 40 years it was 59%, 41% of that percentage being female.

There is also a social science approach: studying the effects of games on people. Are video games making people violent?

There is a humanities approach: Meaning and content of the games, for example narrative. They are in fact artifact/mediums of art.

And finally the industry abd egineering approach: the development of games/New Communication Technologies.

However antisocial and unappealing to some people video games may appear, it improves:
1. Peripheral vision.
2. Short term memory.
3. Split decision making.
4. Manual Dexterity.

We also did a test to see whether a woman would be more attracted to a guy who played video games in his spare time in his mother's basement. Or a really athletic guy who is extremely muscly and has all the stereotypical qualities that the actresses in the movie 'Grease' really went for. SHOCKINGLY, most of the women picked the athletic guy, but in the end it all comes down to perseption.

Please note: Wasn't nerdy guy in example =]