Play Style Classification of Video Games
Question:
Discuss about the Cognitive Functions and Video Games for Psychology.
In this era of digitalisation, video game is one of the most well-known components of entertainment for both child and adults. Additionally, impacts of video games have become a burning issue in both leisure and academic field due to its huge accessibility and demand throughout every level of the society. In this paper, the cognitive and psychological impacts of video games have been analysed from various aspects of socio-cultural diversity. The classification of video games and cognitive functions have been also analysed concerning various interconnection and cardinality.The major focus of this paper is to analyse the impact of video games on attention, memory and creativity of an individual. The potential implementation of video games is also examined with relevant shreds of evidence.
Video games have multiple threads of classification including platform based classification, play style classification and others. In order to analyse the cognitive and psychological impact the play style based classification would be very helpful. According to Oei, & Patterson, (2013), there are five types of games considering the play styles, namelyRole Play game (RPG), First Person Shooter (FPS),Sports, Strategy and Simulation video games. Among these RPG games are usually played from third person camera view by controlling a historical or fictional character. In these games players usually, experience a beautiful storyline with occasional combat. However, as per Takeda, Kato&Nishiumi (2013),FPS games are mostly military and shooting based games. Most of these games consist of excessive cruelty, aggressiveness and violent. Sports games are mainly racing or other simulated outdoor sports games like cricket, football and others. Strategy games allow the player to use more intelligence, memory and management skills. It has two sub-categories namely fast passed and turn-based. Simulation games are a most independent genre that simulates realistic works like train simulator, plane simulator, life simulator, survival simulator and others. On the contrary, as opined by Greenfield (2014), these games are mainly focused on adult and mature computer users who like to play the games to experience the realistic field of work while having entertainment. Each of these types of video games has individual impact on memory, attention, response time, executive control and processing speed of an individual.
Attention is one of the essential criteria in any type of video games. The attention required for a game depends on its complexity and pace. According to Basak (2014), the kids of grades 3 to 5 who regularly play video games have multi-points attention skills. However, another study of 51 undergraduate young people has been shown that excessive playing of high paced games like FPS and Racing reduce the ability to do a monotonous work attentively. On the contrary,Granic, Lobel& Engels,(2014), the high frame movement and colour contrast are the main cause of this negative impact. On the other hand, low volume gamers who play games less than 4 hours per week have more attention increment as the influence of video games. As per the ERP or Event Related Potential report generated from a large group of gamers, moderate and low volume gamer have comparatively high attention and patience level than hive volume gamers who play more than 40 hours in a week (Blacker et al., 2014).
Impact of Different Play Styles on Attention, Memory and Creativity
According to LeBlanc et al. (2013),various real time researchesshowed that the cognitive attachment and attention capacity is also highly dependent on the genre of video games. According to the report players of FPS and Racing game has more fluctuating focusing than simulation or strategy games players. As per the expert opinions, strategy and especially low paced strategy games, as well as simulation games, engage the players for having more patients and stable focusing ability. On the contrary, as per Blacker et al. (2014), most of the FPS, RPG action and Racing game target the teenagers. For various physiological cause at teenage, a person has the higher potentiality to change focus from one to another point in very less amount of time. Therefore, it can be said that each genre of video games have individual target group to engage that regulate the focusing ability of the players.
Video games have also high impact on long term and short term memory depending on the play style and interactivity. Some of the games are specifically made as a memory game, though these are not very popular or widely acceptable. Therefore the influence of video games on memory can be gauged depending on the mainstream games. According to Boot et al. (2013), some of the mainstream genre like Management, RPG, Strategy, and City building games has a high impact on player’s short term memory uses. Some of these games have special bonus points for finding any particular path or treasures within the game. On the contrary, according to Przybylski(2014),more than 33% of regular gamer has the higher stabilised memory than occasional video game players. Some gamers consciously avoid this type of memory utilising games, rather they have more interests in fast-paced games like FPS.
Some other studies have shown that FPS games also have memory strengthening capability to some extent. However, the effect is inversely proportional to the duration of regular game playing. This type of games usually increased the short time cognitive interpretation power and memories that have a negligible amount of implementation on daily life activities. However,according to Feng, Spence& Pratt (2017), this type of games has a high impact on focus switching in fast passed environment. As per the various research conducted on a group of multi-genre gamers, most of the video games have low to moderate level impact on memory except thesome of the sports and racing games.
There is very limited number of mainstream games which enhances the creativity and imagination power of the gamers such as 3D modelling games, Vegicle Building, Plane Building Sandbox Crafting and others. As per Drummond& Sauer(2014), mostly city building games have the quality that can enhance the creativity of the gamers. Over the past 20 years of video game revolution, there are very few games which enable the players to implement their creative skill or enhance it. However, asopined byGee (2014),most of the video games especially FPS and action based RPG games consistently decrease the creative ability of the gamers and increase the aggressive and violent approach. Recently implementation of Virtual Reality in this FPS Shootergenre increases the aggressive influence and decreases the creative influence significantly. According to various international researchers, more than 63% of FPS gamers are observed having lesser creative ability and patience (Feng, Spence& Pratt, 2017).
Video Games and Attention
However, some of the new video game genres like sandbox, survival and others have the capability to influence the creative skills. Recently Sandbox games are gradually gaining high popularity due to it provides highly independent game-play focused on creative aspect. As opined by Anguera et al. (2013), these games are highly effective in terms of increasing the creative quality of any gamer. These games are largely used to utilise the creative ability and interest of players for 3d modelling purposes. Introduction of virtual reality also increases the creativeinfluences of these games. Additionally, more low volume and moderate volume gamers are getting interest towards these creative games where virtual reality has been added additional attraction.
From the past 15 years, video games are becoming one of the highly addictive practices irrespective of any demographical divisions. This high addiction has an enormous impact on the academic life of a school going or college going students (Gee, 2014). The average academic performance of teenagers is significantly decreasing due to unstoppable addiction towards video games of various platforms. According to Peng, Crouse& Lin (2013), more than 63% moderate volume video game players who play gamesapproximately 30 hours in a week, are intended to become high volume video game players. Additionally, more than 53% of high volume video game players have more than one psychological problem, such as depression, chronic anxiety, attention deficiency and others (Anguera et al., 2013).However, simulation games are gaining popularity amongst various training institutions and educational institution as well. On the contrary as per Green& Kaufman(2015), creative games like sandbox and 3d modelling games are being utilised to enhance the creative ability of the students as well as their interest on creative task. It also allows generating additional attention and patience within the students.
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it is clear that theimpacts of video games have become a very strong issue in both leisure and academic field due to its huge accessibility and demand throughout every level of the society. Additionally, each game genre has a unique impact on the cognitive functions and psychology of the gamers. FPS shooters and other fast-paced games have the high impact on short-term memory and visual memory of gamers in both positive and negative ways. However, sandbox and strategygames are highly effective in terms of increasing the creative quality of any gamer. Recently these creative games are gradually gaining high popularity due to it provides highly independent game-play focused on creative aspect. In conclusive part it can be said that, video games have cognitive and psychological impacts from various aspects of socio-cultural diversity.
References:
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