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GPS and quest markers are literally fucking up your brain!

L

loganclaws

Plane Escape Torment
According to this newly published article:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montr...y-be-bad-for-your-brain-study-finds-1.4237361

Playing first person shooters where you don't need to remember locations and landmarks are reducing your grey matter. Very interesting article, here's an extract about how hand-holding techniques are literally fucking your brain up:

West said their study raises essential questions about video-game design, and he and Bohbot are now hoping to address those questions together with video-game makers.

"What aspects of action video-game design, action video-game playing causes this reduction in grey matter in response learners?" West asks.

"If we understand that, we could potentially improve these types of games so that they don't cause any reduction in grey matter and eliminate any potential risks."

West pointed to the inclusion of GPS and way-finding markers in many current action games as examples of potentially problematic features.

"These type of markers, we hypothesize, encourage people to ignore landmarks and follow routes that recruit and rely on the brain's rewards system," he said.
Click to expand...

Guide me with a quest marker if old.
 
O

Orayn

Member
Gee, I wonder if this science related headline could take some very basic data and use it to draw completely wacky conclusions that aren't even supported by the very limited amount of evidence collected. That has clearly never happened before in the history of journalism.
 
S

Spring-Loaded

Member
Orayn said:
Gee, I wonder if this science related headline could take some very basic data and use it to draw completely wacky conclusions that aren't even supported by the very limited amount of evidence collected. That has clearly never happened before in the history of journalism.
Click to expand...

an artist uses lies to tell the truth
 
C

Conciliator

Banned
i'm gonna get in a time machine and go back 2000 years to some rice farmer in the sun with his hands in the earth, and be like "hey man, make sure you turn off the nav bar and quest icons on Fallout 4, that shit'll rot your brain"
 
M

Mindlog

Member
Overall I feel part of the 10% still reliant on spatial memory even after lots of games. However, I'd be all for more games adopting the BotW approach to mapping out environments in an open world.
 
T

Toxi

Banned
West and Bohbot first established if subjects were response learners or spatial learners by having them run a virtual maze on a computer.

Spatial learners were identified by their tendency to find their way via landmarks such as a rock, a tree or a mountain. Response learners, on the other hand, tend to navigate through remembered sequences of left and right turns.

The participants were then divided into two groups: one played first-person shooter games for a total of 90 hours, and for the same amount of time, the other control group played 3D-platform games, which require players to navigate in a virtual environment by remembering previously visited locations.

Playing Super Mario Odyssey and other 3D platform games could help restore some of the grey matter lost in the hippocampus from playing shooter video games, the Montreal researchers say.

All participants playing 3D platform games, such as Super Mario 64, showed growth in the hippocampus after the experiment, regardless of whether they were response learners or spatial learners.

This result, West said, suggests that 3D platform games could be used as a kind of antidote to the negative effect of action games on hippocampal grey matter in response learners.

"It's certainly possible that someone could pick up a 3D platform game and train their brain to grow that grey matter back," he said.
Click to expand...
Why do I feel like I'm reading a stealth Nintendo advertisement?
 
O

Orayn

Member
If anyone actually cares, this seems to be a continuation of a study that made a few headlines 2 years ago.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150519210303.htm

"For more than a decade now, research has demonstrated that action video game players display more efficient visual attention abilities, and our current study has once again confirmed this notion," says first author Dr. Gregory West. "However, we also found that gamers rely on the caudate-nucleus to a greater degree than non-gamers. Past research has shown that people who rely on caudate nucleus-dependent strategies have lower grey matter and functional brain activity in the hippocampus. This means that people who spend a lot of time playing video games may have reduced hippocampal integrity, which is associated with an increased risk of neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's disease."
Click to expand...

Video games are maybe associated with reliance on caudate-nucleus, which is maybe associated reduced gray matter, which is maybe associated with neurological disorders. Even if this newer study supports that conclusion further, it seems like a pretty tenuous connection.

I found the actual text of the more recent study here, just search for "impact of video games" https://papyrus.bib.umontreal.ca/xm...18554/Diarra_Moussa_2016_these.pdf?sequence=2
 
Kumomeme

Kumomeme

Member
i really hate destination marker

make things easier without encourage player to explore the location themself
i feel like there no need to use brain at all since all we need follow the marker and just bypass any obstacle without properly follow correct path
this also like destroying the landscape design purpose
 
M

mrklaw

MrArseFace
But isn't that kind of behaviour already pervading real life - google maps, cars with satnav. People are already not thinking spatially and just dumbly following arrows

I'd think if there is something to this study, real life would be more worrying than video games
 
N

Net_Wrecker

Member
We're in 2017. Getting lost is for cave people.

We can map the entire known universe. I don't care about my grey matter. GPS take the wheel.
 
JayBabay

JayBabay

Member
thekonamicode said:
The solution is to play Souls games.
Click to expand...

It's incredible how you can map out an area in your brain without any maps or guidance when you are forced to be so perceptive of the environment that surrounds you.

You can literally play large portions of those games In your mind, recalling so much through landmarks and enemy placement because of how much care you take going through it the first time.
 
C

Cuningas de Häme

Member
People learn to follow the arrow, and they will never stop to think for themselves.

Games just reflect that. "I don't have time to read quests, I just want the reward with the least activity and now!" is the norm.

Players don't learn to work for their goals, don't learn patience, don't learn to think for themselves. Of the game won't give you everything on a silver platter they will look the solutions online.

It sucks, and by judging how people act online they are a lot more stupid than the kids of the past. Hateful little worms.

Luckily there's games like Minecraft that feed their imagination.
 
Toadthemushroom

Toadthemushroom

Member
Good summary in the other thread about similar research:

PK Gaming said:
A different article on the same research makes things much clearer:

source

TL;DR:

  • There is no causation between brain damage and playing shooters.
  • Playing shooters in a certain way (ie: autopilot) may cause negative effects on the brain.
  • On the other hand, playing those very same shooters by applying spatial strategies (ie: thinking of the map layout, not mindlessly shooting at things, getting gud) can actually provide beneficial effects.
  • Mario games are good for the brain in general..

So not only does playing on autopilot make you a bad player, it possibly has negative effects on the brain (lol)
Click to expand...

I often wonder what the impact is if you play braindead RPGs (e.g. Tales of Zestiria) vs something like Golden Sun which doesn't point out where to go, ever, and has dungeons that you often have to commit spatial information to memory (remember Gaia Rock?)

---

I've been playing Gravity Rush 2 lately and the way the game puts a waypoint on basically everything is really making it feel braindead. The presentation is lovely, and some of the gravity flight/combat gameplay is as fun as it was in the first game, but there's way too much 'follow the waypoint' in its main and side quests for a game that gives you the means to explore freely.
 
2

2+2=5

The Amiga Brotherhood
I understand some gaffers' hate for markers, but context is important, modern rpgs' worlds are bigger, more complex(height, interiors), more open(open world with a single map vs open world divided into multiple smaller maps) and with more elements(people, objects, collecibles, missions etc) than those of the 80s and 90s.
Different story are simpler/smaller games.
 
Toadthemushroom

Toadthemushroom

Member
2+2=5 said:
I understand some gaffers' hate for markers, but context is important, modern rpgs' worlds are bigger, more complex(height, interiors), more open(open world with a single map vs open world divided into multiple smaller maps) and with more elements(people, objects, collecibles, missions etc) than those of the 80s and 90s.
Different story are simpler/smaller games.
Click to expand...


This is true, but there's still a place for careful-conscious design where developers don't just design massive environments where most of the space isn't actually useful for anything other than creating a huge sense of scale or for littering dozens of quests everywhere.

It often feels like waypoints and markers are a solution to poor discipline of design.

Luckily there are also huge open game worlds which work without waypoints and on-screen markers (or even minimaps) - Zelda: BotW is a superb example, especially given its focus on verticality.
 
S

Spoit

Member
2+2=5 said:
I understand some gaffers' hate for markers, but context is important, modern rpgs' worlds are bigger, more complex(height, interiors), more open(open world with a single map vs open world divided into multiple smaller maps) and with more elements(people, objects, collecibles, missions etc) than those of the 80s and 90s.
Different story are simpler/smaller games.
Click to expand...
Even now, almost two decades later, I'm still finding new stuff when I replay Deus ex.
 
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