@Syphen_bast @delcidanddarth Haha, yes. It should more accurately be called "20 minutes of games don't affect your pro-social instincts". We should always be skeptical of studies, no matter the findings. But before we can come to a conclusion, multiple studies need to be done that all arrive at the same conclusion. Hopefully, this is just one of many more studies to find no link.
@Syphen_bast You would prefer an 8-hour CoD zombie-thon? Good luck finding participants for that study (outside of people who already play CoD for hours at a time). All this study really says is that playing a game for 20 minutes has no immediate effect on our pro-social human instincts. Nothing more.
@Krinnium Human behavior is difficult to study. This experiment wasn't just 20 minutes of one game, it was 20 minutes with 4 different games. And while it would be easy to find a bunch of gamers to do this, you won't find a lot of "control" people (non-gamers) to play games for over an hour.
Also, the "pen test" is a legitimate social skill test that looks at our human (or more broadly, "primate") instincts to help others out who seem to need it. Same type of thing is done on chimps and children.
Behavior is difficult to study because you can't just ask someone if they feel more or less violent. Well, you can, but the results tend to be wildly varying. Candid behavior is usually most accurate versus scripted Q/A.
@Bumblebee1138 I was specifically responding to the pen part, and misdirection is a required element of any psychological human testing, as humans typically try to outsmart the test. The 20 minute part is more of a testing choice, as any study involving people has to attract enough participants to be significant, yet still be relevant to the question at hand. As it is, the subjects played 20 minutes of 4 different games, which is a lot of time for most people. If you had them play a more realistic hour or 2 hours, this would be an all day experiment, and very few people would volunteer. On the other hand, they could have paid the subjects to get a larger sample size. You should probably think a little harder on the complexity of the whole experiment before being 100% incredulous about it.
@Bumblebee1138 When doing human studies, this type of thing is pretty common. People are smart, so you have to disguise the test. If it was as simple as answering questions related to social interactions, the subjects could bias their answers because they had their own personal agenda. What the subjects didn't realize was the questions weren't part of the test at all.
"The only difference is that the advertisement we have is quite small and not disruptive, so people are not aware of clicking on the banners because they know this is a part of the whole experience on the dash"
So much of this just seems paradoxical. A "small and not disruptive" ad combined with "banners" just doesn't add up. Add in the fact that EVERYONE hates ads, my mind is going to explode (in a bad way).
@Zombrex @jtech50 Banning occurs at two levels. The big 3 consoles won't license an AO game to be used on their hardware, and most stores won't sell an AO game (which is limited to computers now, thanks to the big 3 rule). You are left with buying at adult stores/websites.
you mean, you'll get to the magic later? I think I've heard this song and dance before. For anyone who was born yesterday, don't consider promises as part of a product's value. All we have right now is a published list of specs for each system, and that's about it. These companies can drastically modify (or hide) a lot of things between now and release time, let's just wait and see.
@Snakepond1 They can have both. Family share for digital games (that you can't currently sell to gamestop), regularly share disc-based games like we've done for years. All it takes is a little bit of imagination to make it work. Personally, I'm offended Microsoft couldn't figure out a way to do both.
While Steam and Apple may lock your digital content (at least, if you break the TOS and you "lose your license" to play that content), that might not be the way digital content ends up. Already in Germany (I think?), there's been a court order that someone who pays for a digital copy is the owner of that content, and must be allowed to resell it as used. We'll see if that gains any traction here.
@Snakepond1 "Cave" to gamers? Imagine that... when a gaming company does what gamers want, the gamers approve. Microsoft didn't fail to explain properly, gamers actually don't want to have limits on when or where they play games they paid for. Microsoft could easily turn things around if they put the family-share option back on the table. No reason they can't do it, they just want to behave like a child and pretend gamers can't have any advanced digital options unless we take all of them. Note to companies... give your customers options, don't dictate to them.
delcidanddarth's comments