Those findings back up a study from the University of Southern California published last year, which said that women played "more intensely" than their male counterparts. In hourly terms, according to Scientific American the women surveyed played EQII an "average of 29 hours a week, versus 25 for the males."

Hardcore players more than doubled those numbers, with women still in the lead.

But The Journal of Communication says that women tended to lie about (or lowball) their EQII addictions. USC's study said almost the same thing, and we're starting to see a trend here—Everquest II player surveys simply cannot be trusted.

Gal Gamers Geekier Than Guys [Scientific American]

Writing on his blog, Dr. Marco Cardinale has four suggestions for those who enjoy their games as much as their athletic activity:

1) If your are travelling to train and compete and are crossing time zones, avoid using your laptop, DVD player, Ipod and similar tools and video games devices during the night. Get back to sleep!

2) If you are training and or competing the following day, avoid all of the above the night before such activities (training and competing) take place

3) Recovery time is meant to be for rest and piece. You don't want to play street fighter with your best mate and have your blood pressure, heart rate and cortisol levels go sky high because you lose!

4) There is a time and place and most of all a duration for your gaming and computing activities, make sure you don't negatively affect your performance because of that!

Man's got a point. Athletes need sleep, video games get your heart rate up, and when that happens you can't sleep. So athletes...try a good book instead. Maybe a book about video games?

Playing videogames and social networking….good news or bad news for sports people? [Sport & Fitness Science, via GamePolitics]

Reader Kyle, an entrant in the exhibit, sent us in these two videos of his creations. One, above, is a game of Mario, hacked so that your actions on-screen determine the kind of drink the robot will pour you. The other, below, is the same deal, only this time, it's Tetris.

So, yes, to recap: robot bartenders that play video games. We've never wanted to live somewhere closer to Vienna in our lives.

[Nonpolynomial Labs Roboexotica Projects]

Earlier this year, scientists from the US and China published a paper called "Human group formation in online guilds and offline gangs driven by a common team dynamic". Which does a neat job of summing up the paper's contents.

Basically, there's a mathematical model, a "a common team-based model can accurately reproduce the quantitative features of [WoW guilds and gangs] simply by adjusting the average tolerance level and attribute range for each population". So WoW guilds and gangs run on the same mechanics.

And it took scientists to come up with this? Crips and Bloods, Alliance and Horde...it's right there in the colours when you sign up, let alone whatever happens later on.

Human group formation in online guilds and offline gangs driven by a common team dynamic [Physical Review E, via Slashdot]

The study, entitled "The Priming Effects of Avatars in Virtual Settings," more or less says that people don't have to self-select antisocial depictions of themselves to engage in antisocial behaviors. Just being told to play on the Dark Side in Jedi Knight II, or as a Klanketeer in another setting, encourages them to be a-holes. So you can imagine what that says about a person who creates the skeleton-faced, top-hatted all-black avatar with a tag like xXx_ScAbIEsDeM0n_XxX.

Before you get huffy, the study's author isn't singling out video games or avatars; they just comprise one environment that can also "prime" people to be louts and douchebags. Let me submit another: The 101 from the 87 to Mountain View at 8:25 a.m. on a weekday.

But yeah, as "no shit" findings go, it does sound rather obvious. You can read up on the rest of the study if you like.

What Does Your Video Game Avatar Say About You? [Daily Comet via Destructoid] [Pic via Something Awful]

Remember, for one of the shortest jumps in the original (Dome of the Rock), we calculated Altair would need a pile three times as high and 41 times as large to stop the fall without Altair crashing through the cart and into the bricks below. So, "slightly larger," won't cut it, unless for some reason Ezio is "vastly lighter."

Owens' built his"Avatar Machine" costume to "[replicate]the aesthetics and visuals of third person gaming, allowing the user to view themselves as a virtual character in real space via a head mounted interface."

Which means...yeah, you guessed it. "The system potentially allows for a diminished sense of social responsibility, and could lead the user to demonstrate behaviors normally reserved for the gaming environment."

That's all well and good, but we just want to know one thing: can you make us one, Marc?

Avatar Machine [Marc Owens, via GameSetWatch]

The different types of tournament are micro-management, small-scale combat, limited tech tree and full games using StarCraft Brood War 1.16.1. Registration is open between now and September 15, 2010, submission is open from Sept. 15 through Sept. 30 and the actual tournament kicks off October 1 and continues through the AIIDE 2010 Conference.

Here's what the official website has to say:

Bots for StarCraft can be developed using the Broodwar API, which provides hooks into StarCraft and enables the development of custom AI for StarCraft. A C++ interface enables developers to query the current state of the game and issue orders to units.

...

All of the tournaments will use a double-elimination bracket, based on best of 5 matches.

So go forth, StarCraft modders. It's not just for nerd cred... it's for science!

Thanks for the tip, Professor Lowood!
Image Cred

The American Library Association, realising what some of us have known for years, have decreed that games can be a positive force in the teaching of history, and that the medium should be celebrated with a special day commemorating that.

"We have found that by adding board and video game formats to library collections", ALA President Dr. Camila Alire told Reuters, "we are providing users with tools to build strong literacy practices while sharpening technical and critical thinking skills".

Before you scoff, remember: history isn't always about dates and names. If a game can introduce a player to a period in time, let them see social and political forces at work (or give them an understanding of how those forces affect everyday people), that can be just as important as sticking a historical figure in a game, or having the player recreate an actual event.

Academics hope history in video games spurs interest [Reuters]

The group has released a report on the super-popular home fitness program, drawing on research performed by the University of Wisconsin. And this report has found that even Wii Fit's most physically taxing workouts can't hold a candle to actual exercise.

Wii Fit's boxing, for example, burns only 1/3 the calories of actual boxing, while the other four most intensive modes - Free Island Run, Super Hula Hoop, Advanced Step, and Free Step - only burned between 100 and 160 calories every 30 minutes of exercise. Considering a cheeseburger has around 300 calories, you'll be on Wii Fit all day if you want to really burn some fat.

Perhaps most damning/hilarious, however, is the report's finding that while Wii Fit burns more calories than a regular game - where you're doing nothing - it's not as good for you as a session on Nintendo's own Wii Sports.

Ah, the power of marketing.

American Council on Exercise Charts 'Underwhelming' Wii Fit Health Benefits [Gamasutra]

In reality, this technical demonstration of muscle-computer interfaces, as shown at the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, looks far less precise, far more finger straining than playing with traditional plastic. But the work done here by Scott Saponas, a PhD student at the University of Washington, and his peers could provide some of the tactile feedback missing from other motion control options, like Microsoft's Project Natal.

The non-gaming applications are just as fascinating, especially the theoretical car door opening baby carriage. Much better than the personal jet packs and silver jumpsuits I had planned for my own futuristic lifestyle.

Guitar Hero without a guitar [Procrastineering]

Deniz Ince, 11, is the lead author on the study, to be presented Monday in Philadelphia at the annual meeting of the American College of Rheumatology. Ince, who enjoys playing the Wii, found his fingers ached when he squeezed oranges. He set about researching the matter to determine if video games were linked to it.

The study surveyed 171 of Ince's schoolmates, aged 7 to 12 years old. Eighty percent said they played consoles or handhelds, and half of those said they played less than an hour a day. A third said they played one to two hours daily, and 7 and 6 percent said they played 2 to 3 or 3 or more hours a day, respectively.

The study found that each additional hour of use increased the likelihood of experiencing pain by 50 percent. It also found a higher pain incidence in younger children than older.

The study's senior author, Dr. Yasuf Yazici of New York University, said "the younger the kids, the more significant the pain." Why exactly couldn't be proven by the research, although the researchers believe it might be because muscles and tendons in younger kids are still developing.

The survey respondents said the pain they felt was "generally mild," although some 22 percent found it enough to limit how much they played. Interestingly, playing a Wii exclusively resulted in more self-reported pain, regardless of the player's age or how much he or she played per day.

Video Games Can Play Havoc With Kids' Joints [HealthDay on U.S. News & World Report]

CNN walks us through a number of experimental programs being tested by Homeland Security's Future Attribute Screening Technology, or FAST.

The different systems check a person's heart rate, breathing, eye movement, body temperature and, yes, fidgeting.

There are a number of different devices and technology involved in all of this detection, from thermal imaging to cameras used for eye tracking. But the most interesting to many of you will likely be the improvised fidgeting monitor.

Researchers took a Wii balance board — a device people stand on to interact with certain Nintendo Wii video games — and altered it to show how someone's weight shifts. Studies are now under way to determine whether there is a level of fidgeting that would suggest the need for secondary screening.

Fortunately, the screening wouldn't rely strictly on a person's Wii Fit Age to determine if they're a terrorist or not. Instead, screeners would look at all of the body signs before unjustly labeling a nervous flier a possible suicide bomber.

Will airports screen for body signals? Researchers hope so [CNN, thanks mjarantilla]

The study's results imply that video games draw on physiological mechanisms in ways similar to warfare, where testosterone-fueled aggression provides a strong advantage. Researchers had tried studying it on subjects in sports, but the natural production of testosterone by physical exertion clouded the results of the study.

In this one, researchers pitted 14 three-player teams against one another in Unreal Tournament 2004's Onslaught - a capture-the-flag mode - and laid a $45 bounty for winning team players vs. $15 for losers. To make sure they knew what they were doing, they let the teams practice for a week.

Afterward, they found that winning teams' testosterone levels spiked immediately after the tournament, especially in those who contributed most to the win. When team members played one another, in death matches with similar cash incentives, the best performing males typically produced less testosterone than those they defeated.

"In a serious out-group competition you can kill all your rivals and you're better for it," said David Geary, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Missouri. But when competing against others in order establish a social hierarchy, annihilation doesn't make sense. "You can't alienate your in-group partners, because you need them," he said.

Gamers Are More Aggressive to Strangers [New Scientist]

What's controller latency? DF explain it neatly as:

In basic terms, controller latency is very easy to define. It's the time, usually measured in frames or milliseconds, between pressing the button on your controller and the appropriate action kicking in on-screen during gameplay. The longer the delay, the less responsive the controls, and the more unsatisfying the game can feel.

This can be caused in two ways. One by LCD televisions, the other by inherent lag in the game's code. Since TV latency can vary between sets, DF's research focuses solely on measuring the lag between the controller and the game code. Their findings are listed below.

As you can see, the top performers are the ones that really need as little lag as possible: the twitchy games, the ones most reliant on fast timing. So fighting games, music games, driving games.

For the full rundown of the methodology and technology involved, hit the link below.

Console Gaming: The Lag Factor [Eurogamer]

Or at least the brains of adolescent girls, who were the subject of the study, funded by Tetris marketer Blue Planet Software. Adolescent girls' brains are still developing, as any adolescent boy can tell you, so their brains are more susceptible to the sort of change Haier was looking for, and change he indeed found. The girls were given MRI scans before and after three months of Tetris, and after the testing period it was found that certain areas (in blue above) showed greater efficiency, while others (in red) showed thicker cortexes, indicating more brain matter.

Future benefits of this study, says co-investigator Dr. Richard Haier, might be to "demonstrate that a player of Tetris does see lasting effects that generalize to other activity," showing for example that engaging in activities like playing some games might help fight off the mental decline that occurs with aging.

The full study is being published in Thursday's BMC Research Notes, but we get the general gist. Adolescent girls who play Tetris on a regular basis grow up to be completely awesome.

How Tetris Changes Your Brain [Wired]

Crave decided not to take Sony's press releases at their word, and instead plugged a Slim into machines to test its actual power output. And their findings are a little surprising!

The Slim uses a lot less power than Sony have given it credit for. In standby mode, it's around 70% more efficient, while playing games and Blu-Rays its just over 50% more efficient.

That's not to say its an efficient machine per se (it still uses 4x as much juice playing a Blu-Ray as a standalone Blu-Ray player), but hey, in relative terms, the Slim is now a lot more efficient than it's fatter, older, more wasteful brother.

PS3 Slim uses half the power of PS3 'Fat' [Crave, via Gizmodo]

Paul Delfabbro of the University of Adelaide led a team studying more than 2,500 Australian teens, more than half of whom admitted to gambling in the past year. OK, fine. Delfabbro then brings out his broad brush.

If you look at those young people who are classified as pathological gamblers you will find that they do have a higher frequency of involvement with many different types of videogame. They're much more likely to play games on Xboxes and similar consoles. They are also more likely to play arcade games ... Those sort of young people who've had this need for more sort of unstructured activities probably also drift into gambling a bit more because it's another activity which you can do if you're out on the street.

This is, honestly, a serious question - are arcades in Australia as dead as they are in the U.S.? (It's 6:30 a.m. there, I'm not waking Luke up to ask that.) Because if so, it's an incredible - as in, not believable - assumption that arcades, practically made obsolete by consoles, play a role in conditioning or desensitizing young people to gambling in a casino.

If it seems like too easy a connection, don't worry, a guy with a diploma bigger than yours or mine thinks so too. Alex Blaszczynski, a psychology professor at the University of Sydney, more or less states what folks learn in Psych 101, or any form of science, really - correlation is not causation.

Does an interest in gambling lead to people becoming involved in video games or do video games lead to people becoming involved in gambling? Or is there a third factor which accounts for both gambling and videogames? There's also the possibility that some people with certain characteristics would then tend to engage in both video and technology type gaming activity and gambling as well. And that may well be linked to things like risk taking or impulsivity or other factors.

Does Video Game Play Lead to Gambling Addiction? [Game Politics]

The Centers for Disease Control examined 500 adults across all majority ages (18 and up) in Seattle, because its Internet usage is highest in the United States and it's one of the largest media markets. Forty-five percent of respondents reported playing video games. Of them, CDC found that gamers' average age has gone up to a what-am-I-doing-with-my-life 35, and body condition, health and emotional state have followed suit.

All is not lost; girl gamers my age have it worse. CDC found they reported "greater depression and lower health status than female non players." Unsurprisingly, "male gamers reported a higher BMI and a greater reliance on the Internet than non-gamers.

"Health risk factors, specifically a higher BMI and a larger number of poor mental-health days, differentiated adult video game players from non-gamers," he said.

"Video game players also reported lower extraversion, consistent with research on adolescents that linked video-game playing to a sedentary lifestyle and overweight status."

Feel like crap yet? You should, according to this study.

Video Gamers 'Older Than Thought' [BBC]

The mirror makes the hologram appear to be "floating" in air, while the Airborne Ultrasound Tactile Display shoots focused ultrasonic waves to create the feeling of a holographic ball or holographic rain falling on one's hand.

The Wii Remotes? They're used to track movement — just one of many non-gaming use scientist people are finding for Nintendo's hardware.

Touchable Holography [University of Tokyo via @GreatDismal via Pink Tentacle]