Hit the jump for the top 20 devs on the list.

1. Nintendo Kyoto (Brain Age, Wii Play)
2. Infinity Ward (Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare)
3. Blizzard Entertainment (World Of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade)
4. Electronic Arts Canada (FIFA Soccer 08, NBA Street: Homecourt)
5. Valve (Portal, Team Fortress 2)
6. Konami Japan Studio (Winning Eleven: Pro Evolution Soccer, Dance Dance Revolution Universe)
7. Insomniac Games (Ratchet & Clank Future)
8. Capcom Osaka Studio (Lost Planet: Extreme Condition, Monster Hunter Freedom)
9. Electronic Arts Tiburon (Madden NFL 08, NASCAR 08)
10. BioWare Edmonton (Mass Effect, Jade Empire: Special Edition)
11. Bungie Studios (Halo 3)
12. Ubisoft Montreal (Assassin's Creed, Naruto: Rise Of A Ninja)
13. 2K Boston [& Australia] (BioShock)
14. Harmonix (Rock Band)
15. Bandai Namco Tokyo (Ace Combat 6: Fires Of Liberation, Beautiful Katamari)
16. Square Enix Tokyo (Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core, Front Mission DS)
17. Game Freak (Pokemon Diamond/Pearl)
18. Epic Games (Unreal Tournament 3, Gears Of War PC)
19. Hudson Soft (Mario Party 8, Mario Party DS)
20. Neversoft (Guitar Hero III, Tony Hawk's Proving Ground)

Nintendo, Infinity Ward, Blizzard Top First-Ever 'Top 50 Developers' Countdown [Gamasutra]

The most interesting result of the study? The dancing game actually expended more energy than walking on the treadmill. Hit the jump for exactly what those results were.

While watching TV and playing traditional video games, both groups of kids expended the same about of energy. Using the camera game, they used three times the amount of energy. Walking on the treadmill, the normal weight kids used three times the energy, while the mildly obese kids used five times the energy. Both groups used the most energy in the dancing game, with the mildly obese group burning six times the amount of energy than sitting still.

I think this study would have been made all the more interesting if they'd used more current games, like anything for the Wii, Wii Fit in particular, but the results are kinda neat, nonetheless.

Mayo Clinic Shows Adding Activity to Video Games Fights Obesity [KIII TV]

Jeez, I feel like such a statistic. As a female who is permanently attached to her DS and spends way too many hours playing The Sims, I fit the profile they describe to a T (although accounting for all the DS-playing I do on the bus and Sim playing I do in front of the TV, 7.4 hours is - ahem - a conservative estimate). Does this describe other female gamers, too?

ESA report shows 38% of gamers are female [dbtechno.com, via Gamasutra]

Can't figure out why your old lady won't sit and play Halo 3 with you, guys? Don't know why the man in your life won't stop playing Call of Duty 4 until the wee hours of the morning, ladies? According to a new study by the Stanford School of Medicine, the part of the brain that gives of a feeling of reward and accomplishment is more active in men than in women.

Twenty-two men and women were given a simple game, in which they had to control a number of balls and a wall in a certain way to protect territory and ultimately win the game, while their brain patterns were tracked on a fMRI machine.

"The females 'got' the game, and they moved the wall in the direction you would expect," said Reiss, who is director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Brain Sciences Research. "They appeared motivated to succeed at the game. The males were just a lot more motivated to succeed."

Both groups showed activity in the mesocorticolimbic center, which is the part of the brain associated with rewards and addictions, but the males showed a lot more activity.

So there you have it. Could this really be the reason your girlfriend won't play Xbox with you? I guess it would account for the higher number of males that play video games than females, and would also make sense why not all guys love games, and why not all girls don't. After all, having a gendered brain doesn't mean that your brain is exactly the same as everyone else of your gender, just similar. I think it also comes down to nature vs. nurture, too: video games are becoming a bigger part of our culture, so regardless of how your brain is wired, you'll be more inclined to play games. More information on the study in the press release after the jump.

02/04/08

VIDEO GAMES ACTIVATE REWARD REGIONS OF BRAIN IN MEN MORE THAN WOMEN,
STANFORD STUDY FINDS

STANFORD, Calif. - Allan Reiss, MD, and his colleagues have a pretty good idea why your husband or boyfriend can't put down the Halo 3. In a first-of-its-kind imaging study, the Stanford University School of Medicine researchers have shown that the part of the brain that generates rewarding feelings is more activated in men than women during video-game play.

"These gender differences may help explain why males are more attracted to, and more likely to become 'hooked' on video games than females," the researchers wrote in their paper, which was recently published online in the Journal of Psychiatric Research.

More than 230 million video and computer games were sold in 2005, and polls show that 40 percent of Americans play games on a computer or a console. According to a 2007 Harris Interactive survey, young males are two to three times more likely than females to feel addicted to video games, such as the Halo series so popular in recent years.

Despite the popularity of video and computer games, little is known about the neural processes that occur as people play these games. And no research had been done on gender-specific differences in the brain's response to video games.

Reiss, senior author of the study and the Howard C. Robbins Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, has long been interested in studying gender differences; in 2005, he published a study showing that men and women process humor differently. He and his colleagues became interested in exploring the concept of territoriality, and they determined the best way to do so was with a simple computer game.

The researchers designed a game involving a vertical line (the "wall") in the middle of a computer screen. When the game begins, 10 balls appear to the right of the wall and travel left toward the wall. Each time a ball is clicked, it disappears from the screen. If the balls are kept a certain
distance from the wall, the wall moves to the right and the player gains territory, or space, on the screen. If a ball hits the wall before it's clicked, the line moves to the left and the player loses territory on the screen.

During this study, 22 young adults (11 men and 11 women) played numerous 24-second intervals of the game while being hooked up to a functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, machine. fMRI is designed to produce a dynamic image showing which parts of the brain are working during a given activity.

Study participants were instructed to click as many balls as possible; they weren't told that they could gain or lose territory depending on what they did with the balls. Reiss said all participants quickly learned the point of the game, and the male and female participants wound up clicking on the same number of balls. The men, however, wound up gaining a significantly greater amount of space than the women. That's because the men identified which balls - the ones closest to the "wall" - would help them acquire the most space if clicked.

"The females 'got' the game, and they moved the wall in the direction you would expect," said Reiss, who is director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Brain Sciences Research. "They appeared motivated to succeed at the game. The males were just a lot more motivated to succeed."

After analyzing the imaging data for the entire group, the researchers found that the participants showed activation in the brain's mesocorticolimbic center, the region typically associated with reward and addiction. Male brains, however, showed much greater activation, and the amount of
activation was correlated with how much territory they gained. (This wasn't the case with women.) Three structures within the reward circuit - the nucleus accumbens, amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex - were also shown to influence each other much more in men than in women. And the better connected this circuit was, the better males performed in the game.

The findings indicate, the researchers said, that successfully acquiring territory in a computer game format is more rewarding for men than for women. And Reiss, for one, isn't surprised. "I think it's fair to say that males tend to be more intrinsically territorial," he said. "It doesn't take a genius to figure out who historically are the conquerors and tyrants of our species-they're the males."

Reiss said this research also suggests that males have neural circuitry that makes them more liable than women to feel rewarded by a computer game with a territorial component and then more motivated to continue game-playing behavior. Based on this, he said, it makes sense that males are more prone to getting hooked on video games than females.

"Most of the computer games that are really popular with males are territory- and aggression-type games," he pointed out.

Reiss said the team's findings may apply to other types of video and computer games. "This is a fairly representative, generic computer game," he said, adding that he and his colleagues are planning further work in this area.

Fumiko Hoeft, MD, PhD, senior research scientist, was first author of the study. Co-authors include Christa Watson, social science research assistant; Shelli Kesler, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences; and Keith Bettinger, software developer.

# # #

Stanford University Medical Center integrates research, medical education and patient care at its three institutions - Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford Hospital & Clinics and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford. For more information, please visit the Web site of the medical center's Office of Communication & Public Affairs at http://mednews.stanford.edu.

Noting that the study focused on subjects who played video games for only 30 minutes, Chou said many youngsters spend far more time on video games each day, unaware that doing so on a long term basis could damage the frontal lobe of the brain, as well as the anterior cingulate gyrus.

Not my anterior cingulate gyrus! Fuckbeans. I love my cingulate gyrus.

The frontal lobe of the brain is associated with thinking, speaking, and impulse control, so the study definitely explains 75% of Xbox Live users. Meanwhile my beloved cingulate gyrus monitors the internal emotional response, which is why I am so cold and dead inside. Decreased blood flow to these areas is generally exhibited in patients suffering from schizophrenia and depression.

All I can say is thank goodness I am no longer 25 years old and thus not affected by these findings.

Playing video games may sap emotional control: survey [Taiwan News Online via PC World]

About 63 percent of the U.S. population play video games, and a majority of them see game playing as a way to alleviate stress and to help them unwind, according to a new study conducted by the NPD Group.

The report is based on online survey responses from 5,039 members of NPD's online consumer panel conducted from Oct. 11 to Oct. 18.

Of those who game, 30 percent said they are spending more time gaming this year than last year while another 30 percent or so said they are spending less time and nearly 40 percent say they are spending about the same amount of time. The heaviest gamers in the survey were 18 to 34.

"The new type of game experiences brought to the market over the past several years are succeeding in reaching a broader audience. The challenge for the industry is that consumers are a fickle group, and with the great variety of options pulling at their limited free time, they're going to be easily distracted unless something really compels them to stay with gaming," said Anita Frazier, industry analyst, The NPD Group. "To reach these less involved consumers, the industry has to work even harder, but doing so can produce great rewards."

PLAYING VIDEO GAMES VIEWED AS FAMILY/GROUP ACTIVITY AND STRESS REDUCER
New Study Busts Myths on Attitudes and Behaviors of Various Gaming Groups

PORT WASHINGTON, NEW YORK, December 12, 2007 - According to Expanding the Games Market, the most recent report from The NPD Group, while heavier gamers are much more inclined than lighter gaming groups to prefer playing games alone, both groups are equally inclined to enjoy playing games as a family, group or as a party activity, and both groups value gaming as a way to bring their families closer together. Notable also is that the majority of gamers, especially teens and older gamers ages 15 to 65 and older view playing video games as a way to alleviate stress and to help them unwind.

The report, which examines how consumer demographic groups are represented in the gaming world, also provides analysis on the attitudes and behaviors of various user groups, based on hours per week spent on gaming. It presents valuable insight into gamers and non-gamers to uncover potential areas for expanding the gaming market beyond the core, highlighting the most effective methods for reaching non-traditional gamers with demographic insight and information on genre preferences, system ownership, and use.

In terms of the number of gamers in the U.S. and the amount of time spent playing them, 63 percent of the U.S. population plays video games - defined as console and portable games, PC games, games on kid-oriented systems or games on devices like cell phones or iPods - with 30 percent claiming they are spending more time gaming this year than last year, close to 30 percent claiming they are spending less time and nearly 40 percent claiming they are spending about the same amount of time.

Gamers ages 2-65 and older were classified in this study by the number of hours spent per week on gaming. In terms of demographics and gaming behavior, the heaviest gamers are typically male, ages 18-34, who devote relatively significant amounts of time and money to gaming and focus primarily on more "hardcore" genres, as opposed to casual, lighter games.

By contrast, lighter gamers fall definitively outside the parameters described above; they are more concentrated on the lower and upper ends of the age spectrum and are defined primarily by their inclination toward lighter, casual games and their relatively high female representation.

"The new type of game experiences brought to the market over the past several years are succeeding in reaching a broader audience. The challenge for the industry is that consumers are a fickle group, and with the great variety of options pulling at their limited free time, they're going to be easily distracted unless something really compels them to stay with gaming," said Anita Frazier, industry analyst, The NPD Group. "To reach these less involved consumers, the industry has to work even harder, but doing so can produce great rewards."

Methodology
The report is based on online survey responses from 5,039 members of NPD's online consumer panel. Reponses for 2 to 12 year olds were captured via surrogate reporting, whereby the female parent/guardian, age 21+, was asked to bring her child in this age range to the computer to answer the questions, either with or without her assistance. The survey was fielded from October 11-18, 2007.

The University of Michigan researchers findings indicate that men who are exposed to violent television in video games were more likely to assault their spouses. Women were comparably more likely to have thrown things at their spouses or assaulted another adult.

The study's fact sheet makes note of the fact that as the popularity of video games has increased since the 1990s, violent crime has decreased. Furthermore, it points out that European gamers, who also enjoy the same content, have a much lower propensity for crime.

A very interesting study, one that I'll have to read more closely after I've finished prepping the mailman for the woodchipper.

Researchers Link Video Games to Adulthood Violence [Fox Business]

• 75% of parents are concerned about video game content.
• 43% of parents were not aware of ratings system.

Because while concerned parents may look like a bad thing—as if parents see gaming as an enemy or something that needs to be stopped—parents watching what their kids are playing is just what the industry needs, and "concern" is in one light just a synonym for "care".

But the widespread lack of awareness of game ratings has got to end. Could you imagine the film industry if no one knew what things were rated? Well...if you're old enough, you probably do.

Games content 'concerns parents' [via mcv]

1. Nearly 50% of all console game renters didn't purchase a single game they rented last year.
2. Only 9% of renters bought 11% or more of the games they rented.

In short: if you rent a game, you don't buy it. But who ever bought that whole "try before you buy" argument, anyway? Though I will admit to keeping a few games from my monthly mail rental service of choice.

Game Rentals Eating into Purchases [via maxconsole]

"Everyone always thought that casual games were something that only appeal to women," Jessica Tams, managing director of the [Casual Games Association], said in an interview. "We have always been obsessed about making games for women."

Surveys of players showed that while nearly three-fourths of people who bought casual games were women, the players of such games were split 50-50 between the sexes.

The reason men have not been reflected in the data so far is because most males are fans of realistic, "hard-core" games, and many do not admit that they like to play simpler games involving shiny gems or lines of colored balls.

I can't understand why having some casual games on your laptop (or your 360, for that matter) is some shameful secret - a case of 'real men don't play PopCap games'?

Men also avid players of casual video games: study [Reuters via CNET]

Nick Yee had an unenviable task last week.

The Stanford research assistant and massively multiplayer online gaming expert was flown in to Denver to explain online gaming to a room full of criminal investigators, educators and internet safety experts from area district attorney offices, police departments and the U.S. Department of Justice.

Yee, whose landmark Daedalus Project continues to study behavior in MMOs, hoped to present to these members of Qwest Colorado Coalition for Online Safety a take on online gaming that they may not have heard before: That it can actually be good for you.

"I've had opportunities like this before to give talks like this to non-gamers," he told me last week. "My message isn't that it's all good, what I prefer to say is that there is so much that is missed when the media picks up on it, that there's also the positive side."

"It's not Qwest trying to be an alarmist, I'm not an alarmist," he said. "We're trying to put the full spectrum in front of people."

Yee told the group many things that gamers might already know, that the average age of gamers is 26 to 30, that many online games have robust parental controls to limit both chat access and time playing. But he also went into some interesting discoveries he made over his years in researching the behavioral characteristics of online gamers and the boundary between the virtual and real worlds.

"These online spaces provided unique opportunities," he said. "Teenagers can lead a guild that consists mostly of adults and I don't think people realize how serious and complicated that is. It involves a lot of leadership, a lot of charisma."

"Parents who play these games with their children are given an opportunity to see their kids in a social setting they don't usually have access to. It's also a place where they can let their kids make mistakes in a safer environment."

Some of Yee's other beliefs include that:

• The demographics in typical MMOGs provide unique and potentially valuable social experiences for teenagers.
• It's better to interact with people around the world via MMOGs than to sit in the living room not talking to your family because everyone is watching TV.
• It's important to set reasonable guidelines and time limits regarding MMOGs.
• MMOG environments are a safer and more forgiving social space for making mistakes and learning social dynamics.
• It's possible to develop real-world leadership abilities as a result of playing MMOGs.
• Virtual environments such as "Second Life," are distinct from MMOGs in that they are not games because they do not pose an objective or end goal. Currently, online virtual worlds are unpopular with kids and, thus, not a risk to youth.
• MMOGs show how people respond to tense situations.
• Relationships may form that wouldn't have taken place if initiated face to face in real life.
• Certain demographics and people with existing stressors are more likely to develop problems via the game.
• People in a vulnerable state of mind may latch onto behaviors that provide a temporary sense of control or power.
• It's not about the amount of time people spend playing, but how gaming affects other facets of their life.

After he walked me through his presentation I pointed out to Yee that the crowd, this particularly law-enforcement heavy crowd, would likely have lots of questions about possible links between game playing and increased violence tendencies.

Yee said that while there haven't been a ton of studies done on that for MMO games, the ones that were conducted showed that the belief about crime, violence and games didn't pan out. He added that it is an issue that is quite hard to prove or disprove.

Yee said that last week's Denver talk could be the beginning of an initiative that spreads to the rest of the country. It was too early to tell what it could blossom into, he said, but they were talking about future plans with Qwest.

Sonny Jackson, Denver police spokesman, said the department has two people on the task force because they understand that "knowledge is power."

"It's beneficial to know how gaming works, how it can effect people, how it can effect our society and whether there are any potential dangers we should know about," he said. "And it's important for our crime analysis."

These kids, who should really go outside and play when they're not reading Kotaku for news and foul language, have a common progression, says the NPD. The tend to graduate from kid-friendly electronic games to PC at around age 6, eventually moving on to mobile phone gaming, portable game devices, then to consoles like PlayStations, Xboxes and one-to-two Gamecubes, with NPD indicating that they're going for next-gen hardware.

Rather unsurprisingly, boys tend to stick to consoles, while girls are more attracted to PCs, mobile platforms and "kid-oriented systems".

NPD analyst Anita Frazier says of the findings that between 6 and 8 years is the "critical age at which to capture the future gamers of the world" as that's when children transition into "serious" gamers. These poor kids. They don't know the hell they're getting themselves into, one of pale skin, soft belly flesh and an unhealthy attraction to epic mounts.

Still, I, like Frazier, and Houston before her, believe that children are our future and we should teach them well and let them lead the way. And make sure they play Ico. It's important to a child's development.

Our second experiment showed that both men and women can improve their spatial skills by playing a video game and that the women catch up to the men...

Moreover, the improved performance of both sexes was maintained when we assessed them again after five months...Clearly, something dramatic is happening in the brain when we see marked improvements in spatial skills after only 10 hours of game playing and these improvements are maintained for many months.

Action Games Improve Women's Spatial Abilities, Says New Study [gamepolitics]

Study Finds Usability Problems with Parental Controls OAKBROOK TERRACE, IL, SEPTEMBER 25, 2007 - Ratings-based parental controls are often used to protect children from exposure to inappropriate media. To compare the usability of common parental controls, Chicago-based usability consultancy User Centric, tested four devices with 20 parents and 20 children ages 9-12.

During individual usability test sessions, all participants were asked to set up parental controls using a television with a V-Chip, a digital video recorder, a game console, and a mobile phone marketed specifically for children under ten. Participants were also asked to rate each device based on ease of use during set up and their confidence in their own success.

Findings:

* Failure rates were high: 31% (DVR), 36% (mobile phone), 42% (V-Chip), and 47% (game console). Across all four devices, parents and children had similar failure rates when setting up parental controls. Participants who reported prior experience fared no better than those who had no experience.
* The relationship between ratings systems and their impact on parental controls was unclear to many participants. When using the V-chip, participants were often uncertain if selecting one rating would be sufficient for blocking the more severe ratings. When using the game console, participants were confused whether their selection represented the highest rating allowed or the lowest rating blocked (despite explanations displayed onscreen).
* One third of participants failed to set up parental controls across all the devices. This contrasted sharply with the high confidence ratings given by participant; many participants believed they had successfully activated parental controls when they actually had not.
* Several participants failed to set up parental controls because they were unaware that they had to perform an extra step to save and then activate their selection. Parental control interfaces failed to provide sufficient visual cues on whether a specific rating was successfully selected or automatically saved as the current setting.

Overall, User Centric found that participants' lack of understanding about ratings compromised their ability to successfully set up parental controls and that parents may be more confident than they should be that the controls are properly set.

For example the ability to bring together distributed groups of individuals - often who are on a volunteer or semi-volunteer basis - to be able to make more rapid decisions under conditions of uncertainty. To incorporate and use different sources of data and make decisions rapidly. To recognise people for their contribution. To be able to motivate.

Gamers 10,271 Stupid People 0

Gaming's business end [via maxconsole]

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the results showed that most boys, and many girls, played games that the ESRB had rated M, signifying that they were for mature audiences only. Of the games played by the boys, Grand Theft Auto and Halo were both in the top three, and GTA was also the 2nd most played game by girls, according to the data. Over half of all boys agreed with the statement "I play electronic games because I like guns and weapons." On the other hand, over 60 percent of boys and girls agreed with the statement "I play electronic games because there's nothing else to do."

I would hope that the actual article has some slightly more useful and/or startling conclusions than these, but I haven't had a chance to read it yet.

New survey shows that kids like games rated M for mature [Ars Technica via GamePolitics]

Gamasutra has a great Q & A up with Lisa Cosmas Hanson, director of Niko Partners - who just released a study a study entitled "2007 Chinese Video Game Market Annual Review & Forecast Report." 2006 saw huge leaps in the revenue and market share of online games, but Hanson talks mostly about where China's going, not where it's been. Will China produce a WoW like hit in the next decade? What companies are benefitting from the huge growth of the industry? And what about that pesky pirating problem?

She's got some interesting things to say on the free to play model, the future of consoles in China (which have traditionally lagged behind PC based games), and the challenges faced by Western companies wanting to break into the market. Maggie Greene

Q&A: Niko's Hanson On China's Gaming Future [Gamasutra]

The study also shows that parents of children under the age of 13 are twice as likely as those with children 13 and older to "never" allow them to play M-rated games.

The study was conducted by Peter D. Hart Research Associates in early April, and surveyed over 500 parents who have purchased a computer or video game in the last six months and have children age 3 to 17 that play video games.

It's interesting to see that 64 percent of parents seem to agree with the mature rating. While I appreciate the work of the ESRB, I can say that I find the T rating a bit too broad. Of course, as parents we all have to make our own decisions based on good information.

Hit the jump for more findings from the study. Brian Crecente

Among the study's other findings:
87% of parents find it "very important" to be able to monitor and regulate what their children watch, read and play

90% of parents surveyed said that the ratings are "very" (55%) to "somewhat" (35%) helpful in helping them buy and rent games they deem appropriate for their children

91% say the ESRB ratings are the "most important" (17%), a "very important" (52%), or a "somewhat important" (22%) consideration when selecting games

Other than ESRB ratings, parents turn to packaging (31%), other parents (29%), or their children (21%) as the top three sources of information about games

83% said that they would consider parental control settings to be "very" (53%) to "somewhat" (30%) helpful in allowing them to control the games their kids play.

"It's extremely encouraging that the vast majority of parents are involved and informed when it comes to choosing which games are appropriate for their families," said ESRB president Patricia Vance. "The ratings continue to be a very important, if not the most important tool to help parents make an informed decision, and it's clear that parents are using and relying on them in growing numbers."

"Awareness and use of the ratings is clearly continuing to rise to considerably high levels, still showing steady growth from where they were just a few years ago," said Jay Campbell of Peter D. Hart Research Associates. "What is quite telling is that the number of parents who say they 'never' allow their children to play M-rated games rose as those who 'sometimes' do declined. This suggests that parents are becoming more assertive in using the ratings to set and enforce restrictions with respect to the games they allow their children to play."

Okay, not crazy exactly, but those predisposed towards violence, aggression and neurotic behavior. Call it crazy lite(tm). The study looked at 120 children in the early teens before and after a 20 minute Quake II session. While the already aggressive children were either more or less aggressive depending on their emotional state before playing, the majority weren't affected at all.

Prof Devilly said much of the research linking aggressive behaviour to violent video games had been unconvincing.

"It's the only message parents have ever received and it's just not accurate," he said.

The study showed aggression linked to game playing depended on a player's mood and predisposition to aggression, he said.

Most kids 'unaffected' by violent games [The Sydney Morning Herald via GamePolitics]

Psychologists at the University of Rochester polled 1,000 gamers and asked them what keeps them glued to games. They found that gamers "reported feeling best when the games produced positive experiences and challenges that connected to what they know in the real world."

Sometimes we need a virtual replacement of tasks we don't get to accomplish in real life to make our brain happy:

"It's our contention that the psychological 'pull' of games is largely due to their capacity to engender feelings of autonomy, competence, and relatedness," says Ryan. The researchers believe that some video games not only motivate further play but "also can be experienced as enhancing psychological wellness, at least short-term," he says.

See mom? I'm not wasting my life, I'm just doing right by my brain. Michael McWhertor

A reason why video games are hard to give up [PhysOrg]

First, it was American kids sweating it out on a DDR. Now, it's Japanese junior and senior high schoolers studying English via the Nintendo DS. Starting this September, students in Kyoto Prefecture's Yawata City spend the first ten minutes of class, studying vocab on their portables. Says a Yawata City teacher:

The students are getting accustomed to using the DS and are studying enthusiastically. Progress can be expected.

Thanks to traditionally poor language instruction in the classroom, English is notoriously difficult for many Japanese. The software includes 1900 words for high school students and 1800 words for junior high student. They practice writing the words on the touch screen, and the DS emits the correct pronunciation for new vocab. There's talk of expanding this program elsewhere and plans to introduce Kanji software as well. These classroom applications for the DS are a no brainer, really. Brian Ashcraft

Study Hard Kids! [Yomiuri]

According to the Nielsen folks, more than half of all "Active Gamers" play online. Sixty-four percent of those gamers are females; however, male gamers still outnumber female ones two-to-one. The study also stated that Active Gamers spend up to five hours a week playing games socially. Teens are still the biggest chunk of the market, and the over-45 year-old segment accounts for the smallest. So that "sexy chick" you're talking to online? Well, that's probably some old dude. Brian Ashcraft

Girls Online [Voodoo Extreme]

"Our data support the recommendation that parents limit weekday television and video game time to less than one hour and restrict access to adult media by limiting exposure to cable movie channels and R-rated movies and videos," wrote the study's author, Dr. Iman Sharif of Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.

The number of students who had poor performance rose as weekday television screen time surpassed three hours and time spent playing video games rose past one hour on weekdays, found the study.

Wow. So, more time dedicated to beating hookers to death with a 9-iron might lead to poor school performance? Consider us stunned! Michael McWhertor

Too much time with TV, video games cuts school performance: study

The project is called Teaching With Games and has the support of Take Two, EA, Microsoft, and the ISFE.

"I can definitely see the potential of using games in the classroom. It proved to be a great tool for motivating students and engaging their interest. I would like to use games for teaching in the future if the technical problems could be addressed," commented Claire Gemmell, a teacher at St John's School & Community College in Marlborough. The technical problems she's referring to involved licensing and copy protection issues that prevented some teachers from easily installing the software or running the games on school networks.

Games in the study included RollerCoaster Tycoon 3, Sims 2, and Knights of Honor.

I personally have been a proponent of regular old gaming (as opposed to educational games, which usually suck) as learning tool since I realized how savagely I fought to acquire the reading skills necessary to play adventure games when I was wee.

Games are set up to reward learning just as a basic tenet of play, so they're already ideal forms of teaching. What did you learn from gaming, my wee apelings, and how did it help you? Eliza Gauger

Study: Games Can Aid Learning at School [Gamedaily BIZ]

From the "Sony can't get a break" feed comes this post over on GamesDaily.biz, which suggests that Playstation advertising just doesn't make you feel good about yourself.

On the flip side, the Xbox ads they were up against seemed to increase levels of "distrust". The actual implications of this study are irritatingly obfuscated by the article, but the gist seems clear.

Anderson's study found that boys who were exposed to Xbox pictures were "higher on power motivation" than those who viewed the PlayStation images. Along with "power motivation," the Xbox images also seemed to elicit higher self-confidence scores than those in the PlayStation group. Furthermore, images of the consoles themselves also had different effects on the respondents. Interestingly, boys in the Xbox group had higher levels of distrust after seeing the ad, while this phenomenon was not observed in the PlayStation group.

What's weirdest about this study, I thought, was the sexual dimorphism in the test groups. I can't be sure, but the article seems to say that the children were separated based on gender, with girls being tested only in the Bratz vs. Barbie branding category, and the boys in the Xbox vs. Playstation.

I despise people who run around spouting nonsense like this, but jesus christ that's sexist. Eliza Gauger

More here [GameDaily.biz]

I try to avoid "girls in games" articles but this is neat. According to a little study at University of Teesside, girls are apt to dig games with lots of fighting, thinking, and story. In other words, splodey games that aren't stupid.

I think this is something we can all embrace, vagina or no.

Clay used software developed at the University of Teesside in Middlesbrough to analyse the 34 best games as listed by 76 female gamers.

The software, called Strange Analyst, builds a profile of each game by trawling through online reviews and extracting key words. Clay found women prefer games with confrontation and attack, investigations and puzzles - and a good story line.

Unfortunately, the article is extremely short and doesn't mention which keywords were used, etc. Still, this sounds right to me. Eliza Gauger

More here [New Scientist, thanks DB]

100 undergrads between the ages of 18-21 were polled, making this a sample size so small as to indicate almost nothing at all. Half played Grand Theft Auto 3 and used baseball bats to beat up hookers; the other half played Simpsons: Hit and Run.

"The researchers found, young men who had played the violent game were less cooperative and more competitive in completing an assigned task with another person, compared to those who played the Simpsons game. They were also more likely to have permissive attitudes toward alcohol and marijuana use." Hey, what undergrad doesn't have permissive attitudes toward alcohol and marijuana use?

The article closes with this winning quote: "Brady urges parents to be aware of what sorts of video games their children are playing. And kids themselves, she adds, should understand that violent games can change the way they think."

Just like education, reading, writing, film, travel — a cornucopia of human experiences which expand our horizons and make us think differently about things. It's the old brainwash bogeyman. You may remember it from the way parents reacted to film, jazz, rock and comics, when those forms were nascent.

Violent video games linked to risky behaviors [Reuters]

According to Reuters, "The study found around 80 percent of M-rated games included sex, violence, profanity, gambling or drug and alcohol use, none of which was described on the labels." We're trying to figure out what the other twenty percent had that got them an M rating. Maybe really intense sassing and backtalk.

Violent video games often not properly labeled [Reuters UK]

According to an April 2001 story in The Observer, Ryuta Kawashima, at the time a professor at Tohoku University in Japan, did a study investigating the levels of brain activity in children who play video games. He used the same sort of computer imaging technique used for developing the first Brain Age game. Kawashima hooked children up to a device that showed which areas of the brain were being used in real time and then had them play Nintendo games. He then had the same children do an excercise called the Kraepelin test, which is just doing basic math problems for 30 minutes. (A similar program is found in Brain Age.)

The study found that the children playing games were only using the parts of their brain used for vision and movement, while the group doing Kraepelin test were using the left and right hemispheres of the frontal lobe, which is where learning, memory, emotion and impulse control take place.

Kawashima presented his findings to an education conference in the UK, saying that children who play games stop the development process in certain parts of their brain and could limit their ability to control anti-social behavior.

Kawashima told the Observer that the discovery's importance couldn't be underestimated.

"There is a problem we will have with a new generation of children — who play computer games — that we have never seen before."

"The implications are very serious for an increasingly violent society and these students will be doing more and more bad things if they are playing games and not doing other things like reading aloud or learning arithmetic."
"Children need to be encouraged to learn basic reading and writing, of course," he said.

"But the other thing is to ask them to play outside with other children and interact and to communicate with others as much as possible.

"This is how they will develop, retain their creativity and become good people," he said.

I stumbled upon this old research while working on a story about Brain Age for the Rocky Mountain News and was initially stunned, but on closer examination it doesn't really contradict anything being said about Brain Age.
Kawashima's personal opinions on gaming aside, he does say his Brain games help stimulate the same parts of the brain that he initially said was left untouched by traditional gaming.

When contacted for comment Thursday, Nintendo pointed out that the study is five years old and argued that it never established that gaming was actually harmful.

"Brain Age is designed specifically to let players use the portions of their brains that were shown to be inhibited when people played only certain kinds of games excessively. As everyone knows, doing anything excessively is typically not good for you. Dr. Kawashima's brain-research expertise demonstrates that Nintendo has partnered with the right person to help make Brain Age as creative and as stimulating as possible."

First, the professor is a woman. I appologize for the assumption that the professor was a man. But Professor Nina Beth Huntemann sounds a little defensive in her email and I don't buy the whole "I have to start somewhere" argument. I can't see why she can't just a general call for people who are romantically involved with a gamer.

It sounds like I'm not the only one making gender assumptions.

The full email is after the jump:

Hello Brian,

In response to Kotaku's post today about my research, I would like to clarify two things. One, I'm a woman. Yes, believe it or not, female professors do exist. Not only that, I'm a gamer. I know, it is hard to believe there are women play games and have PhDs.

And two, my field is media studies. This research project is serious, though my tone in the Craig's List post was informal. I've also been asked why I am studying only wives and girlfriends. I'm not. I will also conduct similar group interviews with guy gamer widows, but I have to start somewhere. Only so many interviews I can conduct at once.

I teach at Suffolk University in the Department of Communication and Journalism, if anyone should want to check me out.

Thanks,

Nina

A college professor in the Boston-area is looking for some wives and girlfriends of gamers (specifically MMORPG gamers) for a study he's working on. The prof is trying to figure out how loved ones put up with all the gaming. He wants to do group interviews in which he can "listen to 4-5 women talk/rant/bitch about life with a gamer." Bitch? Did a professor just use the word bitch? What exactly is this guy a professor of?

Wanted: Boston Area Gamer Wives and Girlfriends (for a study) [IGDA Sex]

The $4.75 million grant from the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research starts next year at the Children's Specialized Hospital in Mountainside.

The idea is to make rehab more productive and cost-effective. The games developed for the study are controlled with gloves that can sense movement and even have force-feedback.

Scientists think video games may provide therapeutic breakthroughs [North Jersey Media Group]

Josh Smith did a little study of Xbox Live profanity and found that people cussed a total of 641 times (that he heard) in the 33.9 hours that he was tracking it.

Wow, that sounds low to me. Besides the lovely pie chart above, Smith also created graphs to show the break down of cussing and uploaded an Exel spreadsheet for downloading.

Frequency of Profanity in Halo 2 [Josh Smith Online]