Video games and ADD?

[gusl]

ADD could be due to low frontal-lobe activity: higher-level activities such as planning, etc.

In my experience, video games rarely exercise the skills of organization and long-term planning. Most games are quite reactive: the best strategy is to focus all your attention in the immediate situation.

Research: video games decrease brain activity

Comments

[troyworks.livejournal.com]

my current theory is these loops when positively reinforced acts as little ruts/prison that makes a deeper and deepr rut which makes it hard to escape from. Sadly I think that checking for email/LJ updates can act in the same fashion. Short cut/shortcircuiting the processes that take longer to process to deliver long term thinking/strategies and goal optimaization.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

I once became addicted to checking my email because Outlook wasn't set to check automatically.

[troyworks.livejournal.com]

I have the same issue with Yahoo, I can use trillian/Yahoo messenger for notification but these aren't much better as they pick up the garbage coming into my bulk/spam box (one every half hour on average).

[daoistraver.livejournal.com]

I think that one of the things that characterizes most addictions is "short-term vs long-term thinking". Video games are no exception here.

It would be nice if there were video games that rewarded long-term approaches, but they wouldn't be addictive, and therefore, would get wiped out by competitors that use a short-term reward schedule.
Even supposed "world building" strategy games tend to favor a short-term patching approach in the beginning of the game. It's so apparent, it kills all the fun for me. (I'm more of a long term planning kind of person...)

This pattern also has tremendous implications for the world economy. Managers are hired on the basis of what they can do in the short term to boost share prices, even though this ends up destroying the long term strategy.
This is in part because the stock market often works the same way, rewarding short-sellers.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

I can imagine a long-term planning videogame that is addictive in an essentially different way from regular addictive things. SimCity, for instance, seems like such a game.

The problem I'm running into is finding out what the "reward" is in video games. Sure, killing a big enemy or passing a stage are rewards, but in a game like SimCity it's not so clear. It's like the player can stop to admire his own accomplishments ("what a nice city!") at any time.

As for short-sighted companies, perhaps managers could be rewarded based on an honest estimate of the long-term profit as opposed to the immediate realized profit.