Wii may improve real world skills
A team of researchers say that motion-controlled video games like those in Wii, is good practice for real-life sports.
Participants in a study who played 18 rounds of a video golf game that used a motion controller to simulate putting did significantly better at real-world putting than a group that played a video-game with a push-button controller and better than participants who had no video game training, said Edward Downs, former doctoral student in mass communications, Penn State, and currently associate professor of communication, University of Minnesota-Duluth. Motion controllers require players to use their own bodies to control the movements of the video game’s avatar.
The researchers, who reported their findings in a recent issue of the International Journal of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations, suggest that motion-controlled video games, as well as future virtual reality devices, such as Oculus Rift, are turning video games into simulations.
“It seems to us that we’ve crossed an evolutionary line in game history where video games are no longer just video games any more, they’ve become simulators,” said Downs. “These games are getting people up and physically rehearsing, or simulating motion, so we were trying to see if gaming goes beyond symbolic rehearsal and physically simulates an action closely enough that it will change or modify someone’s behavior.”
Players who used the push-button video-game controller — a form of symbolic rehearsal — actually did worse in the real-world putting exercise than the other groups, according to Downs, who worked with Mary Beth Oliver, Distinguished Professor in Media Studies and co-director of Media Effects Research Laboratory, Penn State.
Using these devices as simulators could have some drawbacks, including simulating skills, such as shooting or fighting, that could be used in negative ways.
Downs said the ability of motion-controlled games to improve real-world skills may go beyond just putting, but further research is needed to reveal just how far the effect goes.
