Action-shooter games improve our capacity for making quick, accurate decisions. The researchers randomly assigned their subjects to play action or strategy games, so the results don't simply reflect people being drawn to games they're naturally good at playing. The PR release isn't perfectly satisfying ("…action game players were up to 25 percent faster…" isn't helpful, thanks), and Current Biology locks the data behind a paywall, but from what we can tell, it looks solid.
The era of defending digital games has ended quietly. They can now join comics, premarital sex, voting rights, and integrated schools as uncontroversial, beneficial features of modern life, whose merits are debated only by an ever-narrowing fringe of reactionary cranks. The ubiquitous needs no defense.
- J. Adam Fenster, University of Rochester
- This could be you.
The Stranger Testing Department is Rob Lightner and Paul Hughes.
