Entering the Fray

Here is another song that I recorded using GarageBand.
Entering the Fray

Mental Video Games and Video Games Myths

Why Video Games are Good For You

Andrew Marks

7/12/09

I'm certain that many of you here today are familiar with the horror stories associated with video games, such as a Chinese man stabbing another fellow gamer for selling a borrowed weapon in-game, or the boy who shot his parents over Halo 3, or the Korean who died after a 50 hour gaming session. Video game related deaths have become a hot topic over the last few years. In fact, people get so focused on these events (Which really only become newsworthy when Video Games are involved) that they don't look into the other side of video games. No-one knows that video games help people physically and mentally. No-one really cares that all the myths about video games simply aren't true. No-one takes the time to see how the games industry is evolving to help us. And no-one looks at how video games can even have medicinal benefits. My topic is Video Games and why they are good for you.

New studies show that children who play video games have finer-tuned bodies than those who don't. According to new research, people who play video games can track moving objects 30% more than non-players. Another test shows that avid game players can detect very subtle changes in color against a gray background that most people cannot. Many people think that violent video games are very destructive and harmful, but as it turns out, violent video games bestow significantly more visual benefits than non-violent games. Daphne Bavelier and Shawn Green came across this phenomena while they were researching the visual skills of deaf people. They discovered that Shawn had significantly higher visual skills than his parter, Daphne. Shawn was an avid gamer and Daphne was not. They followed up on this research and they tested game aficionados with several visual tests. The tests were described as being "totally unlike gaming" and required the subjects to do the same specialized task over and over. They tested the gamers and a group of non-gamers on these tests, and sure enough, the gamers outperformed the non-players significantly. To make sure that video game players weren't just visually talented people, they conducted another test. Two groups of non-gamers were given the WWII game Medal of Honor, in which the player plays as a soldier in WWII. Another group was given Tetris to play. After 3 weeks of an hour a day practice, the people who were given Medal of Honor performed astronomically higher on visual tests than the group that played Tetris. These scores were not as high as the people who played video games avidly, and current research does not show how long it takes to develop these skills. You may be wondering why visual skills are so important. Think about it this way: Someone who has more developed visual skills is likely going to be a better driver. Wouldn't all of you want your children to be able to identify dangers on the road when they start driving at 16? Video games are also a lot more beneficial to your body than simply watching TV. After testing 18 children during a 25 minute gaming session, the University of Hong Kong report found that compared with resting, kids burned 39 percent more calories during a seated game, 98 percent more during an 'active bowling game' and a whopping 451 percent more during an 'action/running game'. Video games are beneficial to growing children. Games can help develop significant visual and physical capabilities, and right now, we have a generation of gamers who are going to grow up with these skills.

Video Games have many positive effects on the way children think, and they present learning opportunities that would otherwise be unavailable. Children who play video games have shown to perform significantly higher on tests of fluid intelligence, and studies show that video games make people more perceptive by training their brains to analyze things faster. Steven Johnson, the author of the bestselling book "Everything Bad is Good for You", says when kids are playing video games, they're learning how to think in ways that would be extremely useful to them when they go out into the world and do the same kind of thinking in an office. He says:

 "Failure is credited as being the most successful teacher, but in today's culture failure is simply not tolerated, and if we can't fail how can we learn? Video games teach children with failure, but don't reprimand them for it.  Video games encourage children to try again. One of the most popular games of all time is without a doubt Pokémon, but what will all the children who grew up with Pokémon actually be taught? If you analyze what is required to win a Pokémon game you spot things that are extremely important in today's culture. The Pokémon generation is going to think well about systems, good at exploring, good at re-conceptualizing their goals based on their experience, they're not going to judge someone's intelligence just by how fast and efficient they are, and they're going to think non-laterally." He says "In the world of today with it's complex systems and danger, those are pretty damn good ways to think." 

Steven Johnson also recollects an incident when he was showing his 7-year-old nephew SimCity. As most of you probably know, SimCity is an urban simulator that lets you create a virtual metropolis on your computer, build highways and bridges, zone areas for development, and raise or lower taxes. Based on the player’s decisions, neighborhoods thrive or decline, streets get overrun with traffic or remain wastelands, and criminals prosper or disappear. When he walked his nephew through the game, he gave him only the most cursory overview of the rules; he was mostly just giving him a tour of the city he’d built. But the 7-year-old was absorbing the rules nonetheless. At one point, Steven showed him a block of rusted, crime-ridden factories that lay abandoned and explained that he'd had difficulty getting this part of his city to come back to life. His nephew turned to him and said, “I think you need to lower your industrial tax rates.” He said it as calmly and as confidently as if he were saying, “I think we need to shoot the bad guy.” "In a 20-minute tour of SimCity," he said "my nephew had learned a fundamental principle of urban economics: Some areas zoned for specific uses can falter if the zone-specific taxes are too high." Of course, if Johnson had sat his 7-year-old nephew down in an urban studies classroom, he would be asleep in 10 seconds. The 7-year-old was learning in spite of himself. So, as it turns out, video games aren't rotting children's brains, in fact, they are allowing children to become smarter and smarter. Video games present environments that the player wouldn't be exposed to otherwise. In these situations they develop thinking strategies that they would have never had developed without Video Games.

There are many myths surrounding video games that are simply not true. Many people claim that violent crime is influenced by violent video games. According to federal crime statistics, the rate of juvenile violent crime in the US is at a 30-year low. Researchers find that people serving time for violent crimes typically consume less media before committing their crimes than the average person in the general population, and while it is true that recently most students involved in school shootings did play video games, an overwhelming majority of children play video games (90% of boys 40% of girls), so being a game-player doesn't mean much.  According to a 2001 U.S. Surgeon General's report, the strongest risk factors for school shootings are centered on mental stability and the quality of home life, not media exposure. The panic over video games does more harm than good. It has led adult authorities to be more suspicious and hostile to many kids who already feel cut off from the system just because they play video games. It also misdirects energy away from eliminating the actual causes of youth violence and allows problems to continue to fester. People also claim that video games cause youth aggression. 

All the research that has been done in this area is inconclusive, and has also been criticized on methodological grounds. According to Henry Jenkins, an MIT professor in Comparative Media Studies, "In these studies, media images are removed from any narrative context. Subjects are asked to engage with content that they would not normally consume and may not understand. Finally, the laboratory context is radically different from the environments where games would normally be played. Most studies found a correlation, not a causal relationship, which means the research could simply show that aggressive people like aggressive entertainment."

Former military psychologist and moral reformer David Grossman argues that because the military uses games in training (including, he claims, training soldiers to shoot and kill), the generation of young people who play such games are similarly being brutalized and conditioned to be aggressive in their everyday social interactions. Jenkins says that this model only works if "We remove training and education from a meaningful cultural context, we assume learners have no conscious goals and that they show no resistance to what they are being taught, we assume that they unwittingly apply what they learn in a fantasy environment to real world spaces." The military uses games as part of a specific curriculum, with clearly defined goals, in a context where students actively want to learn and have a need for the information being transmitted. There are consequences for not mastering those skills. 

James Gee describes game players as "active problem solvers who do not see mistakes as errors, but as opportunities for improvement. Players search for newer, better solutions to problems and challenges", he says. "And they are encouraged to constantly form and test hypotheses. This research points to a fundamentally different model of how and what players learn from games." Classic studies of play behavior among primates suggest that apes make basic distinctions between play fighting and actual combat.  

Game designer and play theorist Eric Zimmerman describes the ways we understand play as distinctive from reality as entering the "magic circle." The kid who is punching a toy designed for this purpose is still within the "magic circle" of play and understands her actions on those terms. Such research shows us only that violent play leads to more violent play. So as it turns out, playing violent video games is not going to make children more violent. The many myths about video games have no evidence to back them up. In fact, all the evidence directly counters the myths.

With recent developments in gaming technology and research, more and more thought is going into making games more and more useful. In fact, you could say that the games industry is evolving to meet our needs, and this is something that the movie and TV industry can never do. More and more research is being conducted by the video game companies. Actually, last year Nintendo spent 140 Million dollars on research and development. That's more than twice then what the federal government spent on research and innovation in Education. There are many games on the market that are being specifically designed for mental and physical improvement. One of the first achievements in this field was the game "Brain Age". Brain Age was developed by a neurologist, who used brain scans to measure mental activity. He found that reading aloud and doing simple math problems in quick succession stimulates the brain and promotes healthy development. He designed "Brain Age" with this research in mind. This kind of game would have been impossible fifteen years ago because the game industry didn't do much research into their games. After "Brain Age" became extremely popular, the games industry began making more and more mentally stimulating games. Eventually a sequel to Brain Age came out with even more research behind it than its predecessor. The games industry is getting better and better at making games that are beneficial to the players. Possibly the most amazing breakthrough in the last 5 years of gaming would have to be the Nintendo Wii. With the invention of this device, games suddenly became a lot more interactive and physically helpful. The Wii Fit is an excellent example of how new technologies can make the video game industry more and more adept at making what society needs.

With the development of the Wii, other companies are following suit. With the development of Project Natal players can simply stand in front of their television, without a controller, and play. Natal recognizes faces, complicated movements, voices, and objects. Natal creates a full body and mind experience by immersing the player into the game. With the development of new technologies, the Game industry can only get more and more sophisticated. The game industry is evolving to create an even more beneficial experience.

As I have explained, games can have mental and physical bonuses, but could they actually treat the mental condition ADD? The answer is yes. Alan Pope, Ph.D. and Olafur Pallson, Psy.D. have invented a way for Nintendo and Play Station games to be used to treat Attention Deficit Disorder. In traditional treatment, the patient is wired up to a machine that reads his or her brainwaves. The patent has to make a colored bar that shows his high functioning brain waves go higher, and make a bar representing his low functioning brainwaves go lower. Today, some existing software allows patients to play simple video games which reinforce the faster brain waves. Pope and Pallson's unique contribution is that they have invented a device that works with off the shelf video games. When players produce faster brain waves - beta waves - the game pad or joy stick for the video game works better, and they can better control the characters on the screen. When players use slower, more lethargic brain waves - theta waves - the game pad is more sluggish. This means that ADD sufferers can learn to control their behavior without the need for medication or extensive therapy. In early research about 20 youngsters ages 9 to 14 received EEG biofeedback - half using the new invention, and half using traditional biofeedback. Both groups are said to have made improvements in controlling their impulses and improving their concentration. Pope and Pallson reported that the youngsters using video games showed improvements sooner. They were also more likely to come in for their sessions. This technology could be in homes all over the country within the next two or three years. Drs. Pope and Palsson even foresee a time when video game makers who produce games merely for entertainment might have a hard time competing with companies making games that have healthy mental or physical side benefits. Video games are being used for medicinal purposes, and they have been proven to work.

Video games are good for you. They help children develop physically and mentally, and all the myths about video games simply don't stand up when they are examined closely. The video game industry is continually improving to help and educate us, and make us a more intelligent species overall. Video games can even be used to help children with the mental condition ADD. Video games are good for you. It's proven, and it's true. So the next time you pick up a controller, think to yourself about what you learned today.

A New Composition - Looking Down on Utopia

Here is another song that I recorded using GarageBand.
Looking Down on Utopia

Opening Night

I had worked for weeks and weeks for this night. I had set aside an hour of my time each night to learn my lines and stage directions to be a part of this. I was the secondary lead, the supporting actor, and I was in the dim backstage of the theatre with a lone blue light to aid me with revising my script. I could hear the audience gathering. The rustle of clothing, the creak of the metal folding chairs as the expectant spectators sat down in them, the low and hushed conversations beginning to emerge from the sprinklings of people gathered at the far side of the auditorium. It was half-an-hour until curtain-rise and it felt like I had an assembly of slithery and fluttery creatures amassing in my innards. I needed to deal with this quickly or I would surely faint. I remembered the severe criticism of my director and the gentle reassurances from my family and found a happy average between the two. My breathing slowed, the animals fled, yet there was a swelling uneasiness in my gullet. It was my 7th play with the troupe but I still had trouble controlling my crippling nerves. My older brother told me “Nerves are natural and normal and with public performance comes nerves.” I thought to myself that demonic nerves such as these could not possibly be normal, or how could any production be made at all?

Fifteen minutes to go. The stagehands were rushing around me touching up makeup, tweaking our costumes with such meticulous eyes that I thought quietly to myself that they would panic if they saw the lead actor had a speck of dust on his pristine bow tie. The audience was gathering at an increased rate now, the low hum of conversation had become a mighty roar of laughter and greetings. Our director came backstage to give us last minute ideas and notes. As she spoke the eyes of all the cast lit up with pride and confidence — that is all the cast but me. As I stood there in the dim backstage with my lone blue light I was worried. Worried that I would let everyone down, that I would be the weak link, that I could single handedly destroy all that these people had worked so hard to build. The director said her final words of encouragement and left to climb up the ladder to the light board to begin the show. And as she exited I felt abandoned. I heard the co-director shout “Three minutes until Showtime people! Get Ready!”

The cavalcade of animals in my stomach returned and brought with them many of their friends. I felt sick. I dropped my script and whirled around looking for a chair to sit down on, but I saw none. I closed my eyes and I fell. I waited to feel the hard embrace of the cold stone floor, but to my surprise I waited in vain. I was caught not by any stagehand or director or any other form of authority, but by the lead actor, my partner in crime, my friend. “One minute!” He quietly reinforced the miniscule thought that needed reinforcing most. He told me that I was going to be brilliant, that I was going to steal the show, that I was going to be a star! He did it in a way no-one but a friend could, his compassion could not be matched by any supervisor or teacher. I stood up strongly and without any question in my mind about how the performance was going to go. I was empowered by his words. We walked on stage and to our marks, gave each other a look, and suddenly the curtain went up. It took me a second to register everything, the blinding stage lights, the sea of faces before me. Everything was silent except for a small cough from the audience. I took some deep breaths and opened the show without any fear in my voice. I was strong. I was confident. I was ready.

Recently Remixed & Recorded-Duet

Here is another song that I recorded using GarageBand. I don't know who wrote it, but people have told me they have heard it before. It is a nice, short duet. Due to the fact that my USB keyboard ha s a limited range, I recorded one half of the piece (played by me) and tracklaid the other part (also played by me) on top of it. Enjoy‼ Duet

Recently Remixed - Axel F

One of my friends recently taught me the melody and baseline to Axel F (more commonly known as "Crazy Frog") and I found it so cool, that I decided to orchestrate it using Garageband. I used a M-Audio Keystation 49e (a small electronic piano that plugs into my MacBook) and Garageband to record and mix. It was great fun and I wanted to make more. This then sparked an idea — what if I find all my old composed music, compose more and pool it together on my blog. I will be posting new songs regularly and I will also be posting some of my older songs. Bear in mind that I wrote them when I was much littler so a few of them might sound a bit samey, but I still think they are cool. Anyway, here is my new Axel F homage!

Bee Aware - my film at Camp Cinequest

Cinequest is a film promotion company, who organize the Cinequest film festival in San Jose every year. Camp Cinequest is a summer camp for blooming film students to learn more elaborate film techniques, about the camera and how to use it, and how to edit using Final Cut Pro. Camp Cinequest is held at San Jose University. it is a wonderful location because of the enormous campus and every kind of person you can imagine if you need a quick interview for your film. The people I worked with were film enthusiasts and that was a huge bonus. The mentors offered professional advice and the co-directors worked to the best of their ability. We had 2 teams, my team that worked on a documentary about honey bees and the other team that worked on a narrative (a narrative is a story rather than pure fact). My production team had a total of 4 people - myself, Calliope Scherrer, Peter Savoy and our mentor, Car Nazzal, who had excellent organization skills. Let me just talk about them individually. Peter was the comedian of the group and provided comic relief in a film about dying honey bees. he stars as a honey critic who is trying to sniff out the organic honey in the midst of non-organic honey ¡EEEW! terrible stuff. Calliope represents the average person commenting about the decline of honey bees. She asked questions that the audience might be wondering. If i may quote her "if it doesn't affect me then i don't care". imagine someone with a horsewhip and a British accent sitting in the directors chair and then you will have me! I was also the cameraman, editor-in-chief, boom mic operator ( a boom mic is a large mic attached on the end of a pole) and the narrator. Car was our mentor; she helped us decide on camera angles, provided music and helped with editing. By now you are probably wondering about what my film was about. Bees. To be more precise the huge decline of honey bees. Basically all the non-organic raised honey bees are dying. This doesn't just mean "no more honey". Oh no its much more important that that. It means no more pollinators.
And no more pollinators means no more food! The main reason causing the deaths is that the commercial bee keepers are transporting bees around the country for pollination. To save money the bee keepers feed the bees corn syrup. This compromises the immune system and they really feel the effects of the mites and diseases that were always there. Note that organic beekeepers haven't had any unnatural deaths at all. Thanks to my mum for compiling all the research. What's filmmaking without a little fame? My team got their 15 minutes of fame when our film was chosen to represent the best of Camp Cinequest! We had 2 public showings of our movie, one in San Pedro Square, the other in St. James' Park. The Willow Glen Resident thought it would be good to feature someone who lives in Willow Glen and participated in the camp. Guess where I live?
Here's the movie:

Download the Beaglemania movie here.
QuickTime 7, iTunes 6 or VLC 0.84 will play the file.
Or watch it on YouTube

Beaglemania

Fred the guitar playing beagle:

Download the Beaglemania movie here.
QuickTime 7, iTunes 6 or VLC 0.84 will play the file.
Or watch it on youtube.

Helmet Surfing - Stop Motion with people

Christopher and I made this movie after seeing Tony vs. Paul:

Download the Helmet Surfing movie here.
QuickTime 7, iTunes 6 or VLC 0.84 will play the file.

It took about 3 hours to make and 2 hours to edit. I wrote the music in a day and the credits song is the first song I ever wrote.
I hope you enjoy it and find it entertaining.

Christmas rapping

Hannah, Andrew and Christopher (H.A.C. for short) made a Christmas Eve rap.

Technorati Tags: Christmas, music

Christopher's Buttons

This blog is up for voting in the vloggies in the "children's" category - do please vote for us.

This movie is one the boys made about 5 years ago - Christopher invented some magic buttons, and they started working...

Download the Christopher's Buttons movie here.
QuickTime 7, iTunes 6 or VLC 0.84 will play the file.

Technorati Tags: button, magic, marksbrothers, video, vloggies

Robogames report

We went to the robogames today:

Download the Robogames movie here.
QuickTime 7, iTunes 6 or VLC 0.84 will play the file.

Technorati Tags: lego, movie, Robogames, robot, soccer, video

Review of Casablanca's Cafe

0.2

Casablanca's Cafe is extraordinary

Jun 10, 2006 by Andrew Marks business

Casablanca's Café

1185 Lincoln Ave

San José, CA 95125

(408) 993 8636

★★★★☆ Casablanca's Café is an extraordinary Persian restaurant in down town Willow Glen. I had the Hummus sampler and a Gyro Sandwich (lamb, red cabbage, lettuce, cucumber, tzatziki in lavosh bread) which was very nice Although the food is grade-A the actual environment is slightly drab with only four ornamental fish on the wall and two nice paintings that look like a window in a beach hut. What I think made it special is that you can buy assorted Persian delicacies on a shelf near the counter. I strongly recommend Casablanca's Café.

Apple is holding my data hostage

When my boys' videos started getting some interest via their podcast and the Make film festival, I got 2 emails in a row from Apple's mac.com service saying I was exceeding bandwidth limits, and then I was cut off.

Back when I worked for Apple, they launched mac.com as a free service, and I bagged our family names in their namespace. The integration of iDisk into the OS made it a simple way to post files to the web, and I used it for both work-related sample code and personal bits and pieces.

Later on, Apple did a bait and switch, and started charging for mac.com. I decided the cost wasn't too onerous, and we could keep the email addresses and the hosting. It costs $100 a year, and $10 for each extra email address, but the switching cost seemed high, as we have a lot of friends who use those email addresses, and the hosting integreation is handy.

Later on, I kept getting 'your email account is full' crap, and pointed out that gmail offered 100 times as much storage for free, and they later relaxed the terms a bit.

Then came this, from noreply@apple.com:

Dear .Mac Member,

Please be aware that you have reached 100% of your .Mac data transfer quota for this two-week period and we have turned off external access to your site(s). Attempts to visit there will produce a page explaining that your site has gone over data transfer quota and the material requested cannot be displayed.

You can still publish to your site(s), but you will not be able to view any changes on the Internet until your site is reactivated. Reactivation will happen on the 1st or 16th of the month, whichever comes first. To review your data transfer usage, click here. To increase your data transfer quota by purchasing additional storage space, click here.* For more information see Help.

I thought 'OK, I'll move my stuff to other hosting, and redirect my links' - but the iDisk 'Sites' folder is also disabled on my machine, so I can't get at my files to move them.

So, if some of my posts here are missing movies or images, that's why.
Amazon's S3 service is looking interesting, both Google and Microsoft are preparing hosting services, and there are a plethora of video hosting sites like blip.tv.

Apple's terms are uncompetitive, and stopping me from accessing my own files until I pay is a nasty kind of blackmail.

Technorati Tags: Apple, hosting, mac.com, podcasting, politics

Andrew and Christopher won the Make Movie Festival

Andrew and Christopher
Originally uploaded by Kevin Marks.

Bre Pettis writes:

With so many great entries it was hard to pick a winner, but the Marks Brothers' Fun with Dry Ice shined through. Their top notch explanations of how to have fun with dry ice was really great. The grand prize is a box set of Make Magazines signed by the Make Magazine staff, a Make: t-shirt for each brother, and Make: license plate covers, which they'll have to wait until they can drive to use!

The boys, Rosie and I are dead chuffed.