Yet Another Vogue for the iPhone: Video Games

 

Is there anything an iPhone can’t do? See how the iPhone takes makes video games more portable then ever. Friendly Computers thinks you may find this very cool:

The iPhone has sent rivals scrambling, first to duplicate its glassy touch screen, then its successful mobile application storefront.

Now it is the video game industry that is sitting up and taking notice. Playing games, it turns out, is one of the most popular things to do with an iPhone. Of the 50,000 programs available for the iPhone and iPod Touch through Apple’s App Store, games are the largest category, about 20 percent of the offerings, according to the mobile analytics and advertising company Mobclix. The company also said that more than half of the billion downloads from the App Store are games.

That plethora of games, most of which are free or cost as little as 99 cents, are available in seconds via wireless download, which is driving the expansion of the audience for mobile gaming, said Tuong H. Nguyen, an analyst with Gartner Research who tracks the industry.

“Like many other features of the iPhone, it introduced the possibility of gaming on your phone to a whole new group of consumers,” Mr. Nguyen said.

Called casual gamers, these people who play a game for a few minutes here or there are a sought-after group by a video-game industry searching for growth. Sylvia Martinez, a 52-year-old educator living in Los Angeles, is one of them. Mrs. Martinez, who owns a 3G iPhone, said she had never played games on her cellphone before she bought the iPhone. “With older phones, the games were so hard to play,“ she said. “With the iPhone, everything works so well.“

Now there are several games that she plays at least once or twice a day, she said. “It suits my time frame,” she said. “I don’t have an hour to play; I have five minutes.”

Greg Joswiak, head of marketing for the iPhone and iPod, said, “This is the future of gaming.” The company has emphasized iPhone gaming in several television commercials. At the press conference in early June where the iPhone 3G S was introduced, the company ran a long video featuring testimonials from game developers. The company also trotted out several companies on stage to demonstrate games that made use of the latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system.

The popularity of gaming among iPhone users — some 79 percent of all iPhone owners have downloaded games, compared with 31 percent of smartphone users in general, according to data from the Web analytics firm Compete — has game publishers flocking to get their titles on the platform.

One of them is Electronic Arts, the giant maker of boxed software for PCs and game consoles like Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s PlayStation3. “We knew it would be big,“ said Adam Sussman, vice president for worldwide publishing for the mobile division of Electronic Arts. “We knew we had to scramble and invest more on the iPhone.“

The built-in audience, which amounts to more than 40 million iPhone and iPod Touch owners, adds to the platform’s allure, said Mr. Sussman, who has overseen the translation of some of E.A.’s bigger franchises to the iPhone, including the Sims 3 and Tiger Woods PGA Tour.

The iPhone has already increased revenue at the French game developer Gameloft, which publishes games across a variety of platforms including the hand-held Sony PlayStation Portable and Nintendo’s DSi, in addition to the iPhone and iPod Touch. The company said that 15 percent of its sales were from iPhone games during the first quarter of 2009. It anticipates sales from the iPhone to top $20 million this year.

Some experts say that the big-name titles available for the devices are further evidence that larger game studios are taking the platform as seriously as other portable gaming devices like the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP.

It does not require a budget backed by a publishing giant like Electronic Arts or Sega to churn out a successful game for the iPhone. The low technical barrier to publishing games in the App Store means that anyone with programming skills and a laptop can try their luck at it.

Indeed, many of the App Store successes were born of a clever idea from a single coder or produced by small independent teams like Firemint.

Firemint, an Australian mobile development team, is behind Flight Control, a simple yet addictive game that challenges players to guide aircraft to landing strips. “When my mother-in-law couldn’t stop playing it, I knew we had a success on our hands,” said Robert Murray, company founder. Since Flight Control went on sale in early March, the game has sold a million copies and hovered in the top ranking spots on iTunes, said Mr. Murray.

Gamers spend about 30 minutes playing some of the more polished games, said Krishna Subramanian, a co-founder of Mobclix.

“That level of gameplay is really starting to bite into the gaming market occupied by the PSP and DS,” he said.

Al de Leon, a spokesman for Sony, said the company recognized there was an appetite among their audience for direct access to software and more of it. In October, the company plans to release a new version of its flagship portable gaming device called the PSPGo that won’t use cartridges at all; rather it will deliver software directly to the device — just like an iPhone.

But even though the company is responding to trends that iPhone is driving, Mr. de Leon said the company is not worried that Apple’s device will take over their core audience. “At the end of the day, you buy the iPhone to make calls,” he said. “And you buy the PSP to play games.”

Cammie Dunaway, vice president for sales and marketing for Nintendo, echoed similar sentiments about the company’s lineup of portable hand-held gaming devices. “No one can match our years of experience in the hand-held market and the subscriber base we’ve built up over the last 20 years,” she said.

Michael Cai, vice president for video games at Interpret, a market research firm, said, “Dedicated portable devices have a certain appeal that the iPhone can’t quite match.” But that does not mean those companies are not paying attention, he added. “Sony and Nintendo definitely realize the threat of the iPhone and iPod Touch.”

 

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/technology/29iphone.html?ref=business

Warner Bros. emerges as sole bidder for Midway Games

 

Midway Games which filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection has only received one bid on the company. Friendly Computers learned that they expected a lot more bids to drive up the price. Below are the details: 

Warner Bros. has emerged as the only bidder for Midway Games Inc., all but assuring that it will take control of the bankrupt video game publisher previously owned by Viacom Inc. Chairman Sumner Redstone and become a major force in the video game industry.
Midway had hoped that the film studio's $33-million offer, made in late May, would spark a bidding war that would boost its price. A Chicago investment group and several game publishers kicked the publisher's tires, according to a source familiar with the discussions, but none pulled the trigger.

"No other bids came in, so there's not going to be an auction," Geoffrey Mogilner, a Midway spokesman, confirmed.
Redstone, who took control of Midway in 2004, was never able to bring the troubled company to profitability. He sold it at a huge loss to a private investor last November in exchange for a $700-million tax write-off that has since led to a lawsuit from the publisher's creditors.
Integrating Midway will significantly expand the scope of Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, the studio's small but growing video game division. Warner has acquired three game production companies in recent years and hired industry veteran Martin Tremblay as WBIE president. It also tried, unsuccessfully, to buy Eidos, the British publisher of the Tomb Raider games.

Although Midway has declined in significance in the last few years because of big losses and poor-selling games, it is still a well-known brand with a rich library of titles that Warner will be able to exploit as games or, potentially, movies and TV shows.
"We bid on Midway because we are interested in their catalog of intellectual properties," Tremblay said in May.
Assuming the deal goes through, the studio will take control of most of Midway's assets, including Mortal Kombat and well-known but dormant game series such as Joust and Spy Hunter. It will also get two production houses in Chicago and Seattle.
That would allow Warner to expand its video game lineup, which currently includes titles based on "Where the Wild Things Are," "The Lord of the Rings" and the "Harry Potter" books, as well as an original game called Scribblenauts that received numerous awards at the E3 industry conference.
"Building a company takes time," Tremblay said of his division's growth plans. "We have one of the most efficient distribution channels in the world. We have strong intellectual properties. But we're missing a third piece: talent."
Warner Bros. is one of three major media conglomerates, along with Walt Disney Co. and MTV Networks, to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in video games recently in an effort to reach younger audiences and tap a fast-growing market as traditional cash cows like DVDs decline.
Before the deal is complete, the Delaware court overseeing Midway's bankruptcy must address complaints by several creditors about the sales process. One of those is producer Larry Kasanoff's Threshold Entertainment, which worked on two "Mortal Kombat" films and claims it has the exclusive film and TV rights to the series. Also objecting is Tigon Studios, a production company controlled by Vin Diesel, which said in a filing that it is owed $200,000 for the star's work on the Wheelman game.
A court hearing to address those and other issues is scheduled for Wednesday.

 

Source: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ct-midway27-2009jun27,0,2631772.story

 

Remembering Michael Jackson's video game legacy

 

Friendly Computers was saddened to hear about the passing of Michael Jackson. Below is an article we found remembering the video game “Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker”. We think this may be interesting to you:

While he was probably best-known for his personal eccentricities, pet monkeys, and legal problems (and some music, too, we suppose), Michael Jackson, who died Thursday at age 50, has a small but important footnote in video game history as well.

Back when Jackson was merely a semi-eccentric star, Sega created a video game property for him, named Michael Jackson's Moonwalker (actually separate games for the arcade and Sega Genesis/Master System consoles). Moonwalker was notable for being an early example of real-life celebrities appearing in video games, and for using digitized versions of some of Jacko's songs.

The game is also unintentionally ironic because Jackson is tasked with rescuing helpless children from a crime boss named Mr. Big (although in hindsight, perhaps it was Mr. Big who was doing the rescuing).

The arcade version was a basic isometric beat-'em-up, with two players able to play as dual Jackos, one in a white suit, one in red (similar to his "Smooth Criminal" music video). Jackson's special attack was a dance move, and when activated, a spotlight from the heavens illuminated him as he pulled off some signature spins and kicks, destroying many of the onscreen enemies.

Even stranger, Bubbles the Chimp made a cameo, and if you picked him up, Jackson would be briefly transformed into a laser-shooting robot version of himself.

The somewhat more pedestrian home console version behaved more like a standard side-scrolling platform game. Again we're rescuing kids from a mobster, but the real appeal is hearing Jackson shout "Woo!" with each attack--usually a dance-like high kick that causes tiny stars to shoot from his foot.

The music in the home console version was a letdown for anyone who had played the arcade version--essentially MIDI-style pinky versions of tracks such as "Smooth Criminal" and "Beat It."

The game went on to become a cult classic, more for its cultural kitsch value than its gameplay, with its animated Jackson appropriated for funny Web videos and retro-'90s talking-head TV shows.

Subsequently, Jackson made only a handful of video game appearances, in Space Channel 5 (also from Sega) for the Dreamcast, and as an unlockable fighter in Ready 2 Rumble Boxing: Round 2.

At the time of his death, rumors had surfaced that Jackson was involved with a new video game project for the Nintendo Wii, PlayStation 2, and PlayStation 3, but the game was never officially confirmed.

Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10273229-1.html?tag=mncol;title

Point-of-sale video game activations won't work

 

The EMA is considering implementing a system that will require video games to be activated by a cashier before they will be able to be played. Friendly Computers read about this and the many possible flaws in the  proposed system.  You may find this information interesting:

The Entertainment Merchants Association, an organization that represents North American entertainment retailers, reported in the latest edition of its trade publication, Inside EMA, that point-of-sale video game activations could help save the industry "billions of dollars" in lost sales due to theft and piracy.

Dubbed Project Lazarus, the organization's initiative plans to determine "the feasibility of deploying 'benefit denial' technology on retail optical discs."

According to the EMA, its study has found that benefit denial, the "concept of denying a shoplifter or internal thief the ability to use stolen goods," could lead to reductions in theft and piracy.

The study isn't complete, and associated costs still need to be analyzed. But the EMA says benefit denial could substantially improve the process of buying games.

According to the organization, games should be shipped to retailers in a "locked state and then automatically 'unlocked,' based on a point-of-sale transaction." So if anyone attempts to play a locked game on a console, it won't boot up. Only after the sales transaction is complete will the game be activated. It can then be played on the game machine of their choice.

The EMA thinks that this is the future. I think that the plan is a loser.

Piracy and theft is indeed a problem in the video game industry. But it's not so bad that it requires games to be shipped in an unactivated state. Moreover, game piracy is really a bigger problem on the PC than on consoles.

According to a study performed by TweakGuides.com, Crysis Warhead, a PC game, was illegally downloaded more than 243,000 times over a two-month period. Fallout 3's PC version was illegally downloaded more than 271,000 times in a single month. But the Xbox 360 version of the game was downloaded just fewer than 20,000 times in the same period. TweakGuides couldn't find a single PS3 copy of the game that was illegally downloaded.

Those are just a few examples of many that TweakGuides cites. Piracy is certainly impacting the industry. But as TweakGuides points out, it's not a major problem. And since most of the issues affect the PC side of the business, not even benefit denial will be able to stop piracy. Once the game is activated, it could easily be downloaded onto a computer and uploaded to torrent sites, as usual.

How will it work?
In order for benefit denial to work, the EMA would presumably require the three major consoles to have some sort of activation verification function to ensure that games were legally purchased. It will be interesting to see if Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft agree to that.

There is also a lucrative market for used video games to consider. After some gamers complete a title, they sell it back to the retailer. How will benefit denial handle that situation?

What if a gamer wants to share a title with a friend? Will that game still work on the friend's console, even though they didn't purchase it? It better.

And what about connectivity? Will video game consoles need to connect to the Web to verify activation? If so, it could pose a problem, since many users don't connect their consoles to the Internet. It's adds another hurdle to overcome before they can enjoy a game.

What about downloads?
We also can't forget that video game downloads will make this initiative obsolete before it even gets off the ground. Microsoft announced at E3 this year that it's bringing full-game downloads to the Xbox 360. The practice is widely considered the future of the video game industry. And once again, the EMA has proposed nothing with Project Lazarus that will address that.

Benefit denial just doesn't make much sense. I understand that retailers are trying to find ways to limit the amount of lost sales, but using a video game activation system will only make it worse on the industry. And since there are so many issues with the plan, I don't see how it can work.

I think it's time to get back to the drawing board, EMA.

 

Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-10270870-17.html?tag=mncol;txt

Specialty Game Retailer Game Crazy Donates Video Games & Consoles to USA Football Junior National Team

 

Playing video games to prepare for a football championship? It may sound crazy but not to Game Crazy and the coaches it has teamed up with . Friendly Computers found out that they are donating games and game consoles to help prepare the team. Check it out!

Football Video Games Used As Team USA Coaching Aids for IFAF Junior World Championship

WILSONVILLE, Ore., June 22 /PRNewswire/ -- To prepare for the world's best competition in the 2009 International Federation of American Football (IFAF) Junior World Championship, USA Football's Junior National Team are employing football video games and game consoles courtesy of national specialty game retailer Game Crazy.

Team USA head coach CHUCK KYLE of Cleveland St. Ignatius High School is utilizing 40 video games and 20 game consoles donated by Game Crazy to help America's team prepare for varying styles of play throughout the IFAF Junior World Championship in Canton, Ohio, from June 27-July 5. Team USA's playbook was loaded onto the games to help players better comprehend their assignments during training camp (June 14-25) at Walsh University in North Canton.

USA Football's Junior National Team will represent the United States and compete amongst a field of eight nations spanning four continents in Canton's historic Fawcett Stadium. The tournament field pursuing football's first junior world championship encompasses Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand and Sweden.

A number of games and consoles will be shared among all IFAF Junior World Championship athletes within the player lounge at Walsh University - the residence and practice home of all eight national teams.

"Preparing for well-coached and talented teams like those we'll see in Canton brings a great challenge," Kyle said. "We appreciate of this donation - these games allow us to accelerate the players' ability to learn the playbook, helping us to hit the ground running in Fawcett Stadium Saturday night."

Game Crazy, with six retail locations in Northeast Ohio, has donated to Team USA 20 copies each of EA Sports' "Madden '09" and "NFL Head Coach '09" video games, which allow for game set-up customization. The retailer has also provided USA Football with Microsoft Xbox 360 consoles. USA Football's coaching staff can now upload upcoming opponents' alignments and formations to help their players learn in-game assignments and responsibilities.

"We're proud to support Coach Kyle and USA Football in this historic tournament," said Game Crazy Chief Marketing Officer CLIFF TORNG. "We congratulate all of the coaches and players who have earned their way to Canton and are pleased to be able to provide them access to the latest in technology and training methodology. Video gaming is not only fun, but has also been shown to help develop and enhance athletic performance across a number of different sports. We look forward to a great tournament in a city whose football heritage and history is unmatched."

USA Football's Junior National Team is composed of 45 incoming college freshmen soon to enter one of 33 universities, including Michigan State, Mississippi, Ohio State, Oregon State, Syracuse, Texas A&M, Virginia, Virginia Tech and Yale. The team is America's first on the junior level (19 and under) in football.

About Game Crazy

Game Crazy(R) (www.gamecrazy.com) is the nation's second largest specialty game retailer with approximately 550 locations across the country. Game Crazy provides customers with a vast selection of game titles, consoles and accessories; terrific value on new, used and trade-in games; and unmatched expertise. Headquartered in Wilsonville, Oregon, Game Crazy is owned and operated by Movie Gallery, Inc, which is also the parent company for the Movie Gallery and Hollywood Video brands. Movie Gallery, Inc. is the second largest North American home entertainment specialty retailer with more than 3,700 stores located in all 50 U.S. states and Canada.

About USA Football

USA Football conducts more than 100 football training events annually to strengthen the game on youth and amateur levels. USA Football members - coaches, game officials and league commissioners - reside in all 50 states. The independent non-profit based near Washington, D.C., manages U.S. national teams within the sport for international competitions and has provided more than $1.5 million in equipment grants for youth leagues and high school football programs since 2006. USA Football was started by the NFL and NFLPA in 2002 through the NFL Youth Football Fund. For more, visit usafootball.com.

Website: http://www.gamecrazy.com

 

Source: http://sev.prnewswire.com/retail/20090622/NE3615822062009-1.html

Crowdsourcing a video game's design

 

Have you ever wanted to design your own video game? Well now you can help. Roundhouse Interactive is designing a game which should be released next year, but internet community users can help choose what direction the game is going to go. Friendly Computers thinks you may find this interesting.

Laughing in the face of the concepts of the "tragedy of the commons" and "don't-design-by-committee," a game publisher has decided to put nearly all of the design decisions for a forthcoming console video game in the hands of a large-scale community of users.

The publisher, Roundhouse Interactive, says it will work with programming partner Frima Studio, but will rely mainly on the whims of a potentially six-figure-large community for the major decisions in the game's creation. The game, which is currently going by the code name The Game Cartel, is expected to be a console game available in December 2010.

In the first interview Roundhouse has given on the subject, Mike Montanaro, the president of Roundhouse Interactive, talked to CNET News about the project, the challenges it faces, and why this project could change the way the games industry puts out new products.

To hear Montanaro tell it, The Game Cartel project--the community itself will be known as the Game Cartel--will allow the community to have a major say on just about every single important decision about the game. And that includes its name. The process is expected to begin sometime during the summer.

"It's going to be a democratic voting system and society," Montanaro said. "We place a bunch of ideas out to the cartel members, and they get to decide the direction it goes, everything from the name of the game straight to what platform, the genre of the game, storylines, playability (and) controls. We're going to guide the consumer through the full development of the game."

One goal of the project, he added, is that Roundhouse hopes to give the average game consumer a view inside the development process that he or she has never had before, "the behind-the-scenes of how a game is made."

 

The idea is that at every step of the way, cartel members will be presented with a number of options--between five and eight--that they can vote on. The decision of the majority will rule, and as the programmers, Frima will implement those choices at every milestone. "We'll take that direction to the next level, and then open up another round (of choices) and ultimately create a game that is truly decided on by the members themselves," Montanaro said. "It basically gives gamers the opportunity to participate in the creation and direction of a full-scale game."

To begin with, those interested in joining the cartel will be asked to pay a $50 upfront fee that will guarantee them a copy of the game, as well as a series of incentives to participate at every step of the process. Montanaro said the more people get involved--in voting, and in regular discussions on the cartel's forums, on Facebook and in other venues--the more they will be rewarded. They'll also get their names listed in the game credits.

Further, Roundhouse hopes that within the community of cartel members, subgroups will form around specific directions members want to see the game take. Some, for example, may feel strongly that the game should be a first-person shooter, and may be willing to fight for that. Others may see it differently and argue for a different genre. The same will be true, the publisher hopes, at each step of the process.

Montanaro said Roundhouse is hoping to attract as many as 100,000 people to the cartel, figuring that that is enough people to provide a solid brain trust, but not too many to overwhelm the process. As well, of course, at $50 a pop, 100,000 members would mean a hefty $5 million in the bank, up front, for Roundhouse. And, given that Roundhouse hopes to keep the development budget to about $3 million, that would mean a nice profit from the get-go.

Of course, one could ask whether anyone, let alone 100,000 people, will reasonably be willing to pay $50 upfront for a game that won't be published for a year-and-a-half. But Montanaro said Roundhouse has run the number up the flagpole and he insisted that for a lot of gamers, $50 is an appropriate price to pay for getting "elite status" on a project like this. "They don't want it to be something that just anybody can be a part of."

That means, he added, that if Roundhouse can indeed sign up 100,000 cartel members, the list would be officially closed, and everyone else would have to wait for the game to publish to play it or be involved in any way.

To be sure, that's a very optimistic perspective and plan, and there's no way to know yet if Roundhouse is deluding itself or others in thinking that people really will be willing to pony up half a Benjamin for the right to be involved. There seems to be no precedent for such a project, and given the state of the economy, one has to wonder whether gamers--who have, in spite of the recession, proven they've still got the scratch to pay for the games they want--have the funds to pay for a role in such a project.

If it works, however, Roundhouse will have staked out a place in the industry that could pave the way for a lot of copycats. One reason is that the development of console games can often be a $20 million prospect these days, and for a publisher to put out such a game on a $3 million or so budget--Roundhouse is betting that the cartel members would serve as enthusiastic evangelists, saving the company money on marketing, not to mention that the cartel would pay for the right to be part of the development process, normally a very costly line item--would be a very attractive model. Further, said Montanaro, the project offers game consumers and the industry itself an antidote to the problem of never-ending sequels, franchise games, and a general lack of creativity.

Too many cooks?
On the other hand, the project risks drowning in input from too many captains. It's hard to imagine how a cohesive game could come out of such a massive development-by-committee project. Particularly when there's no advance road map. But Montanaro said that is one of the appealing elements of the project, and that Roundhouse is already thinking about a second, and third, go-round.

Still, Roundhouse isn't handing the reins entirely over to the community. Rather, it is employing what it calls a "celebrity" panel of arbiter judges who will help guide the community through the decision-making processes. Plus, one would expect that Frima will apply its development expertise to sticky situations caused by the community's choices, whatever they may be.

Whatever happens, Roundhouse has guaranteed that people will be watching what happens with the project. If it succeeds, it will surely be much copied. If it fails, Roundhouse can argue that it was a (fairly) inexpensive experiment that was worth trying. Whatever happens, one imagines that the discussions over what happens at each step along the way will be highly entertaining.

 

Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10267336-52.html

Some Video Games Can Make Children Kinder And More Likely To Help

 

Video games often get a bad wrap that they promote violence and aggressive behavior in children. Studies have now been done with pro-active video games which promote teamwork and kindness and it seems that the games are having a positive effect on children's lives in the real world. Friendly Computers found this information:

That's the conclusion of new research published in the June 2009 issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

The article presents the findings of three separate studies, conducted in different countries with different age groups, and using different scientific approaches. All the studies find that playing games with prosocial content causes players to be more helpful to others after the game is over.

The report is co-authored by a consortium of researchers from the United States, Japan, Singapore and Malaysia.

"Dozens of studies have documented a relationship between violent video games and aggressive behaviors," said lead author Douglas Gentile, an Iowa State University psychologist. "But this is one of the first that has documented the positive effects of playing prosocial games."

Prosocial video games involve characters who help and support each other in nonviolent ways.

"These studies show the same kind of impact on three different age groups from three very different cultures," said Brad Bushman, a University of Michigan co-author of the report. "In addition, the studies use different analytic approaches—correlational, longitudinal and experimental. The resulting triangulation of evidence provides the strongest possible proof that the findings are both valid and generalizable."

"These studies document that children and adolescents learn from practicing behaviors in games," said Rowell Huesmann, a U-M co-author of the report.

One study examined the link between video game habits and prosocial behavior among 727 secondary students in Singapore, with a mean age of 13. Students listed their favorite games and rated how often game characters helped, hurt or killed other characters. They also answered questions about how likely they were to spend time and money helping people in need, to cooperate with others and share their belongings, and to react aggressively in various situations.

As in numerous other studies, the researchers found a strong correlation between playing violent video games and hurting others. But the study also found a strong correlation between playing prosocial games and helping others.

The second study analyzed the long-term connection between video game habits and prosocial behavior in nearly 2,000 Japanese children ages 10 to 16. Participants completed a survey about their exposure to prosocial video games, and rated how often they had helped other people in the last month. Three to four months later, they were surveyed again, and researchers found a significant connection between exposure to prosocial games and helpful behavior months later.

"This suggests there is an upward spiral of prosocial gaming and helpful behavior, in contrast to the downward spiral that occurs with violent video gaming and aggressive behavior," said Bushman, a professor of communications and psychology and a research professor at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR).

For the third study, the researchers carried out an experiment with 161 U.S. college students, with a mean age of 19. After playing either a prosocial, violent, or neutral game, participants were asked to assign puzzles to a randomly selected partner. They could choose from puzzles that were easy, medium or hard to complete. Their partner could win $10 if they solved all the puzzles. Those who played a prosocial game were considerably more helpful than others, assigning more easy puzzles to their partners. And those who had played violent games were significantly more likely to assign the hardest puzzles.

"Taken together, these findings make it clear that playing video games is not in itself good or bad for children," Bushman said."The type of content in the game has a bigger impact than the overall amount of time spent playing."

 

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090617171819.htm