Gamers are more stupid now because they play more action games! I can prove it with science too:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/shooting-video-games-health-1.4237361
Apparently to improve our brain, we need to play 3D platformers!
No, it's not that simple. And you didn't prove it with science yet. Did you read the piece? It specifically mentions games which subjects played: "After 90 hours of playing first-person shooter games such as
Call of Duty,
Killzone,
Medal of Honour and
Borderlands 2". Those games are not good FPS games. In short, those are shitty games. You should not judge the whole genre based on its worst representatives, you know?
And those four games are indeed ones which actively make you dumber, if you play them alot. They do it on purpose, too, even if making players dumber is only a side-effect and not the primary goal of such designs. Personally, i can't play modern Call of Duty for any much, it's simply disqusting for me (note though that i am certified marksman IRL, and this certainly makes me more aware of all the wrongness than most other gamers).
But, this is not only my personal opinion - this has also been noted by others on multiple occasions, about each of those 4 games. And not just noted, but also explained in detail. See yourself:
- Call of Duty: "one of the things that Call of Duty does, and it's smart business, to a degree, is they compress the skill gap. And the way you compress the skill gap as a designer is you add a whole bunch of randomness. A whole bunch of weaponry that doesn't require any skill to get kills. Random spawns, massive cone fire on your weapons. Lots of devices that can get kills with zero skill at all ... the skill gap is so compressed, that it's like a slot machine. You might as well just sit down at a slot machine and have a thing that pops up an says “I got a kill!” They've taken individual skill out of the equation so much".
Source.
- Killzone: "Sony has invested the rough equivalent of a developing country’s GDP into their muscular next-gen system, and the company desperately wants to prove why we must upgrade. For all the talk during the lead-up to the PS4 launch about how a boost in processing power would magically unshackle developers from technical limits and usher in a bold new era of creativity in video games, the decision to feature the fourth iteration of this inessential series as one of the system’s flagship titles shows that perhaps the new boss is the same as the old boss. And so in the absence of any new ideas,
Killzone: Shadow Fall exists as worshipful paean to the technical power of the PlayStation 4, not as a game to actually play and enjoy".
Source.
- Medal of Honor. Chances are the latest game of this series - MoH: Warfighter - was played in that "research" you give us. If so, then it's just one shitty game, in general. Critical reception of it mentions the following: "one of the worst video games we have ever played ... It's so brazenly unremarkable, its storytelling so amateurish, its action so rote, that it feels like a master class in middling modern warfare ... this once-loved series may be dangerously close to being put in a casket ... linear gameplay failed to add up to the tension, there is too much ammo and enemies show up in predictable places making the game too easy, poor storytelling, confined maps ... Warfighter is down with everything that makes modern shooters fucking despicable ... the lack of player input on the actual plot, stating that "being played by a self-aware human being was classified by the developers as a bug". This lead him to coin the term "Spunkgargleweewee" to describe overly linear, modern military shooters. He later placed Medal of Honor: Warfighter at #2 in his list of worst games of 2012, describing it as "obnoxious, incoherent, and boring".
Source.
- Borderlands 2: "With
Borderlands, you don't do much more than point at guys and make the red bars get smaller, which means, to paraphrase the classic
GamePro advice, shooting them until they die. Most good shooters go beyond that. In
FEAR, they call in reinforcements, flip over tables to create cover, distract you to allow their friends to flank, and it all feels right. In
Halo, an Elite will make use of his grunts, turning them into meat shields when his shields pop. In
Far Cry 2, putting a sniper round through a mercenary's kneecap will inevitably result in his allies coming to check on him.
These games treat their world as real and their inhabitants more so. They make use of the first-person perspective, of that idea of immersing the player within a world, and they take it as far as they can.
Borderlands 2, on the other hand, treats its enemies in distinctly different terms. Its enemies are mobs to be aggroed while you blast them with AOE attacks and whatnot. They're not treated like people inhabiting a space; they're treated like concepts with legs, bipedal ideas given malicious form. Shoot shoot, bang bang, visual effects. On to the next guy. ...
A good shooter should feel like a stew of sensory data, feedback, use of space, and artificial intelligence. Everything should fit together in a way that feels right—in a way that somewhat emulates actually being in a space, because that's really what first-person games are all about. ... The best shooters not only treat space like it's real, but encourage players to explore that game space, thinking about where cover is, where enemies are, where gunfire is going, where their gunfire is going, how to game enemies into different space, and so on and so forth".
Source.
This is why the key point is not that all four games in that research you mention - are FPS games. They key point is how those four specific games are made. There are many other FPS games which are very different, in this regard! Try Red Faction 1, try Counter-Strike 1.4 ... 1.6 (NOT later versions!), try Mechwarrior 4, try the original Deus Ex, heck, try Quake 1 or Half-Life even, - and you will find every one of games i here named makes you think times and times more than any of the games they used in that "research", and in particular present difficult challenges for your reflexes, precision, tactics and situational awareness. I even dare suspect that this "research" you give us here - is intentionally biased by using this _kind_ of FPS games, - which for simplicity we can call "stupidifying FPS titles".
Why, exactly, those researches didn't use any of games i just mentioned, eh? Especially Red Faction 1, which personally i regard as most excellent FPS game ever made. There are two possible answers to this question. 1st, they simply have no idea about which FPS games are good, and which are shit. But in this case, results of their research can't be valid. 2nd, they know everything above very well, but intentionally picked games which makes people stupid. Boring, badly made, and most of all - preventing players from _actually_ make a difference in the game's world. But in this case, results of their research are not to be trusted neither.
Sidenote. Try to beat Red Faction 1 on hardest difficulty to see what i mean. It's availabe through gog.com these days for very humble cost, by the way. I managed to do so many years ago, and it was unforgettable experience. Makes you so much better FPS player, hones your reflexes, and at times makes you realize how inferior we humans are to computer-controlled characters when they are not artificially restricted from wiping us human players out.
Another one thing which is universaly true about 4 games used in that "research" - all those are console "FPS" games. Well let me tell you a "secret": there are no FPS games on consoles. You can't make any true shooter game if your players use a gamepad for controls. Seriously. Because it's simply impossible to do precise and quick enough "point and shoot" action using analog sticks. It's like asking a man without hands to shoot a rifle - as stupid and idiotic as it sounds, and yet that's exactly what is being done for modern concole gamers. I see it as a form of psychological torture, in fact...
So you see, FPS games can differ dramatically, just like games of any other genre; some are made primarily for idiots and, naturally, make anybody playing them to slowly degrade into an idiot. Results of this process are well described in the full piece about Call of Duty (available through the 1st link of this post): ruining whole generation of FPS gamers. Which that "study" you gave observes in certain specific details. But this in no way means whole genre is the same. Far from!
P.S. This post further confirms observations i made in my previous post, too. I find it reassuring.
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