Oh hey, it's that guy down the hall who wears fanny packs, and now you want to wear a fanny pack. But if he notices, it'll be weird, but maybe he'll be flattered. Ali Ward here with a sixty four bit version of the ninth episode of Smologies. What is Smologies? I'm so glad you asked. So we took full ologies episodes and then we sliced them and diced them up to make these really bite sized, classroom friendly edits of
our deep dive classics. So if you have not listened to the original full length episode of Litology and you don't mind some not safe for school details and lots of swearing, go back listen to that version. The link is in the show notes. But if you only have about twenty minutes, or you need a g rated version that's suitable for all ages, you're in the right place.
Let the games begin, Okay. In this episode, we sit down with lotologist and game designer Speaker and someone I was just talking about and quoting her in last week's full length Neuropathology episode about concussion therapy. So she has done two wildly popular time talks, written two New York Times best selling books, including one called Reality Is Broken. She also wrote the twenty fifteen release Super Better, and she has a new book coming out March twenty second,
twenty twenty two. I just asked her about it today. It's called Imaginable. It's all about how we can play games and use our imagination to predict otherwise hard to predict futures. She earned her PhD from the University of California at Berkeley in performance studies, where she went on to teach game design and game theory. And another little fun fact, she was named one of the twenty most
Inspiring Women of the World by Oprah. Just fun facts, but she's known the best as the inventor and the co founder of Super Better, which is a game that's helped more than a million people tackle actual, real life health problems. And if that isn't enough, she also teaches at Stanford University. She's the director of Game Research and Development at the Institute for Their Future. So a lodologist, she is one. And litology is a real word. I swear I looked it up. It means the study of games.
It comes from the Latin word lu dare to play, so play. Yeah, the word was coined sometime around the nineteen fifties, so it didn't mean video games back then because time machines are not a thing. But nowadays it can encompass all kinds of gameplay, from sports to card games and of course yes, video games. So in this small smologies, condensed clean episode, we cover how video games
can help improve brain function and build tenacity. We talk about gamifying your life, how online communities kind of translate to relationships in real life, and how different games have different effects on the brain. Also, how much is too much gameplay? I know we all want to know, and also essentially video games good or bad. So let's presstart on a conversation that will one up our brains and unlock some achievements with litterrologist and game designer doctor Jane mcgonagaal she her.
Code knowledge.
Can you tell me kind of how games change the way we think or what happens in the brain. What happens is dopamine and serotonin, like what's going on in that brainy soup?
Yeah, Okay, there's like so much I want people to know about this, and they're two big pieces, and so I want to tell both of them because not everybody like benefits from playing video game. It takes them out of reality, it takes them out of their social relations
and their goals. So I want to preface what I'm gonna say by this doesn't naturally happen for all people like the good things, and there are ways that you can if you don't have a good relationship with gaming, that you can change it so that you're more likely to get the benefit. So I just want to preface all this by saying, it's not like games are some magic pill that you play them and good things happen to you.
It really depends on how you play and why you play that good things can happen for a lot of people.
Just allow me to reiterate that disclaimer.
Games are not a magic pill, and not everybody benefits from video games, and however they can really help in the following ways. So the signature thing that I would say as probably the person who has studied I mean, I don't think there's ever been a scientific paper written about video games that have not read thousands of them. I am on it. I would say this sort of
signature finding has to do with self efficacy. So self effogacy is the belief that you have the ability to take actions that can help you achieve your goals right, and so you have skills, you have resources, you have pathways forward. And different people have different kinds of self effogacy. Like I might have a lot of self efficacy as a cook in the kitchen, but maybe not in my fashion sense of what should I wear today. I'm just not feeling like I have a lot of talent in
that area. Different people have self efficacy in different areas, but if you have the experience of gaining self efficacy in new areas, it can develop a kind of mindset
that does translate. So if you are often doing things that you're bad at and then stay with it and get better, and suddenly you have new skills and you acquire new resources and you have achieved new goals and milestones, your brain gets better at looking at a difficult skill or task and saying, let me try it, because I have a great and long history of getting better at things that I'm bad at. And that's what gaming does
for most people. And the more different games you play, the more your brain gets used to being frustrated, hanging in there, feeling optimistic in the face of setbacks and that is the one generalizable positive impact of games that we see. No matter what kind of game you play, sport, challenging, cooperative board game, you're playing bridge, you're playing a video game.
If we can help you get comfortable with not being good at something, trying using your skills and ability to get better at it, and then you do, in fact get better, that that can translate to the rest of your life.
So games help us get comfy with being a total newbie at something. So when we try new things, whether it's a video game or something in the three dimensional realm, we're accustomed to being really frustrated at first and being like, h I hate this, I'm so bad at it. Oh wait, and then we gradually get better and better with time and effort, and we're like, oh, I can apply this to my life. So to receive the full benefit of that.
The doc says, make sure you're always playing different games, like the person who always plays mind Sweeper or Solitaire like they've been playing it for thirty years not not having this benefit. But when you look at the research literature, the people who really benefit from this experience are people who feel like games are real in a way, like
they don't see them as a scapist. They don't play games to ignore their problems or like shove down negative feelings or get away from people who are annoying them. Those people tend to not benefit because they see games as separate from reality, so they don't bring the same mindset to real life. And those are the type of players who go on to be like you would call it addicted. It's not quite an addiction, but it's a kind of compulsive gameplay where they play more than it's good for them.
Is there a difference in games where you're playing against a computer versus you are in a community and your friends are on a headset and you're all yelling at each other trying to, like, you know, kill it the same elf.
Huge difference. And it's not that one is better or worse. They're they're good for different things. Right, So, Like, if you're dealing with anxiety or depression, a single player game is actually really good it because you can pull out your phone and play it for a few minutes. Because one of the benefits of games is that it can
stop rumination. Right, So if you're anxious, you're anxious because you're imagining things that could go wrong right, and it requires it requires your brain to be actively focused on visualizing things that scare you. So one of the best treatments for anxiety in the moment is to just stop the ruminations, to make a conscious decision not to spend time and energy on these thoughts. And so a game on your phone. It could be like a mini golf game, it could be you know, candy Crush, it could be
Words with Friends. Anything that you can play by yourself is fine because it stops the thoughts. Same with depression. People depression ruminate on very negative thoughts about themselves or their circumstances.
Maybe it's the new word game Wordle, created by Josh Wordle as a present for his word game obsessed partner. Or maybe, like for my husband Jared, it's League of Legends with his brothers and friends. Either way, it's nice to interrupt destructive thought patterns with a good old fashioned.
Game, and if you can stop that flow of thought, it's an effective treatment. So single player games are great and they are really helpful for things like anxiety, depression, and pain, but social games are phenomenal for other things. The quality of positive emotions they create, the trust that
they build. It's interesting you mentioned League of Legends. There's been great research showing that people who play League of Legends regularly have a stronger social support network than just about any other gamer, meaning there are more people in their lives who will be there for them if they need advice, if they need help in reality, like help moving or assistance physical assistance. People play League of Legends very powerful social support system.
So each type of gaming experience has its benefits, she says, and social games see to lead to a bigger sense of community and family that can transfer to real life. But can you play too many video games? And is there a connection between playing video games and those shiny, flickering, jingling slot machines? Essentially, is gaming like gambling to the brain? They are only a few letters off after all?
Oh my gosh, Ali, there's so much to say here. Let me start. Let me start with the gambling question, because this, I think people, If people can understand this, it will alleviate a lot of anxiety around video gaming versus casino gaming. The thing that happens in your brain where you feel like something good could happen as a result of your actions. It is identical in gambling. And
video gaming. Right the part of your brain that says try again, try again, you might win, Go ahead, go for it, that keeps you at that slot machine, or you just need to play another hand in gambling or make another be yes, that is identical to what's happening in video gaming. But what happens in video gaming is you actually get better at skills, and you acquire more resources, and you gain more allies who can teach you and
help you and show you the way. And as opposed to luck based gambling where you're just you know, pulling the slot lever or scratching off a lottery ticket, you can actually get better and improve your chances of winning in video gaming. So it is a completely different psychological experience, a different neurological experience, because it is not delusional to stay engaged.
Oki dok so before the lightning round of questions from patrons who sign up at Patreon dot com. Sooshologies it's a buck month, just saying each week a portion of the ad revenue goes to a cause of theologists choosing and Jane loves Ablegamers dot org, which in their words, gives people with disabilities custom gaming setups, including modified control and special assistive technology like devices that let you play with your eyes so they can have fun with their
friends and family. So a donation went to Ablegamers dot org, who are doing awesome stuff. So thank you Jane for telling us about them. So a few words from sponsors who make that donation a reality. Okay, back to your Patreon questions, which are good ones. One Patreon question I got a ton from Mark Williams, and from David Baffa and from Sasha kd. They all asked about gamification. And I know that I don't think that you love the words,
but is the gamification of behavior a useful technique? Sasha K wants to know how do you feel about gamification of everything?
Yeah, you are awesome Ali for knowing that. I do not use a word gamification to describe my own work because just historically it's been used not in ways that authentically empower or bring the best out of the people who are being gamified. So my philosophy is, if you are connecting with somebody's deeply held values, what do they want more in their life? They want to be a better parent, they want to learn something new every day, they want to be braver and get out in the
world more, be more physically active. You know, whatever it is that they authentically want to do that they choose for themselves. If you can put a quest system or a leveling up system, or a kind of cooperation opportunity where they are multipliers, if you and your friends are doing it together, you can add some game design elements that help people do more of what they want. And if they do it, they're going to experience an upper spiral of skill and ability so they can maintain it
outside of the game. That's an ideal situation for gamification.
So basically, if it helps you achieve your goals from Uno to Magic, the Gathering to Tarkov, then doctor Jane fully supports it. But what about the classic of all classics, the one we all know and love, the Falling Block Majesty of Tetris? And then a bunch of people Colin, Matthew, Carla Kennedy, Helen Amy Connor all asked about dreams. Why do I dream about Tetris? After playing Tetris for a
long time? Two people in particular, Colin and Amy, both said, I love Tetris, but if I play it too long, I start thinking about it all the time, and when I close my eyes, I literally see little Tetramino swollic. Why does this happen?
This is the greatest question, because the other public service announcement I always like to do about video games actually has to do with Tetris and how it takes over your mind. Because there have been three randomized control studies and clinical trials now, including one in the field with people who experienced traumatic events, that show that the way that Tetris takes over your brain so that you are flashing back to it, it can prevent flashbacks associated with
post traumatic stress disorder. And there's actually increasing usage of Tetris within twenty four hour of a traumatic event that if you play Tetris within twenty four hours and before you go to sleep, that your brain is more likely to flash back on Tetris and the event, which reduces
the rate of traumatic flashbacks in the future. Yeah, and it happens because Tetris is so visually compelling and requires so much visual attention that your brain essentially diverts resources from everything else, and it works so hard on this problem that when you walk away from it, your brain is continuing to work on it. If you had a really bad day and you don't want to sit there thinking about it, or like stay up all night thinking
about it. You can use tetris to block your brain from flashing back on an experience that you don't want to remember. You use the power of tetris to flash back on tetris.
That's right, tetris saving you from stressful replays in your brain. You heard it here first, But what about just strapping a game console and a screen to your actual face? Is that too much? I got a ton of questions about VR. Yeah, like Justin So, Dion Dabbelow, Kirana Bergstrom, and Janelle York all wanted to know what video game advances should we look forward to, Like how do you see the industry developing? And how does VR and AR change game design? Like virtual reality and augmented.
Yeah, oh so many things. Okay, I'm going to focus on a few things. One advance that we are going to see in gaming in general as a result of virtual reality, I believe, is that gaming will become a socially safer and more pleasant space for people who have historically experienced more harassment, So for women, people who are identified as queer. There can be a lot of harassment
in social gaming, and that's just a fact. I spent a lot of time talking to VR developed and I know that all of the major VR developers are very much focused on not repeating the mistakes of the past of both social media and video gaming. They do not want VR to be a space where anybody can come up to you and tell you what they think, anybody can come up to you and have an interaction with you. They want to invent new kinds of technologies for consent, for who can see you, who can touch you, who
can talk to you. I'm very optimistic that VR is going to thoughtfully not replicate the kind of toxic environments that we've seen in social media and video gaming in the past. That's one thing. Yeah. Another thing that I'm excited about in VR is VR esports. I mean, esports
is obviously becoming really popular and accepted. I mean, there are college scholarships, there's college leagues, there's more people watching online world chamn Bean ships for the Biggest League of Legends finals, then watched Major League Baseball World Series, watched the NHL.
Okay quick aside, just to fact check this, Let's look at the most watched World Series in recent years. Twenty sixteen, Chicago Cubs are in the World Series for the first time since nineteen oh seven. This is a big deal. Game seven, Who's Gonna win? The viewership is about triple what it usually is for a World Series, with forty million people watching. The Chicago Cubs take the victory forty million. Oh but last year the number of people watching the
League of Legends finals was one hundred million. Well that's an exaggeration. It was ninety nine point six million. So yeah, that's a lot.
Sorry Cubs, it's very popular. But I'm interested in esports and VR because the esports and VR are often very physical.
If you look at images or videos of them online, you see people leaping and crawling, and there's a real blend of physical sport, but also all the things that require you to be good in video games and esports, the kind of fast reflexes and visual attention and resource management that are the kind of strategic decision making that we see in traditional video games in esports, so I'm excited for VR esports also as a way to have
both real physical and beautiful gameplay alongside traditional esports skills.
So in the future, we could see sports and esports come together and possibly put us in some form of the oasis from Ready Player one. And I know people who use their Oculus Quest headsets to work out via Beat Saber and other apps, which kind of feels like going to the gym in Star Trek's holiday in the best way. But is there a world where maybe that's a little too immersive? It's just a little much. Can
you spend too much time playing video games? My nephew Mason is nine, and I just got back from the holidays with him, and he and his parents have a difference of opinion on this issue, as you can imagine. Let's see Matt Soalgato, Carla Hickenlooper, Rodi Akaria, Carla Kennedy and a few other people asked about addiction. When should kids start playing video games? And how much is too much?
Okay, so you cannot go wrong if you are playing the game with them. That's that's the first and most important rule. There's no too soon if you are playing with them and talking to them about it, and for as long as you can continue this, the better. So even if it's a single player game, you know somebody they're building something in Minecraft. You are sitting right there, You're like, what are you doing? How did you know to do that? How did you figure that out?
Like?
Ah, looks really hard? What's going on? Talk to your kids, let them express their problem solving process, what's motivating them about the game. Why is this fun? You want to just draw out as much as you can, because it allows kids to really reflect on how they learn, what they're getting better at, how they are capable of solving
difficult problems, and staying engage with hard challenges. Games are just the most incredible environment for you to validate your kids' skills and abilities as a learner, as a creative person, as a problem solver. And the other thing about in terms of timing, I did help do a meta analysis of all the studies that have looked at kids and adults how much is too much? And I will say that there have never been studies showing ill effects when
people are playing less than twenty hours a week. You do see impacts on school performance, on social relationships with people who don't play games, on physical health and well being over twenty hours per week, So that's just another kind of safe zone. And in cases of serious pathological gameplay. When people are saying up all night, they're not doing the school work. I'm not looking for a job. I always say, get it to twenty hours or less, do not take the game away. Okay, so there's a.
Sweet spot of twenty hours or less a week, but your mileage may vary. And really just make sure that you're prioritizing the big things sleep, rest, family and friends, time, your schoolwork, your big goals, and recognize when you're relaxing and when you're escaping because life maybe feels too painful. Speaking of pain, a lot of us wanted to know is there a connection between video games with violent content
and three dimensional real life bad behavior? If you play video games stealing cars, are you going to go around and steal much cars? You're trained to do it now. I don't know about you specifically, but you know what I mean. And so a bunch of people asked about violence and video games, Emily Brabish and Elizabeth Janelle York, Lauren Murray McKay, Sarah Jane James, Amber Cooper, and then they all kind of ask do violent video games cause more violence?
Look, statistically, we know that ninety six percent of men under twenty one play violent video games. And I prefer to use the term like games with violent content, because obviously the most violent game is like football, real football, where you are hitting people and causing brain injuries. That is an actually violent game. Video games are not actually violent. So let's say games with violent content or aggressive themes.
Everybody plays them. And if you look at the data, violent crime has gone down and down and down exactly as engagement with violent themed games has gone up and up. I mean, it's like, it's ridiculous. If there were any any correlation, let alone causation, you would not see this trend. This is like anybody who saidies this, well, that's the first thing they will say is over the past thirty years, violence crime goes down, particularly in this demographic, this male demographic.
Violent themed gameplay is going up. It's just not there's no data to suggest that there is any kind of correlation, let alone causation. However, that said two things. There are certain types of gameplay that can turn you into a jerk. Not a violent person, but somebody who has less empathy for people they perceive is weaker than them, and who are kind of moodier and may yell at you or be grumpy to you, and you're just like, ough, why
are you so obnoxious or such a jerk? That kind of gameplay is when you play in these very aggressive themed games against strangers who you don't know and will never see in person. We tend to dehumanize those opponents. We don't know who they are, so we're playing anonymously online, we're trying to beat them. We build up in our mind that there's like horrible people and we hate them and we feel antagonistic towards them, and those emotions that
we build up, the frustration, the anger, the hatred. It's not like you just walk away from the game and they evaporate. Can linger. A lot of people don't want to simulate violence because we don't enjoy it, and that's a natural feeling, and it's why a lot of people are turned off by video game culture. It's not abnormal to not enjoy violence, like that's also a normal thing.
If you're turned off by it, that's okay. And you don't have to play violent video games, or if you play them, you don't have to necessarily engage in the violent aspects of them.
Okay, got it? So video games with violent content won't necessarily make you a violent person, but playing certain types of games can make you more of a jerk when you're not playing, maybe even Monopoly, which just a quick aside I have to tell you this. It was actually the early nineteen hundred's brainchild of an anti capitalist activist and a comedian and a writer and an unmarried woman by the name of Elizabeth Maggie, and she created Monopoly.
It was then called the Landlord's Game as a cautionary tale and in her old timing words, let the children see clearly the gross injustice of our present land system, and when they grow up, the evil will be remedied. Well, we had such high hopes, Lizzie, but perhaps the irony was a little too lost on us, because she was at a party playing it with her friends, and then
some jabbroni liked it and ripped her off. He paid her five hundred bucks for the idea, and then he made millions of dollars distorting its message, because capitalism the very thing she was trying to ward us about anyway. So that's why you feel bad when you play Monopoly and you watch your family become destitute while you own like four railroads. Anyway, let's look on the brighter side
of gaming, shall we? After nearly twenty years in this industry, in this field, what is the shiniest light when it comes to litology? What is your favorite thing about video games or about what you do?
I mean, my favorite thing is I love with discovering a new game with my hud. It's been still We've been together since two thousand, so almost twenty years now, and one of the first things we did together was play an adventure game called grim Fandango one players Lucas Art's BROWSERAIS game you like explore world together and we spent a few weeks playing it together. And I still like.
I love when a new game comes out, whether it's Gone Home Game or Fortnite, we can sit and experience it together and we have the sort of memorable moments in our history, like when we found Portal, when we found Braid, when we found World of Warcraft. I really love developing a skill with him together and having that novelty and that exploration and curiosity. There's so many positive emotions that we feel when we play, and when you can feel them with someone you love, it's really powerful.
WHOA wow, So ask smart people playful questions because there's a lot more to video games than any of us previously thought. So we learned that they can change the way we think. They can build confident and resilience, They can build communities online that translate to communities in real life.
We also learned Tetris requires a ton of mental focus and a bunch of different games is better for our brains than just playing one game over and over, and also that maybe we should try and limit our time playing video games to twenty hours or less a week, depending on if you're meeting your top priorities in life and you know, self care things like that. So to find out more about doctor Jane McGonagall, you can go to janemcgonagall dot com. It's linked in the show notes.
She's also avante game on Twitter. I'll link all of this in the show notes, including linked to the Nonprofitablegamers dot org, and we're finding the sponsors of the show in case you're interested in them. And Jane's books include her upcoming March twenty second release Imaginable, How to See the Future Coming and feel ready for anything, even things that seem impossible today, and also her twenty fifteen bestsellers
super Better. Those are all linked on my website. You can find out more at alleyboard dot com slash Somologies. You can find more Somologies episodes there in case you are listening and you want to binge on some. Thank you to doctor Jane McGonagall and thank you to any new Smologites. New episodes are out about every two weeks and links to the full litology episode. For grown ups or children who don't mind swearing, there is much more
detail and again lots of curse words. Those are available on alleyboard dot com or in the show notes, and a full list of credits for this episode can be found there as well. Since we like to keep things nice and small around here, and if you listen to the end of the show, you know I give you a piece of advice, and this week it's that I just realized that there is a feature in Gmail that lets you add a task list. Google it. It's amazing.
You check the box next to an email, you add it to your task list, and it pulls up on the side of your email, so you can just find what you're doing easily. Click an email instead of just putting random stars on things, and it actually, I will be honest, kind of gamifies your to do list because you get to click it and then it disappears and you go, haha, I did that. So if you have a Gmail box, very helpful. I don't know if that helps anyone else. Also, kids, floss your teeth because your
dentist will love you. And in the future, when you're grown up, you're going to spend way less money getting cavities filled and you can spend it on more fun stuff like a virtual reality headset that your parents won't let you buy when you're a kid. Okay, that's all for this week. Until next time. Smologites per bite, colg.
Knowlogy. I'd call them the super Mario Brothers.