Computer game research – cool science, but hard to advertise

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I’m talking a bit about the reality of being a computer game researcher. It is a really great and rewarding work, but it is at the same time still very hard to convince the general public about the good use of computer games. It is often like being an ambassador of computer games instead of being a researcher.

Researching computer games or better researching the educational use of computer games is a really cool science. It is very interesting to discover similarities between the challenges created by computer games and the challenges offered in the real-world.
One of the most obvious relations between computer game challenges and real-world challenges might be the general reaction time. Reaction time is needed in almost every part of our daily life. It extends from the quick grab of a glass dropping to its death to the reaction time needed while operating a car on the streets.
A fast paced computer game often challenges the reaction time of the player. In order to proceed through the game, the player needs to become fast enough to fulfill the challenges. This reaction time of analyzing the in-game situation can be directly applied to the reaction time needed to analyze a real-world situation. The decision making reaction time in computer games can be applied the same way to a real-world situation.

This was just an example how computer games can help to improve ourselves in order to perform better in our daily life. Unfortunately, this relation is not so obvious to non-gamers or the general public. Furthermore, most of the benefits of today’s scientific research are not really obvious to the general public, because they are very abstract and often focussed on a very specific area most people even have not heard about. On the other hand, the research is still accepted and seen as a serious work.

Although this seriousness is mostly applied to every part of the sciences, computer game research still has a very problematic time. This is mostly due to the fact that computer games still have the general connotation of being „just a game“. Computer games are often seen as entertainment without having any good use then the waste of time. Moreover, even when the some „seriousness“ about computer games is accepted and that games can train some specific skills, then it is still a very long way to go until the application of these skills to the real-world is accepted.

The scientific community is more and more open minded to this serious application of computer games and the recent trend of gamification is really helping to make the good use of computer games more popular. However, it is still a very long way to go until the general public really starts to recognize the connection between computer game and real-world skills.

In this case, the reality of being a computer game researcher is not so cool anymore. The work itself is really rewarding and makes a lot of fun, but often it is more about being an ambassador of computer games in order to make the good use of them more popular. Most of the time, before I can start talking to a non-gamer about the recent findings I’ve made, I need to convince him at first that computer games really can have a positive impact on our real-world performance.

However, if I manage to convince somebody that computer games can really have a good impact on our real-world then I’m really satisfied, because I changed someone’s mind about my research. From this point on, I can finally start to present recent findings about optimizing educational processes and in this case our lives with computer games.