A Quick Response to "Video Games vs The Brain"

A good friend of mine recently wrote a post on her blog titled, "Video Games vs The Brain" wherein she talked about a study conducted by a professor Akio Mori. In the study Professor Mori brought in subjects that fit into one of four categories: normal, (Those who rarely played games) visual, (Those who are avid TV viewers) half-video game, (Those who played played less than fifteen hours a week) and video game (Those who played games at least two hours a day.) Professor Mori then measured the brain waves of the subjects and found that those in the visual and video game group did not have much activity in the areas of the brain related to creativity and emotion. Shay (The author of the blog) Then extrapolated some of her thoughts on the results of the study and about excessive gaming and television watching in general.

Now before I get into my response I would like to say a couple of things, first off being that I quite enjoyed this post. It's an interesting discussion and I thinks its good to have discussion about it. Secondly, can we be real for a minute and mention how absolutely awful having the font, size, and colour of the text change seemingly at random throughout the post is? I love you Shay, you are a good person, but seriously that just looks so bad. Just painful to read. I mean I think I get why you changed font the first time as you transitioned from writing about the study to your thoughts, but it's 100% unnecessary. It makes it look like you just copy pasted a paragraph from somewhere else onto your post and it looks bad. Now that we got that out of the way, let's actually talk about what the words said an not the font.

There are already a bunch of Facebook comments that highlight the major problems with this post. The study doesn't say what games people were playing which could have a dramatic affect on what kind of brain activity the subject will show. Imagine a hypothetical situation where the game being played is pong. Everyone knows that game right? You move a paddle up or down to hit a ball back and forth. There is nothing else to it, you could sit Leonardo DaVinci down with pong and he's not going to show off creative thoughts because there isn't anything to that game. That's just one hypothetical situation though. The other problem with the post highlighted by Facebook comments was that it was a study of correlation and not causation. A study like the one conducted by Professor Mori simply can't offer itself as evidence that excessive games or T.V. stop your creative thinking, it can only be evidence that a relationship between the two does exist.

Another problem that I did not see mentioned was the fact that it was only one study. That's a problem. This study might show a relationship between excessive gaming and a lack of beta waves, (Which are thought to be related to creative thinking and emotion) but another study might show something completely different. I'm not saying that another study will, but leaving that question unanswered erodes the credibility of an argument. Also don't think for a second that this isn't an argument being made because it is.

Now I only have one more thing I want to bash at in this post, the last paragraph made me cringe. No word of a lie. To quote, "If you answered the same as I'm doing today, Then I'm sorry, but you are living your life not to the fullest, and that's where regrets come form." Not only does the wording feel awkward, (living your life not to the fullest? Really? How about but you are not living life to its fullest. Don't lead you reader into thinking your going to say one thing and then turn it around on them like that, feels weird to read.) especially since in the previous paragraph she stated to take things in moderation, and now she's saying it would be good to cut it out completely. The real problem though is that it's an absolute statement. What if I meet my long lost brother and the only thing we have in common is playing games? I'd say playing some with him would still be well within living life to the fullest, and I know that's a really extreme example, but you expose yourself to problems like that when you make absolute statements about subjective things. Honestly I was thinking this was actually a great post until the end of it, now I'm forced to call it just "good."

Alright I'm done, hate train has departed. There are definitely flaws with the reasoning in the post, but I applaud Shay for taking the time to open up a discussion about this. It's nice to see discussion in comments on Facebook rather than just a mass of likes. Keep it up Shay.

Just a reminder of some of the really great things about games.

Miss Wedding. Blog Instead.

My oh my Makinna. I thought I'd have some more time to put this little piece together, but as it turns out my procrastination got the better of me yet again. None the less I feel like it would still be a good idea if I celebrated marriage by boosting your ego with some nice words, also I'm kind of a bad friend and missed your wedding and need to make up for it a bit. That's not the important thing though! The important thing is that you had a wedding! So I'm going to stop ranting and just go on with the whole ego boosting bit I was talking about before.

If i only received one word to describe Makinna Kristensen with I would without a doubt in my mind go with wing-nut. Yeah... I really feel like that word totally captures everything about her. Wing-nut. Whatta word. Jokes aside though I'd really go with consistent. I use consistent because for the very limited time that I've known her, and no matter what the context of a situation was I could count on the fact that Makinna's attitude and behaviors wouldn't change.  She's almost always caring, kind and willing to sacrifice for others. Willing to lend her ear to a friend that needs someone to talk to, all that lovely jazz. Ninety-Nine out of a hundred times this would be good. Sometimes I'd be hoping she'd let me off easy for something stupid I said, but being ever consistent individual I would get slammed for it. She's surprisingly good at subtle slamming a person into the ground with a clever thought or phrase. I know subtle isn't exactly a word many would use in any sort of a description of Makinna, but it's true.

Beyond her consistency I've always thought of Makinna as a very intelligent sort of person in the sense of understanding her surroundings and the people that filled them up. There is this unspoken ability to just understand how another person thinks and know what their action will be based on that. Makinna has it. I think that's probably what allows her to be so consistent, because she is able to predict very accurately how a situation will play out and react accordingly.

Alright, that's enough of the ego inflation for one sitting. I'd like to kinda wrap this mess or words up with thanking you for being nothing short of an absolutely fantastic friend to me. You truly are one of the shining examples of what I think a person aught to be like. (Here I thought I'd stop inflating your ego!) This is normally where I say something like, "I hope you have a very happy and successful marriage!" But I don't have to because I've seen you and Calvin together, There can be no doubts that your marriage will be fantastic. Congratulations on progressing forward with your life and here's to me one day joining you in the married club! (ROFL good one Jonny!) Sorry again for missing your wedding today, but I'm sure I'll apologize for that like a hundred more times at least.

A Quick Look at the Fast-Push Strategy in League. Part one: Compositions.

Fast-pushing is a strategy that has become extremely prevalent in competitive League of Legends. The strategy revolves around taking enemy towers down early and fast in order to establish dominance over the map and snowball the game into a fast victory. It often relies around team compositions with strong early/mid games but suffer heavily into the late game. This puts an effective "Timer" on the team to create the overwhelming advantage before the opposing team accrues enough gold to buy the core items for their compositions which often rely more on the later portions of the game. Recently in the North American LCS there was a game that very well described how a fast push should work, and also what a team needs to do in order to stall the game out long enough for overcome the early disadvantage and win the game. I'll be going over the Curse vs Counter Logic Gaming match from Week three of the NA LCS to examine some of the in's and outs of Fast-Pushing, both pros and cons. Today it'll be just the drafting portion of the game.

So what I would say is the general rule of drafting fast pushing teams is that you want attack damage/speed, strong wave clear and mobility. You also want to try and bait the other team into picking champions with weak wave clear, as strong wave clear is the main method of stopping a fast pushing opponent. With that in mind let's see what drafting decisions Curse and CLG make in champ select. Starting with bans, where not a whole lot unfolds in regards to the fast push strat. CLG ban away a few champs that have strong potential to pick off individual champions, but that doesn't really matter that much to Curse because they aren't going for a team comp that focuses on picking people off like that, rather forcing them to back away from turrets through out numbering people at the turret with smart and fast rotations. Curse also doesn't ban away any really strong wave clearing champions, more of two all around strong picks with the Annie and Elise bans.

Moving into the picking portion of the draft we begin with Curse picking up Ziggs. Ziggs works really well with fast push strategy because it's very easy to push enemy minion waves out and shove yours up against the oppositions tower allowing you to either put damage on the turret or to roam to another lane and help shove turrets there. Shoving a lane like this also keeps at least one person pinned to the turret allowing for your rotation to become more effective. CLG respond to the Ziggs pick with a Renekton and Shyvanna. Now both of these champions have decent wave clear with Shyvanna's actually being quite strong, however picking them both of these forces the Shyvanna to play in the jungle, making her far less effective in stopping the fast push because when you are playing Shyvanna in the jungle, your strength comes from counter jungling, and not so much from moving into lanes and assisting/ganking. Curse then takes Dr. Mundo and Jinx. Dr. Mundo can hold a turret very well and Jinx might be the best turret pushing champion in the entire game with her natural attack speed steroid from her Q and strong wave clear from her Q as well. These two picks now are also very smart as they don't reveal that Curse is looking for a fast push strategy. The first three picks from Curse are totally normal picks that could also be used in a pick comp or a team fighting comp due to Mundo and Jinx both having forms of CC and strong late game scaling. Not knowing it's a fast push comp CLG take Vayne and Yasuo next. Both of these champions are really bad at defending the fast push as vayne has no real inherit wave clear and Yasuo needs a static shiv at least before he can clear waves easily. Knowing that CLG has now picked a team compositon that will struggle against the fast push Curse immediately lock in the Nunu and Janna picks. Nunu and Janna both have good synergy with  Jinx adding another attack speed steroid and an attack damage steroid with Janna's shield, not to mention the knock-up form Janna can also persuade people to abandon turrets form fear of the dive initiate she brings, Janna's ultimate also can counter-act the hard engage a Shyvanna ult brings to a team fight. So two very smart picks for this composition. CLG knowing what they are up against now have no real choice but to simply stick to the comp they are already bulding and lock in the Lulu for the last pick.

So in summary, Curse picked strong pushing champions that are also usable in other compositions to bait CLG into picking champions that are weak against the fast push. Once Curse knew CLG couldn't build a strong composition to counter their strategy they revealed their strat with their last picks. CLG at this point has no other choice but to stick to their guns and hope to out play Curse in game.

Later this week (Prob Tues/Wed) I'll be looking into the first twenty minutes of this game to see how Curse now execute this fast push strategy.

Obligitory Chauster picture. 

Image source from ibuypower.com