Let the (Video) Games Begin

It's been a good couple of weeks for video games. First, it was the MacArthur Foundation report Teens, Video Games, and Civics that concluded that playing video games isn't the worst thing adolescents could be doing.

"The stereotype that gaming is a solitary, violent, anti-social activity just doesn’t hold up. The average teen plays all different kinds of games and generally plays them with friends and family both online and offline," said Amanda Lenhart, author of a report on the survey and a Senior Research Specialist with the Pew Internet and American Life Project, which conducted the survey. Interestingly, virtually every teenager polled reported playing games. As for the commonly held stereotype that teenage gamers are solitary, anti-social basement dwellers that can't socialize? Forget it, says Lenhart. For most kids surveyed, games are a social experience, where they get to interact with their friends.

One thing the survey focused on was the relationship between gaming and civic experiences. Does playing games make teens less interested in their communities and less likely to becoming good citizens? Again, the survey found that teens who take part in social interaction related to the game--commenting on websites, contributing to discussion boards, etc.--are engaged civically and politically with the world around them.

Next was the team of Michigan Tech researchers led by Roshan D'Souza, who credits video gamers for pushing GPU-based technologies that's being used in agent-based modeling of complex biological systems, such as the human immune response to a tuberculosis bacterium (TB). "With a $1,400 desktop, we can beat a computing cluster," says D'Souza. "We are effectively democratizing supercomputing and putting these powerful tools into the hands of any researcher. Every time I present this research, I make it a point to thank the millions of video gamers who have inadvertently made this possible."

The University of Michigan's Denise Kirschner developed the TB model and passed it on to D'Souza's team, which programmed it using a graphic processing unit (GPU). Agent-based modeling hasn't replaced test tubes, she says, but it is providing a powerful new tool for medical research. Computer models provide a big advantage. "You can create a mouse that's missing a gene and see how important that gene is," says Kirschner. "But with agent-based modeling, we can knock out two or three genes at once." She adds that agent-based modeling lets researchers do something other methodologies can't--test the human response to serious insults, such as injury and infection.

"GPUs are very difficult to program. It is completely different from regular programming," said D'Souza, who deflects credit to the students. "All of this work was done by CS undergrads, and they are all from Michigan Tech. I've had phenomenal success with these guys--you can't put a price tag on it."

-- Jonathan Erickson
jerickson@ddj.com

Posted by Jon Erickson at 05:24 PM  Permalink