First there was a knob you would twist to move your paddle to hit the ball. Then there was the NES controller. Then the light gun. Then the Power Pad and the PowerGlove. Now jump ahead to the… Gamebike? It’s a plug-and-play device for the PS2 and other consoles that’s literally a stationary bike with a cord coming out of it. It’s even being used in schools, or a school at least. Teacher Eric Frohriep at Lockwood Elementary introduced them to get kids to exercise voluntarily, and kids are lining up to play during recess. Coming soon, virtual Four Square on a DDR pad.

“It kind of gives a whole new perspective on fighting cancer. I mean you can’t really do it physically, so you can do it virtually,” says David Kossow, 17-year-old leukemia sufferer, of the game “re-mission.” The game is designed to teach children suffering from cancer about the disease. Apparently, players of the game are more likely to consistently take their medication. Games are also being used to fight obesity and ADHD. In one setup, patients with ADHD wear a hat that gives off brain waves that may alter those responsible for ADHD in the child.

Funny, I thought video games were the cause of ADD…. Hey! Are you paying attention?! Alright…put on the hat.

WKYC 9 News Now has a piece on using a video game interface to help our troops in the War on Terror. The Predator unmanned aerial system is one of the chief instruments in the fight. However it is prone crashing. We’ve lost nearly half of them to human error. The interface used to control the craft is a chaotic mass of maps and screens that only show narrow camera views from the craft. One of the operators of the Predator for the Air Force known only as Katie describes the current interface.

“It can be like looking through a soda straw. You have that tunnel vision.”

Defense contractor Raytheon may have come up with a video game inspired Universal Control System to solve the difficult interface problems. Operators would be surrounded by monitors making them feel like they are in the cockpit of the Predator. They execute commands with keyboard and joy stick. The hardware for the system is available off the shelf at stores you likely frequent.

“Revolutionary situational awareness….It’s much easier to put myself in the aircraft and say I need to go in this direction to acquire the target,” says Katie.

Watch the video to see for yourself what a big difference Raytheon’s Universal Control System makes.

This article from the The Intelligencer & Wheeling News-Register describes an open search that NASA is conducting for students aged 13-18 to participate in the administrations exploration into what it takes to create a fun and educational game. Using the NASA-sponsored Classroom of the Future at Wheeling Jesuit University, students will use an educational program called Selene and the researchers will monitor their usage and learning after exposure to the game. The study is recruiting students in the Wheeling area and the initial study results should be made available publicly later this year. The game and its supporting web page are located here for the curious.

Could it be that learning institutions are finally coming to understand the value of games as an educational medium?

Writer Daniel Cook does a good job of breaking down the factors involved with how games are played, seen and used as well as how we as players interact with our games in his article “The Circle of Life: An Analysis of the Game Product Lifecycle”. While the piece may be a bit academic for many readers it is aimed at developers and helps to identify why games evolve and change and why some games come in and out of favor. Interesting reading if you’ve been gaming for long.

Technology site Ars Technica has an interesting feature article detailing the 2005 patent by Google to use behavior tracking to create a model of player psychology. In light of the recent purchase of in-game advertiser Adscape could Google be looking to leverage this information to build somewhat intrusive demographic pictures about gamers, their gaming tastes and habits? Probably.

The story also goes on to describe how the technology could be applied to capture user information and allow the game advertising to be targeted specifically at you as a gamer including: how long you play, where you save and quit and how you manage risk and reward in a game.

Check out the link for the full article: Google patent for game ads evaluates user action psychology (Ars Technica).

Does anyone else remember those old Dreamcast ads that told you, “It’s thinking?” Well, apparently someone took that to heart and now developers at NeuroSky Inc. are working on incorporating mind-reading devices into toys and games. Using a sensor that attaches to the forehead and reads brain waves, a person could control an electronic device just by focusing their concentration on it. To promote this new technology, NeuroSky took this technology to the next natural step: dressing up a guy as Darth Vader and having him turn on a lightsaber with his mind.

It’s one of the force powers they didn’t cover so much in the movies, I guess.

Later the company plans to license the technology for non-lightsaber related purposes. Another developer, Emotiv, has already developed a prototype headset they hope to begin selling next year, which could hook up to a Playstation 3, Nintendo Wii, or X-Box 360. This could potentially show a movement by the gaming industry away from the standard controllers. This could also increase childhood obesity of the thumbs, which is a very serious ailment that I just made up.

Professor Patrick Markey believes that violent video games do in fact cause aggressive behavior. However, he also thinks that the media and politicians have taken this fact out of context, rather than characterize it as it is. I his words, “What we find from research is it actually has a very tiny effect.” In a study conducted at Villanova University, Markey found that players of the violent video games produced more aggressive responses than the non-violent games players. The mean number of aggressive responses for the three non-violent video games did not differ from each other. Nor did the mean number of aggressive responses for the three violent video games. Now, that looks bad for violent games, I know. But wait! Each participant completed a survey when beginning the study, and these revealed that the mild-mannered people were affected by games the least, while “angry” people were affected more. Also, the size of the effect of these games was comparable to the size of the effect of other types of violent media. Says Markey, “For example, the general consensus among researchers is that the effect size is small, and we’ve accepted that. But in the media it’s difficult to say ‘oh yeah, video games cause aggression but the effect is small’. No one want to hear that, it’s not sexy enough. It doesn’t sell newspapers. And so we only hear the front end of that, which is that video games cause aggression.”

It’s not news to anyone with common sense, but I hope the mainstream media catches on, as most of them don’t fall in that classification.

Scarborough Research, a firm that measures lifestyle and shopping patterns, media behaviors and demographics of American consumers, has measured the local US markets for homes that own a video game system. Salt Lake City, UT, comes in at number one, with Lexington, KY, Flint, MI, and Toledo, OH, follow close behind with 30 percent of households in these cities owning a video game system. Nationally, an average of 24 percent of households own a video game system. The study also shows that Wal-Mart is still the most popular store among video-game owners, with Best Buy close behind.

I’d like to take this opportunity to congratulate my Lexington brethren (several of whom I LAN with on a regular basis) on their second-place finish, and to encourage them to WORK HARDER for next year!

Science is now coming to light that reveals what many gamers have long believed: Playing video games makes you smarter. Lumos Labs, an independent research firm, claims participants in tests of its games showed improved memory, attention, mental processing speed and cognitive control. Since the release of Brain Age, these types of games are becoming increasingly popular. Sherlye Bolton, chief executive of brain-training site Happy Neuron, says, “That’s a huge impetus toward the trend of exercising the brain. We’ve watched our parents age, but we’ve been different from our parents at every age. Why would we stop now?” On the other side of the coin, many researchers say that it’s far too early to draw definitive results on how gaming affects brain functions. Personally, I know that games have made me smarter. If you have doubts about that, remember this: I get paid to write about games. Translation? SMART.