Viswanathan K's Thoughts

Is writing video games software harder than other forms of software development? In his biography of a handful of video games, Blood, Sweat and Pixels , Jason Schreier answers it with an emphatic Yes.   First, he points out, video games are interactive. Which means they don’t move in a linear fashion, unlike say an animated movie or a movie like Avatar . Secondly, the game consoles (e.g. Xbox, or PlayStation) have newer, faster, better hardware capabilities every year. If you don’t come up with a game that can use those newer capabilities, your game will look tame and old . But that hardware is still under development, which means things are continuously changing: “Making a game is like constructing a building during an earthquake.”   Third, games need other software tools like photo creators, and physics engines (you don’t want to program the laws of physics each time, do you?). These tools keep changing. Or the tools could do so much more with the improved hardwa...

As a kid, I loved playing Atari’s video games. All those memories came back as I was reading Stephen Levy’s book, Hackers , when he talked about the existential threat to companies like Atari when the (then) new home computers came to the market. Perhaps it was inevitable because one of the most popular use for home computers was, well, playing games. Sure, the graphics on home computers back then may have been non-existent (or sucked), but the primitive games were addictive nonetheless. A few pioneers thought they could even make money writing and selling computer games, and this gave rise to a small industry. That in turn soon attracted a certain class of programmers who considered it a challenge to render better graphics on the available hardware. Their success led to better graphics in computer games, which in turn attracted more buyers, which then created the need to write yet more games. The circle had begun. Since writing computer games was very effort intensive, it a...

Ok, so there are benefits and privacy risks to video games. But did you know there is an actual attempt to make it a physician prescribed mode of therapy?! It started off in a university lab, where Adam Gazzaley noticed that the benefits of playing certain video games (sustained attention and improvements to working memory) extended beyond the duration of game play. He found that certain areas of the brain “lit up” when you focused or tried hard. Further, hitting those areas of the brain with waves of certain frequencies when they lit up increased one’s cognitive ability even more. And yes, those benefits too extended beyond the period of game play. So his team designed video games whose difficulty level adjusted based on the feedback received from sensors attached to your body: push you enough to challenge you but not so much that you got frustrated! And so Gazzaley formed a company to productize such games as therapy. A couple of pharma companies like Pfizer and Me...

Can playing video games be anything more than a (very addictive) timepass? Yes, says this Note to Self podcast with Jane McGonigal. For starters, video games are known to help those suffering from depression and anxiety. How come? Because the “opposite of play isn’t work; rather, the opposite of play is depression”. And we always knew this at an intuitive level, says McGonigal . After all, when we’re playing games, we’re excited, optimistic about our chances, full of physical energy and joyful. Take the opposite of all of that, and you have the “clinical definition of depression”! This has even been proven clinically: the areas of the brain that are chronically under-stimulated when we are depressed are over-stimulated when we’re playing games. Ergo, McGonigal recommends playing video games for, say, 10 minutes when you are very upset or replaying a very annoying conversation in your head. Playing the game will change your state of mind. Then stop, and continue with your life ...