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A report over at MSNBC raises the possibility that video games may make gamers smarter. Reporter Steve LeBlanc highlights a new study from the University of Wisconsin which randomly examined 2,000 World of Warcraft forum posts, and determined that the game "encouraged scientific thinking".

The report also points to a "series of studies" that researchers with the American Psychological Association have said that video games are "powerful learning tools" that perform a wide range of societal goods, "from increasing younger students' problem-solving potential to improving the suturing skills of laparoscopic surgeons."

LeBlanc quotes some research statistics that are rather impressive (if not terribly surprising). Take, for example, the Fordham University study where 122 students from fifth through seventh grade were asked to play a video game they had never seen before for 20 minutes, and to think out loud while playing. The researchers found that younger children were interested in creating short-term goals in order to learn the game, while older students just wanted to finish the game.

Even more interesting are several studies that show that video games have the ability to make surgeons even better at their jobs. A study conducted by Iowa State University psychologist Douglas Gentile and Dr. James Rosser, head of minimally invasive surgery at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, polled 33 laproscopic surgeons, finding that the ones who played video games in their leisure hours were 27% faster at procedures and made 37% fewer errors than their colleagues who did not.

A yet unpublished study by the same pair of researchers yielded this fascinating quote about surgeons who play video games. "The single best predictor of their skills is how much they had played video games in the past and how much they played now. Those were better predictors of surgical skills than years of training and number of surgeries performed," Gentile said. "So the first question you might ask your surgeon is how many of these (surgeries) have you done and the second question is 'Are you a gamer?'" [ed. note: underlines added by me for emphasis]

So what's the point? Well, first of all, it's good to finally see some hard statistic proving what we've all known for a very long time: gaming is not as simple as "zapping aliens". Almost every game on the market requires at least cursory problem-solving skills, and anyone who has spent a lot of time gaming knows that your ability to solve problems increases with the more games you play. 

But I also would like to take a moment to chastise the mainstream media for once again selling gamers short. As I said, while it is nice to have these numbers to back up what we've long suspected, it's not exactly earth-shattering. LeBlanc goes out of his way to show his disdain for games and gamers by using patronizing language, like, "Certain types of video games can have benefits beyond the virtual thrills of blowing up demons". I know that mainstream media outlets generally don't have a whole lot of gamers on-staff, but these are conclusions that one could have drawn after watching WarGames. 

We are not a stupid demographic, forever chasing our childhood fantasies of blowing up bad guys and blasting monsters. Today's modern gamers, and games, are more intelligent, deeper and mature than at any point in history.

The only question that remains is: when will the mainstream catch up?

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