Official* HAF Video Game Thread

[xSilverPhinx]

Got my Google Stadia.

A bit of laggy response at first, then I tweaked the settings. Seems pretty solid on responsiveness now.

Playing Destiny on it.

I'm supposed to get a free "Buddy Pass" of some sort, but they're not available yet.

Anyone here wanna try it when I get that?

I haven't heard many good things about the Stadia. 

[joeactor]

Got my Google Stadia.

A bit of laggy response at first, then I tweaked the settings. Seems pretty solid on responsiveness now.

Playing Destiny on it.

I'm supposed to get a free "Buddy Pass" of some sort, but they're not available yet.

Anyone here wanna try it when I get that?

I haven't heard many good things about the Stadia. 

So far, so good... but then I'm not much of a pro gamer.

[jumbojak]

What is stadia, exactly?

[billy rubin]

more than one of these

[joeactor]

What is stadia, exactly?

Stadia is Google's cloud gaming system.

No console. Play on your tv, phone, tablet, etc. That's the general idea.

How it works is that you connect to Google's server and that's where the game really runs. They just stream the video and audio to you.

The version I got comes with a wi-fi controller.

For games, you buy a game, but there's no DVD/CD. And no installation or upgrades. Everything is on the cloud.

So, if it works right, it's pretty amazing.

I've tried it on my tv (via Chromecast Ultra), and on my phone (Pixel 3). No lag, very responsive so far.

It also has the possibility of huger interactions between large groups of players (since they're all really running on the same system)

... AND, I've got a buddy pass that'll give somebody 3 months of Stadia Pro. You don't need a controller or anything else - just play on a Chrome browser on your computer.

[jumbojak]

I've gotten back into Minecraft after a long hiatus and hooooly crap they added a lot of stuff. It's crazy.

[xSilverPhinx]

I've gotten back into Minecraft after a long hiatus and hooooly crap they added a lot of stuff. It's crazy.

Damn. I've got to play that game again. Time to take my old desktop computer out of hibernation!

[jumbojak]

It's a lot of stuff. Roving bands of marauding pillagers, the villager system has been completely rebuilt, and scaffolding. Scaffolding is awesome.

[xSilverPhinx]

It's a lot of stuff. Roving bands of marauding pillagers, the villager system has been completely rebuilt, and scaffolding. Scaffolding is awesome.

Ah, scaffolding is important!

Many long hours were spent on improvising scaffolding alone in years past.

[Davin]

[Magdalena]

My kids had to explain this to me.

[Davin]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4V7H8MDpTk

My kids had to explain this to me.

Updates used to be pretty small things, like a few MBs here and there, except for major updates. CoD though, they take it to another level.

[Wolfen]

Platform, PS4
Currently, replaying AC:Valhalla

I also recently purchased the Kingdom Hearts bundle, played a little bit of it, but taking a break from that because the early game mechanics are kind of frustrating.

[Recusant]

I can see this coming up in conversations in not a few households. 

"Video Game Players Show Enhanced Brain Activity, Decision-Making Skill" | Georgia State News Hub

Frequent players of video games show superior sensorimotor decision-making skills and enhanced activity in key regions of the brain as compared to non-players, according to a recent study by Georgia State University researchers.

The authors, who used functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) in the study, said the findings suggest that video games could be a useful tool for training in perceptual decision-making.

"Video games are played by the overwhelming majority of our youth more than three hours every week, but the beneficial effects on decision-making abilities and the brain are not exactly known," said lead researcher Mukesh Dhamala, associate professor in Georgia State's Department of Physics and Astronomy and the university's Neuroscience Institute.

"Our work provides some answers on that," Dhamala said. "Video game playing can effectively be used for training — for example, decision-making efficiency training and therapeutic interventions — once the relevant brain networks are identified."

Dhamala was the adviser for Tim Jordan, the lead author of the paper, who offered a personal example of how such research could inform the use of video games for training the brain.

Jordan, who received a Ph.D. in physics and astronomy from Georgia State in 2021, had weak vision in one eye as a child. As part of a research study when he was about 5, he was asked to cover his good eye and play video games as a way to strengthen the vision in the weak one. Jordan credits video game training with helping him go from legally blind in one eye to building strong capacity for visual processing, allowing him to eventually play lacrosse and paintball. He is now a postdoctoral researcher at UCLA.

[Continues . . .]

The paper is open access:

"Video game players have improved decision-making abilities and enhanced brain activities" | Neuroimage: Reports

Abstract:

Video game playing is a popular activity which provides a cognitively engaging, sensory rich environment that can lead to cognitive benefits in those who play frequently. How exactly they change our brain to achieve these cognitive benefits has yet to be known.

In a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment, we examined the behavioral and brain responses of video game- players (VGP) and non-video game-players (NVGP) during decision-making tasks. In behavioral response, VGP were overall faster by approximately 190 ms and more accurate by 2% than NVGP. In brain response, comparing percent signal changes in commonly activated brain regions between groups, we found that video gamers had increased task-related signal changes in the right lingual gyrus, right supplementary motor area (SMA), and left thalamus associated with improved behavioral response.

Directed functional network activities to the right SMA and the left thalamus were also increased. The regional signal changes and network activities of all participants were found to be negatively correlated with decision response time, indicating that higher the node and network activities better the performance. These results provide novel insights into the brain mechanisms that underlie improvements in sensorimotor decision-making abilities due to video game playing.

[Anne D.]

Unfortunately, I haven't regularly played a video game since Paperboy and Super Mario in the early 90s. Hopefully there's some residual effect.