TED TALK: Tom Chatfield chats about the benefits of gaming

I'VE always believed that games can be highly beneficial in many ways. I remember always trying to justify why I played games so much to my folks at a tender, young age. Apart from improving basic hand-eye co-ordination, I argued that I was learning a great deal about history.

Sid Meier’s Civilization was my main ammunition for this argument, but even World War games with real historic footage and snippets of factual information made learning an incredibly engaging and fun process. There is even the chance that gaming could make you a braver person in the real world.

Tom Chatfield gave a TED Talk this year about the benefits that games can have on the way the brain learns new information and responds to stimuli in both the virtual and real worlds. He suggests how universities and business can learn from gaming by applying some simple techniques.

The video takes a few minutes to get into the juicy bits, but it really is interesting stuff and well worth a watch. Enjoy!

Tom Chatfield: 7 ways games reward the brain

About this talk
We're bringing gameplay into more aspects of our lives, spending countless hours -- and real money -- exploring virtual worlds for imaginary treasures. Why? As Tom Chatfield shows, games are perfectly tuned to dole out rewards that engage the brain and keep us questing for more.

About Tom Chatfield
Tom Chatfield thinks about games -- what we want from them, what we get from them, and how we might use our hard-wired desire for a gamer's reward to change the way we learn.

About TED
TED is a small nonprofit devoted to "Ideas Worth Spreading". It started out in 1984 as a conference bringing together people from three worlds of Technology, Entertainment and Design.

That's www.ted.com

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GAMING: A tribute to the Atari 2600 gaming console

KNOWN as the godfather of modern videogame systems, the Atari 2600 (originally called the Atari VCS) helped spawn a multi-billion dollar gaming industry. Released in 1977, the Atari 2600 was the first successful console to use game cartridges and its influence can still be felt today in the Xbox, PlayStation, and GameCube.

With an initial offering of nine games, including addictive titles such as Space Invaders and Pac Man, Atari sold over thirty million consoles and hundreds of millions of games.

The wood-finished Atari 2600 gaming console

Atari also spawned the first-ever third party software producer, Activision in 1980. The company was actually formed by four peeved employees who were unsatisfied with the working conditions at Atari. They grossed over $70 million that year after their defection.

Atari’s activity gave birth to several other companies which began competing fiercely in the gaming industry. There was even a company that released a line of X-Rated (softcore 1980s porn) games for the 2600 called Mystique.

There’s no possible way that the Atari can be matched with today’s gaming consoles, yet no other has had such a long history or sold as many systems in the U.S. as the Atari 2600.

According to atariage.com the console still has a large fan-base today,

"... who remember the countless games played over the years, and the years to come. There are even games being produced today by hobbyists, often in cartridge format with a full color label and an accompanying manual. Finally, the recent trend in retrogaming has introduced many more video game fans to the 2600, and it continues to live on 24 years after its release!"

Links: • www.atariage.com • A little history on Mystique

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