Video games Vs. Juggling
In either the late 1980s or early 1990s, people started to be concerned with the reactions that people playing video games were having toward those who were interrupting them. They were also asking questions about the violence in video games, and whether people should play video games at all since they didn't know the long term consequences. If scientists want to understand video games without playing themselves, all they need to do is understand how playing most video games back then, was a lot like juggling.
1) Starting all over again
Let's say a person named Bob tried juggling 3 balls at a time, but then eventually after moving each ball in 2 complete circles(2 times) drops all the balls. Bob will have to start his count of how many times he got to juggle consecutively without dropping the balls all over again.
Most video games on a console today, have the ability to save. That wasn't the case during and close to the NES era when most video games did not have a save feature, meaning once you turned the console off, you had to start all over again (back at the first level).
While some games don't have life counts and dieing in them, a lot of them do. When a player has one life left, dieing in the video game usually means he or she will have to start over again in some way. Infact, I don't know of any exceptions to that. Depending on the game, other deaths may or may not cause a player to start over. Starting over may mean trying to accomplish a very difficult task which the player does not want to repeat, all over again. Sometimes repitition increases a person's skills though, which is the same with juggling.
2) Eye-hand coordination intensive
Not all video games are eye-hand coordination intensive, but apart from most RPGs(role playing games) and pure educational games, I think most of them are. For this comparison I will be dealing with the eye-hand coordination intensive games. You may not be able to see how eye-hand coordinated it is by simply looking at the player, like you can with juggling, but it's there.
3) Goal setting or not
You don't have to set a goal for juggling or video games, but chances are, someone will at some point. This is how it might go: To start out juggling, a person may just try to juggle or see how much they can juggle. Bob after juggling 2 times in a row, might make a goal of juggling 3 times in a row. Once he does that he makes a new goal of 5 times in a row. Then 7, 10, 40, 50, and 100.
In a video game Bob might want to see how far he's going to go in the game which really isn't much of a goal. The next time he plays, he makes it a goal to get past the first level. Once there, he wants to get past the next level, and then the next. The goal post just keeps getting moved. Of course there's always that goal out there of wanting to beat the game.
4) Focus and Concentration
Video games, for me, sometimes get really intense because I know that one mistake could cost me a lot.
One mistake in juggling, may cause someone to drop all the balls.
It would take my full concentration to do both, but it depends on who you are.
5) Reaction to goal interruption
Sometimes there might be cut scenes (video) that you only get to see one time through the game's story line and might be important information for progressing through the game, so interrupting that might be devastating.
Aside from that,
a real multitasker could juggle the balls and talk to you at the same time. A one-track minded person like me would drop the balls the second you get my attention, so I'd die in a video game just as easily. If you're really good at the game that might be one reason you don't die at being interrupted. I personally don't like being interrupted. Anyway, you will get the same type of reaction from interrupting video games as you would interrupting juggling. If a person who's goal it is to juggle to 100 times in a row got interrupted (dropping the balls as a result) at 79 and they had never gotten that high before, they might be mad. Learning that their parents don't care about their goals isn't nice either.
6) You could argue that not a lot of people make money doing either one.
What good are video games?- They can help exercise problem solving skills and/or planning skills, think correctly faster, read faster, gain a sense of direction(useful for driving to get back to a familiar area), and learn how to play sports and other games like pool. Of course, it depends on the video game. There are even games whose sole purpose is to either excersize your brain, or learn stuff like languages. "My Spanish Coach" is an example. Driving a car for the first time on the highway was easy for me thanks to seeing a racing game called Pole Position for the Atari 2600. They may allow you to listen to music, experience stories, and have fun.
My suggestion to parents who want to limit game time is to give your kid(s) two hours at a time to play video games, since the length of time from one save point to the next in games that take the longest (which is a lot of them) is somewhere in-between 1 to 2 hours. At least that's how long it's taken me several times where I've timed myself, and one time I just barely made it under 2 hours. I looked at a clock just before playing and then when I finally got to a stopping point. Some games now can be saved at almost any moment, but there are some events which might prevent saving until the event is over with. Two hours is shorter than some movies, but when playing a game other than an RPG, you're exercising your brain more than watching a film. RPG's might help with reading, strategizing, or problem solving though.
If game content is your concern check out the ESRB ratings system on games. It's like ratings on movies. Some are for older audiences only, while others are for everyone. The rating for a game is usually found on its packaging. You can also do your own research on certain games. I'm concerned that First Person Shooters with realistic graphics may become killing simulation games, but I've only seen them rated M or higher.
Some games don't have bad guys to defeat, as they might be puzzle games, racing games, sports games, brain games etc.. For games that do, sometimes someone might call "killing a bad guy," the act of making the bad guy disapear off the screen. There are lots of different ways to do that including shooting missles from spaceships, magical fire balls from fictional guns or even a hand, and stomping. If a game is clearly fiction I believe it stays just a game.
Usually games with bad guys have a good vs. evil theme. In many games, the player is good while their opponents are evil. Some games let you play all characters whether good or bad, especially in games where bad guys(known from other games) don't do anything bad. In a more story oriented game, sometimes playable bad guys turn good momentarily or for a long time.
I believe there are a few violet video games that don't have a good vs evil theme where the player ever does good nor a competive theme like most fighting games. I could only think of 4 games that could be like this, but I've never played any of them. Anarcute and Grand Theft Auto are two of the 4 that I'm thinking about. The other two, I don't know the names.
Fighting games usually either favor the player with the best memorization(for pressing buttons) and eye-hand coordination skills, or those with strategy, improvising, some memorization(maybe a lot), and eye-hand cordination skills. Typically, fighting games contain characters with super powers and/or martial arts skills. Some characters are more ficticious than others. Characters fight other characters. I do not like Mortal Kombat(Combat?) for its gruesome graphics, but I don't know of any other fighting game that is like that.
About: I didn't actually research anything to write this, but I realized there was a misunderstanding by reading a newspaper article a long time ago as well as watching TV. Television at other times, remembering a person's concern, and my experiences reading about games, seeing them advertized, watching people play them, as well as playing them is also what went into writing this.