Benefits Of Playing Video Games - Free Essay Example

Video games are seen as a useless entertainment to many parents and even some educators believe that they damage a childs brain. Over the years, violent video games have been blamed for leading people to a life of crime because they believe that games are the cause of kids becoming violent or develop an antisocial behavior. In reality many psychologists and scientists have found that playing video games can actually have benefits towards a persons brain. Video games can eventually teach kids skills that they will need and use in their lives. Today everyone has played video games for fun, but some have put it to the test to use video games for research purposes. In a study done in New York, one set of surgeons played video games for 3 hours a week, while the other set played none. The set who played the video games made 37 percent fewer mistakes during laparoscopic (Medical bag). In another study, those who play action video games on a regular basis can process visual information f aster and can track 30 percent more objects than non gamers. Action video games are shown to increase ones contrast sensitivity, or the ability to notice minute changes in color against a uniform background. One group of gamers played action games, like Call of Duty, while the others played The Sims. The Call of Duty group showed a 38 percent increase in aforementioned sensitivity, whereas the Sims group showed none whatsoever. Video games can also slim you down. Wii Fit, for example, has players doing yoga, stretches and other exercise in order to unlock fun and exercise. Dance Dance Revolution requires players to dance by placing their feet on the corresponding arrows. After a while, players work up a sweat due to the required rapid movement. Gaming can also make you smarter. People who play video games display fluid intelligence and problem solving. Managing multiple objectives and multiple resources is one of the goals that helps you become smarter. Learning the rules of the game and what strategy works best for you also helps you. When playing video games, the coordination and concentration can physically, socially, and mentally benefit the user. Research today shows that certain video games can reduce fat and therefore promote weight loss. Other sources state that doctors have instructed parents to let their children play video games to help control focus. Active video games are also being marketed for adults. New Gaming companies have been turning their gaming systems into exercise machines. The workout levels are increasing stamina causing weight loss and health awareness. The new video machines can drastically change an adults workout routine. Video games can also improve visual skills and brain function. Action video games train the brain to better process certain visual information. When people play action video games, theyre changing the brains pathway responsible for visual processing. When people play action games, theyre changing the brains pathway responsible for visual processing. These games push the human visual system to the limits and the brain adapts to it, and weve seen the positive effect remains even two years after the training was over. By playing Action video games, vision improves up to 58 percent. Video games that involve high levels of action, such as first-person-shooter games, increase a players real-world vision, according to research in todays Nature Neuroscience. The ability to discern slight differences in shades of gray has long been thought to be an attribute of the human visual system that cannot be improved. But Daphne Bavelier, professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester, has discovered that very practiced action gamers become 58 percent better at perceiving fine differences in contrast. Normally, improving contrast sensitivity means getting glasses or eye surgery. However, this will need further testing in people with this condition. As a treatment for poor eyesight generally though, gaming is unlikely to replace conventional approaches in the near future. Bavelier had previously found that game players had better vision when compared with non-game players. She says that these video games, and spending time in front of the computer, may not be harmful to our vision. The researchers suggest that this indicates that playing video games could have potential for improving some conditions such as amblyopia (Rochester.edu). Additionally, evidence has shown that gaming can help with psychological problems and games reduce symptoms of depression more than conventional treatment. Another research team at Oxford University found that playing Tetris shortly after exposure to something very upsetting in the experiment, a film of traumatic scenes of injury and death was used, can actually prevent people from having disturbing thoughts (oxford.edu). Therefore playing games can also help in releasing tension and help a person to have lighter thoughts. The effects are not always so positive, however. Indiana University researchers carried out brain scans on young men and found evidence that violent games can alter brain function after as little as a week of play, affecting regions in the brain associated with emotional control and causing more aggressive behaviour (Indiana.edu). But Daphne Bavelier, one of the most experienced researchers in the field, says that the violent action games that often worry most parents may actually have the strongest beneficial effect on the brain (Bavelier). Games like Mortal Kombat, Grand Theft Auto, Doom and others, have taken the blame for various heinous crimes (Gross). Certain government officials have even gone as far as filing lawsuits against the developing companies in an attempt to outlaw video games in general. Not only that, but they have also been under inspection for supposedly causing a gaming addiction. Some of the other controversial video games are also the ones wit h the greatest potential benefits. Fast-paced, FPS like BioShock Infinite, Halo, Half-Life, Borderlands and third-person equivalents like God of War: Ascension, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and Force Unleashed have all been accused of being too violent, but the benefits gamers gain from playing them are astounding. Researchers like Daphne Bavelier and C. Shawn Green have been able to demonstrate in multiple laboratory tests that playing these fast-paced games increases a persons ability to try multiple pieces of visual information and decrease reaction time. They also have worked with another researcher, Alexandre Pouget, and showed that fast-action games also decrease decision making time. Basically, these games have so much going on all the time that for someone not used to following and tracking so much information it can be overwhelming. Gamers have no trouble keeping up with this information overload. The players are able to assess, make decisions and react quickly because they have learned how to do so in order to play and advance. If they are playing by themselves they may have to give orders to their computer allies. If they are playing with other humans then they have to be able to communicate effectively with them while tracking all the other data. This shows how playing video games cna help a person be more confident in telling others what to do and helps their communication skills and interact with others better. The brains of gamers adapt so quickly, that they can keep track of all the information they need to. Bavelier and her team found that a video gamers brain physically changes so that the player can process all of this information, and, most importantly, use it. A video gamer is capable of making accurate, informed decisions faster than a non-gamer with the same percentage of right answers. Bavelier and Green demonstrated that this benefit from fast-action video games sticks around for at least six months after a test subject has played o nly 10 hours over the course of 2 weeks. This means that every person can gain this benefit without actually being a gamer, as long as he or she is willing to put in a few hours a week to train his or her brains. This is really exciting because many of these changes have immediate benefits other senacios such as driving because when driving, the increased awareness, ability to track the many things going on around us and to make correct, fast decisions about likely outcomes of movements is invaluable in the prevention of car accidents. Playing video games has a huge impact on an individuals brain and as a result has a direct impact on how gamers interact with and navigate our world. Many gamers are told over and over that they have trouble focusing, but they do so well in focusing when there is so much happening on their screens all the time. Exciting new research, again from Daphne Bavelier and her team, is showing that gamers attention and focus is actually better than that of non-gamers. They are capable of resolving visual conflicts faster, which is frequently used in the lab to determine attention and focus capabilities. However, video game detractors point to information released by the Centers of Disease Control (CDC) regarding increased Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) diagnosis rates since 1997 with growth rates as high as 22% between 2003 and 2007. They argue that more and more children are being exposed to video games and more and more educators and parents are complaining that their children are unable to focus on things like classroom instruction the female orgasm and homework (Sucutti). What has been found, though, is that these child gamers brains, as well as the brains of their already adult counterparts, are very capable of focusing and they can maintain the same level of performance in what we find in many video games like World of Warcraft, much of the Final Fantasy series, and the previously mentioned first person shoot ers for hours. However, Gabe Zicherman, a leader in the development and application of gamification, disagrees with such views. He suggests that it is adults that need to catch up and keep up with kids, not slow down kids to their slower pace. Todays kids play games in which theyre expected to chat in text and voice, operate a character, follow long and short term objectives, and deal with their parents interrupting them all the time to talk to them. Kids have to have an extraordinary multi-tasking skill to be able to achieve things today. It should then not be a surprise to discover that children who have become excellent learners in high-stimulus virtual environments may have trouble settling down into a sedate classroom with other children who are also conditioned to learning through video games. Tom Chatfield has written multiple articles and a book on how video games are the perfect education and motivation tools. He points out that children are constantly learning in a v irtual environment where there are consequences to not accomplishing a task, losing a life, a tool, or not meeting a time requirement. There are also clearly stated rewards to completing the task as well as possible unexpected rewards that are doled out at calculated increments. Video game designers have been fine tweaking the ratio of difficulty, rewards and consequences to being a dumbass so that they know exactly how much to throw at a gamer at what level in each game in order to keep that person engaged and coming back for more. Educators could learn a lot from what these designers already know; children who are engaged and rewarded in an interactive learning process can and do give their entire attention and focus. The fact that video games are a tool that can be used for education, and therefore do have an impact on the human brain, means we do need to be aware of what the potential negative impacts of those changes could be. What most every person has heard as an argument against video games is that they encourage violence and aggression in the people who play them. Multiple studies have been published on the topic, but when those studies have been reviewed and compared, it was found that they contradicted each other, and in many cases, used flawed methods to reach their conclusion regardless of the results. Christopher J. Ferguson with Texas AM University used meta-analysis to review 12 studies available to him at the time of his publishing and found that researchers often used flawed methodology, drew conclusions that were not supported by their evidence, or in general could find no link between video games and violence. Holly Bowen and Julia Spaniol of the Dept. of Psychology with Ryerson University found that there is no indication that people who play violent video games have any long-term emotional desensitization to violence in their immediate surroundings. They do acknowledge that there may be a period immediately after playing these viole nt games that a gamer may be desensitized, but it is not an effect that could be attributed to an increase violence and aggressive behavior in those test subjects. Essentially, the evidence so far is showing that video games have a short-term impact on how people respond to violence and are likely desensitized to violence and possibly even reading for a short period after they play violent video games, but there is little evidence that there is a long-term impact. The heart of the argument against violent video games is based on the idea of a long-term, negative impact on gamers. Research just does not support that position. Video games have become a part of our culture and a part of our lives in many ways. As a society we need to focus our energy and attention on is how to use them to make our lives better. Weve already seen research that shows how video games can be used to help with several tasks with real world applications. We can use video games to increase our ability to t rack multiple objects and thus be able to monitor more of our surroundings while driving. They teach people how to be able to focus and maintain attention in situations where there is a lot of information to absorb in very short period of time. Video games can help us to better analyze what is going on around us and make quick decisions about the best action to take in a variety of situations. New research about the benefits of video games is coming out every year. It is time for us all to step forward and embrace the technology around us that has so many benefits and work together to mitigate the deficits that are present. Our society will not be ruined by this action, but will instead be enhanced further. There is one further thing we need to do. We need to sit down and pick up a controller. We leave ourselves at a disadvantage if we refuse to play out of false concerns regarding violence and aggression. Video games are a form of media that is often believed to be associated with negative health consequences. However, they are a great source of stress relief and improvement and development of mental health for social skills. They are engaging and immersive on a level different from traditional board games and other forms of entertainment. The player actively contributes to the level of satisfaction they attain because of the willingness to engage in the elements of the video game. The amount of play time can also an important factor to the effects of playing certain games. In other words, excessive screen time can have its negative consequence,but gaming in its proper manner and be healthy, fun, and educational to all ages.

Individual Motivation Has Been Defined As The Processes

Individual motivation has been defined as the processes that account for individual’s intensity, direction, and persistence of effort toward attaining a goal. Group motivation is built on the same principles but consists of two or more individuals, interacting and interdependent, who come together to achieve goals. In formal groups the behavior team members usually engage in are determined and guided toward organizational goals. Informal groups in organizations meet the need for social contact and these types of interactions among individuals, through informal, can deeply affect behavior and performance. Groups can be either formal or informal; both can affect employees’ behavior and performance. There has always been a debate about†¦show more content†¦Esteem are made up of internal and external elements such as morale, determination, accomplishment, rank, recognition, and attention. Self-actualization is an individual’s drive to become what we can beco me. These needs are very important when it comes to individual or group motivation because if they are not met a person will most likely will not be as motived as someone that as fulfilled these needs and recognizes them. An individual or groups motivation can also depend on their mood. A person’s mood can affect their work performance, creativity, problem solving, and decision making skills. â€Å"All moods can affect judgment, perception, and physical and emotional well-being. Long-term exposure to negative moods or stressful environments can lead to illnesses such as heart disease, diabetes, and ulcers. The decision-making effects of any kind of bad mood can hinder a person s job performance and lead to poor decisions that affect the company. In contrast, a positive mood can enhance creativity and problem solving. However, positive moods can also create false optimism and negatively influence decision making.† If people are in a bad mood when trying to collaborate the group or individual may not be able to perform to their full expectations. When organizations are dealing with situations such as this one it may become difficult if even possible to reach the goal or task that is at hand. Organizations can also help withShow MoreRelatedMotivation Concepts1537 Words   |  7 Pagesexploration are motivational drivers. Motivation can be defined as the arousal, direction and persistence of behavior. (Franken, 1994) Motivation is an internal state or condition that activates behavior giving direction towards ones desire or want. The motivational drive is a basic or instinctive need associated in the effort of behavior directed towards a goal-oriented cause. Curiosity is central to motivation for exploratory behavior. 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The Six Phases of Project Management - 3073 Words

1. The six phases of project management This chapter provides a sketch of the traditional method of project management. The model that is discussed here forms the basis for all methods of project management. Later chapters go into more depth regarding a model that is particularly appropriate for IT-related projects. Dividing a project into phases makes it possible to lead it in the best possible direction. Through this organisation into phases, the total work load of a project is divided into smaller components, thus making it easier to monitor. The following paragraphs describe a phasing model that has been useful in practice. It includes six phases: 1. Initiation phase 2. Definition phase 3. Design phase 4.†¦show more content†¦How many files are to be archived? Should the metadata conform to the Data Documentation Initiative format, or will the Dublin Core (DC) format suffice? 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Tony Hsieh free essay sample

Anthony (Tony) Hsieh was born in 1973 to Taiwanese immigrants in Illinois, and grew up in the San Francisco bay area. He graduated from Harvard University with a degree in computer science in 1995 (The Billion-Dollar Question about Tony Hsiehs Las Vegas Experiment). In 1966 Tony Hsieh founded a business called LinkExchange with his college roommate. When Hsieh was only twenty-four years old he sold the business to Microsoft for $265 million (Tony Hsieh on His Secrets to Success). The main reason Hsieh and his partner decided to sell LinkExchange, was because the culture in the company had gone bad. â€Å"I was dreading waking up and going to work at my own company† Hsieh said to Niblez. com. This realization defined Hsieh as a leader throughout his remaining career. His dread of waking up to go to his own company inspired him to create an environment where culture plays a crucial role. He is very passionate about companies’ cultures and has stated, â€Å"Companies that have strong cultures outperform companies who don’t† (Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh Explains Why Company Culture Matters. We will write a custom essay sample on Tony Hsieh or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page ). Hsieh got involved in the small shoe company called shoesite. com as an advisor and investor in 1999, about two months after the company was founded. The shoe company’s name changed to Zappos after the word zapatos, which means shoes in Spanish (The Zappos Family Story). Tony Hsieh invested $500,000 in the company and became the CEO of the company in 2000. During his leadership, Zappos has grown gross merchandise sales from $1. 6M in 2000 to over $1 billion in 2008 by focusing on its customer service (Hoovers). Zappos has thirteen hundred employees and is headquartered in Henderson, Nevada and also has an office in San Francisco and is working on their newest location in Las Vegas, Nevada. Zappos has been ranked as one of the best companies to work for by Fortune Magazine many years in a row. In 2011, Zappos was ranked number six on the list and in 2012 it was ranked number eleven (â€Å"Lexis Nexis†). Tony Hsieh undoubtedly possesses many traits that make him a leader and has produced an effective management style that has allowed him to create extreme success at Zappos. Hsieh is determined to succeed, ambitious even when facing failure, modeling the way through superb customer service, challenging the process by choosing to be untraditional, inspiring a company wide vision through his democratic management style, enabling his employees to act in an environment they can thrive in, and remaining confident in his company culture. By doing this, he has modeled a new way of effective leadership and created a successful company. Tony Hsieh’s determination is what sets him apart from other leaders in Corporate America. He has been entrepreneurial all of his life. From middle school on, he had his eyes set on the prize and ran a mail ordering service. From then he continued on to study at the prestigious Harvard University. While attending Harvard he ran a Grille where he would travel by subway to McDonalds every day to purchase a hundred frozen hamburgers patties that he could sell at a higher price, and then he ended up investing in pizza ovens that would deliver a higher profit (Hsieh). After that he invested in LinkExchange, and by the age of twenty-four he was investing in what is now one of the largest online retailers, Zappos. Without the determination to succeed, Tony Hsieh would not be in the position of where he is today. He has been an entrepreneur his whole life and was bound to end up with a great company. As Hsieh quotes in the first section of his book, Delivering Happiness, â€Å" I failed my way to success. † This famous quote by Thomas Edison perfectly expresses Hsieh’s leadership trait of ambition. From a young age Hsieh was a go-getter; he describes purchasing a worm farm at the age of 9 to breed and sell, which was a failure, calculating how much money he would make by distributing papers around his neighborhood or selling greeting cards. His biggest childhood business success, and the way he would become a billionaire, was his button making business that made him over $200 a month. These little steps of entrepreneurship led him to his first multimillion-dollar business, LinkExchange, and then on to Zappos, which grosses about $1 billion annually (Hsieh). His success with Zappos did not come easily; it was not until he realized his boredom at his previous jobs at Oracle and LinkExchange that he decided to strive for more than just a money-making business. At Zappos, Hsieh combines his ambition to make money with an environment that also makes his employees ambitious. His ambition allows him to have a management style that encourages his employees to grow within the company. As stated in the Zappos core values, he wants his employees to â€Å"pursue growth and learning,† because Hsieh believes the secret to success is a vision with passion behind it and that cannot be successful without everyone feeling like they are contributing to the vision (Quiqley). Tony Hsieh models the way through customer service, which is his number one priority for being an online retailer. He has made it his commitment to have all his employees trained in excellent customer service, and he prides himself on it. By having an online twenty-four hour help service and shipping delivery within five days, he is able to make sure all of his Zappos customers are happy. He stated his vision and modeled the way for all of his employees as seeing them as equals rather than being their leader. â€Å"We figure the best way to have an open-door policy is not to have a door in the first place† (â€Å"How I Do It†). As crazy as it may seem, this is why his business is effective and is so profitable. The employees can relate to him, and therefore they are able to better relate to the customer. â€Å"He participated in all of our activities throughout the week, but is clearly intent on being a platform builder, not a figure head. There was no motivational speech, only the evidence of a like-minded, fun, creative, focused group of people† (â€Å"Tony Hsieh on His Secrets to Success†). Tony Hsieh does not act above anyone; rather than dictating, Hsieh models the way for others to act by being involved on a day-to-day basis. Choosing to run a business can be a tricky thing to do. Tony Hsieh not only models how a leader should be, but he has also challenged the process along every step of the way. When he first started LinkExchange, which he later sold, he felt as though he was not using his full potential. He felt like he was stuck behind a desk and business was business. His passion, determination, and drive died. Once the company sold, Hsieh realized that he wanted to create a new culture and transform Las Vegas. Instead of focusing on the income he was bringing in, he focused on the potential of the people who would be living and working for him. This approach is not common in Corporate America; he wanted to change the workplace for everyone to be involved. His core values to change the culture include embracing drive and change, building a positive team and value, do more with less, create fun, build open and honest relationships, be humble, be a positive team, be open-minded (Quiqley). To keep a positive culture, each employee is interviewed with behavioral questions to make sure they are a right fit for his company. Most employers do not ask these kinds of questions and this is challenging the process through a CEO point of view. â€Å"I think it’s a combination of how self-aware people are and how honest they are. I think if someone is self-aware, then they can always continue to grow† (On a Scale of 1 to 10, How Weird Are You? ). He has enforced these core values in all aspects of business and overcome any obstacles he was faced with. Tony Hsieh inspires a company wide vision by motivating employees through a company vision that is about more than being number one. It is about running his business in a democratic style. He chooses to treat all his employees with extreme value and make the company values mirror those of his employees. The New York Times describes Zappos as a â€Å"highly social company where workers get free sodas and popcorn, decorate their cubicles, are invited to share ideas and can climb the career ladder from inside. † Hsieh wants to hold onto his employees who he thinks are the best and give them a chance to grow without ever leaving. To do this he creates a comfortable environment where his employees can feel motivated, enjoy themselves, and want to succeed within the Zappos structure. The Zappos culture and way of business allow the employees to set high goals- that are also realistic- of where they want to see themselves at Zappos in the future. In Hsieh’s book, Delivering Happiness, he reveals his framework to a successful business, which he calls â€Å"Happiness Framework 1. † In â€Å"Happiness Framework 1,† Hsieh discusses his way of handling pay raises and promotions. For example, in his call center, he uses a pay raise system that allows the employees to take control of their own pay raises and when they receive them; to do this, the call center representative has a list of skill sets that they must achieve, for each one complete and they receive a raise. By doing this, he notices his employees are happier when they have control and an ongoing sense of perceived progress. Hsieh’s democratic style of management was also influenced by rave culture, which he participated in during his younger years, and the mantra PLUR, that stands for â€Å"Peace, Love, Unity, Respect. † From this culture he realized that everyone is human at core, and instead of losing sight in business, politics, and social status, we should be appreciative of each another and our work (Hsieh). Tony Hsieh enables others to act by creating an environment that his employees can thrive in and be inspired to input new ideas. Zappo’s core values of being â€Å"adventurous, creative, and open-minded†, lead his employees to believe that anything within the business is possible. Hsieh believes that by focusing on inspiring his employees the overall business will be better (Quiqley). For a Zappos employee, anything is possible with the right planning and determination. For example, an employee thought about how many company birthdays there were at Zappos; from that thought she came up with the idea of putting a bakery in Zappos. When it was someone’s birthday, she would bake him or her a cake and deliver it right from inside the Zappos building. She planned her idea and pitched it, and with that Zappos funded it (Young). This management style of enabling others to act and thrive comes from Hsieh’s growth within the businesses he worked for and created, from working at Oracle to quitting Oracle and creating Internet Marketing Solutions to turning that business into LinkExchange and finally moving on from LinkExchange to explore and recreate Zappos. Tony Hsieh is confident in the culture that he creates for Zappos and keeps the culture of the company the number one priority. Hsieh says, â€Å"Its important to me to build a business where money isnt the primary motivator because in tough times, Ive found that it isnt enough to see it all the way through† (Tony Hsieh, The Billion Dollar Interview). When Zappos has a new hire, he or she goes through a traditional interview; once he or she passes that interview, the next interview is entirely based on how that person will fit in the company culture. If he or she gets hired, after a trial period, Zappos will offer him or her money to leave. They pay their new employees for the amount of time they’ve been working at the company plus a $1000 bonus. The reason for doing this is that Zappos knows that the environment is not for everybody, and they only want people there that really want to be there and like the culture of the company. By offering the new employees money, it is easy to sort out the people who are a really great fit and those who would rather take the money. About 10% of the new employees choose the money. The people that would rather have the money are not the people who are going to fit into the culture anyway (How I Did It ). â€Å"I think that happier employees lead to happier customers, and happier customers lead to better business overall,† Hsieh has said in an interview with success. com. He has also said that the best advice he ever got was to never forget that the most important thing in life is the quality of life we lead, which drives him to maintain the quality of life and culture at Zappos (â€Å"Tony Hsieh, The Billion Dollar Interview†). Tony Hsieh is proof that determination and creating a company culture that everyone can strive in leads to a successful business, motivated employees, and, most importantly, happy and satisfied customers that keep coming back. Hsieh not only challenges the way a business is traditionally run but creates an environment where he views his employees as valuable, gives them opportunities to climb the Zappos’ career ladder, and always welcomes new ideas. Hsieh pushes his employees to be creative, take risks, embrace change, be a little weird, have fun, but always remember the customer and the tools to provide excellent customer service. There are many traits we admire about Hsieh’s management style, but there are four main traits that really stick out. First, we admire his ongoing determination within Zappos. Though Zappos is already a successful business, Hsieh is always working to make it better and using his employees to help him do so. His personal adaptability makes him embrace the changing work environment at Zappos. Second, we admire that he includes everyone in all processes that affect Zappos. He is open to new ideas and how those ideas can be applied to make Zappos better. Third, he does not want his employees to leave in order to grow. He wants his employees to grow and improve within Zappos while always staying satisfied with an ongoing pursuit to be better or to reach a goal. Lastly, we admire how he uses his leadership to project a positive message and to uplift his employees. Hsieh knows that without his â€Å"Tribe† (employees), Zappos could not be where it is today.