The following is a very interesting film highlighting the evolution of video games in various categories (driving, first-person shooter, basketball, etc.)


What is most remarkable to me isn’t the improvement in graphics, but the complexity of controls. Considering the first vignette of video games, you’ll recall that Pac-Man required a single joystick and Pong required a single dial. Asteroids was relatively advanced – it required four buttons; rotate left, rotate right, thrust and fire.

Video games on today’s consoles are far more complex — a mission in Grand Theft Auto Vice City or a series of downs in the latest Madden football requires the user to deploy two joysticks and at least eight buttons in a highly orchestrated fashion.

This is one reason why advanced gamers think differently and bring novel ways of thinking to the workplace. For example, UCLA research shows that they have improved skills with respect to visualization and mental maps and show parallel rather than sequential cognitive structures.