

Does playing video games make you smarter? - mathattack
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/03/does-playing-video-games-make-you-smarter.html

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jeremysmyth
Related: [http://www.mpg.de/7588840/video-games-
brain](http://www.mpg.de/7588840/video-games-brain)

They used adults in their study, playing Super Mario 64. This suggests to me
that they didn't deliberately go for something with massive amounts of problem
solving.

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mlntn
Short answer: No. Long answer: Noooooooooooo.

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nitin_flanker
Yes it does if you are playing a game that demands your grey cells to think
creatively and make it to find solution. If you are playing candy crush or
temple run then in no way you are going to increase the count of grey cells in
your brain.

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glenra
Candy Crush Saga is a vast collection of puzzles to be solved. New mechanisms
are introduced regularly; solving each level involves figuring out how the new
stuff works and then determining and implementing a _strategy_ to overcome the
new challenges. In short, to play Candy Crush you need to think creatively and
find solutions.

What's boggling is to realize that there are people whose _full time job_ is
to invent new levels that will be just hard _enough_ to be challenging and
even a little frustrating but not _so_ hard as to seem completely impossible
and thereby force players give up in disgust.

(And I don't play temple run, but might that game not reinforce quick
assessment and reaction time?)

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nitin_flanker
That's great then. Still there are other games like Mortal Combat that allows
a user to think holistically and do explore every possible thing to solve the
game.

