Seems like they found a correlation between score in CIV 5 and score on tests measuring "Organizing and Planning" and "Problem Solving". The correlation coefficients seems to be small (0.25 and 0.19) and "Organizing and planning" decreases once you control for things like "Amount of time the subjects played CIV 5 before.
These seem like weak correlations to me. Especially because they tested six properties and only found weak correlations for these two. It's intuitively plausible to me that being good at Civilization correlates with organizing and problem solving, but I don't think this does very much to support that idea.
In fact, while I think that if I were asked before reading this I would have bet that being good at CIV correlated with those properties, seeing these weak results actually makes me doubt it a bit.
This study also seems to be based on fifty students playing a single game of civilization.
If students are running this study as an exercise to learn about how to conduct a study, then this is probably fine. If this is real academic research then I think this is basically a waste of time. The conclusion and interpretation of it seems very strong - like people should consider using games for "stealth" evaluations of job candidates. The evidence seems very weak.
I would also want to control for IQ. Maybe smart people are good at both problem solving and CIV.
Are there any games or mods that expand victory to include co-existing for a number of years, or synergizing with other cultures to steward a diverse and robust ecosystem? Was the Industrial Revolution and subsequent 4X-ing of the planet inevitable (feels like we’re losing the game…) or might there be ways to restrain our destructive impulses? I’m interested in playing a game that explores this more than the Civilization series does, with its cultures that are almost the same across the board.
Civ V: Brave New World expansion pack adds some new aspects and victory types that require cooperating with other civs like the Diplomatic victory through the World Congress.
These seem like weak correlations to me. Especially because they tested six properties and only found weak correlations for these two. It's intuitively plausible to me that being good at Civilization correlates with organizing and problem solving, but I don't think this does very much to support that idea. In fact, while I think that if I were asked before reading this I would have bet that being good at CIV correlated with those properties, seeing these weak results actually makes me doubt it a bit.
This study also seems to be based on fifty students playing a single game of civilization.
If students are running this study as an exercise to learn about how to conduct a study, then this is probably fine. If this is real academic research then I think this is basically a waste of time. The conclusion and interpretation of it seems very strong - like people should consider using games for "stealth" evaluations of job candidates. The evidence seems very weak.
I would also want to control for IQ. Maybe smart people are good at both problem solving and CIV.