Jedi Mind Control: Serious Gaming for The Human Brain

It’s time gamers took gaming more seriously.

That’s not a cry commonly heard from our friends, families, or even the rest of the gaming community, although analysts are now yammering about changing the way we value games. A while back the popular Extra Credits game analysts chastised video game critics and developers for focusing on “fun” at the expense of artistic expression: we put art in a suffocating and ultimately withering box, they say, when we forget that games have other intellectual value besides Mario-parties in our brains. Games are not just fun–they’re a legitimate and serious artistic outlet.

It’s a decent argument, but not a common one, and while arguably many game developers–especially indie outfits like ever-philosophical Daniel Benmergui–do focus on art beyond fun, we rarely talk about games in the mind of the consumer. If critics need to take games as art more seriously, maybe there’s an even greater need for gamers to wake up to the meaning of the psychological triggers at their fingertips.

Video games do really neat things to our brains. A 2006 NeuroImage study in Spain found that even just hearing certain words like “cinnamon” actually lights up the sensory portions of our brain as if we actually smelled cinnamon: when we’re engaged with imaginary smells, the sensory portions of our brains can live them out just as if they’re happening in real life. Other studies found that our minds replicate fictional social situations in a way that significantly overlaps with our real-life social skills–and when we read metaphors regarding texture, our “touch meters” become active as if experiencing those textures. In the end, the work of many cognitive scientists like Véronique Boulenger and Keith Oatley show that the sensory and emotional brain responds to fiction with the same patterns as it responds to real life. Fiction is more real than we may think.

Yet video games may go a step further than other kinds of fiction. There’s a section of the brain called the pre-motor cortex–just behind the motor cortex that gets things done–that acts out the hypothetical scenarios we see. A 1992 study of macaque monkeys in Parma, Italy, revealed the existence of ‘mirror neurons,’ later found also in humans, that operate in the pre-motor cortex. We’ve now discovered that we watch someone perform an action, our mirror neurons act out that same action just as if we were doing it ourselves. The pre-motor cortex is so tightly connected to the motor that for a long time, scientists couldn’t even differentiate them: it’s like we’re doing the same action, but without moving. This means that unlike with novels, you’re not just experiencing video games on a sensory level the way you would “sense” real life. This means that when you watch the Witch disembowel your character in Left4Dead 2, part of you is ripping out guts, too.

Is this leading up to the old, “violent video games make mass murderers” argument? No. Individuals have control over the junctions between the pre-motor and motor cortex. What each individual does with the results of his or her inner life is a matter of personal responsibility.

This is a cry to take seriously–and to deeply consider–the messages behind the actions pervading our mirror neurons. Most of us shrug off the profound effects of games on our brains because we’re used to hearing extremists screaming to take our games away. “It’s not a big deal,” we say, as we yammer off something about responsible adults–but responsible adults have mirror neurons, too. So instead of thinking of games just as playtime, let’s think about them as they are: serious mental experiences that change who we are with each pixel. Let’s stop just experiencing and let’s decide how the games affect us–let’s play with intentionality. We can control the parts of our brains that we use when we game: let’s take the action from the pre-motor cortex into the frontal lobe where analysis happens.

The stereotype holds that we, as geeks and nerds, tend more towards math and science than literary analysis–and that could have an understandable neurological basis. The constant visual stimulation of video games exercises the physics generator in our brain named “Area MT”, which calculates trajectories and other complex mathematical visual phenomena. Incidentally, MT’s also the area of our brains in which we do math. Maybe that’s where the stereotype of math-brained male gamers comes from. That’s not to say video games should automatically give us all A’s in Calculus; it’s to say that sometimes when we’re gaming, more happens in the back or middle of our brains than in the regions of higher thought.

Let’s change that. Instead of just exercising MT–a great health benefit of video games, by the way–turn on the Jedi Mind Control. Try asking yourself questions about meaning before and after you play a game–during if you can. It’ll feel awkward at first, but it becomes natural quickly, and it’s well worth it. I’ve included a list of questions here at the end you may want to use.

Now obviously, not all these questions will apply to every game: you’re not looking for deep character progression in Tetris. Yet the single most important question to consciously ask applies everywhere: what value do I receive from this game, and in what way does playing it help me become more like the person I want to be? Everything else is only a specific case of this general question.

Is this crazy? Maybe. It’s also awesome. Training our subconscious minds to question will strengthen analytical skills for real-world applications, build up sometimes neglected mental-muscle, heighten our enjoyment of games, and ultimately help us internalize the parts of games that make us who we want to become. We can digest and mirror our heroes; we can understand and reject our villains. When we take games seriously, we don’t just give developers more room to explore games as art: we enrich our exploration of just what it means for us to be good humans.

Let’s do that.

Questions to help yourself take games more seriously:

1. Where is the artistic value in this game?
What is innovative and makes this different from my typical FPS or RPG?

2. Do a cursory check for stereotypes you may be okay with.
A lot of times, stereotypes that offend us jump right out, but subtle stereotypes we subconsciously agree with blend in (think evil capitalist, slutty woman, overbearing religious parents). In what ways do this game’s characters match gender, race, religious, political, and national stereotypes? In what ways do they break them? Good artists will often create stereotypes to break them, blending the familiar with the surprising. Appreciate that, if you can find it, because it’s hard to do.

3. What are the characters’ motivations?
What do I believe about those kinds of motivations?

4. What are the worldviews of the characters?
If I were to sit down and share a Monster with one of these folks, what would I learn about love, hate, death, religion, politics, etc?

5. Who does the game say is right?
This is a tough question in good games and an easy question in simplistic games. We all know Bowser’s the bad guy–but in the most recent Bioshock, who does the game ultimately side with? There is an answer, and that answer tells you how certain members of the developer team felt about people with a certain worldview. An interview with some of the developers showed that religious members of the team apparently had to push to keep their leader from unpleasant stereotypes–did they succeed? Do I disagree with the game? What do I think is the right thing for the characters to do?

6. What’s the underlying message or moral with this game?
Every game has a theme, even if it entered subtly without intention. Our biases influence not only how we do everything–including how we make games. Do I agree with that underlying message? What does this game mean?

7. Do these messages and pictures help make me into the person I want to be?
Do I want to bury these pictures in my heart and in my head, or do I want to steel myself against this influence? What do I do with what the game gives me? Yes, some games have deeper messages than others, so this may not apply to everything: but even Mario-Kart can help make you who you want to be. You can internalize messages of friendship and ambition, or you can internalize screaming the F-word at the television screen when that stupid spiked turtle shell–gah! adk;skaskasdf#$#$#

We really hate that spikey turtle shell.

Illustrations by Terry Mack