Column: Online privacy

Over the last few years it seems that video games have picked up a bad name for themselves. They’ve been blamed for any number of things, ranging from exposing our youth to violent acts, to causing people to get addicted to gaming and ruining their lives.

I tend to take the stance that while these things can happen, they are not the norm. They are the statistical outliers that garner enough attention to give the normal people a bad name.

There are actually studies out there that that hint that video gaming can be good. It develops hand-eye coordination, quickens reflexes, and can engage logical and critical thinking skills. Of course this all depends on the games that are being played.

Education games have become fairly popular children’s titles, but they are also breaking into mainstream adult gaming circles with games that purport to increase your memory through training, or even puzzle games that actually take some thinking to solve.

I’d like to take a look in a different direction for some games that may possibly be good for you and your children to play, and they come from an unlikely genre. Music games, such as Rock Band and Guitar Hero have become popular, but in their current iteration are about as far from playing real music as a pig is from flying. This is set to change in a big way with the upcoming releases of these titles. They have begun looking at ways to use real instrument analogs in the playing of these games. Accessory companies are producing real guitars that function as a guitar with an amplifier, but can be plugged in and used to play the guitar tracks on the gaming console.

Why is this a huge step forward? Because suddenly kids that are attracted to these titles will go from autonomous button pushers to learning to create real music on real instruments. Depending on your age you may debate if what comes out is really music or just garbage, but there are definite musical underpinnings to even the harshest metal music. Scales, chords and modes all come into play and can be found in just about any song that utilizes a guitar.

When a game stops being about button-pushing and starts actively teaching, it suddenly morphs from an activity used only for fun into a fun teaching tool. In addition, it has been long suspected that musical training in childhood can be correlated with higher IQ and learning ability. Musicians have to have a more precise sense of timing than the average person. They have to be able to hear a particular tone and recognize it. Both of these activities develop and stimulate different parts of a child’s brain that may not normally get utilized until much later. This stimulus is thought to produce the neural pathways that can be beneficial later in life.

For instance, a child with musical training is more likely to be better at math and language learning than their musically disinclined counterparts. They tend to do better detecting emotions indicated with subtle audible cues, among a host of other things.

Will Rock Band or Guitar Hero turn your child into a genius or the next Mozart? Probably not, but in moderation it’s not likely to hurt anything either. Will he or she have fun learning a new instrument through a video game? Most definitely. Who knows, they might even see the parents join in too!

— Senior Production Coordinator Matthew Broughton is taking the “ech” out of tech. E-mail him at mbroughton@florencenews.com.