janemcgonigal

Yes of course videogames can have negative impacts -- but it is NOT the kind of game or the game itself, it's how you play. The most important thing we've learned from studies is that playing very aggressive, competitive games against strangers online (think call of duty) can boost your testosterone levels way too high for your own good -- it can make you more aggressive and more of a jerk to people for hours after you play. It's better to play competitive violent games against people you know in real-life -- your testosterone actually goes down after you beat them, the opposite impact of beating strangers online. Or play co-op with strangers or play single-player violent games or don't play violent games... just don't spend all your time trying to beat strangers online. It won't make you violent but it could turn you into a jerk for awhile.

I think collective intelligence has to be balanced against breakthrough ideas. One person might have a genius solution or strategy that is not going to be valued or bubble up through collective intelligence. So we can't let the crowd vote on everything and take the crowd's word for it... but we can give voices to more diverse people and look in the crowd for breakthrough solutions.

You can find a lot of the research by going to my science on games compilation page showmethescience.com !

Through the various stages of my life different games have been important, here is an off-the-top-of-my-head autobiography in videogames (which by the way I think everyone should write one of these! such a good way to understand each other)

LodeRunner (the first game I dreamt about)

Infocom games like Lurking Horror

Tass Times in Tone Town

The Pandora Directive

House of the Dead

NBA Jam

Grim Fandango

The Beast/AI Web game

Tetris

Dance Dance Revolution

World of Warcraft

Portal

Peggle

The Unfiction forums for I Love Bees (they called it the Haunted Apiary) is probably a good resource if you haven't tapped it yet. ANd this was a major wiki effort by the players http://www.thebruce.net/ilovebees.asp The CLoudmaker/Beast stuff I have archives of on CD-Rom buried in storage somewhere that I should figure out how to donate to somewhere... likewise we have a lot of design documentation on those games that should be archived somewhere I think! NOt superhelpful for your project right now but that's what I came up with top of mind. Please tweet at me about the collective action/flow theory @avantgame