Digital Birmingham is a Birmingham City Council initiative and part of a city wide strategic partnership of more than 40 public, private and voluntary organisations
The Rollason Family
The topic that they will be focusing on is Gaming. What are the top ten games?Is gaming oinline going to survive into the future? Is it healthy?
This is the Digital Gaming family.
All of the Rollason family are committed gamers and here is their favourite set of games:
| Owen, the youngest in the family (8) | Guitar Hero |
|---|---|
| Jade , the quiet one (13) | Super Mario and Brothers |
| Jordon, the Digital Family winner | Call of Duty, Halo, Modern Warfare |
| Dave | Forza |
| Forza | Just Dance |
A special feature of this very connected family (they have at least 7 devices connected to their WiFi broadband connection) is their family connectivity. They play games together. Is this unique? We have here a family that doesn't hide in their rooms playing online games, they actually sit together and play them in their front room.
I asked them if they liked playing games together, Jade the quiet one nodded, Jordon was very enthusiastic and Dave and Julie were also supportive.
What are the benefits of gaming? Julie said that it helps Owen to concentrate. Owen has a small concentration span and this has been developing since he started gaming. For Jordan gaming helps with his revision (GCSEs are looming), speeds up reflexes and develops his concentration skills.
Although being a gaming family they are very much a complete digital family with ipods and musical interests and a growing interest in twitter...."It tells you all about gaming", says Jordon.
Here is some further information about gaming.
UK top 10 video games chart for May (From the Guardian)
| Position Game | Game (age rating) | Platform | Weeks in chart |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2010 Fifa World Cup South Africa (3+) | PS3,Xbox,PSP,Wii | 1 |
| 2 | Super Street Fighter Iv (12+) | Xbox, PS3 | 1 |
| 3 | Just Dance | Wii | 21 |
| 4 | Tom Clacy's Splinter Cell : Conviction | Xbox 360, PC | 3 |
| 5 | Grand Theft Auto Episodes - Liberty City (18+) | PS3,Xbox 360, PC | 9 |
| 6 | Wii Fit Plus(3+) | Wii | 27 |
| 7 | Wii Sports Resort(3+) | Wii | 41 |
| 8 | Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (16+) | Xbox 360,Ps3, PC | 9 |
| 9 | Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (18+) | PS3, PC, DS | 25 |
| 10 | God Of War Collection (18+) |
Gaming can be good for you. Yes it can.
The Rollason family have already recognised that it can help concentration.Other researchers have found that it can help develop visual skills. Researchers Shawn Green and Daphne Bavelier pitted keen players of computer games against people who never play in a series of tests that measure basic visual skills.
The tests asked the participants that to match shapes appearing in a series of circles with ones displayed at the side of the screen. Keen players were vastly better at this task, and completed it much faster, especially when the test was made more difficult by the circles being filled with distracting shapes.
Gamers also showed their skill in another experiment that measured "attentional blink" which captures how easy it is to catch someone's attention.
There are also games that develop social relationships.
The Rollason's have found that gaming together has given the family added cohesion. This has also been found by other researchers.
Maybe you would like to blog your thoughts about how harmful they may be.
Come back soon.
Go back to the Birmingham's 2010 Digital Families
