On Video Games, the Jury Is Out and ConfusedThe news on Video games is good and bad. It seems obvious that kids would pick up skills from any actions they repeated and repeated. The adrenalin rush does follow participation in these games, even if you don't like playing. I have gone to online arcades with my students to study the games, and we play them. After a game or two, I felt as if I had just been in a fender-bender--nervous, exhausted, and snappish. The interesting studies will come when people look at something like Everquest, and the players who go into the game for social contact via the out of character side talks and the folks who enter the Everquest space, but don't engage in the main acquisitive activities. Oh, and my kid has learned to get "things" in the game, and sell them for real money to other players...there is a study for some curious social anthropologist and an economist.