I played the Nintendo Wii for the first time about two weeks ago. It was great, mainly because it was pretty easy and involved doing the motions yourself.
At one point in my life, I was pretty good at video games. That was up until N64 came on to the market. Once those systems with the really complicated controllers were released, I became a video-game zero. So, its refreshing to have something like the Wii, which allows non-gamers to feel proficient and have a good time.
I'm wondering if I should get a Wii for my apartment. Here are two reasons why I shouldn't:
1) My arm really hurt the day after playing the Wii. I think I overdid it while playing Wii baseball. Apparently, this has happened to other people as well. There's even a name for this condition: "wii-itis"
2) Purchasing a Wii might have an adverse effect on my academics. Furthermore, it might be bad for my roommate's studies, as well.
Todd and Ralph Stinebrickner touch on the second in an interesting paper about the effects of studying on academic performance. The basic idea is this: imagine having a dataset on a sample of students with information on how much they study per day and their grades. With this data, you could run a regression of grades on studying. But would this really allow you to recover the causal effect of studying on academic performance? Probably not: studying is likely associated with other unobserved factors that jointly determine grades, like motivation or intelligence. Also, poor grades in the past might cause an individual to study more (or less).
One way to estimate the causal effect of studying is to randomly assign students to different hours of studying. Obviously, its not possible to do this. But does the real world generate this kind of random variation on its own?
Stinebrickner and Stinebrickner believe the answer is yes. They note that, in the first year of college, individuals are randomly assigned roommates. If roommates are randomly assigned, so are the characteristics of these roommates, and these characteristics, in turn, might influence how much a given individual studies.
This is where video games come in. The authors, using freshman year information from panel data they collect on a cohort of students at Berea College, find that individuals who randomly assigned a roommate that brings video games to school study significantly less than those that are assigned a roommate with other (more productive?) hobbies. The authors use this and a few other sources of random variation to assess the causal effects of studying on academic performance. Not surprisingly, they find that the extra hour of studying is good for your grades.
3 comments:
I would get it because your arm was sore after, that means you need the exercise that Wii Sports gives. People have lost belly playing with their Wii, and as long as you don't go overboard, it should only be a good thing. Course, you could hurt yourself or waste study time, but that is easy to avoid with a little self control.
you should buy it. i love creating my own icon.
1) wii-itis is the successor to nintendonitis / nintendinitis, which was reported in 1990 in nejm and in 1991 in orthopedics.
2) i agree with noor...creating a mii is pretty awesome.
3) right now i would argue that the best games for wii are wii sports and zelda. that's really about it. granted, tennis is pretty much the greatest game ever. the new super mario brothers, whenever it comes out, will be off the charts. but's thats basically 3 games.
4) the counterpoint to 3) is that you can purchase old nes games to play on the wii. smb, contra, punch-out...wow.
5) unlike ps3 or xbox 360, the wii is really a system that is best used socially, eg when you have friends over. since you have a roommate you'll always have someone to play with but keep in mind that wiing alone isnt so exciting.
Post a Comment