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Asked by 748nepk48 to Ed, Kerrianne, Nina, Oli, yoyehudi on 4 Nov 2017.
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Yo Yehudi answered on 4 Nov 2017:
Totally! I can’t think of any specific examples, but it’s really common for me to be tackling the same problem over and over at work getting nowhere, then I go do something else, and while I’m doing that something else, I’ll suddenly realise that I know the answer to the problem. Video games are one of the ways that I might relax, so it’s believable that they’d help.
Another thought that occurs to me is that fiction in general is great way to inspire you. Games with interesting plots or novel gameplay methods force you to think out of the box. Portal, for example, gives you a gun which allows you to make holes in walls that come out in different places that defy physics. That totally messes with your head and allows you to think differently to ways you might normally think! I love that game but sometimes it makes me motion sick.
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Oli Wilson answered on 6 Nov 2017:
Not me, really (I’m not a massive gamer), but people are starting to realise that you can do tonnes of good with video games! One group of scientists and games developers has come together to create a game and app called foldit (https://fold.it/portal/). People playing the game have given the team new ideas about how proteins in our cells are shaped, and in some cases have done things even supercomputers haven’t been able to! For instance, there’s a protein which helps cause HIV/AIDS whose structure had been a mystery for 15 years. In just 10 days, foldit players had cracked it. It just goes to show you don’t have to be a professional scientist to contribute to science! http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/aids-protein-decoded-gamers_n_970113
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Kerrianne Harrington answered on 6 Nov 2017:
Definitely! In the middle of exam times at University, we often talked about the portals from the game series called ‘Portal’. We often talked about what on earth would happen if you put portals in your socks, and the other portals were the correct height from the floor… could you walk? This lead to a lot of equation scribbling, which was probably good revision.
Fiction is usually a good source of inspiration and discussion, sometimes leading to useful things!
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Ed Bracey answered on 7 Nov 2017:
Yes, we use virtual reality in our institute quite a lot.
We have a game where rats chase a virtual cricket around to get a reward.
We use projectors to create virtual reality worlds for mice to move around in.
We also use virtual reality to put ourselves inside virtual brains so we can see the connections between different brain cells.
There’s also a project using a video game run by Hugo Spiers at UCL:
http://www.seaheroquest.com/site/en/
The idea is to use the game to help with Alzheimer’s research.
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