PhD Research help request

Hello all,

I've been playing POE for about two years now, casually, and found this community very friendly.
Now I'm doing my PhD on "The exploitation of commercial, well-designed video games' potential in formal education".

Considering POE a "well-designed" video game from this perspective, I would like to ask the community to "help" me in my endeavor, and post replies with aspects of your mental versatility that you believe this game has developed, or helped to perfect.

In case anyone is scientifically interested in the topic, or wants to talk more about it with me, my e-mail is: claudiu.schwartz@gmail.com

Hoping I will receive some answers from you guys, thank you in advance!

As a kid I was mainly confronted with the English language through video games and it gave me that certain edge in mid-school over other students when it came to English as foreign language. You might want to explore this a bit, study the effects of some video games on the linguistic abilities.

Typical MMO studies examine the effect of video games on social abilities, rightfully so. In the past I also made an essay based on some scientific papers (I only found 2 or 3 well done ones out of 10+, an awful ratio) on this and there is a magnitude of potential if you research in this department. However the field is riddled with people who have no idea how to structure a research or use their data effectively so I'd advice to stand out in doing it better in this matter.

Little me played Carnage Heart aswell. I was confronted with logic playground (programming your own war bots) and it was fun as hell. It was basically my first programming experience and helped me grow up with a certain clear distinction for some aspects in the field of logics.

A game which is heavily played in the current generation of children is Minecraft. It might be worth a good look at, especially as you'd expect that game to affect mental capabilities due to the very nature of the game.


Depending on the genre I'd say there is even more potential to explore. I don't deem PoE one of those learning rich experiences thou even if there is some problem solving involved overall and social elements are present in the game. You could learn more about economy in PoE, I guess.

This said, maybe it's a wise decision to explore respective genres and their potential on certain skills before weighting a whole study on one game. If you are not sure what to expect from a certain study you approach I recommend a pre-study with qualitative (opposed to the quantitative) methods in your survey until you can pin-point certain aspects to be worth further study.

If you want to deepen some topics or want to explore some questions with me, leave me a PM here. I can also give you my university handle on request, if you'd prefer to communicate the e-mail way.


Have fun in your research! :)

Just real brief..

It has strengthened my expertise in judging numbers, do relative comparisons and simply helped me focus my choices, and quicken them, when dealing with a lot of factors.

On the other hand, constant changes help you to let go of things. It's a struggle you will inevitably face, but i don't necessarily think that is the result of intentional design. All games eventually teach you to let go, some, like poe, are just a bit more powerful in that regard.

Command&Conquer teached me how to invade Africa properly.
If you want to be an Invader you need to know where Angola and Zambia is.

Natural Selection teached me to make decisions within split seconds.
And to live with the consequenzes.

Diablo2 teached me the difference between Good and Bad.
Its the same, especially when it comes to itemisation.

Not sure what PoE brought to the mix.
Should maybe think 2 aditional years about it.

Watch the movie Enders Game... Sums it all up.

Path of Exile forced me to do math for the first time in 15 years.

Thank you all for your involvement, as little you would deem it, it's really helpful for me.

1. Yes, POE is one of those games that has a huge meta-cognitive - learning to learn mechanics - potential, i saw some people thinking i should look into other games. The passive skill tree+the multiple gems+items+skill tree+mechanics information is the exact thing that makes POE community worth asking/researching

2. Commercial video games teach you subliminally - you will not realize how many things you learned from a simple "fun" video game, but they change you, for instance, regular/professional chess players tend to approach life in a different way - in sequences - without realizing it, it's not because they are mostly geniuses, but because they are geniuses that play chess - that's something to think about :P

3. As in regards for other games, I'm right at scratch now, collecting raw data on what users feel towards all kind of successful video games - minecraft for instance, of course! ...linguistics & video games? ...that's a certainty! I'll research that just to scientifically confirm what they never did :P but it's really as obvious as gravity :) - economy and math - yep, all development sides are of interest to me since i can test about 23 different fields of cognitive development :)

4. Cognitive Development=polishing talents, learning behaviors, developing abilities, punctual acquisition of information, meta-cognition, and many many others, so any activity we do on a regular basis has a tends to develop something in our behavior, which can be transferred to other fields of our life.

5. Most research in the field failed because most of the researches looking into the matter had nearly no actual gaming experience, thus they had no idea what to look for and in what manner or order. I happen to be a regular gamer since i was a preteen, have a BA on special education, MA in clinical psychology, and now I'm doing my PhD on educational sciences, so i know what to look for, where to look for and how to test it all.


Thank you so much for all your replies, hopefully others might get interested in the subject, I really appreciate all your answers and opinions, thank you for your time.

PoE aside, but other games caused me to develop a certain mindset at work - I divide tasks as quests, treat earned money as currency for upgrades and translate months/projects as stages to beat. But that's more of a gamification subject I guess.