Column: 'The Esoteric Beat: Duke Nukem Forever Young'

In this week's edition of The Esoteric Beat, Gamasutra's news report that provides new and unusual ways to think about games and culture, regular columnist Jim Rossignol looks at using mainstream games such as Spyro the Dragon for brain exercises, the state of interactive fiction, and a sleep study featuring 3D Realms star Duke Nukem, as commented on in this following extract: The aim of the trial was to show that the gamers who had slept well recalled this information better, and from a different part of the brain, than those who had slept very little, which was indeed the case. All of which demonstrates that games are an increasingly effective tool in testing human faculties, especially when it comes to understanding the brain. But I can't help wondering whether those who people who played the maze-like FPS games of the late Nineties wouldn't naturally be a whole lot better at storing this information than those who hadn't, sleep deprived or otherwise... You can read the full Gamasutra column for more (no registration required, please feel free to link to this article from external websites).