In this episode we discuss friendships and other relationships formed in online games. Can they substitute for offline relationships? Are they better or worse in some ways?

I talk to Dr. C. Shawn Green from the University of Wisconsin-Madison about whether brain training programs work and if regular old action games can make you smarter –and what that really means.

I talk to Dr. Nick Bowman from West Virginia University about how video games differ from other media in terms of the demands they place on players and thus how our approaches to studying them should differ. It turns out that video games ARE special and something new.

What’s the popular topics and state of academic research on psychology and video games? And how can academics package that information for the media and everyone else?

We talk to Dr. Nick Yee about game companies’ use of big data and how he became a video game psychologist.