Favaro found that playing a videogame for a long period of time made children better at playing other videogames, but had little effect on their motor skills or reflexes in the real world.

Also discredited was a favorite claim of the pro-videogame camp, that the games improved hand-eye coordination. With regard to the other popular anti-videogame argument, that they made children вЂњaggressive,вЂќ Favaro found that, while violent videogames did slightly increase aggression immediately after being played, they actually did so less than violent television shows.

While there were indeed a small number of вЂњmaladaptiveвЂќ children who played videogames to the detriment of their scholastic, social, and familial lives, the same was true of many other childhood activities, from eating sweets and chips to playing basketball. One of the first studies of its kind, it found that there was nothing uniquely addictive about videogames. His PhD thesis, which he completed and successful defended in late 1983, was entitled The Effects of Computer Video Game Play on Mood, Physiological Arousal, and Psychomotor Performance. Everett Koop, waded in soon after, saying videogames created вЂњaberration in childhood behaviorвЂќ and, toting one of the anti-videogame campвЂ™s two favorite lines of argument, claiming again that they addicted children, вЂњbody and soul.вЂќ Others colorfully if senselessly described videogames as substitutes for вЂњadolescent masturbatory activity,вЂќ without clarifying what that deliciously Freudian phrase was supposed to mean or why we should care if it was true.ДЇavaro labored to replace such poetic language with actual data derived from actual research. Undaunted, Ronald ReaganвЂ™s unusually prominent new Surgeon General, C. The Philippines and Singapore banned arcades outright, claiming they вЂњcause aggression, truancy, вЂpsychological addictionsвЂ™ akin to gambling, and encourage stealing money from parents and others to support childrenвЂ™s videogame habits.вЂќ Closer to home, the Dallas, Texas, suburb of Mesquite banned children from playing videogames in public without a parent or other adult guardian, prompting a rash of similar bans in small towns across the country that were finally struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional in 1982. Games and the mostly young people who played them would come to dominate FavaroвЂ™s years at Hofstra.ДЄs arcades and the Atari VCS grew in popularity over the course of those years, an anti-videogame hysteria grew in response. One of the last things we said about video games that day was that they would be fun to study in some small research projects. I also wondered what kinds of motor and reflex skills the games were training in us. They took us away from the pressure of graduate school for a short time and gave us a chance to act out some of our competitive urges. In his first year as a graduate student of Clinical Psychology at Long IslandвЂ™s Hofstra University, he and another student developed an obsession with the early standup arcade game Space Wars (a direct descendent of that granddaddy of all arcade games, MITвЂ™s Space War).Дuring one of the many psychological discussions which developed around those sessions, I wondered whether the games served some kind of therapeutic function for us. Favaro started blending computers with psychology some eight years before Activision published his groundbreaking вЂњlife simulatorвЂќ Alter Ego.

Alter ego game