> Even within the same game genre that barely translates. People good at Starcraft I struggled with Starcraft II, people great at Warcraft made little headway in Starcraft II (e.g. WCIII players like Grubby or Happy).

That might be true if you're comparing the top 0.1%, but someone who played a lot of Starcraft would be miles ahead of any newcomer in both Starcraft II and Warcraft III.

Your example is like saying that a world-class sprinter would struggle to be a world-class cyclist. Yes, that's true, but the aspects that do carry over - cardio and muscle development - would immediately put them in the top 5% of the field even if they never win the Tour de France.

> Even within the same game genre that barely translates. People good at Starcraft I struggled with Starcraft II, people great at Warcraft made little headway in Starcraft II (e.g. WCIII players like Grubby or Happy).

Even being good at Starcraft I in 1998 wouldn't make you good at Starcraft I in 2003. People uncover certain optimizations and strategies over times that are quickly adopted by everyone, to the extent that playing the same a good player in 1998 would get you dubbed a "noob" in 2003.

It didn't translate 100%, but even a pro player in Starcraft1 unsuccessfully transitioning to Starcraft2 still played at an insanely high level relative to the general population. It was the difference from maybe being a top 50 player before to a top 500 player after. I would say that this is evidence of a very high carryover.

WC3 => Sc2 is a much greater leap than sc1 -> sc2 but still there was decent carryover. Grubby was still a GM or high masters player, even if he was no longer elite.

Video games are available to people of all abilities. You certainly can't say the same of football (indeed, with concussions, one might question if this lowers intelligence over the long term)

I'm actually really curious what effect playing fast, twitchy games will have on things like reaction time as one ages. Would be interesting to see long-term studies on the subject.

I don't understand your reply. This is a thread about the impact video games can have and whether they are positive. How is it not relevant listing a few examples on how specific games could improve certain areas of a person?

Obviously. Which is why the question isn't about incrementality. It's about whether the choices one was willing to make were beneficial to something that doesn't seem remotely related at first glance.

Most people aren't going to program 10 hours a day. But they might program 8 hours a day and then do 2 hours of entertainment. Maybe those 2 hours of watching TV were better spent gaming in terms of contributing to other aspects in life. Maybe those 2 hours of gaming could've been 2 hours of drawing instead.

If we're talking about incrementality, we'd better question why almost every software company is still treating their employees like idiot savants when games show us how quickly people can learn drastically different concepts, as long as presented correctly.