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We've published a new paper based on the SkillCraft data from a couple years ago.
Download here
Here is the abstract:
Typically studies of the effects of aging on cognitive-motor performance emphasize changes in elderly populations. Although some research is directly concerned with when age-related decline actually begins, studies are often based on relatively simple reaction time tasks, making it impossible to gauge the impact of experience in compensating for this decline in a real world task. The present study investigates age-related changes in cognitive motor performance through adolescence and adulthood in a complex real world task, the real-time strategy video game StarCraft 2. In this paper we analyze the influence of age on performance using a dataset of 3,305 players, aged 16-44, collected by Thompson, Blair, Chen & Henrey [1]. Using a piecewise regression analysis, we find that age-related slowing of within-game, self-initiated response times begins at 24 years of age. We find no evidence for the common belief expertise should attenuate domain-specific cognitive decline. Domain-specific response time declines appear to persist regardless of skill level. A second analysis of dual-task performance finds no evidence of a corresponding age-related decline. Finally, an exploratory analyses of other age-related differences suggests that older participants may have been compensating for a loss in response speed through the use of game mechanics that reduce cognitive load.
The SkillCraft project is ongoing, and we have several interesting things in the works.
I'll answer questions if people have them.
Thanks to all the players who contributed games to the project.
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but... I have 200 APM. 
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On April 11 2014 07:55 CrushDog5 wrote:We've published a new paper based on the SkillCraft data from a couple years ago. Download hereHere is the abstract: Typically studies of the effects of aging on cognitive-motor performance emphasize changes in elderly populations. Although some research is directly concerned with when age-related decline actually begins, studies are often based on relatively simple reaction time tasks, making it impossible to gauge the impact of experience in compensating for this decline in a real world task. The present study investigates age-related changes in cognitive motor performance through adolescence and adulthood in a complex real world task, the real-time strategy video game StarCraft 2. In this paper we analyze the influence of age on performance using a dataset of 3,305 players, aged 16-44, collected by Thompson, Blair, Chen & Henrey [1]. Using a piecewise regression analysis, we find that age-related slowing of within-game, self-initiated response times begins at 24 years of age. We find no evidence for the common belief expertise should attenuate domain-specific cognitive decline. Domain-specific response time declines appear to persist regardless of skill level. A second analysis of dual-task performance finds no evidence of a corresponding age-related decline. Finally, an exploratory analyses of other age-related differences suggests that older participants may have been compensating for a loss in response speed through the use of game mechanics that reduce cognitive load. The SkillCraft project is ongoing, and we have several interesting things in the works. I'll answer questions if people have them. Thanks to all the players who contributed games to the project.
Interesting study. But don't you find it coincidental that 22-24 years of age is typically when people enter the workforce fulltime and reduce the amount of time they play games like Sc2. Furthermore, being less rigorous in their playstyle, they might decide to take a more relaxed approach to the game. The benchmark for me was around 23. I appreciate the time invested in the study, but don't you think it would be more beneficial to track the same group of individuals 18-30 years of age over, perhaps, a 3-5 year period to demonstrate a true cognitive motor decline? I know you might not have that luxury. But I think the psychological maturity and stage of life is really at the crux of this observation. I have no empiracal data to prove it, just a hunch. Thanks for the contribution.
PS. I know I'm only one person but I started playing BW at 20 and now I'm 31. Even with very minor carpal tunnel in 1-hand I still have the same APM. Again, I think psychology is more involved in the study results, but that is my opinion.
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Only skimmed the article (too late, too drunk!); will read tomorrow.
Stop mentioning APM. The article is about LDL.
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I tend to agree with sir pinky
I just find it hard to believe because in the NFL a players prime age is about 30 it does drop off fairy soon after that
I think we can all agree the NFL takes as much quick thinking and athleticism as starcraft
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Interesting, I forgot how the other stats test are done but for econometric, what about other potential major variables that you might be ignoring?
Like SirPinky's comment has mentioned, job makes perfect rational explanation.
I am not sure how a normal stats would test it (been too long) but if I were to plot a model to predict a player's performance against his age, that formula will have at least several many other possibly important variables like job and then running analysis to test which are significant.
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On April 11 2014 08:07 SirPinky wrote:
...being less rigorous in their playstyle, they might decide to take a more relaxed approach to the game. The benchmark for me was around 23.
...don't you think it would be more beneficial to track the same group of individuals 18-30 years of age over, perhaps, a 3-5 year period to demonstrate a true cognitive motor decline?
... I know I'm only one person but I started playing BW at 20 and now I'm 31. Even with very minor carpal tunnel in 1-hand I still have the same APM. Again, I think psychology is more involved in the study results, but that is my opinion.
Let me take these in turn.
1. You might expect people to take a more relaxed approach, but speed decreases with age. I guess I find it strange that 30 is more relaxed than 25, and 35 is more relaxed that 30 and so on. We have no way to rule it out, but it doesn't seem like to me.
2. I don't think it's MORE beneficial (it can be difficult to parcel out the practice from the aging), but I do think it would be a useful complement to this study. We have some data that does basically that now, but it will take some time to sort through.
3. As you note, it is a sample of one. The findings we describe in the paper are measured in thousands of players. Nevertheless, APM changes with age AND with experience. As you get better, you get faster; as you get older, you get slower. They offset each other, so it doesn't surprise me that some people's APMs do not shift much and it looks like nothing is changing. The bad news is that older is slower, the good news is that you are probably getting better!
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I think the factor SirPinky brought up is too big to overlook. It's a skill that's trained. I mean, there are baseball players into their 40s and even 50s that can hit 100+ mph pitches whereas the general population could probably never even see the ball before it hits the catcher's glove. For a gaming example, there are a lot of CS players into their 30s which is probably the game that requires the fastest reaction of any of them.
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Bisutopia19299 Posts
I have actually improved a ton recently. At 26 my typing dexterity and apm has greatly increased, but I'm also someone who matured late mentally too.
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I started playing starcraft at 31 lol i should be in bronze
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Turning 24 this year.. Guess I should go pro tonight 
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On April 11 2014 08:46 BisuDagger wrote:
I have actually improved a ton recently. At 26 my typing dexterity and apm has greatly increased, but I'm also someone who matured late mentally too.
I would expect that everyone ages in exactly the same way as everyone else. Remember, though, that aging and experience are independent factors. You can get better with practice, even as you get slower with age.
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On April 11 2014 08:45 dazzled wrote:
I think the factor SirPinky brought up is too big to overlook. It's a skill that's trained. I mean, there are baseball players into their 40s and even 50s that can hit 100+ mph pitches whereas the general population could probably never even see the ball before it hits the catcher's glove. For a gaming example, there are a lot of CS players into their 30s which is probably the game that requires the fastest reaction of any of them.
It the study we use both age and expertise in our analysis. Diamond level players are faster than Bronze as you would expect, but young Diamonds are faster than old Diamonds. Expertise does not remove the effect, they are independent factors.
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Interesting, wonder why my APM isn't down.
I was at a SSBM tournament where we had a reflex test for everyone(around 40 people) and I didn't really see any indication of this ;S
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If the 3305 players studied were just random ladder players as opposed to professionals, I would take the study with a large grain of salt. As SirPinky stated, a major factor to consider is that with age comes increased responsibilities that require more and more of a person's time, which in turn puts them out of practice and makes them slower when they do in fact play. It's basically the muscle memory factor at work. You do something over and over again frequently and you start to do it better and faster, but if you stop for a while or don't do it as much, you start to slow down because you have to consciously consider what you're doing again. For instance, the amount of SC I play has decreased drastically over the years, from a constant 2 hours a day in my mid-teens to maybe a few times a month now. The result? I'm fucking slow as shit compared to 10 years ago. Conversely, the amount of typing I do on a daily basis has remained more or less constant over that time span and I'm a much faster and more accurate typist now than I was at the same age.
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On April 11 2014 08:07 SirPinky wrote:
Interesting study. But don't you find it coincidental that 22-24 years of age is typically when people enter the workforce fulltime and reduce the amount of time they play games like Sc2. Furthermore, being less rigorous in their playstyle, they might decide to take a more relaxed approach to the game. The benchmark for me was around 23. I appreciate the time invested in the study, but don't you think it would be more beneficial to track the same group of individuals 18-30 years of age over, perhaps, a 3-5 year period to demonstrate a true cognitive motor decline? I know you might not have that luxury. But I think the psychological maturity and stage of life is really at the crux of this observation. I have no empiracal data to prove it, just a hunch. Thanks for the contribution.
PS. I know I'm only one person but I started playing BW at 20 and now I'm 31. Even with very minor carpal tunnel in 1-hand I still have the same APM. Again, I think psychology is more involved in the study results, but that is my opinion.
I agree with this, I was a mid leveled BW player (bounced around the C ranks on iCCup) and then a solid sc2 player (peaked top masters playing vs GM occasionally (NA server)) Before I went to university and started working, losing the free time available to play sc I lost passion for it and my skill naturally declined because I was playing less and I was playing with less focus.
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older participants may have been compensating for a loss in response speed through the use of game mechanics that reduce cognitive load.
yes, yes.
I'm happy to see this come along, A lot of people are impatient but proper number crunching takes time and they have unrealistic expectations about your academic approach. Then again, esports, broken promises, etc. Still, time to geek out!
I really agree with the quoted statement especially, because it ties in with a core value of starcraft or RTS in general:
You can do things with speed, and you give up efficiency and accuracy. It can apply to any unit or strategy or micro or whatever, the point is that someone with 500APM vs someone with 250APM doesn't necessarily represent a 50% handicap in overall skill. Setting aside race differences and assuming they're playing at the same "level" (Top of WCS, or whatever standard you choose), the guy with 250APM has ways to solve problems with fewer actions. Do those command patterns get the same value as the guy with twice as many commands? Maybe or maybe not, but if he wins it obviously worked.
Interesting to see that older players get slower, but seem to get, would you say, "wiser"?
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On April 11 2014 08:44 CrushDog5 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 11 2014 08:07 SirPinky wrote:
...being less rigorous in their playstyle, they might decide to take a more relaxed approach to the game. The benchmark for me was around 23.
...don't you think it would be more beneficial to track the same group of individuals 18-30 years of age over, perhaps, a 3-5 year period to demonstrate a true cognitive motor decline?
... I know I'm only one person but I started playing BW at 20 and now I'm 31. Even with very minor carpal tunnel in 1-hand I still have the same APM. Again, I think psychology is more involved in the study results, but that is my opinion. Let me take these in turn. 1. You might expect people to take a more relaxed approach, but speed decreases with age. I guess I find it strange that 30 is more relaxed than 25, and 35 is more relaxed that 30 and so on. We have no way to rule it out, but it doesn't seem like to me. 2. I don't think it's MORE beneficial (it can be difficult to parcel out the practice from the aging), but I do think it would be a useful complement to this study. We have some data that does basically that now, but it will take some time to sort through. 3. As you note, it is a sample of one. The findings we describe in the paper are measured in thousands of players. Nevertheless, APM changes with age AND with experience. As you get better, you get faster; as you get older, you get slower. They offset each other, so it doesn't surprise me that some people's APMs do not shift much and it looks like nothing is changing. The bad news is that older is slower, the good news is that you are probably getting better!
As for #1 you have to look at what method you are using for the baseline of your study: An RTS game. With that you have to examine how long RTS games have really been mainstream. A majority of them emerged in the mid 90's with games like Warcraft and WC 2. At the time, most players were in their mid or early teens (including myself). This was the fundamental beginning for people understanding "mechanics". Also, as for the psychology of the time, people were playing them for fun - there was no such thing as E-Sports so naturally people typically used mouse clicks more frequently and 1-2 hotkey for making buildings; but the concept and speed of RTS became ingrained at a young age. So where am I going with this? As you get older in age the likelihood you had any exposure to RTS games dramatically shrinks. Making exposure to fundamental mechanics, at an early age, unlikely. I know people in their 50's that take 10 minutes compose two sentences on a keyboard. Does that mean they are slow? No, only that they were not exposed to computers at a young age. Same applies to RTS mechanics. This I believe, combined with pshychological maturity and stages of life speaks to the APM decline in age. It's not that I don't find the study valid and interesting, just my interpretation of the data is different; especially since you are using a video game (specifically RTS) which really only emerged around 15 years ago.
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Not much of a surprise - there's a reason why "you can't teach an old dog new tricks" (not quite true), and why you don't see Nestea and White-Ra using greater wisdom to dominate younger players.
The study addresses the age and responsibility question SirPinky brought up - if both players are otherwise equal, the younger player has an edge. Anecdotally, look at the scene - can you name any competitive player that is consistently hitting the top 8 of the major tournaments and over 30? (Don't suggest MC; he's only 23.)
There may be some variance in the observations, but it all hangs together pretty well. Further study would be welcome, no doubt, but the results appear to be pretty solid.
Also, great use of SC2 as an investigative tool.
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On April 11 2014 09:56 felisconcolori wrote:
Not much of a surprise - there's a reason why "you can't teach an old dog new tricks" (not quite true), and why you don't see Nestea and White-Ra using greater wisdom to dominate younger players.
The study addresses the age and responsibility question SirPinky brought up - if both players are otherwise equal, the younger player has an edge. Anecdotally, look at the scene - can you name any competitive player that is consistently hitting the top 8 of the major tournaments and over 30? (Don't suggest MC; he's only 23.)
There may be some variance in the observations, but it all hangs together pretty well. Further study would be welcome, no doubt, but the results appear to be pretty solid.
Also, great use of SC2 as an investigative tool.
Bomber had a great year last year at age 25, Polt is 25, Hyun is 26.
I think the reason there are so few pros in their late 20's is because SC2 came out in 2010, so someone who is 28 would have been 24 at release, not many people are going to pick up a new game and go pro at 24.
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EPT
