Tag: Video games

Give That 1337 a Job!

Apr 15, 2026

By KIM BELLARD

Chances are someone in your family is a gamer. Maybe you are a gamer yourself. After all, somewhere between two-thirds and three-fourths of Americans play video games, and if you just looked at young men, it’d be closer to 100%. Grumpy older people don’t get it, complaining that gaming is just a waste of time, but gamers believe it helps with their problem solving (although at a cost of sleep).

Well, the good news is that if you are, indeed, a gamer, the Federal Aviation Authority (F.A.A.) is looking for you.

Last Friday Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy announced the F.A.A.’s campaign to attract “the next generation of air traffic controllers,” It is looking for people “who possess useful skills that are transferable to a career in air traffic control, including:

Demonstrated high cognitive functions
Multitasking
Spatial awareness
Strategy and problem-solving”

By all that, they mean gamers. The announcement goes on to add: “…this effort is focused on reaching talented young people pursuing alternative career paths, many of whom are active in gaming. Feedback from controller exit interviews reinforces this, with several controllers pointing to gaming as an influence on their ability to think quickly, stay focused, and manage complexity.”

There’s a slick YouTube ad too.

“When you bring on someone who has gaming experience, particularly with air traffic control, they have an edge up,” Michael O’Donnell, an aerospace consultant who previously worked as a senior F.A.A. official focused on air traffic safety, told Karoun Demirjian of The New York Times. “They’re coming in with a skill set. But it doesn’t replace aptitude, or discipline, or decision making under pressure.”

Surprisingly, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association supports the effort, with its president Nick Daniels telling BBC:: “Our union welcomes innovative approaches to expanding the candidate pool, including outreach to individuals with high-level aptitude skills such as gamers, so long as all pathways maintain the rigorous standards required of this safety-critical profession.”

To be fair, both the F.A.A. and the NATCA probably would welcome anything that might drive people to apply. The F.A.A. only has about 75% of the target number of controllers, leaving it several thousand short. Individual airports may be staffed even lower, as might certain times of day. It’s not a new problem and it is not a problem that is going to be quickly fixed; it is not as though today you can play a video game and tomorrow you can be an air traffic controller. There is definitely a learning curve.

It also doesn’t help that air traffic controllers aren’t usually paid during government shutdowns, which Congress seems to increasingly allow. “The failure to pay air traffic controllers for 44 days created uncertainty, drove many experienced controllers out of the profession and harmed the recruitment pipeline,” a spokesperson from the Department of Transportation told CBS News in November.

Nor does it help that air traffic controllers rely on technology that is likely to be older than they are. The F.A.A. is trying, for example, to replace its outdated radar system, but NBC reports: “The FAA has been spending most of its $3 billion equipment budget just maintaining the fragile old system that still relies on floppy discs in places. Some of the equipment is old and isn’t manufactured anymore, so the FAA sometimes has to search for spare parts on eBay.”

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Chair Jennifer Homendy complained: “This is 2026. The secretary talks about upgrading our air traffic control system. We have an old air traffic control system. This is why he talks about that. We need to upgrade.”

I was surprised to learn that gaming might not just be an asset to become an air traffic controller, but also an asset for air traffic controllers. Josh Jennings, a supervisor at the F.A.A.’s air traffic command center in Virginia, told Ms. Demirjian that gaming is both a way for controllers to stay sharp, and as a form of “social currency” among them. “I would say it’s probably tenfold on how fast this new generation is able to pick up on our physical tech, our radar scopes,” he said. Controllers apparently often play video games on their breaks.

In similar approaches to look for unconventional backgrounds, the Marines are looking at dirt bikers to become drone pilots, while Russia is looking at university students for its drone pilots.

Halo, Heresy, and Health Care

Oct 29, 2025

By KIM BELLARD

If you are of a certain age – say, mine, that is to say, a Baby Boomer – last week’s announcement that Microsoft was going to release a new version of Halo on Sony’s PlayStation console may have passed you by. So what, you might have said? If, on the other hand, you are one of the three-fourths of Americans who play video games, you might have more immediately grasped the significance.

The gaming industry is like porn industry in that it tends to be early on the technology front. Since I don’t follow the porn industry, I try to watch the gaming industry to see what trends in it may suggest for the future of other industries, especially healthcare.

In case you weren’t aware, Halo is a Microsoft game, and has historically been played on Microsoft’s Xbox console. Sony’s PlayStation is Microsoft biggest competitor, and has been winning the war handily. So making Halo available on PlayStation is a somewhat surprising move. As Zachary Small wrote in The New York Times: “It is the equivalent of Disney letting Mickey Mouse roam Universal Studios.”

Or, as Grant St. Clair marveled in Boing Boing:

I cannot possibly emphasize how big a deal this is, but odds are you already know yourself. Halo is bar none the biggest IP Xbox has, and historically one of the biggest draws to the console. It’d be like Nintendo suddenly putting Super Mario Galaxy on Steam. This is a tacit admission that Xbox has lost the hardware war — the writing was on the wall already, granted, but this italicizes and underlines it.

A gamer told BBC Newsbeat that the announcement was “massive” and “broke the internet a little bit.” She’s happy about the news, adding: “I know there’s a bit of controversy about it coming to PlayStation, but I don’t see any reason why it should be like that at all. I just think it’s a win for all gamers.”

So, whether you realize it or not, this is kind of a big deal.

Microsoft has desperately been trying to stay relevant in gaming. A couple years ago Microsoft shelled out $70 billion to acquire Activision Blizzard, and a couple years prior to that paid $7.5b for ZeniMax Media. Still, though, as Joost van Dreunen, a market analyst and professor at New York University, told Mr. Small: “When it comes to consoles, Xbox has always been the bridesmaid and never the bride. They just haven’t been able to outmaneuver PlayStation and Nintendo.”

It may have found a way. Earlier this year Microsoft made Gears of War and Forza Horizon 5 available on PlayStation, and Microsoft Flight Simulator will join them later this year. Indeed, Mr. Small points out: “Between April and July, six of the top 10 best-selling games on Sony’s consoles were Microsoft properties.”

I.e., if you can’t beat them, join them.

“We are all seeking to meet people where they are,” Matt Booty, the president of Xbox game content and studios, told Mr. Small. Even more interesting, he further explained: “Our biggest competition isn’t another console. We are competing more and more with everything from TikTok to movies.”

Lesson #1: your competitors are not necessarily the ones you think they are.

The Effectiveness of Online Health Intervention Programs

Dec 1, 2018

By GLENN LAFFEL, MD

In recent posts on Web-based and mobile behavioral intervention programs, we reviewed evidence suggesting that social support, in one form or another, can improve participants’ adherence and engagement with the program. That didn’t always mean however, that participants achieved better outcomes as a result. In one study for example, an online community increased engagement with and utilization of a Web-based activity program, but it did not increase participants’ actual activity levels.

Another study, slightly older than the ones reviewed above, did show that a Web-based program improved outcomes. In this case, the intervention was an online videogame known as Re-Mission. Since I haven’t touched previously on outcome studies for automated lifestyle intervention tools or videogames as an example of such programs, I’ll do that here.

Re-Mission is intended improve medication compliance in teens and young adults with a history of cancer. In the game, players control a nanobot within a 3-dimensional body of a young person that has cancer. Play involves destroying cancer cells and managing chemotherapy-related adverse effects like vomiting and bacterial infections by using antiemetics and antibiotics. The game purports to help users understand their disease and its treatment and improve their sense of self-efficacy: they can take control of their disease.

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