I disagree with a bunch of the stuff he brings up. So new prince of persia is a very forgiving game, lots of games are pretty forgiving, you fall off a platform you get to try to jump on the platforms again. the GTA series is obnoxious when it comes to retrying failed missions especially if they are located across the map. But there are alot of games out there that are very accessible, little big planet for example simple platforming and you can pick how challenging the platforming level will be. I would say the most alienating thing about videogames is the perception of people who play video games and the wii has done a good job, but the arguement that its the difficulty of games that is keeping videogames out on the doorstep is too shallow. Videogame difficulty initially stems from the arcades where the games where built to be hard so you would die and had to spend more money on them, then the home console games where ports of the arcade games or used the model of those games.

I think it falls to the social function, the people who dont play videogames I am speculating here but in my experience they tend to be more extroverted and the single player aspect of many videogames is what is unappealing. Then if they do try with other friends it has nothing to do with the game being hard but just other people being much better at it. Guitar hero is really fun if you play with people who are at the same level as you, a group of people all playing it for the first time its a great thing, but if you sit down and the other people just kick your ass or vice versa it is boring. This applies to other things as well if you are good at a sport its alright to play with people who are new to it but its not that enjoyable and you wont continue to play nearly as much as you would with people who give you a challenge.

So I submit that it is the us the gamers and our social actions picking on noobs that is keeping videogames from catching on, the difficulty of the game itself doesn't matter, look at a 2 player game of street fighter. one player loses now seconds after KO they are back up for another round and get to play again, but if the person playing not only keeps beating them but likes to gloat and lord it over them then odds are they will stop playing.

I believe it falls on the douchebag gamers who harass and yell at noobs to chill out and not the difficulty of single player games.

That kid was way too emotional for a typical boy. Normal boys don't act like that. They'd be screaming and tearing down walls. Expressing their emotions very extrovertingly.

Fabulous alert!

The show selects the stupidest and most extroverted contestants from the people who audition.

Yeah, i'm sure theres more to it too, social and cultural conditioning and self identifying to behaviors etc, and yes, a person who is extrovert but not overtly feminine could certainly be gay too, as im sure all such personality traits are possible in conjunction with any sexuality, even if their are identified biasess which have enabled stereotyping. That said, i merely think his extrovertness+expressive feelings is what allows his sexuality to be presumed (correctly) within moments of his speaking, and its the contrasting personality of the other guy that makes it less quick to deduce (and i too would probably have to be told to know). So more of a case of considering this 1 instance, rather than getting deep into stereotyped (accurately or otherwise) behavior that we are attuned too and use to assign sexuality.

Wasn't there a vid on here that looked into this? how quick can we guess correctly someones sexuality just form a silhouette of them sitting down? sure there was...

Yeah, here it is, that part being at around -2.50

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Surely one could be gay and extroverted, and not overtly feminine? I think there must be something deeper involved. Some part of the brain that switches to model female behavior instead of male.

There's all that classic child psychology stuff about a son modeling his mother instead of the father - if the father is really dysfunctional/non-present. I'm not sure I buy that, but it could contribute.

^ You could probably identify macho/masculine or other personality traits on any sliding scale, and the more extrovert the persons character is, the more quickly you could make the assessment, and the more pronounced it would seem. The guy on the right is a lot more extrovert in expressing himself, where as the guy on the left is more subdued/reserved. As such, inherently less expressive. To be expressive about ones feelings is often seen as an effeminate trait, and something often avoided by what our culture regards as hetero masculine behavior. The guy on the right expresses his feelings freely in his extrovert style, and hence, this behavior which is non conformist to our "hetero masculine cultural norms" and is immediately apparent. From that, first opinion assessments about sexuality arent really surprising.

from my brother-in-law, who does research in cognitive psychology:

As far as I can tell, it's an optical illusion that is in the same class as the necker cube, an illusion that I'm sure you are all familiar with, even if you don't know it by name. Both of these are "bi-stable images" (or, in the case of the ballerina, a bi-stable movie, I guess), that your brain can interpret in one of two ways. If you are looking at the cube, with a little practice, you can force it to switch between the two interpretations pretty easily. I suspect that a forced switch will be harder with the ballerina because it's a moving image, but it should be possible. I've found that if I focus just on her planted foot, I can get the rotation to change directions almost at will.

How does it work? The key is that what you are looking at is essentially a two-dimensional image (I was going to say it was a flat image, but that's clearly not the case...) of the ballerina. There are no depth cues and no 3D shading. It is as if you are looking at the projected shadow of a twirling ballerina, if that makes sense. With that in mind, think about it this way: Imagine the ballerina is facing exactly sideways (right or left, doesn't matter). Then imagine that she spins, say, 45 degrees. First, think about what she would look like if she was spinning toward you. Then think about what she would look like if she was spinning away from you. Remember that all you have to look at is a shadow - you can't see a face or any other front/back distinctions. What you should realize is that if she spins 45 degrees "away" or 45 degrees "towards" you, the resulting image is exactly the same. Spin her another 45 degrees (so she's now rotated 90 degrees), and she will either be facing you or she will have her back to you, but again, since it's just a shadow, the image is exactly the same... What it boils down to is that with a 2D projected image (of a ballerina, of a motorcycle, anything, really, there's nothing special about the image they chose), you do not have enough information to tell the direction of rotation. They add the shadow of the feet to make the image more interesting, but again, there's no real rotational information there.

Since you don't have enough information, your mind could choose between two equally likely interpretations (hence the "bi-stable image" name). So when you look at it, your brain picks one interpretation, and then typically sticks with it until it is pushed to reinterpret the image (either by looking away for a while, or really trying to convince yourself that the image is going the other way or, I don't know, whatever else works).

As far as the right-brain, left-brain stuff goes, I don't put any real scientific faith in that terminology. Yes, certain functions like language skills and spatial processing are more localized to one side of the brain than the other. However, calling someone "left brained" or "right brained" should be viewed as an easy label to use to indicate if someone is more creative or more analytical, but it's more like saying that they are "introverted" or "extroverted" than it is a statement about their neuroanatomy.

Does the spin direction of the image reveal your brain-sidedness? I highly doubt it. I can't think of any reason that such a test would be diagnostic.

-- He's way smart.

This brings to mind my favorite aeronautics quote:

"The thing is, helicopters are different from planes. An airplane by it’s nature wants to fly, and if not interfered with too strongly by unusual events or by a deliberately incompetent pilot, it will fly. A helicopter does not want to fly. It is maintained in the air by a variety of forces and controls working in opposition to each other, and if there is any disturbance in this delicate balance the helicopter stops flying; immediately and disastrously. There is no such thing as a gliding helicopter.

This is why being a helicopter pilot is so different from being an airplane pilot, and why in generality, airplane pilots are open, clear-eyed, buoyant extroverts and helicopter pilots are brooding introspective anticipators of trouble. They know if something bad has not happened it is about to."

-- Harry Reasoner, 1971.