Those findings are very interesting but I'd be hesitant to agree that gaming is 'effective' for PD. At least not any more effective than any active leisure activity.
Older video games do nothing for maths skills but with their lack of save options I think they may well increase a person's patience. The number of times I remember dying on Sonic and having to start from the beginning all over again...it's amazing how often and how well I dealt with that repeated frustration at eight and nine years old.
It's funny you bring this up as only yesterday I was wondering about whether people who are drawn to PD are also drawn to certain genres of game or are inclined to play games a certain way: I'm thinking mainly of RPGs.
In role-playing games, especially the Final Fantasy series, the player spends hours just checking on character stats and deliberating making their characters practice skills such as fighting so the characters gain more and more experience which then improves the characters.
There's a mild strategic element to it, but I personally find levelling characters up just satisfying in itself. As long as there's some enemy yet to defeat, some ability yet to gain or some award yet to earn I feel almost a need to make characters as strong as possible. Similarly there's a term I've heard, 'completionists', applied to gamers who 100% complete their games - which with modern games is no quick or easy task.
So...yeah, I'm more interested in a possible personality link between personal development and gaming - though for the moment it's a very light off-the-cuff idea.
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