I still haven’t read Everything Bad Is Good for You, but I did enjoy The ‘Bad’ Guy, about the book and its author:
When it comes to gaming, Johnson invokes some of the neuroscience he studied for his last book. Human brains are drawn to systems, he suggests, in which “rewards are both clearly defined and achieved by exploring an environment.” The exploration part is key: Gamers have to figure out the rules as they go along, and “no other pop cultural form directly engages the brain’s decision-making apparatus” the way video games do.
With television, Johnson’s argument rests more on economics. Complex narratives that “force you to work to make sense of them” have been rewarded by a marketplace where profit now depends heavily on repeat performances, whether on DVD or in syndication. Making shows more challenging to decode makes perfect sense if you’re assuming they’ll be watched more than once.
Games aren’t Hamlet or The Great Gatsby, Johnson writes; they’re more like mathematical logic problems. As such, “they are good for the mind on some fundamental level: They teach abstract skills in probability, in pattern recognition, in understanding causal relations that can be applied in countless situations, both personal and professional.”