'Dota 2' and 'League of Legends' players might be smarter than you

People who play multiplayer online battle arenas (MOBA) like Dota 2 and League of Legends perform better on problem solving and logic tests than those who play shooters Destiny and Battlefield 3, researchers found. "The specific MOBA genre is remarkable in the sense that it already engages a vast number of players across the globe, but more generally, complex, socially-interactive and intellectually demanding video games are now ubiquitous and generate a constant stream of performance data that can be normalized against millions of other players," a team from the University of York in the UK concludes. The scientists found that as participants got older, shooter skills dropped. The performance pattern suggested that younger players had an advantage over older ones and that "performance decreases monotonically with age." Since MOBAs tend to favor more strategy and planning than twitch reflexes, this might not be too surprising.