The Impact of Violent Gaming

An anonymous reader writes "IGN has an article up looking at the impact of violent videogames. It discusses some of the rationale on the gaming industry side for having violent images in their games, and the reactions from politics and lawmakers to these games." From the article: "Despite the large body of evidence that supports a link between playing violent videogames and aggression, lawmakers still have a difficult time convincing the courts that they should be removed from children's hands. One of the reasons for this is that most of the work done is correlational studies which look for a link between two factors. That is, if we see an increase in violent videogame play, is there also an increase in violent behavior?"

Comments

Remove the violence

[saskboy]

I'm all for taking violence out of video games. There's no reason games can't be modified to have non-violent outcomes. But then Jack Thompson would whine that realistic consequences aren't being depicted which will train cold blooded killers.

Think of Super Mario jumped on mushrooms and they turned into happy angels instead of dead pancakes? Or in Unreal Tournament you fire paintballs, or tickle people at close range? Or in Mortal Kombat you have a tickle fight, and instead of ripping out a heart, you read the woozy opponent a bedside story. I think it would sell just as well. A game doesn't have to be violent, it can be funny and still be as fun.

Yes and no...

[Sparky2112]

I know a child psychologist working in this field. His research is pointing to something interesting, yet not earthshattering: children who play violent games outside the pervue of their parents *do* show a propensity for violent behavior. The flipside is that kids playing violent games *with* their parent's cursory involvement *do not*. This guy was ready to throw the book at games altogether, so the studies he's running came as quite the surprise, naturally.

Re:Logical fallacy

[Stone Pony]

Nor does it imply the absence of causation, which is the unspoken subtext behind the "correlation != causation" posts which invariably spring up whenever this subject surfaces. What correlation undoubtedly does do, unless you have a total lack of curiosity about the nature of the world, is to suggest interesting avenues of research. That's why the subject comes up repeatedly, and why it will continue to do so.

Obviously, though, taking all that into account would have taken far too long to allow much chance of getting first post.

Not if it induces violence, but rather which sort

[bigsmoke]

Personally, I don't think games induce violence as much as they inspire violence. Which is to say that, although the type of violent acts may very easily be copied from populair entertainment, I highly doubt if the amount of violence can be traced back to the amount of violent entertainment which is consumed.

When I decide to go on a murderous rampage to kill random people after having played a game of Carmageddon, it is obvious that my violence is inspired by the violence which is so abundant in that game. What is not obvious is that I wouldn't have found another way to express my violent needs for lack of creative inspiration. People have been torturing, maiming and killing each other for a little while longer than high-tech-taintment has existed.

I find increasing overpopulation to be a much more likely source of violence than increasingly violent entertainment. But, after all, a correlation does not necessarily indicate a causal relation. Such relations are difficult to prove without a rigidly set up experiment.