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'Boozy Gamer' Researcher Questioned
Via GameSetWatch, a Gamespy interview with Sonya Brady, the person who ran the research study we reported on a while back. The one that claimed gamers enjoy getting high, drinking alcohol? From the article: "What kind of feedback have I received? My feedback from research colleagues and other older adults has generally been positive. What I find most interesting is the feedback I have received from adolescents and young adults. Some people are interested in learning more about the research, even if they are skeptical of the results. Other people have been very angry."
When I saw "Boozy Gamer" I thought for a minute I was reading about some future Ubuntu release.
And for the question of the year: Who really gives a shit? Come on, young people are demonized as a matter of course, particularly for drinking or doing drugs. Trying to draw a causal link between games and that sort of behavior is unnecessary.
Now what am I going to do with my afternoon?
Get drunk. Play a game.
The original research said that a group of people were made to play either GTA or the Simpsons driving game (Hit and Run). The people who played GTA had more permissive views of drug uses than the people playing Hit and Run. Assuming that their methodology for those results are valid, the research still leaves a lot of questions unanswered:
What if they were made to play other sorts of games? What would be the differences between Katamari Damacy and Tetris, for example.
What if they were exposed to other sorts of things? What would be the difference between playing GTA and watching Casino? Or between watching football and watching fishing.
I think more data is needed to avoid making an oversimplified generalization from these results.
Believe it or not young ones but there was a time when some people claimed smoking wasn't just not bad for you but actually GOOD for you. Boggles the mind doesn't it? You can imagine that smokers having grown up with idea that smoking a good thing didn't react all that well when people started telling them how bad it is.
Even worse when smoking parents were being told they were harming their childeren.
It is a sorta holy war. A constant one is the debate as to who is right when it comes to working hours. The americans with long working weeks or the europeans with short ones. Part of the problem is perhaps that their is no right answer but I think the main reason that such a discussion always becomes a flame war is that each side feels themselves being attacked for a fundemental part of their livestyle.
To test the effects of violent games on gamers lets use another hobby but one where we have very clear examples of the violence it generates. Soccer.
I am sure even americans have heard about violent soccer fans (hooligans) that are a major problem in europe and have been since I was a kid. Almost every match needs a sizable and costly police force to keep things under control. Even with this huge cost to the taxpayer it still frequently goes wrong and you the results are very clear closed of city centers that look like a disaster struck and a constant bill for public transport in destroyed vehicles (and a train costs a lot to rebuild).
Now I challenge you with this. You go on public tv in europe and claim that soccer is the cause of this violence and that restrictions should be put in place to curb the violence. Good luck.
The evidence of violence is very clar as is the link. If a hundred hooligans go out of the stadion and on a rampage it doesn't take a genius to figure out that if you forbid audiences at soccer matches you would limit the problem.
Hell, even simpler suggestion. Let the soccer clubs pay for the police presence. They make billions they can afford it. Good luck again.
So, nobody likes to be told that their hobby is the cause of problems. Nobody likes to be told what they should do.
So is that strange that gamers react strongly to being told that their hobby is bad and should be regulated or even banned?
It doesn't matter if the accusations hold water. What matters is that your lifestyle is being questioned. The smoker doesn't want to be told to stop smoking, the soccer fan doesn't want to pay for the soccer hooligans and the gamer does not want to be restricted in the games he can play.
Very normal. But is it helpfull?
Smokers have lost, soccer fans hangon because soccer is a billion dollar industry with a wide fanbase. Gamers? Well, we are not exactly popular are we. We don't have the public on our side.
Does it really help our case of "violent games don't cause violence" if we react violently against anyone who claims it? Isn't that rather like claiming "I am peacefull and will kill anyone who claims that ain't so"?
It is easy to feel attacked in your personal freedom but when you attack your enemy for claiming your violent you are only proving his point.
Worse, perhaps we are like those smokers who claim that smoking ain't bad for you. How many gamers are even willing to consider that the link between violence and gaming could exist? Based on past experience, not many. This is another holy war and both sides got their fanatics.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
And I ask again, how is being permissive towards the use of alcohol, sex or even drug use a problem? Alcohol can be used in moderation, sex can be safe when using condoms and some drugs can be perfectly safe when used in moderation, so safe, that many are prescribed by doctors!
This research is like saying "reading books about food will make people hungry" or "reading a wine tasting magazine will make people more permissive towards alcohol use". Geez!
Some say he is made with ascii, others that he is eyeballed daily by millions. All we know is, he is known as the Sig
And if drinking is too hard... Try drugs instead.
You can't win, Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Here's my observation of the way the study is being presented: Playing an intensely violent and realistic video game led students to say that alcohol and marijuana use are less harmful than they would have otherwise.
Where was this published, in the journal "DUH!"? Since when is it a surprise that people reduce their assessment of other risks when confronted with a specific risk? I don't worry about government wiretapping when I'm high off the deck rock climbing. We are, quite simply, wired to deal with the risk we are facing. A real control in this experiment would have put some of these randomly selected students in a risky, blood pressure raising situtaion (climbing could work, ethics guidelines are not likely to allow a simulated mugging), and ask them the same question.
Games like GTA really do induce a "reptile brain" response. I'm 45 years old, and find it kind of scary getting behind the wheel after virtually driving wrong way the length of the Las Veturas strip at full tilt with a mob goon tied to the hood of the car. In that situation, I am hypersensitive to driving risks, and likely not worrying about other things.
Last, somebody needs to point out that you can't reasonably play these games when you are wasted. GTA is freakin hard to play. I assume that computer games provide an alternative to drug use, rather than fostering it as is implied by the headlines.