The 64% Violent Pacman

DreamWinkle writes "During the recent Senate hearings on video game violence, one expert claimed that the ESRB underrated violent games. They went on to say that Pacman was 64% violent. To some, this means you shouldn't play Pacman; to others, it highlights what's wrong with Senate hearings. Whether a game is violent or not depends on how you classify violence, and the ESRB has the job of doing just that. They're not regulated by the government, they let the game makers recommend their own ratings, and don't play every game they rate. Is the ESRB to be trusted?"

Comments

Re:Anyone have more information?

[Guuge]

I managed to dig up a little from a site by the creators of the study. Here's the juicy bit:

One author (Kevin Haninger) reviewed and coded all of the recorded game play, noting the starting and ending times of each incident of violence toward other characters, the type of weapons used for violence, whether the violent incident resulted in injury or death, and the number of character deaths attributable to the violent incident. The JAMA article contains a table that lists each video game we played, as well as the genre, console, release year, ESRB-assigned content descriptors, and our measures of violence.

So it seems that the number refers to the percentage of time that the game is violent. Now, how is violence defined such that Pacman gets such a brutal rating?

We defined violence as acts in which the aggressor causes or attempts to cause physical injury or death to another character. We did not include damage to objects, accidental actions that unintentionally harmed another character, the effects of natural disasters, or the presence of dangerous obstacles that could not be attributed to the actions of a particular character. We also did not count as violence any intentional acts of physical force that represented normal play in a sports game (e.g., tacking in football or checking in hockey), because the intention of the player is technically to stop the other player without causing injury. We did count excessive physical contact in sports games, such as punching or otherwise attacking another player (e.g., after the football play was over).

If Pacman's ghosts were replaced by rolling boulders, it would have nearly no violence. Discuss.

Re:Anyone have more information?

[Jerf]

Ghosts are, by definition, already dead.

Can you really commit violence against them?

Moreover, it's not immediately obvious that Pac-Man is alive either. (Discuss. :) )

Re:64% violet?

[FurryFeet]

Some crazy people