Slashdot Mirror
Harvard Phd Vs. About.com over Gaming
MaryAlan writes "I don't know if anyone has noticed this, but About.com's Aaron Stanton is in the middle of a back and forth firefight with Dr. Thompson, a Harvard researcher who recently testified before the U.S. Congress about violent video games. She published a study that listed Pac-Man as being 62% violent. Stanton attacked in an article criticizing her research. Then, Joystiq.com contacted Dr. Thompson and got an interview and a response, published her rebuttal, in which she defends the Pac-Man rating and the study.
So today, Stanton attempted to tear the study apart, detailing why it's flawed even though Thompson claims otherwise. On one hand we have an established Harvard Phd, who has testified before the U.S. congress, against a game journalist with a bachelors degree in Psychology. Hmmm..."
[flamebait]This is great and something slashdotters can appreciate and relate to. The article has a online journalist with a bachelors degree going up against a Harvard PhD. It reminds me a lot of all of the home users and part time Dreamweaver users (I mean... web "programmers") commenting on the suitability of Linux and Apple products for enterprise wide use.[/flamebait]
Can't we all get along here?
They must have done secret studies inside the PacMan household and how he treats Ms. PacMan.
God spoke to me.
... or so my study indicates.
- These characters were randomly selected.
Since when does having a Ph.D. excuse someone from making moronic statements? Also, testifying before a Congress that is little more than a religious/corporate tool isn't much of an accomplishment.
As Staton says, Thompson's methods found that Pac Man was 62% violent, Dig Dug was 67% violent, and Centipede was 97% violent (!). These results (which, not so coincidentally, were expunged from the final report) indicate that the whole method is flawed. This only begs the question - why were these numbers removed? Perhaps because it would have signaled to anyone reading the study that it was hopelessly flwed?
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
So? If a PhD came out and said that all fish were descendant from cows and some fry cook said it was the other way around, who would you believe? You should base your conclusions on the soundness of the arguments, not who made them.
For that matter, who the arguments where made to shouldn't give them added credibility. Do you really believe that someone having testified to something before Congress makes it automatically true--or even more credible? 'cause there have been a lot of woppers told on the floors of Congress.
--MarkusQ
They just make me want to kill people.
Well, online games, at least. Campers, TKers, idiots with squeeky voices.
I haven't checked recently, but has it become passe to ignore that you need to do isolate as many dependent variables as possible in a scientific experiment for the results to be valid?
The kind doctor's response? Well theres a lot of studies so our study (whether it's crap or not) is going to be only one data point. FFS, if a data point is made-up it doesn't deserve to even be in the statistical sample!!!
"Reality continues to ruin my life" - Calvin and Hobbes
Ms. Pac-Man.
Seriously, during my seven years in uniform, I probably spent way too much money on Ms. Pac-Man. Pac-Man is for civvies, real Army types prefer Ms. Pac-Man.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Some repressed Japanese game desinger I think, it was the 1970s, after all PacMan himself looks a bit like a femine part and the ghosts look like eja... Oh crud, there goes my karma.
Pub > Computer > Slashdot > Troll
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No. It is the abstraction that removes the "violence" from the loss.
Violence is only violent if there is some aspect of realism.
By her "logic", chess is an incredibly violent game.
Say I created a game in which you spent 15 minutes having sex with a prostitute, then 15 minutes beating her to death and cutting her up into pieces. Would this game be 50% violent, 50% having sex with hookers?
then I fear for the sanitized future of gaming should the Thompsons of the world prevail. I'm sorry, since when did cartoon piecharts chasing cartoon "ghosts" incite anyone to violence? Other than the tirade all of slashdot is about to go on over this totally sophomoric crap?
In other news having a Phd does not guarantee you're not a moron in other areas, like matching theoretical scales for violent content with REALITY.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
As someone with the letters P,h,D in my professional background - I speak with some authority on the subject: Yes, quite a few of the "Ph.D. club-card holders" are completely full of shit.
Caveat Emptor. Grow up Americans. Think for yourselves, people.
and since when does testifying in front of congress give someone credibility? The people in Congress are not the brightest critters out there. To me, congressional testimony is as good as saying you were a witness in a trial. Whoop de doo.
"So? If a PhD came out and said that all fish were descendant from cows and some fry cook said it was the other way around, who would you believe? You should base your conclusions on the soundness of the arguments, not who made them."
So does that mean that the "if you don't put your name to it, I'll not believe you" argument will disappear?
Necrophobia - n., the irrational fear of dead things?
Fear leads to hate, folks. Let's stop the hate. Hug your friendly neighborhood ghost, they might be a relative.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
I am currently pursuing a PhD in computer science. I do not expect every statement I make to be right because of the degree. The only thing this degree should do in this story is make the person questioning the research make doubly sure of what they are saying, since the degree does give more authority and indicate the person *should* know what they are saying/doing.
I find it surprising (although I by now I should not) that there are some who would think it laughable to question a Phd's opinion.
First, it's nothing new. Many have been claiming video games are violent and detrimental to today's youth, and many more have been saying "hogwash!" to the whole idea.
But second, and most importantly, the same thing has been said about many other forms of entertainment, such as rock music and Victorian novels (correct me if I'm wrong on that second one!)
-Parallax
Nobel prize winners can even be crackpots. Linus Pauling has been pushing the benefits of Vitamin C. Of course nutrition isn't the field he won the prize for.
a lth&res=9B0DE0DE163AF93BA35751C0A9629C8B63
William Shockley won the prize in Physics for inventing the transistor. He used the prize as a foundation for the soapbox from which he spouted racist bile.
A proper argument is based on facts. PhD vs. grade eight education. Doesn't matter. If some illiterate has the facts in his corner and the PhD only has theory well; reality always trumps theory.
Actually, taking experts too seriously can sometimes have horrible consequences. There was a British 'expert' who got a bunch of people convicted of murder because their kids died of sudden crib death. "... the testimony of Sir Roy Meadow, a prominent pediatrician who was the first to suggest in 1977 that some mothers induce illness in their children to draw attention to themselves." http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=he
I dispute your findings.
Mostly because I couldn't read page three of TFA
Page Three redirects --> http://nintendo.about.com/?once=true&
Obviously, your methodology is critically flawed and I suspect the author of TFA is going to tell the world about your shoddy science too.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The whole study is fundamentally flawed in that it doesn't seem to distinguish or identify between different types of "violence". It seems to use such a broad definition of violence as to include what I would call conflict or competition, but not necessarily violence. It fails to take into account the grade or realism of violence, and lumps it altogether as a single universal constant, rather than a subjective scaleable value.
By their standards it would seem like one minute of thumb restling out of 2 minutes of gameplay would be rated as 50% violent whereas 1 minute of shooting a guy in the face with blood splatter effects and visceral gurgling sound effects out of 10 minutes of total gameplay would only be rated as 10% violent. It's a flawed system of measurement which completely fails to take into account all the factors involved in what a normal, average, discerning, human being would normally use to define "violence".
Even when it measures relative deaths per minute, it doesn't seem to care exactly what is dieing. Apparently a goomba or a turtle from mario, or a plant monster, or even a ghost, is measured exactly the same as a poor defensless civilian grandmother from GTA. It also doesn't seem to care about the method used in killing; whether it be bopping on the head, causing it to instantly dissappear, or to light a person on fire and watch him burn to death screaming. Burning someone to death usually takes a little while, so you might actually get a lower violence rating if you kill people exclusively with flamethrowers.
The relative levels of education involved in this debate in this case is just another misleading factor. Just because the person who conducted the study has a Harvard Phd doesn't mean she has a clue. Her study may very reliably and accurately measure the level of something in videogames, it certainly isn't what most people would call violence. And whatever it measures, it certainly doesn't seem to be anything useful.
How would a game like Hitman be rated? In optimal gameplay, you're "violent" for maybe 5 seconds out of a 15-30 minute mission. Does that make it under 1% violent, more child friendly than Pokemon? If preparations to do violence counted, then Dig Dug should be near 100% violent, rather than the 67% they gave it. The whole purpose of the game is to blow the enemies up, as Hitman's purpose is to kill your target. So what's the deal? Am I missing some other criteria in their judging system? From where I'm sitting, they're just looking foolish.
Her doctorate is an "Sc.D., Harvard School of Public Health"
Don't inflate it, this isn't a hard science PhD. Its not even a Psych PhD!
Her field is "risk analysis"
What'd you expect from a PhD college professor?
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
"Can't we all get along here?"
*hugs creimer*
Dr: Pac-man 62% of the time in a game of Pac-man involves trying to commit harm.
Journalist: That's not useful to me because it says nothing of realism. You suck.
Dr: I wasn't looking at realism or talking about it.
Journalist: Well, 62% is still misleading because I'd let my kids play Pac-man.
Dr: *tap* *tap* Is this thing on?
Either her data hold up to peer review, or they don't. Of course, this is a sociology study, which isn't noted for being the most scientifically rigorous field in academia.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
No, I didn't RTFA (who does?), but PhD in what? Art history?
Darn, I'm conflicted - the journo majored in psych - a loser of major if there ever was one.
Just because she's testifying before Congress doesn't mean that she's giving good testimony.
Two examples:
- A PhD in Music talking about orbital mechanics
-
The 12 year old kid who tearfully testified about Iraq soldires draring babies from incubators who turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador (and probably not in Kuwait at the time of the attack).
___Personally, I'd be inclined to describe PacMan as akin to a computerized game of 'tag'. Now, if you come up with a definition of 'violent' which classifies tag as violent, then you're gonna probably tag pacman with that same definition.
If, on the other hand, you use Bush's definition of iraqi torture as the border for violence, then Pacman doesn't register on the scale.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
The way to change her arguement, is to have her play an eight way skirmish or two in Warhammer 40,000: Winter Assault. The violence starts just a couple minutes in and can take almost two hours to end. I play a couple hours a night, and the blood splattering wars waged on my PC make my heart squeal with glee. Once she witnesses that fun, Pac-Man won't even make it into her study...
I work in a building full of PhD's in all kinds of areas. The help desk folks refer to them as PhD retards. They may know everything in the universe about tax law or a specific kind of rock, but they can't always find the power button on their PC. A surprising number of them think that the monitor IS the PC.
Just because you have letters after your name doesn't mean you know a hill of beans about the topic at hand. Pac-Man is 62% violent??? If that's the case, how does she rate Manhunt? or Hitman? or GTA? or Legend of Zelda? or EverQuest?
If Pac-Man is 62% violent, the rest of those titles have to be off the top of the chart. That brings us to something else that all kids love...cartoons. Wonder what she thinks of Wylee Coyote or Porky Pig?
2 cents,
QueenB
HDGary secures my bank
when my sister loses against me in a friendly
one on one deathmatch quake 3 i must say she kicks, scratch, bitches, beats the hell out of me
i'm so damn glad i'm 10 years older so i won't lose my nerve and go gauntlet against her
in related news the classic game 'pong' was banned in 6 states citing violence towards balls.
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. - Martin Luther King, Jr.
it's not a game....
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
the dude's a lawyer, right? likely he's got JD (juris-whatever doctorate). ;-)
;-)
WE ARE ALREADY FUCKED!!
Ph.D. or no, it's a 20-some-odd-year-old game depicting a phosphorescent fictional/made-up "protagonist," "eating" a bunch of inanimate phosphorescent dots. No blood, no screams, no mayhem.
How could this POSSIBLY justify a "62% violent" rating?!? That's like saying you're committing murder by eating your Rice Krispies(TM) each morning.
This "Doctor" (and I use that term extremely loosely) needs to get a life. (Or maybe some paying patients...)
"I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." -- Warren Zevon
Wow MaryAllen, at least we know where you stand. More little bits of paper that allow us to append things to our names = the more weight our opinions hold regardless of anything else, eh? Oh, wait, I forgot, she also testified before congress... and of course it's well known that people that testify before congress don't have agendas.
I wonder, did you bother to read any of the back and forth between them, or do you just defer to the PhD regardless? Aaron's arguments are well thought out, and researched. Granted he may not have a PhD, but as a working game journalist, he's closer to the subject matter than Dr. Thompson, the proof of this is in the results of her survey... or do you agree with her findings that games like pacman and super mario brothers are more violent titles than, say... GTA III or Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion?
I Rate Congress as being 100% Stupid, with a Screwing the People rate of 32.9 a minute. Also the phrase "Stay the Course" is a terrorist phrase, and any one using it should be shot.
I used to work in a lab that produced at least two Nobel prizes. At any random coffee break you could always hear the secretaries complaining about how dumb the senior scientists were.
I don't worship PhDs (see my 'PhDs can be crackpots' post above) but just because they don't know everything some bozo knows about his job doesn't make them stupid. Usually the people doing the complaining are just bigging themselves. They don't know how much they don't know and they're just living in a fool's paradise.
Google fight! Well... that wasn't much of a fight.
To do list for Windows
This dipshit deserves my foot 62% of the way up her ass. Is that 100% violent?
You'd think someone with a PhD would have something better to do than fucking testify in front of congress about some stupid video game.
Check out the cave on the east side of lake Hylia. Strange and wonderful things live in it.
"On one hand we have an established Harvard Phd, who has testified before the U.S. congress, against a game journalist with a bachelors degree in Psychology."
l ?id=11874
That doesn't prove anything. I have a Ph.D., and I don't know shit!
http://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/html/id.phtm
These are just opinions. Whatever methodology they use, they can go on forever and never come to a conclusion. I have many friends from History and Linguistics and it's amazing how easy they can change opinions into "facts".
Did you read the study?
So how long is it before our wonderful news media puts two and two together and releases a piece of "news" that the shooter in the Vermont school shooting today, played Pac Man and it made him want to kill?
This is a classic case of confusion between an operational definition and a coceptual definition. Her operational definition of violent video games says that PacMan is violent. The question is: Is her conceptual definition of violence appropriate? If so, does her operational definition follow from that conceptual definition? If not, why not? Is her concept of a violent video games different from yours? If so, how?
Oh, I see. So she understands how video games' chemistry affects the environment.
At first I thought she was totally unqualified to comment on violent video games.
who knows the difference between 'violent' and 'aggressive' actions and behaviour?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Now, Ms. Pac Man is another story - that Bitch with her damn little bow.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I think that there are some fairly serious problems with this entire field of videogame violence studies, which has been characterized by some of the sloppiest, most overinterpreted "science" that I have ever seen. Dr. Thompson is far from the worst offender. The main problem with her work is that it utilizes an arbitrary, unvalidated definition of "violence." If she wishes to relate here work to the studies that purport to detect harmful effects of videogame violence, then she certainly needs to establish in some rigorous way that what she calls "violence" is in some sense comparable to what these studies are examining. (those studies are mostly pretty bad, too, but that is another issue).
Stanton's point that Thompson's classification system yields high violence scores for games that most people, and most parents, would not consider to be particularly violent is a perfectly valid criticism, and her defense, which was essentially "we aren't using it for those games" simply dodges the issue. Given that her criteria are clearly misleading for some games, how does she decide which games it can validly be applied to. I think that it is highly irresponsible for her to report her %violence measures to Congress without properly explaining the criteria she used for classification (saying that it's in her papers is hardly adequate here, considering that her audience is most certainly not going to be reading those papers). Frankly, it seems highly questionable to me whether Dr. Thompson's studies have any value at all. I thought that her defense of classifying Pac-Man as violent was particularly revealing:
What I find notable here is that she seems to have made no effort to actually determine whether many--or indeed, any--young children actually interpret Winky, Blinky, et al. in Pac-Man as "ghosts trying to kill you" or are actually frightened by the game. This kind of uncritical thinking seems representative of her approach.
I should note, however, that her actual recommendations to Congress seem fairly reasonable. She suggests, for example, that ESRB members should actually play the games, hardly a radical suggestion. And somewhat ironically, she suggests that they should do what she failed to do herself in her testimony--"make its rating process and the terms that it uses in its ratings more
transparent."
does he even have an editor? that can't help his cause.
A lot of you folk are missing the brilliance here. If pacman is 62 percent violent and catepillar is 90+ percent violent then DAMN cos GTA must be a million percent violent and manhunt ga-mega-bazillion percent violent per second per second!
I think it comes down to how the Dr T defines violence. It had little to do with how graphicly it was depicted but how it related to the experience of playing the game, like the winning and loosing conditions and the interaction between the game objects. As for how valid that view is, is open to opinion. Ditto with how much violence seen or acted out is good for a person.
So for pacman, eating dots being the primary goal isnt violent, eating a power pill and then eating ghosts a supporting goal is violent, and getting caught by a ghost to loose a life is also violent. The fact that the violence was not portrayed in a realistic or gruesome manner was not considered.
Thus by her definition, Space Invaders, chess, Quake would all easily out rank pacman for violence because the primary goal is eliminate/kill an enemy, and the loss condition being death of the players avatar. Where as solitaire, most racing games, or DDR would be almost devoid of violence.
The best bit about her reply was saying that the parents of kids are ultimately responsible for what they let their kids play.
Regardless of what Dr T said to some senate committee, it will be perverted/given spin by the politicians for their own means.
See my art -> http://herbevore.deviantart.com
that's wasn't Ms Pac Man, that WAS Pac Man.
Remember this was back int he 80's, times got hard for Pac Man and he needed to get money, Sequals of the exact samething weren't popular so he had to put on makeup and a bow in order to get people to touch him again.
So we're taking a subjective idea (violence) and trying to quantify it using objective data (a percentage). Pac-man eats little bits of white dots, (could be food, could be babies), and defends himself from ghosts (probably don't exist). What I remember learning from Pac-man was that in order to survive you needed to eat. Then there were these ghosts trying to kill me (could be white people). Then by either fate or determination you can turn the fight back on the "ghosts" and take them out, because they are trying to exterminate you. So the true lesson I should be learning, according to PhDs, is that when "ghosts" come after you, you roll over and let them gut you, because survival is violence.
Pac-man doesn't teach crap. Its a game to waste twenty minutes of your life. It means nothing else. I'm not slaughtering people in the name of Pac-man. I'm not even thinking about it. Though I do want to run people down in the future in the name of F-zero. Also destroy large stacks of blocks in the name of Tetris.
Selex
It doesn't matter who says it, its what you say.
A Very Brief History of Pac-Man
It really doesn't matter at all how many degrees and certificates she has. They prove that she has studied, and is able to write reports.
Trying to say how violent a game is by how many minutes of 'violence' there is a game without ANY weighting to the context or impact of said violence is ridiculous. To say that Centipede is 100% violent because the entire game is spent being chased by something that intends 'harm' is just stupid. It's a reflex/puzzle game... and it's a game of tag effectively. To rate it higher than GTA because there are stretches in GTA where there is no violence is just plain moronic.
You can't apply an objective measure to something so plainly subjective as violence in the media.
I don't care how many pieces of paper she has.
I'm sure that Dr. Thompson's doctorate is the real difference in whether or not she's right or not. And she's not. In fact, she's an idiot IMO.
I work in building full of people with PhDs. Most of them lack any common sense and frequently make me wonder how they teach computer science since most of them need assistance installing a printer. But hey, I'm just an undergraduate, what do I know?
Derek Greene
Obviously you've never seen this Canadian comics "Talking to Americans" segment. In one he speaks to faculty and staff at Harvard. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_mercer#Talking_t o_Americans While not covered in the article, needless to say they were pretty clueless about shit you should have known was made up with just common sense.
I don't mind Pac Man being named violent. That only serves to make ridiculous the claims that other violent video games have a negative impact on kids.
Also, if Centipede is really 97% violent, where does that put Grand Theft Auto? It can't be much higher than 97%; now imagine being told to keep your kids away from such games as Centipede and Grand Theft Auto.
XaNk: now I remember why I hated the girls in high school
XaNk: because none of them would talk to me
He had no clue about statistics. He wasn't exactly up-to-date on dna.
...
Bad science is bad science even when the person spouting it has a doctorate. Of course lots of Americans don't believe in real science any more
What the hell CAN they do besides eat little dots, blue "ghosts", and die? I guess that is enough for some people.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
(obligatory troll comment, but I cannot resist!) "On one hand we have an established Harvard Phd, who has testified before the U.S. congress"
(emphasis mine)
Any idiot can get in front of Congress, hell, any idiot can get ELECTED to Congress.
Waait a minute. So Jack has a degree now?
I play halo. I play chess. I play pacman (well, ok, not lately). I don't think there's any denying that these games contain acts of agression and are zero-sum in nature, though admittedly in the case of pacman we're only eating ghosts, which look a lot like lucky-charms and are, as ghosts, already dead.
Just about every disney/pixar promo title follows the same formula. Cute characters run around and wack stuff. Doesn't matter if you're firing marshmellows, pingpongs, or molotov cocktails. Its still agression.
I have young children, and in determining what games are appropriate I worry more about the agression required by the player than the violence itself. Lemmings for example has a lot of "violence". But Lemmings is on our good list because the characters goal is to save the lemmings.
In any case, just because I agree with the study doesn't mean I agree with how its used politically. The government which governs least, governs best... and all that stuff...
I'm posting AC well after this article was posted, so I think it's unlikely that much of what I'm about to write will be taken very seriously.
That aside, I believe that the state of what could be called 'media literacy' in America is basically non-existant. As soon as I finished typing that sentence, I can guarantee thousands of Ph.Ds, parents, and other 'media literate' people have thrown up their arms in outrage.
Which is good, because it neatly illustrates the point I'd about to make: at the end of a day, when your study, book, paper, blog, or even post to a forum on the Internet is published, what do we really KNOW about 'media literacy'? What, beyond what many educated individuals might call common sense, have we actually learned and disseminated back into the greater body of society? How scientific are most studies when compared to what many in academia would consider the 'pure sciences'? Beyond the differences of academic stature between the holder of a Doctorate, an anonymous poster on the Internet, and the amount of thought and writing that usually diffentiate the two parties, is either party really contributing anything positive or enlightening towards what one could call literacy? Both types of observation could equally be called opinion in the other's context.
What it really boils down to is that fact that many aspects of each individual human being's perception of reality is subjective. Since our perceptions form our reactions, arbitrary studies based upon one person's or one group's idea or opinions of 'literacy', or for that matter any other such topic (such as violence) become irrelevant.
To get back to the topic at hand, this study is particularly irrelvant due to its utter disregard for the consistency required to adhere to the scientific method. While I have not read the full text of the study (or any of the studies which followed, since I have no desire to buy a subscription to the JAMA's online service), the FAQ on the Kid's Risk website, Dr. Thompson's testimony and rebuttal, and Mr. Stanton's article all point out very fundamental flaws in how the data was defined, gathered, and analyzed; needless to say, I feel that a signifigant amount of each researcher's opinion on the matter fundamentally influenced (and flawed) the results of the study; just as it influenced Mr. Stanton's article and my own post here on Slashdot. I do not intend to write a full academic critique of the study, but once again to demonstrate the power opinion can have on what may or may not be significant scientific fact.
I believe Dr. Thompson's heart is in the right place; I believe that the process of raising children in modern society requires metrics parents can use to gauge what is appropriate for their children. Where I fundamentally disagree with what I have read is in how these metrics are developed and ulitmately how they are presented. I also do not believe this discussion is appropriate to discuss who, what, where, why, or how such metrics are determined by each individual parent; nor would I presume that my own personal opinion on such matters should matter.
The issues surrounding violence, sexuality, and other objectional materials, images, and ideas in media are daunting, I believe that in its rush to define their evils society often jumps the gun in defining their impact. Previous posts have cited rock and roll as an example; I am inclined to agree with the contrast presented when used to compare modern reaction to video games. Perhaps it's hollow, however, to make such comparisons in such a general context.
In closing, I'll go back to the specific topic at hand. I believe society needs to first define what the specific metrics for issues such as violence are before society can define their impact. Only once the issues at hand have been adequately defined and measured can 'media literacy' truly be achived.
Yes any statistic or defintion of violence that that rates Pac-Man as being 62% "violent" is a statistic that clearly not a statistic that would not reflect the general opinion of violence in video games. A poster pointed out the inadequacy of her statistic with Hitman. Consider Carmageddon for instance - you can entirely legitimately finish the game by actually racing the courses and coming first and not slamming into anyone. If you do not think Carmageddon is violent you are off your rocker. Also "psuh it to the limit" has sexual overtones!!! Lady, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
She does make a point though. I'm stunned that the ESRB doesn't play the game significantly before they rate it - you'd figure that would be obvious. In that respect I have to agree with her - if you are going to rate the game on its content then actually experience a representative random sample of the content.
Ofcourse as we all know many parents think video games are for kids and ignore the ESRB ratings anyway but thats no excuse for not rating the damn thing properly!
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
Actually, it's not Jackass Thompson, its Dr. Kim Thompson.
This is known as an ad hominem attack -- that is, an attack upon the critic, not the criticism.
Tiresome.
"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music." - Kristian Wilson, Nintendo VP, 1989
of the entire game? i find that hard to believe. since if i recall 59% of the game is runign around eating pills/dots. perhaps thats the real reason more and more ppl in this country are overweight. do a study on that and leave us our video games - damnit all... no matter what it is it seems to me that someone somewhere has a problem with it. grains of salt and all that i suppose.... nothing to see here, move along.
the submiter makes it sound like the discussion has a bit of smartnes going on. bullshit.
...don't have to be a harvard doc to know it. And people still disagree when i say that academic education is overrated!
the study is base on a % system. what that means? they've simply choose a total and rate games on a scale. what is the "total"? a game 100% violent. what is a game 100% violent in the mind of the moron... aham, harvard person? full time with violence.
so, he put the "pirate cut little girls trhoat just for the joy of it" in the same level as "characther bumps in the wall" then time people playing the game. while you are just walking, it count as non-violent time. when you cut little girls trhoats/bump into walls, it counts as violent time.
so, pacman has 62% of the game time filled with random concepts of violence.
while a game where the goal is to cut throats, and you can do it only after jumping plataforms for 2h hours, would be 2% violent.
Wich would you get to your kid?
for a story on videogames posted on /., who isn't going to take the side of games being non-violent, I think it's safe to assume that the people reading and posting are or were at one time gamers, and gamers never like to admit that it might be bad for them, or that yes, Halo 2 may be a little violent, and yes, a few of us that played mortal combat did try a few of the moves as kids... do I think the study was crap? yeah... but would any study on this topic really have a chance here?
- Spacey
I'm surprised. After reading through all of the articles and links, even with my initial bias against Dr. Thompson, I find myself agreeing with her on many of her points. Some are a bit far out there (such as the arcade game ratings), but for the most part, she is making intelligent, well-structured, and supported points. I think the main reason for my bias was from the name Thopson, actually. Stupid Jack Thompson.
The dyslexic atheist says, "There is no dog"
I have no interest in the PhD flamewar, but the violence rating system Thompson used is clearly useless even for the purpose you propose: by Thompson's standards, Centipede (92% violent) is probably more violent than the movie Robocop (I believe Robocop is about 100 minutes long, that means it would need 8 minutes of "non-violent" material just to be on a par with Centipede!) Does this mean parents should consider Robocop more suitable entertainment for their three year old child? Consider: Centipede (in which a gnome destroys some bugs), or Robocop (the opening scene of which features a man being shot to squishy bits).
Parenting is a hard enough job as it is without studies like Thompson's being taken out of context and used to give parents yet more confusion. Television and tabloid psychologists should always be ignored in favor common sense. "How do I determine if this game is too violent for my young one?" Look at the packaging, read the copy, scrutinize the screenshots. Think about the implications of the words "Rape, pillage, claw, and shoot your way through 69 bloodthirsty levels of gore, guts and mayhem!" If you're still not sure, try renting the game and maybe even playing it yourself.
Education
Sc.D., Harvard School of Public Health
M.S., Massachusetts Institute of Technology
She works for the finest institutions and universities - that doesn't mean a statement like PacMan is 64% violent isn't moronic. The methodology is clearly flawed - as is rhetoric that increased violence in video games had led or will lead to increased antisocial/violent behavior (see declining juvenile crime rates).
They rate Space Invaders as more violent than GTA:SA (which whether you think it should be regulated or not is clearly very violent). The metric and methodology is useless.
First, their definition of violence
This is a problem from the start. So unintentional harm is not violence? This instantly brings up the question of what the player's "intention" is. Is your intention to kill someone or to win? Is winning accomplished by killing?
They then continue: "We also did not count as violence any intentional acts of physical force that represented normal play in a sports game" which immediately sets up a binary division between sports and videogames. I've long argued that if we are worried about violence, we should be a lot more worried about the kids who hit each other so hard they have to wear padding and helmets than we should be about the kids sitting on the couch with controllers in their hands. Such a division also indicates that in the minds of the researchers that, seemingly without examination, sports are ok, but videogames aren't. If they didn't assume that sports were ok, then they would examine them for violence. If they didn't assume that videogames weren't ok, then they would not examine them for violence.
In the joystiq interview, when asked, "Do you feel that the violence portrayed in games like Pac-Man and Mario Bros. is harmful to minors? In what way does it affect their growth to warrant a rating exceeding that of the pre-designated E?"
Her response was,
Funny that when asked about the impacts of media violence she pretends not to be qualified to make a statement about it, but somehow refernces three people who have consistently been crying that the sky is falling when it comes to media violence for years. Were one to actually be objective, it would seem that one would suggest contacting people who have been less convinced that media violence is bad.
When asked, "To what extent are video games used as a scapegoat for politicians and activists?" she responds, "This is not a question that I have researched so I'm not sure how to answer it. My impression is that every industry thinks that it is the scapegoat for politicians and activists. This is America." So basically she is saying that the videogame industry is a bunch of crybabies and that it is common to whine about things that you have no reason to whine about. Sure, just like when the Comic Book industry was complaining that they were being scapegoated...
Finally, she concludes by stating, "We developed and consistently applied definitions for violence and other content." That is nice and all. However, being
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
Think about it: if this study found Pac-Man to be 62% "violent", then even a 100% rating on whatever scale this is doesn't sound that bad.
Claiming PacMan to be 62% violent actually makes it seem than modern games *don't* have that much more violence than classic arcade games.
Basically they are bullshit studies which while they measure the percentage of 'violence' in a game don't measure any effect said 'violence' has. As such, the journo is correct in noting that the study is useless for the purpose that the congessional panels were convened.
"On one hand we have an established Harvard Phd, who has testified before the U.S. congress, against a game journalist with a bachelors degree in Psychology. Hmmm..." ...on the other, we have a slashdot submitter who can't write a proper sentence.
Seriously, stick to their arguments and not cheap shots about their degrees. PHD's are a dime a dozen, and testifying to congress is a matter of having the desired opinion and degree. They don't make you right or move the needle in your direction in the slightest. The content of your argument is what matters. If you draw conclusions from credentials then you are an idiot. If you use them to insult people, then you are a troll.
For some bizzare reason, a person with degrees in chemical engineering and environmental health has the Sloan School of Management (a biz school) on her letterhead.
You read TFA, you stated a point and explained it.
Well done sir:)
(snarking in this post as well) There's a lot of viciousness in this thread, oh wait, that's just a healthy dose of scientific skepticism from a well educated and street smart crowd who wouldn't be caught dead trying to assess games, much less speak before congress.
Maybe the NSF ought to instead rely on a select group of slashdotters to ensure scientific funding goes into the right hands! And screw peer review and congressional committees and Harvard!
ah thank you, that's the exact comic that was going through my head when I was writting it out but couldn't remember where I saw it.
Since when has a degree EVER denoted a level of intelligence in EVERYONE? Or for that matter that people with PhDs can never be wrong? Just because a person has specific method, does not mean it's not flawed. I suggest the many posts I've seen taking the side of the 'Doctor' just because they own a PhD re-evaluate their standing on the position.
is going to be only one data point
One data point isn't going to make a difference - it's infinitely small. IF this person does two more studies, though, they'll have a data TRIANGLE, and then we'll really be in trouble.
paintball
>>But she does have a point-- what would happen if THE CHILDREN began to eat power-ups and attack ghosts in real life?>>
Well, for one, they would probably get more fruit in their diet than they are currently. 100 points for a cherry, and not a Twinkie in sight!
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
The part after the Hmm... is that the game journalist has most likely actually played a video game...along with the other millions that have, and haven't killed anyone or acted the storyline out in any way. The doctor most likely has the problem that she has nothing better to do, so there is much more to the Hmm... here.
Is she related to Jack Thompson at all?
:S
BTW I still dont understand how you can even attempt to interpret a qualitative study with quantitative results
It really seems like all of this is due to mischaracterization of the study by using the word 'violence' as an inappropriate descriptor. Violence is more of the end result of a series of actions. It doesn't last very long because for violence to be occuring, there must be a current and ongoing reciever of direct physical hostilities. It seems "aggression," or the initiation of hostilities, would be a much better descriptor, as well as much less incidiary. This all boils down to buzz words. If she was forced to say "Pac-Man gameplay is on average 62% aggresive or hostile" then it would be more appropriate and it would begin to expose the "so what?" nature of her results. It's important to keep in mind this still does not address the problem of the quality or intensity of the aggression; it makes the % number near useless since this issue, like most in the world is not black and white. There is a big difference between the aggression of team sports and a murderer.
After playing so many hours of extremely violent video games during your research, do you feel you represent a greater risk to the public?
Enough said!
Wow, Dr. Thompson is very seriously abusing statistics! For the sake of entertainment, let's analyze a few flaws of the deaths per minute evaluation:
(1) hmmm so a game bent on world domination? How many deaths per minute? Destroying an entire nation, so around 500,000,000?
(2) a game bent on interplanetary warefare: ie. destroying an entire planet?
(3) Time scale...some games move slowly, others jump in years per second! Somehow I doubt Dr. Thompson accounted for this.
Fact is, measuring violence in games accurately is an extremely complex problem. Here's a scientific alternative using some simple AI that has to be *somewhat* better than their approach.
(1) extract a set of simple "features" that may help determine volient / non-violent games and write them down in a list for each game.
(2) Have people rate the violence of each game from 1 to 10 (where 10 = will not allow child to watch, 0 = perfectly safe and innocent for any age)
(3) train a classifier via a standard supervised learning algorithm
Of course, step 1 is a bit difficult and requires human knowledge, but any system where one tries to measure violence will require some human intervention (machines aren't smart enough yet).
"Recursive bipartite matching"- try it!
If Pac-Man had had any influence on me, I'd have spent the 90's in darkened rooms listening to repetitive music and munching pills ... oh wait
It all comes down to what you define as violence, I suppose. Isn't the basic idea in Pac Man that you control a little 'circle with a mouth' and the purpose is to eat everything in your path while avoiding being killed by monsters? And isn't that a violent theme? The only question, as far as I can see, is how she calculated these percentages.
I'm surprised you didn't mention the 1973 Physics Nobel Laureate, Brian Josephson, discoverer of the Josephson Effect and director of the Mind-Matter Unification Project. Have a look at his home page. He's also a very vocal and articulate critic of the scientific community's treatment of such `crackpot' topics as homeopathy and cold fusion.
Personally, I side with the view that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, but I think we need figures such as Josephson to keep us on our toes.
Tetris 0% !!! ...My God the Thompsons are right, you've been desensitized!
WONT SOMEONE THINK OF THE BRICKS!
Collector's Edition
First off.. Pacman & Ms Pacman + Junior show that Pacman is not violent but instead, the protector and provider of a healthy family.
Second: Pinky, that slut.. is a violent ho. she should be under fire here!
Third: Pacman makes you want to munch pills, & everybody knows pills make you happy so Pacman & his followers could not be violent.
this whole article makes me want to punch this guy ~~
Kill your TV
I tell ya ... whenever I play Ms PacMac I get totally out of control!!!
... those little dots are just ASKING FOR IT! Sitting there all round and stuff, they know what they are doing. They like it.
... running around all colored and blinking!!!
... I'm getting that funny feeling again.
I mean
And don't even get me started on the ghosts
Uuuuuhhh
With PacMan 62% violent and Centipede 97% violent, where does GTA3 land?
I believe they have not even found a name for that number.
...So is Football, American Football, Rugby, and even golf, Don't you think is violent a game where you have to strike a ball with a metal club so it can be eaten by nasty pole flagged holes?
I know plenty of people who are well educated that don't have a lick of common sense. Just because someone has letters after their name doesn't automatically make them "smarter" than someone else. The sarcastic "hmmm" at the end of the article is a bogus inference that the good doctor is obviously smarter than the Stanton fellow. Ph.D. isn't necessarily tautologous with having a clue. It seems obvious to me that Mr. Stanton might have a firmer grip on reality than the book worm. The mere fact that someone would bother doing a study about the violence inherent in Pac-Man leads me to believe that they might need to reassess their life's work.
Terrible karma and aiming lower, which in this environment of one-sided reason, is higher.
The PhD's argument really pisses me off.
... Really? I guess based on her person's criteria, it is. But their criteria is obsurd and sensationalist. She's capitalizing on the furor that other crackpots keep repeating, that video games are violent and that they have a strong influence on the behavior of people. This is the kind of shoddy logic that, if played in global politics, would lead us to world war 3.
I find more and more often that crackpots earn PhD's just so people will take their ill conceived ideas seriously. People need to remember two important things:
1) PhD's, contrary to the poster's blindingly stupid remark about education, are not more correct based on their education.
2) PhD's earn money by selling books and going on talk show circuits. Without an edgy topic, regardless of it's validity, they won't make money.
3) She knows what she's saying is highly controversial and probably bullshit. But she can form good arguements like any PhD can, which leaves the world with crap statements like: "Pac Mac is 62% violent."
I guess I'll make up some criteria. She's 70% innacurate in her portrayal of a benign game like Pac Man being violent. If she wanted to rail on Grand Theft Auto I'd spot her 80% violent right off the top. But she chose Pac Man for the most impact. She's manipulating her audience. Don't be fooled.
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
Since when exactly is Hardvard (or she) a recognized institution on gaming matters?
Thanks
We have one person claiming that Pac Man is an orgy of violence. It doesn't matter what the other guy says, that claim alone proves her study is utter gibberish nonsense.
Case closed. Next patient, please.
I have found that the "white coats" usually lack the vision to see the forest for the trees in matters such as this. I have a case where two guys with no formal education beyond high school has proven two PHD teams with mounds of reports were totally wrong! This proof came buy doing what was reported as not feasable.
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
As James Randi would say, once someone get's a PHD they seem to become incapable of admitting any fallability.
...that and $5 will get you a late at Starbucks.
Yes, maybe Pac-Man isn't suitable for 2 or 3 year olds. However if she actually read what the E rating meant, she'd know it's suitable for children age 6 and up.
If she came up with a whole load of undeniable proof, then maybe PEGI would be editing that 3+ SVG image into a 5+ one. But - and I'm really not a fan of the ESRB (the M/AO split is retarded) - she can't complain about a 6+ rated game's effect on 2 year olds.
Seriously. I'm getting a little sick of the uninformed intellectuals springing onto the attack every time someone feeds them a controversial line.
A lot of our current problems stem from the belief that people are stupid. We get a certain satisfaction from seeing people put down below us. The news media and the government feed on that and deliver one-line characterizations of people, factions, countries, whatever. "The terrorists" are, to a man, religious fanatics that want to see our way of life destroyed. They wake up every morning with nothing but killing America on their minds. Christian fundies are stupid sheeple. Frenchmen are arrogant bastards. Americans as a whole are fat, lazy, imperialist cowboys. The president is a completely evil ignoramus. We should point and laugh at every lawsuit you can spin into something ludicrous, like the McDonald's coffee case. Ann Coulter and Michael Moore are 100% politically honest and represent the majority of conservatives and liberals.
So PhDs are stupid ivory tower academics -- especially the women, who probably slept their way to the top. If you see the words "study," and god forbid it's from a PhD, you don't have to go beyond the short mischaracterization of their research provided by all the popular media outlets. Next thing you know, everyone's walking around laughing about the same mischaracterization, and spin becomes reality. We instantly assume the stupidest motives of everyone, except when we've decided they're evil, when we assume the most insidious motive.
"Think for yourself" doesn't mean to root against authority, it means to understand the facts fully before you start spewing out verbal diharreha. How many of you believe that anti-evolutionists deserve nothing but contempt, yet don't actually know the scientific studies and principles that led to the adoption of evolution? How many people that constantly bring up the example of the heliocentric theory will tell me what makes it physically superior to choosing any other fixed point vis-a-vis relativity? And speaking of relativity, who among you can tell me what Einstein actually did?
I have never known a Ph.D. that did not have a particular axe to grind. Dr. Thompson would seem to be anti-computer games (entirely, not just the violent ones).
From TFA: it is important to keep in mind is that games rated E are played by children as young as 2 and 3 years old, and the developmental psychology literature indicates that young children do not have the developmental capacity to distinguish reality from fantasy until approximately age 6 or 7
I have a five-year-old little girl. She does watch television (mostly childrens' television but also a certain amount of "Boomerang" with their "horribly violent" Tom & Jerry cartoons. She has never played one video game. Never.
Perhaps it's because I'm old, ancient, decrepit, almost a complete fossil that she has no access to video games. I must be a totally mean and nasty daddy, according to Dr. Thompson. Here I have been consciously, deliberately and with evil intent parenting my daughter in such a way so as to limit her experiences with things like television, video games and other forms of childhood entertainment. Gawd, I must be completely horrid!!
But I think not.
There is one program that my little girl watches called "Dora The Explorer." She likes that show because there is a problem to solve and a map to follow. There's also the odd Spanish word and I want her to know that there are languages other than English that she can learn. Dora also exists on-line as a video game and for sale on Nickelodeon Jr.'s website (Please note, this site will cause popups on some browsers). The television show has many video game aspects to it, complete with mouse cursors and highlit objects when chosen. My daughter has seen me and her mother on the computer but we're both waiting for her to read before we even think about exposing her to the on-line stuff for children available on the Internet.
And even then, we don't plan to expose her to video games until she is past what Dr. Thompson considers an age where she can determine fantasy from reality (though at age 5, she does know the difference).
Perhaps there is a fantasy that Dr. Thompson has that needs exploring -- mainly: if there is a video game out there, all children of all ages will be playing it all of the time. As a parent, I'm happy to disabuse the good Doctor of her fantasy.
My little girl needs to have a solid grounding in the kinds of things she can do not-on-line, like coloring, learning to read, learning to write, playing at the park, learning to swim, drawing, playing with stuffed animals and dolls and using her imagination. She'll have plenty of years for those things her horrid daddy is neglecting to expose her to.
So I suppose I would tend to have the same bias as the Doctor. My daughter doesn't do video games. But the reason why she doesn't do them is not due to some game rating system but, rather, to my parenting (or my being a total meanie who just doesn't understand the need for children to be constantly fiddling with a mouse or joystick instead of getting enough exercise to build muscles). Dr. Thompson is inherently ignoring the ability of parents to "just say no," when it comes to things that won't assist in the development of their children.
Perhaps I'm totally out of touch with the needs of children these days. But I think my daughter will not be stunted in any way in her growth.
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
I see the "Thompson should be a doctor" crowd is out in full force today...
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
"On one hand we have an established Harvard Phd, who has testified before the U.S. congress,"
Big deal so has Twisted Sister. So has every two-bit celebrity with a pet cause.
There is no "minimal credibility" required before you can testify before Congress.
Chances are, this woman testified before Congress because some moron in Congress, who already didn't like games, swallowed her ridiculous 'research', and invited her to testify in order to shore up said Congressperson's pre-existing agenda.
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA