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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..."
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.
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.
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... and Centipede was 97% violent (!).
:P
I confess... Centipede is where I learned to hate bugs and enjoy chasing real bugs with a can of RAID. Not only do I commit pesticide, I also maintain WMD under my kitchen sink.
To pick a nit, she doesn't have a Ph.D., she has a D.Sc., and it's in Public Health. But she does have a point-- what would happen if THE CHILDREN began to eat power-ups and attack ghosts in real life?
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.
Now, Ms. Pac Man is another story - that Bitch with her damn little bow.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
The guys in GTA just kill people. Pac-Man devours their very souls!
Pacman isn't violent, it's just drug obsessed. You're essentially boiled down to a simple mouth with the single goal of avoiding what can only be your own hallucinations (ghosts?!) while constantly munching down little pills fervently just to stay alive. You're so fucked up that most of these drugs just keep you going, nothing more. However, you're on a quest for the real good stuff, the uppers that let you conquer your darkest demons. Still, even these hi-powered feel good drugs really only serve to drop you even harder when you come down and suddenly you're closer to your fears and problems than ever before. Yeah, pacman is a really loser-junkie if you ask me. Sure he might turn to violent crime eventually to feed his habit, he might even slap Mrs. Pacman around a little bit, but I think that's reading into the game a bit much don't you Mrs. Thompson?
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Your application for doctoral study was rejected, wasn't it? Be honest now.
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