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..."

Comments

Re:Perfect for Slashdot

[nwbvt]

"It's not feasible for game raters to play games in depth, and even if they did, they would inevitably miss content. That's why the current system has them rate games based on videos of the most violent/whatever moments. It's a good system, and no more flawed than the alternatives."

Well for starters, look at where they are getting that information. Currently they get it solely from the publisher, who clearly has a bias.

"Why, could this possibly be why ESRB ratings have contained helpful little content descriptions like "animated violence" for about 10 years now?"

First of all, I'm looking at the list right now and there is no "Animated Violence". There is "Cartoon Violence" and "Animated Blood", but no "Animated Violence". Anyways, the problem she is complaining about is that those content descriptions are often lacking on games that do contain some amount of violence.